Well, the ice-cold ocean water was nothing compared to what followed. The first thing in the morning, I woke up on my own at around 0450. I got dressed in the proper attire (inside out long underwear topped with inside-out boxer shorts, flip-flops and socks on my hands), and gathered my "haircut insurance" which I bought yesterday to protect me from getting my hair chopped. I had been informed by Mr. Buckley (a veteran polar bear) that they would not wake people up until 0500. I was all set.
I waited... 0500 came and went. I looked at my watch, yawning, and it was 0515. I crawled back into bed, and caught some more sleep.
The door slammed open, the lights all came on, loud music was blaring (REM), and people were yelling and shouting. Luckily I was all prepared. I went out, and found a person who yelled at me to get upstairs. I went up there, and stood in a line of other blue-noses. We were all given a slip of paper which had a poem on it titled "Why I am in the coast-guard". The poem read:
"All me bloomin' life, me father was King Neptune, me
mother was a mermaid.
I was born on the crest of a wave, and rocked in the cradle
of the deep.
Me eyes are stars, me teeth are spars, and me hair is hemp
and seaweed.
When I spits, I spits tar! I's tough, I is I am I are."
We had to memorize it as they were extracting people from the line to "go around the corner..." I was soon picked to go around the corner, where I stood with two other blue-nose coasties. We waited for whatever evil were to come next, and soon we were summoned. We headed down the hall to the gym, and into the back room where all of the exercise machines were. I was hoping that they were going to put us on a stair-climber, but I didn't have so much luck.
It wasn't that bad really, we were served green-eggs and grits, and some orange drink. I was glad to get the grits down, because they didn't taste too good. According to the folks serving the food, they were supposed to "grow our sea-scales." After that, we climbed up the ladder through the hatch up to the front deck of the ship, where I had done my walrus watching the day before. I saw Mr. Buckley up there, who tied my Phish t-shirt around my head to serve as a blindfold, and sent me off to stand behind the blue-nose ahead of me. We walked single-file, our hands on the shoulders of those ahead of us, and were told to stop. We stopped, and turned 90 degrees to the right at their command. We were then shot with cold water, and by the taste of it, definitely salt-water. Thank God I wore flip-flops. I'll be the only one with dry shoes for the rest of the month.
We then had to turn 180 degrees, and get blasted on our backs. It wasn't too bad compared to what I suspected. I was expecting a fire-hose, and they merely sprinkled us. After that, still blindfolded, we followed each other to the "haircut" place. I heard the buzzer, and was glad I got my insurance. They asked for the insurance, and then said:
"Well you folks that bought this insurance are lucky, 'cause it don't mean s***t!"
I kind of suspected that. I chuckled to myself, and let the "cutting commence." Basically they just went around with some vibrating box and touched people's heads. "Oh, you -- the scientist with the big head of hair! Ah, there's a nice patch missing." He said that, and then rubbed my hair with some sort of shaving cream.
Soon we were led, shoulder on shoulder, to the next point. We had to "walk the plank." I didn't really notice any plank, but I did it anyway. At the end of that, I was told to "get down and crawl." Of course there was a real sloppy, cold, type of slush there... It smelled really bad. I got down on my knees to crawl, and then was told to "crawl on my belly." Oh why not. I wallowed in the gross goobery stuff, the socks on my hands now weighing close a to a hundred pounds. I reached the end of the wallow pit, and was lead to a tub of warm water. It smelled something like an old stew that I found in the back of the fridge one day. It was warm though, and felt good.
At this point, while sitting in the tub, my blindfold fell off, and I got to see where I was. I was on the ship's deck in a tub of warm, brown, soup. There were half-eaten hamburgers in it, and old vegetables. I saw Mr. Buckley standing right in front of me, and he took a picture.
I got out of the tub, and got blindfolded again. I was lead up some stairs, and through a door. At the door, I was asked, "Why are you in the coast guard?" I answered with an incredibly butchered version of the poem, and was lead farther into the room I was in. I was made to kneel down, and the blindfold was taken off of me.
The first thing I saw, was a Buddha-like hairy fat guy sitting in front of me, with a big smile on his face. That was funny, until he said, "eat the cherry!!!" I then looked down, and on his Crisco-smeared stomach was a cherry stuck in his belly button.
I almost threw up. I knew I had to do it, but I didn't want to, and I sure as hell didn't want my mother finding out. The whole time I am looking around in bewilderment and protesting, Mr. Buckley is laughing his head off and taking pictures. I immediately told him that I didn't want him to take a picture of this.
I went ahead, focused on the cherry, and got it out of his belly button as fast as I could. I held it in my teeth, with Crisco all over my face, and asked if I could spit it out. Luckily they said yes. I would have thrown up, had they told me to eat that cherry.
