The internet wasn’t broken yesterday, but the wireless was, meaning that the only place we could get internet access was the hundred year old PC in Jeremy’s room.

It was Jeremy and Matt’s room yesterday, because six persons arrived to stay at the house. It’s not our house, it is a house that is rented in Atqasuk for the use of researchers. No one stayed with me, probably because I smell so bad.

So these loon people show up and I had to try to remember the names of Debbie, Ken, Matt, Sarah, Jeff, and Joel all at once. It didn’t help that I had been about five minutes away from a two hour nap and Jeremy was nowhere to be seen, since he’d gone fishing with some old turkey lunchmeat and an As Seen On TV! travel fishing pole.

Then the kids materialized and brought a puppy named Princess and stayed until midnight, lurking around the house with ladders since we wouldn’t let them inside. We have been pretty nice to them this week. They loved the popcorn and popsicles. Lest you think we are trying to fatten them up, we also offered them carrots and they accepted quite happily. They also kicked my butt at war (leaving me with only a king, an ace, a two and a six after one round), but were astoundingly less successful at Trivial Pursuit. I even tried to pick easy questions, but apparently they’ve never heard of Gordie Howe.

All I had time for on the internet was posting six sentences yesterday so I could post the link to the pictures. It was a tough fight. I will try to put up more pictures of more consequential things soon.

Today we got done in the field early and raced to the airport dirt-road landing strip with our bags to see if they would let us on a flight we didn’t have tickets for. They did so without question. No IDs, no bag searches, no metal detectors (ha), no credit card numbers, just a once-over and a “sure, hop on.” And me with my pocket knife and a full bottle of water in my carry-on!

We were not in a rush to get to Barrow, only in a rush to get out of Atqasuk, having been in the way of the loon people long enough. They were very nice but one of them was sick and they were preparing for two weeks of camping in the tundra and catching loons. This involved, for whatever reason, many many boxes of Jell-o.

Speaking of processed foods, it was appropriate that we were not in a rush to get to Barrow, since our flight to Barrow was by way of Wainwright. There we dropped off one passenger and two dozen boxes of beef jerky, otter pops and Wonder Bread (“2,000 Miles Fresher! Baked in Alaska!”). It appeared to be a normal coastal village, sort of an Atqasuk and Barrow hybrid.

We also were in a rush to get back and surprise Jean, and we were not disappointed by her excitement at our return (which was not supposed to be until tomorrow morning). We immediately went out to eat at Osaka with some other researchers and racked up a $361 bill for sushi and Japanese food for fourteen people. Dessert was on the house, since we sang happy birthday to a member of our party who had no real reason to commemorate his age. The dessert was a red-bean ice cream pop. This is exactly what it sounds like. It looked like a Fudgesicle with berries in it. It was sick. Jean loved it. What a day she had!