T A B L E_T A L K Oh those ugly Americans! Hate them or defend them in Table Talk's Wanderust area. R E C E N T L Y Discovering Petra By Maxine Rose Schur At dusk, after the tourists have left, Jordan's ancient ruin comes to splendid life (11/26/97) Marooned in Colorado By Sara Baird A type-A journalist is forced to unwind at an idyllic, isolated (accessible only by narrow-gauge railroad or helicopter) Colorado resort (11/25/97) Road Warrior Jerry Yang Yahoo's Jerry Yang shares travel secrets (11/24/97) Surreal Gourmet By Bob Blumer A turkey chicken's Thanksgiving recipe (11/21/97) Crossing Mongolia By Amanda Jones Of gers and grit on the first recorded four-wheel expedition through the Gobi Desert to Lake Hovsgol (11/20/97) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Wanderlust archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -		BY MARY ROACH | People who live in Antarctica develop an eye for whites. One day last year, while skidooing the two miles from McMurdo Base to his classroom out on the Ross Ice Shelf, U.S. Antarctic Program survival instructor Bill McCormick spotted a piece of white styrofoam on the snow. You have to admit it's impressive, an ocular achievement akin to spotting a Wheatie in your All-Bran. McCormick's two-day cold weather survival course is a requirement for new Antarctica arrivals who plan to spend any time in the field. That includes both researchers and support staff, plus the occasional visiting journalist. Students learn how to build emergency snow shelters (igloos, trenches) and operate shortwave radios, and how not to get frostbite or hypothermia doing it. McCormick, a 48-year-old mountaineering guide from Colorado, is at this moment lecturing on an extremely white weather condition called whiteout. Every fourth or fifth sentence he breaks stride for a swallow of coffee, which he takes black. Whiteouts are snowstorms so trumped-up and incorrigible that ground and air, horizon and sky, are indistinguishable, a colorless, directionless chowder of fog and snow. McCormick has seen people get lost on the 50-foot walk from his classroom to the outhouse. (Another reason to be wary of ice-sheet outhouses: Seals occasionally use the opening in the ice as a blowhole. While there's nothing inherently dangerous about a suppositorial blast of hot seal breath, it is, in the words of one shaken veteran, "a disquieting way to start your day.") McCormick tried for years to come up with an accurate description of what it's like to be in a whiteout. What he finally settled on was being outdoors with a white plastic garbage pail over your head. This gave him an idea. To make his search-and-rescue exercises more challenging for his students (and more entertaining for himself), McCormick requisitioned a stack of white plastic garbage pails. In this afternoon's search-and-rescue exercise, McCormick is taking the role of the lost victim. A small group of students is given a coil of rope, a sheaf of trail marker flags, garbage pails and instructions to go out and find their instructor without getting lost themselves. That done, McCormick disappears into the almost painful brightness of an Antarctic afternoon. N E X T+P A G E +| "Help ..."