Then I turned around to my left, and there was King Neptune and his wife (who had a very prominent mustache). I was told to honor the Queen by kissing her foot. Another really gross thing -- but I have to say that I would rather kiss a guy's foot then eat a cherry out of his belly-button. So I did it about 3 times until they finally decided that I was worthy.
King
Neptune then asked me: "Why did you come?"
The question kind of threw me, but I answered: "To worship
you, of course."
He then asked, "Was it cold?"
Why lie? I'm from Barrow. "No," I said, "not really compared
to Barrow."
He was obviously considering sending me back through the line, and said that I was free to go. Tish was there, and checked my name off.
I AM A POLAR BEAR!!
I looked down at my clothes, and they were an absolute mess. I was wet from head to toe, I had some kind of shaving cream in my hair, I had rotten food all over me, and Crisco on my face. I headed straight for the head to take a shower. On the way down, I passed through the area of folks who hadn't yet gone through the "real" initiation, and they looked at me with genuine surprise on their faces. One person said: "Doesn't look good."
I took a sea-shower and cleaned all of the gunk off of me, threw all of my wet clothes in a laundry bag, and got into some clean ones. I went up to get some real breakfast, and shared my experience with everyone else's. We all agreed that the belly-button thing was the worst.
After that, I spent a little while in the dry-lab, and decided to go take a nap. It was about 8:30, and Mr. Buckley decided he could use some shut-eye too. We both went down, and got into our bunks. I fell asleep with no problem at all. I was extremely tired -- not only had I lost sleep over the past couple of days, but the initiation definitely took its toll.
I awoke twice from that nap -- Mr. Buckley trying to get me up the first time (failed attempt), and the second was at 1200. I heard the PA going off, and decided I should get up. I missed lunch, so I grabbed a leftover piece of dessert and some juice. I was worried about possibly missing whatever was going on with the scientists getting out on the ice, so I got a briefing, and I was fine. The boat was behind schedule, and a series of delays would put it way behind. We were scheduled to hit the spot at 1200, and we ended up starting operations at around 1830.
I
got into my mustang, got my glacier glasses, gloves, hat, and boots. We
headed out onto the helo deck to watch them lower our gear with the crane,
and to see the polar bear watch set out. Soon after all preparations had
finished we headed down the gang-plank onto the ice. Bill and I were the
first to head out onto the ice. We first headed onto a large, flat piece
of ice, and got a rough surface snow depth measurement by taking two transects
perpendicular to each other across the ice block. Bill then poked around
the edge of the ice where he saw algae when peering over the edge. Once
the other guys showed up, we got the gear and took ice-cores (within the
same vicinity) for chemical analysis, structure, and algae. We found algae
in the middle of the ice-cores rather than the bottom, signifying it was
raft ice -- ice that either is pushed on top of another piece of ice,
or pushed below.
We took temperature readings of the cores, and put them into tubes. We
also segmented cores by depth, cutting 10 cm sections. The average depth
of the ice we were taking samples from was 1.5 meters, a little thicker
than we expected. After we bagged the segments (to be melted and analyzed
by Mr. Buckley and I), Pete and I tagged along with Terry when he took
his spoon and started scraping off sediment from the ice. We are interested
in where it originates, and whether or not it contains radioactive chemicals.
Apparently the Russians had deposited a lot of nuclear waste in their
rivers, and that ended up getting mixed in with the sediment being carried
out to sea. Hurricanes would churn up this sediment with slightly radioactive
particles, and get intermingled with the sea ice.
Pretty soon I ended up running around taking sediment samples from the bottom of the little puddles. I had a "scientific suction device" (turkey baster), and was sucking up the sediment, and squirting it into a container. I was told that the water was going to be evaporated to get the sediment alone, so we can analyze it. Makes sense.
Soon
we decided we were done, and got back onto the ship with all our gear.
I went inside to deal with the samples, and start writing my journal.
While I was writing this, Bill came over with a "Des Groseilliers" pin
for my new status as a Polar Bear. It was indicative of Sheba, in this
case, and not Polar Sea -- so I am very thankful for his generosity. Bill
is a really good guy in every situation. The pin has a picture of the
Sheba vessel on it, with a big Polar Bear sticking its paw in the air
in the background.
Today was a very exciting day, and I am glad it happened the way it did. I am secretly glad that the ship was late, so that I could get some very needed rest, and I am glad that initiation is done -- even though I have to admit it was fun. I am looking forward to doing more ice work. One difference I noticed about this type of scientific work, is that people operate very quickly, and get things done. It is very nice to avoid the struggle with preparation, and have people that know what they are doing on board. It is nicely organized, and overall all plans and operations have gone over relatively smooth.