The Hole in the Ice (a.k.a. The Bathroom)...

Well, working out in the middle of an ice shelf definitely has its drawbacks. Besides being very cold and windy, by far the worst thing is the bathroom situation. There is no running water out here, so it goes without saying that there are no toilets. To solve this problem, there are basically just holes drilled very deeply into the ice, and there is an outhouse sitting on top. Basically, when they get full, the hole is filled in, and the outhouse is moved over a new hole. If that doesn't sound pleasant enough, they are not heated and for obvious reasons are located about 200ft away from the buildings we work in. All of this makes for an extremely unpleasant and cold trip to the bathroom.

This year coming down, we were told that we were going to have inside bathrooms that actually flushed. For the guys that have been coming down here for a while, you would have thought that they were going to work at a 5 star hotel compared to what they have experienced in the years past - an actual warm flushing toilet. You have to understand that things take place very slowly down here. Most things are government run (or at least run like the government), so something that would seem very simple such as installing a bathroom, involves a mound of paperwork and a lot of time. This bathroom has been in the works for the better part of 4 years, so there was a lot of anticipation about it opening and everyone was already trying to figure out who was going to be the first to use it (pretty sad, huh).

Anyway, finally this year, all of the construction was complete, the plumbing installed, and basically all that had to be done was to put the digestive chemicals in the system and test it out and we would have a fully functioning restroom in just a few days. The plumber came in to start the job of adding the chemicals to the system and left for the day. Overnight that night, there was some sort of chemical reaction and a fire started in the bathroom. Although it did not burn down, it did enough damage that they will have to start from scratch to install a new bathroom, so it might be another 2-3 years. The building still stands, now with yellow caution tape surrounding it (it is now a biohazard becasue of all the chemicals inside), and it stands as a constant reminder to the bathrooms that could have been and almost were.