Around the world in eight goofy minutes

Photos: Nathan Whitehorn and Laura Gladstone

Around the world in eight goofy minutes

Many a college student has built a room around a sturdy coffee table made from a cast-off wooden cable spool.

But when two University of Wisconsin graduate students went to the South Pole they found spools put to a different use: as chariot wheels.

The chariot joined a steam-breathing dragon, a fake feast on a flatbed truck, and a lot of people in zany costumes in the December 26 Race Around the World. Since it circled the geographical and ceremonial South Pole, the two-lap course was just 2.4 miles long.

The race and parade are an annual tradition among the roughly 250 researchers and support workers at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. About half participate while the rest line the route to heckle and cheer the mish-mash floats. Many wear silly costumes.

"It's a community spirit that arises out of extreme isolation," says Wisconsin grad student Laura Gladstone. She was at the pole to work on IceCube, an experiment that's deploying an array of detectors deep beneath the ice to study neutrinos.

IceCube drillers built the steam-puffing dragon and the chariot. The dragon towed an improvised hot tub warmed by a heater that normally boils water for the ice drills. The cable from the chariot's 8-foot-diameter wooden-spool wheels is now dangling detectors beneath the ice.

Gladstone, who guesses the "balmy summer temperature" was between minus 5 and minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit, jogged alongside the floats in an insulated windbreaker, hat, gloves, long underwear, hiking boots, and wind-protection running pants. She says it took 36 minutes and felt like running in sand. Fellow grad student Nathan Whitehorn whipped around the course in about eight minutes on a snowmobile while towing researcher Emanuel Jacobi on a surfboard made from a packing crate.

"I'm not sure it was as fun as Christmas with my family," Gladstone says, "but it was fun."

Tona Kunz