Sun., July 13: Home is where the Heart is...

The bike crew! (L to R: Jocque, me, Jeff, Tara, Craig, Max (not shown)

Me at the Ice Edge!

Cool house on a lake...

Me doing the "Sound of Music" with the Ice Edge in the background! You know...I am quite the dancer!

Tara and Jeff walking their bikes up the "sand trap hill"


Sorry, corny title, but I just had to do it!

"Home is where the heart is"...and where this blog ends...:(

I arrived in Houston last night (Saturday the 12th) around 11pm. Rob surprised me with a new lab puppy, and I just love him to death!

The last of the scientists left Summit on Thursday morning and arrived in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland that afternoon. I had an unbelieveable shower (as did most others) and we all met to go do some souvenir shopping before dinner at the cantina. I got a few postcards for my scrapbook, a shot glass, and some Danish liquor (everything was pretty expensive because the American dollar has been on the decline). On our way to Summit, our crew ate at the cafeteria in the commercial airport (has like three flights a day) because the cantina closes at 6:30pm and the cafeteria open much later. Some of the others had been there and said the food is horrible. We were all VERY hungry and luckily the food was alright that night (some type of fish, vegetable medley, rice, salad, rolls). We all got a beer at the airport bar afterward because it was happy hour, which means 30 kroner instead of 35 kroner for a beer (that's about 8 bucks for a bottled beer = booo). We were going to go on a hike, but it was drizzling and decided to call it a night.

I started a new book, "The Red Tent" (another Liz recommendation), and fell asleep by about 9:30pm (the earliest I've gone to bed in a long long time).

Six of us (me, Jocque (Univ. of Colorado), Craig (Montana), Tara (Univ. of Toronto), Jeff (Univ. of New Hampshire), and Max (UCLA)) decided that Friday would be devoted to biking the 35 mile roundtrip to the Ice Edge (where the glacier begins). This "bike ride" is not a walk in the park either. I'm talking loose gravel, deep sand, traveling through hills and in between mountains on a path with potholes on bikes with no shocks and some not allowing low gears. The KISS (Kanger International Science Support) facility where we were staying has mountain bikes that the scientists and staff can use...but let's just say the bikes had seen better days! We had all types of bikers...someone who regularly rides trails in Utah and Colorado to someone who had not been on a bike since prepubescent years. In retrospect, I think this made it more fun because each person needed the next to help him make it through the EIGHT hour trip. From the experienced Jocque surprising everyone along the way with "quick fixes" such as Wild Berry Skittles to Ghirardelli chocolate, to Jeff having a horrible fall after flipping his bike on a steep hill with potholes, to Max pushing himself to the limits...we saw it all. Now, as I am thinking about the experience, it is so amazing that the six of us made such great memories and had the times of our lives...and none of us had met just three weeks ago! I am so glad everyone decided to make the trip to the Ice Edge because it is something I will never forget.

We celebrated the end of the trip with a beer from the local grocery store. We went to the cantina afterward and the food was amazing! And it wasn't "amazing" just because we had drained all of our energy during the 8 hour ride...the "non-riders" said so too! The menu included musk ox roast with gravy, boiled potatoes, peas, rolls, and strawberries. It was delicious! The whole time I thought it was beef, but Bonnie (GA Tech) brought the whole musk ox thing to my attention at the end of the meal! You should try it!

That night we had a foosball tournament at the local pub that I organized. Craig (Montana) and Adam (NOAA) won the 2008 Kanger Foosball Tournament. Tara and I lost in the semifinals in a well-played match. I presented the winners with 10 kroner, which basically can't even by you a beer, but hey, I forgot about the award and had to pull it out of my pocket!

After hanging out a little while longer and then playing some darts, everyone headed off to bed. We had to leave KISS at 5am sharp because our plane left the Air Force Base at 6am on the nose. The flight from Kanger to Stratton Air Force Base in Schnectady, NY was 6 hours long, but seemed a lot shorter than last time because everyone was wiped out and pretty much slept the first 2 hours or longer.

It was difficult telling everyone goodbye because we had spent the last two and a half weeks together...sharing every meal and working side-by-side. I am very glad and thankful that I had the opportunity to be a part of the Summit field campaign. Besides Nemo getting a tear and the winch breaking three days before we left, our instruments ran pretty smoothly. It was great getting field experience, and the other scientists and staff made the "camp conditions" bearable.

