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