Wait so this interview is for The Mirror? Is that in the paper?
Yeah, you know, The D?
Oh yeah.
You were accepted into Dartmouth as a '10 but you deferred for a year. What did you do instead?
After I graduated from high school I was really lucky to get a job as a construction assistant with the Raytheon Company in Antarctica on Ross Island.
What did you do in your job?
Random things, construction things. Mostly outside shoveling snow, digging in ice with chainsaws. We demolished a couple old buildings and made some new ones. Most of the ones I worked on all turned out pretty crappy, I think. Also, doors -- you have no idea how much work it takes to make a door swing right in Antarctica. When it's 60F on one side of the door, and -60F on the other, it just won't close right whatever you do. I learned how to use a Cat [bulldozer] to push snow around, but I'm terrible at it. A couple times I got sent out to other places on the continent during the summer season, when scientific research is going on, but it was mostly setting up camps for scientists, carrying their stuff around, tooling around on snowmobiles, pounding nails and stuff.
Was it unbearably freezing there?
It was really, really cold when I first got there -- a couple of -60 degrees days. I actually got frostbite when I went skiing once. My fingers are now shorter than before (right), because the tips fell off. I had to wear mittens 24/7, even indoors, so everyone called me 'Mittens' from then on. My boss moved me to the welding division instead of outdoor construction work.
Did you know how to weld?
No, I had no idea. And it was even worse because I had to wear mittens to do it! For example they wanted me to make this ladder and just put the arc-welder in front of me and said "make it." I actually shocked myself with the welding machine, but I couldn't report it because my boss said to me, "technically I'm supposed to tell you to report this accident," but you get fired for reporting accidents because then the program gets less funding. Same thing for when I got a kickback in the stomach from a plank of wood I was running through a table saw. I didn't report it so I couldn't see any doctors or anything, and it turned out that I had some internal bruising. The medical care is almost non-existent in Antarctica. The safety measures, too.
How much does it cost to fly to Antarctica?
I think you couldn't pay anything to go to Antarctica since it's sort of a government-military operation, although I've also heard that you can go for around $25K. It's free to go if you get a job though. For my job there, the travel was most of the compensation. I was paid less than minimum wage and no overtime pay.
What do you even wear in weather like that?
Oh, they give you all the clothes you need. It's not that bad. Really in the middle of the summer it was sort of like Hanover in the wintertime. When it's really cold though, in certain conditions -- there's a scale from one to three, and if you're at level one weather conditions, they won't let you go outside. It gets really oppressive because there's not much outside contact, few windows and no girls. Well, not very many.
The gender dynamic must be fascinating.
What they say about girls is "the odds are good, but the goods are odd." I'm sure it goes both ways though. There's a lot of cross-dressing at the parties -- a ton of guys wearing wigs, a lot of dancing to '80s music, a lot of standing around drinking, especially since the alcohol is subsidized by the U.S. government. It's all pork [barrel spending]. There's a lot of debauchery.
Why did you want to go?
I just wanted to do something really out there. It was amazing. I got to go skiing every day after work. The cross country skiing is great, and they have a rope tote for downhill skiing at the New Zealand base. I don't know, it was just a really cool job, and you get to go out to different bases and work stations. I was thinking about staying down there instead of coming to Dartmouth.
Stay in Antarctica?
Yeah! You get free food, my roommate was my age. I didn't see money for six months! The big volcano [next to McMurdo station] is always erupting, which is always cool. And it's really cool to be outside. You see seals and penguins and orca whales, but if you touch them you get fined so much because of the Antarctic treaty. You're not allowed to change their behavior in any way. For example, once an Adelie penguin decided to take a nap in the middle of the main road and they had to set up all these 'slippery when wet' road block signs around it so that everyone drove around it. And scientists have to run away from penguins that get attached to them or want to play with them. There are actually lots of rules regarding recreation and I almost got fired for skiing in the wrong place. They sent the search and rescue out and they were chasing me for two hours and they got really, really pissed. But that's the worst they can do, really, fire you. There are no real laws there, so there's a lot of power plays and bureaucracy in the Antarctic culture.
So you obviously didn't stay in Antarctica -- what did you do after?
Well the company pays for your ticket home, so I just changed the ticket to Nepal.