Things I am missing:
1. new friends I met at Summit
2. playing cards
3. oven fresh cookies

Things I am not missing:
1. not throwing toilet paper in toilet
2. cold, windy weather (I am definitely a warm weather gal)
3. not being able to shower
4. sharing facilities with 30 other people

How I grew:
1. invaluable field experience
2. learned new card games
3. didn't need shower shoes when I got back to KISS...all that living with others and not showering made me not care (Mom and Liz I bet won't believe me!)

The rest of the summer and most of the fall, I will be spent analyzing the data. Hopefully in times of frustration while preparing for my dissertation proposal, I will be able to relax and think of some of the great times I had at Summit. We'll see! ;)

Smell-oh-Meter: 1...Zestfully Clean!

Thanks to everyone for sharing my experiences. I really loved reading the blog comments and hopefully everyone else will share their experiences using a blog too! Let me know if you need help setting it up!

Take Care!

**********SPECIAL UPDATE**********

AT APPROXIMATELY 2:45 LT (+3 HRS CENTRAL TIME) I TOOK A HOT SHOWER AND SHAVED AT THE KISS FACILITY IN KANGER, GREENLAND.

I feel like parading around the halls singing..."MAN, I FEEL LIKE A WOMAN!!!" Name that artist!

We are off for a two to three hour hike before dinner at the kantine! Woooooop wooooop!!!

Pics!

For you grandma Jane!

All the way from Greenland!

2008 NATIONAL CHAMPIONS!!!

"Two borgs are better than one!" (Tuborg Beer from Denmark)

Craig looking down on me, Katrine, and Steve from the 45-meter tower.

Wed., July 9: LAST DAY LAST DAY!!!

It's been fun, but everything must come to an end. Everyone has been SUPER busy because we had to take down all of the equipment and transport it to the balloon shed, via bad boy buggy or electric snow mobile, which is hard to coordinate because the battery charge on both is an issue.


We had a NASA DC-8 and DLR German Falcon flyover today around 11:20am LT. They take all sorts of measurements including: chemical ionization mass spectrometer (BrO is the important one!), mercury instrument, meteorological variables, gas samples, and gas mist chambers. We will compare our measurements to the flight measurements.


This morning was really really hectic and it pretty much wore me out for the rest of the day. Craig and I were planning on doing a tethersonde launch at 9am. We filled up Nemo and had everything ready at Satellite Camp around 8:45am LT. Then we realized the Vaisala (tethersonde maker) laptop was not at Satellite Camp. I literally ran around Summit Camp for two hours looking everywhere for it, including: Univ. of New Hampshires boxes they had already packed, the Big House, Green House, and finally found it in the balloon shed in NOAA's boxes. It had accidentally been packed because I had borrowed a guy's laptop satchel who had left when I got here and Dave, his colleague, packed it up thinking it was his. I found it after many trips also back to Satellite Camp. The bad boy buggy and electric snowmobile were not charged so let's just say I was dying! So I finally get back to Satellite Camp with the laptop and then we realize the power cord was missing! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! I literally was about to explode! So so so so so so MAD! After a few moments of wanting to kick myself, I collected myself and walked the oh so familiar path back to the balloon shed. Booooo I thought.


Back at the balloon shed, I began looking in more boxes for the cord. See, this is an old Dell laptop (we only use it for the tethersonde software) and has an odd cord. I finally found it in one of Dave's boxes, which had a billion cables/cords.

So Nemo was launched at about 10:30am and was down by 11am. Just in time for the aircraft to fly over Summit. Whewwww! That was close! We also launched him for ONE LAST TIME (such sweet sweet sorrow!) right after the aircraft left. I'm not going to lie...for the most part I am not sad at all for not having to stand outside in the freezing cold with the wind whipping by and freezing my nose off (yes, I have looked like Rudolph since about the second day). But for the times when the snow looked like a sea full of diamonds and met the crystal blue skies, and I am all by myself looking out for miles...those are the times I will miss.

Everybody worked together and got everything cleaned out of Satellite Camp. Afterwards, the staff said they would handle palletizing (stacking up the boxes onto pallets to load onto the DC-8 tomorrow), and we could just relax. They didn't have to tell me twice!

I decided to ask people sitting around me to give me a quote about their favorite or least favorite part of Summit, best or west memory, advice to future Summitiers, or just what they are thinking at the moment. Here goes...

