The Game of Chase

I was thinking about the game of chase. Gromit adores the game. At the dog park, he loves the herding dogs that crouch on the ground in wait for him. When he sees them, he slows his gait and grins. As we get close he starts a slight prance, like those big Budweisser Draft Horses. Then he puts his nose in the air and looks at the crouching dog from the corner of his eye head turned away, shoulders rounded, paws stretched out away from the other dog. If this doesn't work he play bows and barks and turns his hips at the other dog. If the other dog starts to get up, Gromit hops forward. If the other dog is really interested he takes off hoping for a good game of chase. He is happy to chase another dog as well. He is a bit of a tail grabber though and has to sort out the rules when he chases another dog. He really likes a smart dog, one that can keep up with him and turns to nose him just as he catches him, or one that darts in a new direction before they collide.

Sometimes when Gromit runs and he stretches his front feet out so far, I swear he is pulling the earth underneath his chest and doubling the ground he covers. He runs in circles and dodges within inches of obstacles and in the game of chase, all people are just obstacles. He jumps over trees and cracks through underbrush all the time his feather white tail flashing above the brush line making him an easy sighting if not an easy catch.

I played a rousing game of chase once in Antarctica. It was when we moved the fuel tanks off the ice runway over to the Ross Ice Shelf to the groomed snow runway. Early in the season, planes land on the ice runway. The big planes with heavy cargo can land there during winfly and shortly before the sun comes back in full force. Huge C5s carrying helicopters and small equipment the ones that make the strong and versatile Herc's look small landed on the ice. You can land on wheels on the ice runway but in the snow you have to use ski's to land and the Herc's were used for this.

In order to move the temporary fuel tanks you have to empty the fuel from hose that ran between the tank farm down to the smaller containment tanks on the ice. The tank farm was high up on the hills and it took a couple of miles of hose to get to the ice runway. When you stand on the ice runway and look past the planes you can see Black Island and the Royal Society Mountain Range. If you turn clockwise 90 degrees - you will be facing towards the open water but looking as far as you can you wouldn't see open water. Again clockwise to 6 o'clock and you can see McMurdo a mile or two back from the runway - Scott's hut just a small dot. McMurdo reminded me of a tiny mining town, everything was a bit temporary. The gravel was black against the snow and the sky was blue like a periwinkle, not that pale white blue. It made the smoke from Mount Erebus look white. Around the edge of the Ross Island was the Ross Ice Shelf.

So - the game of chase in Antarcitca- involved removing the fuel from the hose so we could pick it up and move the runway to the summer location. The process to remove the fuel was called "pigging the line." I suppose part of the excitement was the danger, although I didn't think of it exactly like that. Here is how it worked - there is a large rubber plug that gets place in the end of the fuel line closest to the runway. Then air pressure is used to push the pig and the fuel in front of the pig back into the tanks.

There were 2-3 miles of hose full of fuel and it was an all hands on activity. Someone stood at the end closest to the fuel farm tank where the fuel was being pushed and where the pig catcher was connected into the line. Someone else stood at the air compressor, loading and sending the pig off. Then they monitored the pressure the entire time. As that pig sped the hose there were different people watching the line and checking for weight. We all had radios and listened intently. The radio was turned up and air pressure was reported almost constantly.

As the pig moved along it had to move through bumps and valleys in the snow and the aluminum connections of the hose. Sometimes it would get stuck, the pig, and you would know because the air pressure would go up. We needed to track that pig in case we needed to stop the pig. If the pressure got too high, well - all heck may break loose and before that happened we needed to secure the fuel and contain the hose not emptied. My job, was to ride and chase the pig all the way down the line with my boss driving the snowmobile and myself clinging on to the his jacket, my hood flying in the wind as we kept track of the high pressured speedy pig. As the folks at the air compressor started to see pressure go up their voices would get more anxious and pressure got reported more often. Phil, my boss and I would have to quickly find where it was stuck. Looking and lifting the hose trying to determine where it changed from light air filled hose to heavy fuel filled hose. That is exactly where you would find the stuck pig. The line could explode if too much pressure built up. And that would have been an international disaster not to mention extremely dangerous. We were reminded of this several times as we walked through the instructions with the foreman and the crew. So Phil and I were very careful about moving that hose, not wanting anything to start flying or blow up! Boy were we fast with the throttle too - once that pig took off, so did we - yeehaw

But the joy of trying to stay caught up with the pig and listen to the radio and whip around on a snow mobile past pregnant elephant seals under a sunny blue sky and a puffy cloud from Mount Erebus...well it was completely invigorating and the closest piece of excitement I can think to compare to Gromit's joy and grace when I think of us both running a good game of chase.