About a week, which led to the AFC Championship, Meredith Nolan lived on a hulking research vessel parked in Antarctic port. The ship, called nox, was waiting for favorable marine conditions for the orbin to the ice waters below the southern peak of South America.
It was late January and Nolan was heading home after spent three months at Palmer, a small American research base in Antarctica.
She studied the effects of climate change on Zooplankton and encouraged her favorite Buffalo Bills football team at her spare moments. She was wearing a cap with the Bills logo on the front and blue shit at the top as she came out on the ship to collect Zooplankton in the nets, or set off the retreating glacier behind the station. Her hat pointed out two more Bills fans that she was one of them.
In some ways, she did not behave as a typical Bills fan, which caused the team to celebrate joyful chaos and destruction.
“We’ll see if Meredith starts to dive through the tables,” said Ricky Robbins, who studied the sea there. popular activity Among the fans at Bills Tailgates.
But in one important way she did it.
“I’m excited every year,” Nolan said cheerfully at the beginning of November. “But I hope this is a year.”
Since the 1950s, the National Scientific Foundation has funded research projects in Antarctica. Palmer, built in 1968, is the smallest of its three stations, in summer around 40 people and about 20 in winter. It is also the hottest, but it still means to freezing temperatures and snow, even in the summer. Some of them, such as Nolan, study the effects of climate change. For many, sports are a way to stay connected to the outside world, even if they are connected with their teams.
Until recently, high -speed Internet access was limited when it was available at all. The 2018 participant’s handbook warned: “Great downloads and streaming media have a negative impact on all others.”
Sports fans would therefore save their internet rations for games.
In 2013, Ken Halanych, then professor at Auburn University, was on the ship, when Auburn won the game against a hateful opponent, the University of Alabama, by returning 109 yards over time.
Halanych spent four hours uploading video to see the game.
He has been in Antarctica eight times since 2000. In 2004, when Auburn was one of the three undefeated teams hoping for a place in the National Championship game, he convinced the station manager at Palmer to have him raised on the Auburn flag.
“I wrote ESPN, who is trying to connect with them and say,” Here is my voice from Antarctica, “Halanych said.” Espn never answered. “
Darren Roberts went to Antarctica 13 times. He loves the work, although he acknowledges that it can be isolated. Roberts is not sure he would still go if his wife, Megan, was not part of his research team. After the broncos Denver, he helps him contact his brother, 13 years older.
“It’s really sweet,” said Megan Roberts. “Everyone really connects, especially over broncos, even though we are in these crazy distant places.” It’s amazing to see. He is in contact with his family because of what is happening with broncos. ”
Darren Roberts would watch broncos games through Google graphics that showed little football in the digital field. His movements corresponded to what was happening in the game.
However, when Broncos won Super Bowl in 2016, a couple was on a research ship called Laurence M. Gould. He was a captain of Ernest Stelly, a fan of Dallas Cowboys.
Although Cowboys did not play, Stelly pulled the ship close to the Palmer station to use the internet station to pick up radio broadcasts. The chefs whipped refreshments of the party and Stelly organized a Super Bowl party.
“I remember it was great as sitting in the darkness on a boat and listening to a super bowl on the bridge,” Roberts said. “And it was actually a very strange and kind of unique thing, especially at that time.”
The United States also operates a base at the South Pole, which is much colder but slightly more populated, and a base called McMurdo station, which is south of New Zealand and can support 1,500 inhabitants.
Robbins, who is on the SEABIRDS team with Robertses, worked in even more distant locations, making it difficult to watch his favorite teams. He worked once on a small island in Hawaii, where only seven people lived, including themselves. Such experiences cause Antarctica to feel a “almost big city”, he said.
“Like the kitchen with chefs and bedrooms and running water and freshwater showers is like, it’s very luxurious,” Robbins said.
The Seabird Group works from a small building separate from other scientists. Robbins called it “Birder cottages”.
“Darren’s rumors are that we were in a large building with the office, but they were all really sick with a penguin,” said Robbins.
The work was busier at the end of their stay, which meant that it was not so easy to watch the end of the football season. All the eggs of the birds were alcohol and the team had to measure their chickens. Scientists have marked some birds and removed brands from others, sometimes late at night or early in the morning.
When broncos lost with accounts in play -off.
Nolan was satisfied with the result of this game. Sport is a connecting point between Nolan and her father Jim. He is extremely proud that his daughter works in Antarctica, and has become accustomed to explaining Zooplankton to others.
“It’s a kind of DNA of the food chain,” he says to people. “Without Zooplankton we would all have trouble.”
Meredith lives about 30 minutes from her parents, as a postgraduate student Virginia Institute of Marine Science. They love to hear about her work and take penguin images through a text message.
“He’s an amazing child,” he told them.
During the games they constantly text, especially when they are not very stressed.
At the end of December, when the accounts were played by New York Jets, Krill put in bottles to start the experiment. He sent her a message that she shouldn’t be afraid, the game was blowing. The accounts won, 40-14.
Palmer Base now uses the Starlink satellite system for high -speed Internet access. In mid -December, satellites began to ping from the United States rather than Chile, which meant that TV YouTube was available at the base. Nolan could stream his accounts live.
Jim is a fan of Bills because he grew up in the UPState New York and Meredith inherited the condition from him. He has experienced disappointment for decades, including four consecutive losses in Super Bowl. His daughter, 24, saw less.
“It’s very optimistic, probably more optimistic than me,” he told them. “But sometimes when it’s a Bills fan, it can be hard.”
Nosafra finally got check -in to sail on Sunday evening last month, minutes before the start of the AFC Championship. Jim watched a ship on the spot called Marinetraffic.com. There is not too much about Meedith, but Drake’s passage, the area of the sea between Palmer and Chile, can have 40 feet of waves.
After settling, Nolan fired the iPad and signed up to YouTube TV. She sent a photo to her father-it was the back of Josha Allen’s head and the score of the game, 21-10, chiefs. She watched the accounts attempted to return, then lost, 32-29, just one game from Super Bowl.
“He was quite a bummer,” Nolan said in a text message when the ship got to a potentially treacherous Drake passage. She added a crying face. “But still a great season!”