* Tara (Univ. of Toronoto): "I'm going to miss the horizon because in Toronto you cannot see the horizon because of all of the buildings. And I'll miss breathing without worrying about what exhaust I'm smelling. What I'm looking forward to...showering, flushing toilet paper, not having to stay up late because you're scared to go into your cold tent and finally not waking up to snow next to you on the floor!"
* Max (UCLA): "I'm going to miss waking up, taking 15 mins. to put my clothes on and the Scrabble and Youker games. Summit camp is like college...you live with your friends."
* Jocque (Univ. of Colorado): "Advice to future to Summitiers...just don't try to run in the snow after the first day because you get major chest pains!"
* Katrine (UC-Irvine): "I'm going to miss the sunlight."
* Richard (Michigan Tech): "I prefer the outhouse...where you can drop the toilet paper right down! The summer skiing is great too!"
* Jeff (Univ. of New Hampshire): "I didn't lose any fingers to frostbite!"
* Bonnie (GA Tech): "It's the coolest place on Earth!" (she says that is Greenland's moto). "I'm happy to be going home...that's it." (she's been here for six weeks)
* Craig (Montana): "Ice, Ice, baby!"
* Neil (British Antarctic Survey): "My feet are still frozen!"
* Louisa (Michigan Tech): "I love it so much I'm going to stay here for another three weeks!" (I'm guessing she's being sarcastic because she's already been here for six weeks!)

We are leaving tomorrow morning for Kanger, Greenland. We will stay there until Saturday morning and then head back to Stratton Air Force Base in New York.

Smell-oh-Meter:...3...no fresh hair and I sweated a lot running around Camp to get Nemo's laptop...that DARN FISH!!!

We had really good ribs for dinner with baked beans, potato wedges, salad, and enchiladas. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!

Current Weather:
-14F...brrrrrrrr

Mon., July 7: We WILL Prevail!!!

So what if the winch cannot be fixed here at Summit? We are going to manually crank that winch tomorrow during the DC-8 fly over, and we will succeed! Fly Nemo fly!

Otherwise things are good here...the other instruments are working (well besides the problems we had with the datalogger, but I figured out that the data drives needed to be reformatted!), I am sleeping great, and still really enjoying getting to know the other scientists and staff.

After two weeks at Summit, there is only one thing that annoys me: no toilet paper in the toilet. This is because I always forget and have to dig it out! Ugh!

So I took a shower tonight. For some reason I didn't feel as refreshed as before, but maybe that's just because I am use to it now.

Tonight we also played Trivial Pursuit! One of my favorite games! After two and a half hours, we finally got a winning team, Chris the medic and John on of the staff workers, although we did kind of help them out a bit because we were all ready for B-E-D!

Lunch: BBQ sandwich with chili, pickles, salad, tuna

Dinner: Buttery chicken, rice pilaf, salad, cottage cheese, pickles, apple pie

Smell-oh-Meter: 1...SO FRESH SO CLEAN!!!

Sun., July 6th: Bye Bye Nemo... :(

yep yep!

View from atop the 45 meter Swiss Tower taken by Craig Beals.

Looking down at me, Katrine, and Steve.

Looking SW at Satellite Camp. Lower/middle right it the NOAA observation building.

Zoom in of the main camp. In the middle is the Big House and right behind that is Tent City (yellow tents). The recreation port (cycling bikes and two couches and a tv for watching movies) is to the right of Tent City (black, long hotdog looking thing).

Well the tethersonde system has had a pretty good run...but last night around 11pm it may have seen the end of its career (well at least for Summit). We had a successful ascent, but when I began to bring in Nemo, the winch started to cry and moan out in angony. Initially I was in shock because I always thought Nemo would be the one to go, not the winch. I slowed the descent to about a quarter of the speed and then just stopped it all together. Once again I tried to bring Nemo down, but even full speed (level 6) was only about first gear (level 1).

I radioed into Katrine (UC-Irvine) and Craig (Montana) who ran out to Balloon Island (aka the tethersonde launch pad), which is about 70 meters to the east of Satellite Camp. We decided it was definitely time to get the Bad Boy Buggy and bring Nemo and the rest of the equipment inside. So I ran to get the Bad Boy Buggy from the main camp (about .65 miles) and let's just say it wasn't fun in 16 knots winds with my damn 500 pound boots. Fotunately I made it to the Buggy and back to Satellite Camp. By that time, Katrine and Craig had gotten Nemo back down to the ground. So we wresteled him under the power line and we're off to the balloon shed (were we store Nemo when the winds are too strong or when he needs a refill on Helium).

