Drunken Holiday Brawl on South Pole Leads to Evacuation

It's mighty slow week here in Brooklyn. I'm sitting on the couch watching old Bruce Brown surfing movies in preparation for a reporting trip to Monterey next week. Otherwise, I'm doing shit. You might call it a lull. You might call it boredom. And boredom is bad news. Evidence:

McMurdo Station, Antarctica - Marathon holiday sessions of Asshole and Quarters at the US-operated Amundsen-Scott South Pole research station, at the heart of Antartica, led to what one scientist described as a "drunken Christmas punch-up," and forced researchers to airlift two injured men to a hospital in New Zealand.

It was a real whizzer. From the Guardian:

After reports of the fight reached staff at McMurdo station, the headquarters of the US Antarctic Program, an Air Force Hercules was sent to pick up the injured men.

They were flown back to McMurdo, but it was decided the man's injuries were too serious to be treated in Antarctica and he was taken on to Christchurch, New Zealand, accompanied by a nurse and a paramedic.

"There was an altercation between two people -- there's no indication of the cause or of the background between the two folks," said Peter West, spokesman for the National Science Foundation.

The injured man is an employee of Raytheon Polar Services, one of America's largest defence contractors. A company spokeswoman, Val Carroll, said an investigation into the incident would be held. She said it was company policy not to release names of the two men.

The Appetites of Artie Lange

If you have any interest at all in reading a dark, revealing tale of drugs, alcohol, cash, and Devil Dogs, buy this month's issue of Playboy and read my profile of Howard Stern's tormented right-hand man, 'Riding High With Artie Lange."

Over Ambergris Cay, 12/13/07

Landing in a storm, Ambergris Cay, 12/13/07

Landing in a storm, Ambergris Cay, 12/13/07

Downtown Miami, 39th floor, 12/10/07

The Swaying of the Meats

Dan Dunn is a Wine and Spirits Journalist. He writes a syndicated column called "The Imbiber", and recently authored the elaborately-titled "Nobody likes a Quitter (And Other Reasons to Avoid Rehab): The Loaded Life of An Outlaw Booze Writer". In that sense, Dan Dunn is very much my polar opposite. One night last week Dan and I sat at the Infinity Bar of the Grace Bay Club in the Turks & Caicos with the hotel's General Manager, a felicitous gentleman named Nikeel. Dan braced himself against the bar as Nikeel's barstaff presented him with a tangy parade of literally dozens of martinis, rum punches, mojitos, and various esoteric subspecies thereof. Dan Dunn is a Pro, and he absorbed the booze with well-rehearsed techniques involving sipping, puckering, gargling, breathing rhythmically, and hopping gingerly on his toes like a boxer before the bell.

Then the waiters brought us hors d'ouvres, like the skewered beef filets with cilantro pesto seen above. I ate most of the food as a fog of alcohol, lime, sugar and pulverized mint leaves enveloped Dan Dunn. Through it, I could foretell the rest his evening - Dan Dunn staggers through horrified newlyweds at O Soleil, crashes the VIP room at the Fire & Ice party, lurches onto laps of glowing Caribbean debutantes, somehow emerges from the fog just before dawn and wins $1000 at blackjack in a seedy Caicos casino.

Such is the life of a professional Wine & Spirits Journalist. Good luck in your continued quest to avoid rehab, Dan Dunn.

Marcus Gronholm turns a corner

Gronholm retires from WRC racing after the Wales Rally. This is my last view. At the beginning of the video, you can hear the brake compound squeaking as he left-foot brakes into the corner.

Ripping through the Welsh forest, 10:10 am, December 2007

Norwegian Petter Solberg, the 5th ranked rally driver in the world, slides past in his Subaru STI on the first stage of the WRC Rally of Wales. I was one of what seemed like 100,000 who scrambled through the muddy, mist-enshrouded forests to glimpse the best drivers in the world race in the last World Rally Championship of the year.

Xavier Pons passes the crowd, 10:20 a.m.

Stage Six, 5:15 pm, December 2007

Solberg later described the conditions to me as "mud and shit." The rain pissed, the North Sea winds raged, the filthy slurry of mud grew and grew. As I wandered among them, happily tanked Welshmen thumped me on the back and uttered incomprehensible Welsh aphorisms. The rains came in earnest after dark, turning the sixth stage into a chaotic and muck-slicked mess, like Woodstock, I suppose, but without hippies giving birth.

I found a spot in a growing pond of muck and discarded umbrellas, which were useless in the sideways rain and wind, and had a good view of the cars hitting a jump and skidding up a hill. I stood in a good foot of water, away from the crowds. The water was even deeper elsewhere. The fenceline I leaned against was collapsing, and crewmen approached to fix it. One took a wrong step and disappeared under the water. When he re-emerged a moment later he yelled in a thick Welsh brogue, "Was it determination or stupidity?"

Here I go after a week of Rally Racing school. Note my use of a technique caled the "Scandinavian Flick", which transfers the car's weight outside before a skid turn. It's a key to rally driving, kids.