What was that like after being in Antarctica for six months?
It was incredible. It was the middle of summer and I was getting heatstroke everywhere. Seeing grass and stuff again is so weird. It's like you've been in outer space. Also girls. And stoners and marijuana.
Haha. Was there a high demand for marijuana in Antarctica?
Actually, they tried to grow it there but they couldn't really because you'd get fired since it's against company policy. Though somebody found some in a secret growing setup, and it was a big scandal " gossip travels fast in Antarctica, because there are only about 400 people in McMurdo Base, where I spent less than half of my time, and about 10 or 20 in each field camp. Anyway, my personal opinion is that science isn't all that's going on in Antarctica.
Why do you say that?
There's a conspiracy theory that the United States is trying to take control of Antarctica -- because, you know, it's supposed to be politically neutral territory -- to drill for oil in the future. I mean, even all the science is mostly geological mapping of the Antarctic continent, so it makes sense.
Is there oil in Antarctica?
Well no one knows for sure, but that's the only plausible reason that the U.S. base is so huge and so many people like me are hired to expand and run the stations. We outnumber scientists by so much. There are something like 10 support workers like me for every scientist to keep the continent open for U.S. interests.
So what'd you do in Nepal?
Well, I went skiing a lot "
Wait, so you went to the cold parts of Nepal?
Yeah, it was really refreshing, it reminded me of Antarctica. I missed being there. It's funny, after they left Antarctica some of my friends went to the International Antarctic Museum just to stand around the exhibits because they missed it so much.
Where else did you travel?
Then I went overland to Norway, and I met up with some friends for skiing there, and then by good luck my old ski coach was in Sweden, so I trained in Sweden. I had gone to Tibet through China, Mongolia and Russia, hitchhiked through Scandinavia. That was really hard though because no one would pick me up except truckers.
How could you afford traveling everywhere like this?
I was pretty cheap since, at that point, I thought I needed all this money for college. So I was sleeping outside in random parks and shit.
And your mom was okay with this? Did you ever call her?
Yeah, I called my mom and she thought it was all pretty cool.
So is it safe to say you like cold climates better than hot ones?
Well, no because I went to the Gobi desert and it was awesome. I think I just like extreme places.
Weren't you lonely traveling by yourself?
Naw, I guess I was 'alone' but I was never really alone. You meet people, other travelers, everywhere, and you go with them. Like I was traveling with two 19-year old guys for a while.
So did you celebrate your birthday with them while you were traveling?
Actually, I turned 19 in Antarctica.
Oh yeah? What'd you do for your birthday?
Drank too much, fell down in the snow, had to be dragged back home inside by my roommates.
It sounds like the drinking culture was really intense in Antarctica.
Yeah well there's nothing else to do. If it's good weather you go skiing, if it's bad weather you drink because there's no drinking age in Antarctica. And in the summer season, it never gets dark so you never want to go to sleep. That's the party season. I mean, I guess there might be old people there who don't drink every day. Drinking at Dartmouth is tame compared to in Antarctica. I don't drink here.
What do people drink?
The two New Zealand beers -- CD and Speights -- Stoli, Maker's Mark and Bailey's. Those things used to be subsidized, so they drink a lot of that. Oh man, the air is the driest in the world and the hangovers are terrible. And we have this thing called party ice, which is ancient ice extracted from the ground, like ice cores and stuff, miles deep, and we put it in our drinks and it pops and fizzes because there's pockets of air frozen in the ice. Every time there's party ice it's like a huge party and the drunker you are the funnier the party ice is.
What's it like aside from the partying?
There's a big military presence there. It's really blue collar, but there are also scientists there. They're called beakers -- they're so uncool -- they clearly don't fit in.
What do you mean?
They're always losing mittens and stuff, and they don't really understand how things work. But I can see how the Antarctic program seems really cliquey to visiting scientists.
Do you feel weird being at Dartmouth after so much traveling?
Yeah, sometimes I feel like I'm owned by Dartmouth. Do you feel like that sometimes? I study a lot, though, because I want to be an astronaut. It's a little known fact that you need to have an engineering degree to be an astronaut unless you're a pilot, but you have to go into the army for that.
Would you say you're like a younger Bear Grylls?
Who?