The winds were about 7 m/s at the surface and up to about 50 meters (from the sounding data), however, the winds were about 18 m/s around 525m. This was just too much for the winch, which had given its all for the last 6 weeks. And plus...a few hours later I read the operating manual and it said, "Operating temperature from 0C to 50C". So basically we have been operating under that threshold for six weeks. I'm talking all the way to -24C. We have a DC-8 flying over us on Tuesday and they're taking all sorts of measurements (most of them we also have at Summit Camp). Hopefully Willow the mechanic can fix the winch tomorrow so that we have the tethersonde system ready for the fly over on Tuesday. Craig and I took the cover off of it and unfortunately it looks as though the motor is burned out...booooo. Craig said Willow's body language did not look too promising when he explained what happened. Oh well...we'll see.

So I am still sleeping amazingly in my tent. From all the work and all of the trekking through the snow, when you hit the sheets (or sleeping bag in our case), it takes not time to doze off. It is great!

Today was leftovers day...which wasn't a bad thing at all. You see I love leftovers...even in high school I would bring leftovers for lunch...nothing like a steak sandwich when your friends have PB&J and slimey lunch meat! So for lunch I had steak, mashed potatoes, vegetarian shepard's pie, and zucchini. Mmmmmmmmmmm it was delicious! For dinner, some of the Satellite Camp group (Craig, Bonnie, Neil, and me) made an Italian meal: spaghetti with mushrooms, onion, garlic, artichoke, meatballs, garlic bread, and for dessert (drum roll please!)...very very very VERY VERY good warm apple pie! Mmmmmmmmmmmmm hmmmmmmmmm!

Only three days left (we leave Thursday around 8am). I will miss this place in a way and all of the great people from all over the world that I have met, but it will be nice to take regular showers and throw the toilet paper into the toilet!

Smell-oh-Meter: 4.5...pretty steady

Current Weather:
Temperature: 12F
Wind Chill: -6F

Take Care!

Sat., July 5th: "Throw Me Somethin' Mistah!!!"

Tour de Summit...Captain Americus won! Only one float went at a time because of the small number of people at camp (~30 people).

Me as "the shark"!

The frat float...Dar (cheesehead) and Ben (Captain Americus), two science technicians, are flashing the crowd! They also threw out beers to the crowd!

The July 4, 2008 Summit, Greenland parade! Krewe de Shenanigans!

Kathy (camp director, front of pig), Willow (mechanic, driver), and Kathy (assistant cook) on the pink pig!


Two English and one Canadian dressed up as Romans!

Me and the Romans

The "Female Traverse"

Back end of the "Female Traverse"...flowers and martinis!

Steve dressed up as a National Science Foundation scientist..."Your tax money at work!"


Me surfing behind the bad boy buggy (i.e. souped up, off road golf cart)...five seconds later I face
planted! Seriously...it kind of hurt! Ouch!

Dave (NOAA) holding our "Captain Jack's Halogen Hunters" banner. He walked in front of our float!

Getting all of the floats lined up.

The start of the parade...Will the cook banging on pots because we didn't have any drums. Katrine (Univ. of Colorado) holding the Swiss flag, Jocque (Univ. of Colorado) holding the Greenland flag, Kathy (assistant cook) holding the shenanigans flag (back right), and me way back left holding the American flag.

Me and Kathy starting the parade!!!


One of the boys floats...I cannot write the real name of it because it is inappropriate for soem readers...but it resembled a frat scene!

The beginning of our (Satellite Camp) float...pirate/under the sea theme. On top is Jin (GA Tech) with a hook, pirates in the bad boy buggy....

Second part of our float (attached to buggy) are two mermaids and one merman...last but not least is me...the shark!!!

"Tour de Summit" with Captain Americus and the cheese head! Captain Americus won...bring it on Lance Armstrong!!!

"The pink pig"! This was the original water tank that supplied Summitt...see...I told you there is a small supply!

Well HELLO HELLO! What a wonderful, fun, and entertaining day we had here at Summit Camp! Everyone worked hard on their floats for the parade, and it was a blast! You would be amazed at how creative the floats were!

The parade was at 4pm (LT) followed by a BBQ and then a dance party (the Big House actually has a disco ball hanging from the ceiling). It was really great having a break for a couple hours, although I did leave at 6pm and 9pm to do a tethersonde launch (Nemo). After the 9pm launch, we couldn't get Nemo reeled back in because the winds were very strong. So after two hours we finally got him back in using the winch and into the balloon shed. Whew! I was very very scared that we wouldn't be able to to get him back.

I'll post even more pics later!

Smell-oh-meter: 4...hair is not fresh at ALL!

Take Care!