Rolling pancakes

After we took off from Hawaii, we headed south. Our first destination of the day was Pago Pago, where we would stop to refuel the jet and get some lunch.

Pago Pago (pronounced "pango pango") is a beautiful island. When we landed, the weather was balmy, and the small airport, sitting right on the edge of the ocean, was bordered with smooth, tall, conical shaped mountains covered in jungle foliage.

As we walked from the jetway into the little restaurant, we passed through an opening in a short wall made of coral that had gorgeous wil orchids growing out of it's crevasses.

In the restaurant, I learned about Samoan pancakes. Apparently, the dough is deep fried and comes out round, like a ball. One of the crew ordered those, and one kept rolling off his plate onto the table.

Through the windows, we could see ground crews working on our big Starlifter...and then out of nowhere...a tropical storm whipped across the island, pelting it with rain. The storm disappeared as quickly as it had arrived leaving misty, jewel-like narrow waterfalls pouring off of the mountains near the runway.

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We spent the night on Hawaii, then took off bright and early the next morning for Pago Pago, then Christchurch, New Zealand. James Cameron, the director of Titanic, was travelling with us along with a grad student from Berkley who was heading to McMurdo with parts of a telescope that was going to be installed at the base.

Just after we took off from Hawaii, I was squirreled away up on the flight deck. There is an odd little bunk bed up there, as long as I am tall, and snugged right under the fueling port. I've flown across the Pacific a number of times with the Air Force, and it can be a long flight and a bit boring sitting in a plane without windows...so, I like to lay down on the bunk for the long flight and enjoy the sights from the flight deck.

As I was laying up there, shortly after takeoff, one of the two navigator's who joined our crew in Hawaii came up to the flight deck to talk to the captain and other crew. He saw me up on the bunk and pulled a small teddy bear from his back pack and handed it to me, asking if I would look after the bear for the trip. He was one of two navigator's we had picked up for this trip who specialized in navigating the pole.

I studied the bear, and and saw that it had a back pack. Inside was a notebook with log entries from other people who had looked after the bear, and around it's neck was a tag with a letter explaining that the bear belonged to a young girl in Kansas and was part of her Geography project. She had handed the bear off to a commercial crew leaving Kansas nearly a year ago, with a special request that the crew hand it off to someone else who would record where the bear went and so on. I read some of the entries of where this little bear had been. From Kansas he'd gone to Germany and Norway, and then the military picked him up and he'd visited areas at war in Bosnia. The letter asked if whoever had the bear on a date about 6 weeks away would be kind enough to mail it back to her, she was going to use the log entries to plot on maps where the bear had been.

Now I was going to take him to the pole.

When I left on this trip, it was Halloween. We flew out of Port Hueneme, a naval base near Oxnard, California. I was flying with the 20th Air Lift Squadron (US Air Force), and this naval base was big enough to handle our jet.

From Hueneme, we fly directly to Hawaii, where we spent the night at Hickham AFB. It's right next to Pearl Harbor, and I have out there quite a few times. Whenever I fly over Pearl, and see the shadows of the ships under the water from the attack that pulled us in WWII, it gives me a chill.

Hickham, one of the prettiest bases I have stayed on, has some it's own unique history dating back to that infamous day when the Japanese attacked. The Japanese hit the air bases first - Wheeler and Hickham, before bombing the harbor. Their intent was to take out any planes that could come after them before they finished hitting the ships in harbor.

Briar
www.starmountainstudios.com


When I walk around Hickham, on some of the buidlings, you can still see sprays of bullet holes across the walls of some of the buildings.

This is how that painting is supposed to look...I uploaded a cmyk one before. Doh! These guys were the primary pilots I flew with...behind them, you can see the jet...a C-141B Starlifter. All of this is on ice, about 5-8 feet thick, with 1,500 feet of water below that. In the distance, near the volcano, you can see McMurdo.

I created this painting with acrylic paint and an airbrush and the original is about 3 feet wide.

While at McMurdo, I was able to look in the windows of Scott's Hut. He was the ill fated explorer Robert Falcon Scott who tried to get to the south pole first in the early 1900's, but was just behind another explorer named Raold Amundsen - a Norwegian - who made it to the location of the true south pole first.

Antarctica is actually extremely arid, and everything Scott and his team mates left behind in the hut are still there. It looks like they just stepped out the door a few minutes earlier. Very, very eerie.

In our game Frozen, we've tried to impart a sense of the vast spaces and incredible, towering mountains of ice and snow that the hero, Samantha Bloodworth, needs to traverse in her efforts to get back to McMurdo after volcanic blasts rock the continent.

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Weird Helmet

Here is a screen grab of the gameboard for Weird Helmet:

Visiting Antarctica

I create paintings for the Air Force National Archives, and have had the pleasure of flying all over the world with the Air Force...doing research for my paintings. In 1994, I was able to go to McMurdo Station in Antarctica...and it was an amazing experience.

Here is the painting I did from that trip.

In the distance, you can see what looks like a large, white mountain...but that is actually Mt. Erebus...an active volcano that has been covered with snow and ice for so long, it appears blue...and it has steam venting from the top all the time.

We landed on a frozen body of water, called the Ross Sea...and being in an 800,000lb. cargo jet, I was a bit nervous...but I did three flights down there and am still here today to talk about it.

I got to thinking during the long flight home...what would happen if that or one of the other volcanoes down there blew...and the story for Frozen was born.

hello from Star Mountain

Welcome to the Star Mountain Studios blog. Star Mountain creates original online gaming. Take a look at our site:

www.starmountainstudios.com

One of our favorite titles, FROZEN, has been revamped and you can sample other online line games like Genie Joe and the Axeman (starring Joe Perry of Aerosmith), Findola, Bergman, SHARKBITES (a free online word game) and Weird Helmet.

We have LOTS of projects in production and look forward to chatting with you as we post the games and review your comments about the games we currently have online.

cya in cyberspace!

briarlee