Race Around the World

We are celebrating Christmas today at the South Pole even though it is only Christmas Eve here I don't know the reason exactly, but I assume it gives most of the station a two day weekend instead of the usual one day weekend. As part of the festivities, there was a Race Around the World where you can run, walk, ski, ride, or drive your way around a 2.1 mile course that changes every year. I rode in the chariot, as I did last year, which was constructed by a IceCuber years ago and consists of a lot of salvaged parts. This year, we only had four people in the chariot due to the substantially smaller group involved with ARA compared to IceCube and the less favorable weather.

Here you can see the chariot, which may have been in its last Race Around the World as apparently it is slated to be one of the first items to go into the shredder when it arrives next year. I'm hoping Lockheed Martin, who take over the support contract in March, will see it fit to keep the chariot around.














A sled with a float depicting one of the remote field camps that they haven't been able to get people to for a couple weeks now.














The racers gathered together before the race. There are prizes for the top three finishers in each gender with the top male and female finishers getting a free ride to McMurdo for the marathon there.














The start of the 2.1 mile race.














Here you can see the racers as they run behind the back of the station. There are four wings or pods coming off of the station, my pod is the second from the left and the window for my room is the second most right window on the lower level and if you look real carefully you can see me being not in my room.















I believe this is called joggling, but I'm not too sure and I can't imagine doing it in these conditions.















The lone bicyclist. I had figured the rider would do a lot worse in the soft drifts, but he managed to keep up for most of the race.















The visitors' camp, which is only a small fraction of the size of what it once was.














Here you can see the van at the tourist camp. I didn't see any tourists come out to watch the race.














Here you can see the visitors center the station put up to deal with all the tourists this year.
















One of the members of our team gave up on the foot race early on and caught a ride in the van. This shot is of him rejoining the race near the finish.















This vehicle from the heavy shop followed us. I couldn't quite figure out what was in the innertube.














Even though the temperature was near 0 degrees F, the 20 knot winds and overcast sky made this year's race pretty challenging. The flat lighting was so bad that the lead vehicle lost site of the road and ended up making it's own path through some soft drifts. All the other vehicles followed but the sled on the snowmobile ended up tipping crossing some of the deep tacks left behind by the vehicles in front but the driver was able to get it back onto the sled and make it to the finish.














I didn't manage to get a shot of this float before the race, and by the time they made it near the finish line, I was in the van taking the chariot back to the drill camp. We had to stop because the stairs to the chariot fell down on the back, and when I went out to fix it and take this photo, but my camera had started to fog up from being in the warm van. Basically the float had a good portion of the galley staff dancing.