Antarctica In My Head
Mar. 29th, 2006 10:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
funraniumFor the past several nights, the memory of Volleybag has been preying on my mind. I know I have mentioned this to many before but I must purge my brain. I have to preface this with the fact that the places and things I am about to describe are going away or are gone. The heart aches just thinking of it.
The Dome and old buildings are going away. With it shall go volleybag as I knew it. Last I heard, the metal skin of the Dome was going to be reconstructed somewhere at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I will have to make pilgrimage when that day comes, but there will be no volleybag under the Dome.
Prior to the construction of the elevated station, South Pole had three gyms: a weight room under the dome, a laminate wood floor gym that was the back half of the old garage building, and an exercise room full of stationary cycles, rowing machines, etc. out in the Summer Camp which shut down every winter. I believe the weight room to be the oldest continually used gym there. It wasn’t the best weatherproofed of buildings but decades of sweaty grunting had caused all the cracks to seal up with ice on the inside nicely.
One time I offered to pay a guy $20 to lick the weight room ice. I did so over dinner, ruining yet another meal for Mr. Hovey. For a man with such a delicate stomach, I don’t know why he kept insisting on sitting with me and Mark. Anyway…
The gym was a mutant. The limited space at the station combined with the varied athletic pursuits people need to keep sane dragged and the fact that this space used to be part of the garage meant it didn’t quite do anything right.
First, ventilation. The gym was created when the old garage was partitioned into a smaller garage, a parts room/paint shop, and gym. Obviously, the first two need good ventilation or people asphyxiate, so the systems that kept the air clear for the whole building before were dedicated to just these two. This meant that after enough time in the gym, you had to prop open the door because it would overheat so badly just due to your physical exertion. Air that was over 80F went rushing out the top of the doorway as -80F swept across the transom. A cloud instantly formed that began roiling in the middle of the dooway, caught between the convection currents.
Second, thirty years of shifting athletic pursuits. The gym’s original purpose was to provide a half court basketball game that could double for volleyball. Of course, that was just silly because the ceiling was so low that you couldn’t make a shot from any farther back than the foul line and any volleyball set or bump was likely to come right back down on your head from a ricochet. Later, the adventure tourist faction of Antarctic workers (which make up a high percentage these days) got climbing wall holds installed on two of the four walls. Finally, the gym got used as an emergency refuge, so it had all kinds of speakers and alarm systems in the corners of the ceiling. Basically, the two of the four walls and the ceiling were covered in junk, including a basketball hoop.
At its heart, volleybag was the product of physical of these constraints. The game didn’t just work around these obstacles, it depended on them. You aimed for them to change the direction of your shot or to drop it dead to the floor. The only out of bounds was the back wall and your serve had to be a perfectly clean shot, other than that the game was like racketball with knobby walls. Players had to be willing to make abrupt changes in direction and sudden stops when playing for this reason.
It was chaotic bliss, a sport I could truly get behind almost as much as Calvinball. One of the IT guys played with us, so he wired up the stereo to run through the emergency announcement speakers. We played at least twice a week for a couple hours each time. The memory of lying prone on the floor exhausted and overheating, door open, ice crust of sweat forming on me, and listening to the Lords of Acid is vivid. I regularly went home bruised and battered from running into the climbing wall at speed. One time I ended up kicking the wall so hard that I broke my toenail off.
Oh yes, the cold and lack of maintenance had taken their toll on the floor. The slats had gapped ever so slightly, exposing blade like edges to lay your knees or whatever open if you dove for a save. I bled for that sport often and it shows on my knees.
All these obstacles took their toll on the volleybag. Despite being made of the same heavy canvas as our insulated carhartts were, it still tore. The guardian of the volleybag, Johan, one of the South Pole’s denizens of longest duration since I believe he is back down there for his eleventh winter right now, kept it in his room with him and had a sewing kit dedicated to mending it. By the end of our winter, it looked as stitched together as Frankenstein’s face. Since I had never worn them, I volunteered my carhartts to provide replacement material for the volleybag for the next season (not a new one, much like Grandfather’s Axe). I have no idea how old the volleybag actually was but rumor has it that the game dated back to the seventies.
One time I offered to pay a guy $20 to lick the weight room ice. I did so over dinner, ruining yet another meal for Mr. Hovey. For a man with such a delicate stomach, I don’t know why he kept insisting on sitting with me and Mark. Anyway…
The gym was a mutant. The limited space at the station combined with the varied athletic pursuits people need to keep sane dragged and the fact that this space used to be part of the garage meant it didn’t quite do anything right.
First, ventilation. The gym was created when the old garage was partitioned into a smaller garage, a parts room/paint shop, and gym. Obviously, the first two need good ventilation or people asphyxiate, so the systems that kept the air clear for the whole building before were dedicated to just these two. This meant that after enough time in the gym, you had to prop open the door because it would overheat so badly just due to your physical exertion. Air that was over 80F went rushing out the top of the doorway as -80F swept across the transom. A cloud instantly formed that began roiling in the middle of the dooway, caught between the convection currents.
Second, thirty years of shifting athletic pursuits. The gym’s original purpose was to provide a half court basketball game that could double for volleyball. Of course, that was just silly because the ceiling was so low that you couldn’t make a shot from any farther back than the foul line and any volleyball set or bump was likely to come right back down on your head from a ricochet. Later, the adventure tourist faction of Antarctic workers (which make up a high percentage these days) got climbing wall holds installed on two of the four walls. Finally, the gym got used as an emergency refuge, so it had all kinds of speakers and alarm systems in the corners of the ceiling. Basically, the two of the four walls and the ceiling were covered in junk, including a basketball hoop.
At its heart, volleybag was the product of physical of these constraints. The game didn’t just work around these obstacles, it depended on them. You aimed for them to change the direction of your shot or to drop it dead to the floor. The only out of bounds was the back wall and your serve had to be a perfectly clean shot, other than that the game was like racketball with knobby walls. Players had to be willing to make abrupt changes in direction and sudden stops when playing for this reason.
It was chaotic bliss, a sport I could truly get behind almost as much as Calvinball. One of the IT guys played with us, so he wired up the stereo to run through the emergency announcement speakers. We played at least twice a week for a couple hours each time. The memory of lying prone on the floor exhausted and overheating, door open, ice crust of sweat forming on me, and listening to the Lords of Acid is vivid. I regularly went home bruised and battered from running into the climbing wall at speed. One time I ended up kicking the wall so hard that I broke my toenail off.
Oh yes, the cold and lack of maintenance had taken their toll on the floor. The slats had gapped ever so slightly, exposing blade like edges to lay your knees or whatever open if you dove for a save. I bled for that sport often and it shows on my knees.
All these obstacles took their toll on the volleybag. Despite being made of the same heavy canvas as our insulated carhartts were, it still tore. The guardian of the volleybag, Johan, one of the South Pole’s denizens of longest duration since I believe he is back down there for his eleventh winter right now, kept it in his room with him and had a sewing kit dedicated to mending it. By the end of our winter, it looked as stitched together as Frankenstein’s face. Since I had never worn them, I volunteered my carhartts to provide replacement material for the volleybag for the next season (not a new one, much like Grandfather’s Axe). I have no idea how old the volleybag actually was but rumor has it that the game dated back to the seventies.
The Dome and old buildings are going away. With it shall go volleybag as I knew it. Last I heard, the metal skin of the Dome was going to be reconstructed somewhere at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I will have to make pilgrimage when that day comes, but there will be no volleybag under the Dome.
