BootsnAll Travel Network



4th of July

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Happy 4th of July.

This week has been considerably slower than last. We had only one zero count night though. Compared to last year when we had 11 zero counts up to this time, we are still doing well. One night this week we weren’t expecting anyone when two drenched French walked in the door from an obscure and difficult route on the Grandes Jorasses. They had been out for a week doing this climb, and they smelt it. Besides them we have had a couple Spanish, Germans, and Belgians this week.

We have had a sharp drop in the numbers of French and Italian guests. Our guess is that it is on account of the fever spreading through the two countries…World Cup fever, of course. I heard on the radio that only 6% of Americans are following the world cup. So for you Americans reading this it will probably be hard to grasp depth of the mania which is going on here. It is even greater this time around because four teams that made it to the semi-finals were all continental European teams. And we happen to live and work on the border between the two countries to make it to the finals.

The semi-final match between Italy and Germany was pretty boring up to the last two minutes of over-time when Italy scored two back-to-back goals to reserve their place in the finals. France beat Portugal with a penalty kick by Zinedine Zidane sealing their spot. So tonight is the big final match between Italy and France. Strangely enough, all we hear on Italian radio is how formidable a foe Zidane is going to be. An unusual shift from the regular strutting, self-important stance usually taken by the Italian press towards their sporting heroes. It is also strange how they have fixated on Zidane when the French team is full of other great players such as Henry, for example. My theory is that they are just gufando. A gufo is a type of owl and, for whatever reason, gufare means, roughly, to jinx someone. But rather than a curse, when some one is gufando it means they are over-confidence to the point that they screw up. So, in other words by saying that Zidane is such a great player they hope to bring him down. I use this tactic in billiards all the time.

Enough about soccer; honestly, I would probably be part of the 94% if it wasn’t for my fanatic wife (she prefers “big fan”). The point is that we have had a pretty relaxing week to ourselves because most people are watching the games. I have had some time to begin work on the building. I started sanding the rust off our tin roof and cleaning up the mess that Vasco & co. left a few years ago. Somehow they came up with the idea that they needed to patch up the roof with tarpaper and silicone to prevent leaks and corrosion. The tar paper came loose immediately and has become a hazard to the helicopters who let people off on the roof. All that was left was some bits of stubborn tar paper and gobs of silicone which I spent a good part of the week peeling, cutting and brushing off. I soon realized that I was going to need a power tool if I wanted to get the whole roof sanded before the end of the summer. So I finished cleaning up the silicone and moved on to the wooden façade. If any of you have ever had to work with silicone you know it can be a mixed blessing and you know to use it sparingly. It works well on certain applications but should never be used in lieu of caulking. In most cases it can’t be painted on and it shrinks in the cracks rendering its usefulness questionable. When it comes time to try to peel it off, it comes off easily in places and sticks horribly in others. It is especially hard to get off wood. Apparently Vasco & co never learned this lesson. They went silicone happy here. There is an ungodly amount of the stuff in all the cracks in the wooden façade and not a trace of caulk. I am beginning to wonder if it even exists here. So I have put off painting the roof until I get a sander and the façade until I can get some caulking. Hopefully the hunt for caulking doesn’t go gummy.

The relatively quiet days freed us up to have a nice 4th to ourselves. Well, there was a Spanish couple here. They didn’t flinch when they woke up late to billowing smoke from our bonfire. In fact, they never even asked what it was all about. Maybe in Spain it is common for the huts to have bonfires. We decided to keep some of the old benches and placed them around the hut for seating space which, in august, becomes a prime commodity. Some of them are pretty precariously placed but considering that most of our clientele face much diceyer situations on the climb we figured they’d be alright where they are. The tables and older benches had to go. They were pretty funky. In the process of burning the tables, a small grass fire ignited. I stepped out of the hut to a huge cloud of smoke and expected the worse. I couldn’t see where it was coming from from the hut because some coals had rolled down the cliff a little and set fire to some tufts of grass farther down. I went up to the roof and hosed the area down with our water supply hose; no biggie. The rib grilling went well, too. We had invited some guide-friends to celebrate but none of them made it. Why would they; obviously, the 4th is not a nationally recognized holiday in Italy. We always try our best to celebrate it anyway. This was my tenth 4th outside of the US. Their absence just meant more ribs for us. We let the ribs marinade for 4 days. They were really good but they still can’t touch a good Corky’s rib. Luci and I took turns wearing Jesse’s Tui sombrero while we grilled. Jesse got it at a Crusader’s rugby match in Christchurch, NZ and gave it to me if I promised to wear it up at the hut. I had been searching for a sombrero to wear out at the grill when it was raining and this one fits the bill perfectly. A bit difficult to travel with, I have to say. It doesn’t pack very well and attracts a lot of attention when you wear it on a plane. It has found it’s home here at Boccalatte. We leave it hanging in the dining room and people always try it on.

There have been some interesting developments with our Antarctica jobs this week. It has been a rough ride this year with our contracts. When we left McMurdo we had alternate contracts which essentially means we were on a list of candidates for field camp staff. This also allowed our company to send us to get our First Responders recertified. In April we were offered supervisory and chef positions at the same camp we were at last year: Siple Dome. The tricky thing is that the field camp staff positions need to be filled BEFORE the NSF approves the annual budget. As it happens the NSF decided to eliminate one of the camps about a week before we came up to the hut. It was a two person camp whose existence was solely as an emergency air strip for the Hercs flying between McMurdo and Christchurch. It had never been used in an emergency and most Herc crews said it never would be either on account of the rough, icy and windy nature of the area. They are more likely to land at Siple.

Since the other camp had already been staffed, someone had to go. Since the staff at the other camp have more years in the program they got moved to Siple and we got thrown into limbo. Our supervisor said she was working on an alternative for us but after three weeks we were getting desperate. We began to think about what we would do if we didn’t get jobs in Antarctica next season. We talked about going to South America or traversing the Sahara to Mali with a friend. Then we got news from our supervisor that she found us positions at the larger camp nearby Siple Dome: WAIS Divide. The NSF had approved me a new position. I’ll be solely responsible for fueling aircraft and machinery and doing preventative maintenance on generators and smaller equipment. Luci was given the sous chef position. Jesse had applied for the same position but he said he didn’t mind so we’re happy.

We’re pretty happy but we don’t want to gufare troppo. There are a whole chain of events that still need to happen before we can be sure that we are going. The first thing is that we need to PQ or, physically qualify, which means we need to pass our medical. Last week we got a call in the middle of the night from medical (people always forget we are 8 hrs ahead of mountain time). The dentist wasn’t happy with the quality of one of Luci’s x-rays and they want me to get a “restoration” on tooth #14OM. This is difficult for us coming up on our busiest time of year. So we have been brainstorming ideas to make it happen. As it turns out, our dentist already “restored” #14 after the x-rays were taken. There was a bit of confusion because European dentists count teeth from left to right (like we write) rather than vice versa as American dentists do. We are still in negotiations about Luci’s bite-wing x-ray. Our argument is that they also have a current panoramic x-ray to refer to.

Before we can be approved for travel to NZ we need to PQ. Last year we were approved for self-ticketing because we deploy from outside the US. If we have to wait until August to get x-rays that cuts it pretty close for an October deployment. We are concerned about availability if we wait so we have begun building our itinerary already. American Airlines lets us go ahead and book a ticket but we don’t have to pay until a month before travel at the latest. So, hopefully, by the end of next week we’ll have a little better idea of where we stand.



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One response to “4th of July”

  1. Sarah says:

    Congratulations Italia!! What a Cup! Luci, I’m a huge fan now as well.