Look At Me Still Talking When There’s Science To Do

In Grand Rapids… thinking about Barrow (among other things)

Archive for weather

I know all the games you play because I play them, too.

August 7, 2008 at 5:50 am · Filed under Barrow and tagged: , , ,

So…. we’re out of a truck again. UTEP was given specific directions to guard the keys to our truck with all their might while we were in Atqasuk this weekend. UTEP has ten people right now, after all, so we graciously suggested that they use it during our absence.

Then we get off the airplane. (This airplane wasn’t meant to get us back to Barrow. Our regularly scheduled airplane was weather delayed because of the treacherous rain and/or fog, but the charter plane full of Atqasuk-bound high school students was clearly immune to these dangers, and therefore able to traverse the skies with ease. It would have been empty on the way back to Barrow, so the pilot agreed to take us back. He ought to know us by sight, at least, if not by name, since he’s flown us at least a half a dozen times this summer, through rain and snow and dark of fog.)

Anyway we landed, it was really foggy, Jeremy was so scared, blah blah blah, and on our ride back to BASC we were informed that our beloved blue truck was donated to the truck pool, and of course we should feel free to sign it out whenever we please!

Guess how often the truck is actually available.

Since UTEP betrayed us, we now will have to smite them in some way, but we don’t know quite how. However, tonight at the beach Rob proved that he is a capable fire starter. Fire should work. Classic smiting tool.

The point of the fire was to watch the sunset, or rather the sun-ricochet, as it doesn’t stay put for long. We were invited by SDSU, but a Michigan/Minnesota Fire Team was assembled to orchestrate the actual burning of things. Tonight it turned out that the break in the clouds was at the wrong part of the horizon for sun watching. It was worth a shot, though, since this was the first day in a week that any kind of actual sky was visible. The fog is out in full force, but today it left us some fogbows for our nature-appreciating pleasure.

I really like fires, but this one was s’more free, since, reportedly, Hiroki already ate all the marshmallows in Barrow.

I really

really

really

like fires.

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There’s some dangerous quote book stuff going on.

August 2, 2008 at 2:38 am · Filed under Barrow, atquasuk and tagged: , , ,

Evidently, being in the lab all day instead of the field makes it harder to find time and material to post. The weather that boded-not-well earlier this week caused us to miss three field days in a row, and therefore we were to sit in the lab and enter data.

Somehow, though, three days worth of data did not get entered (though one-and-a-half days did), and I cannot for the life of me remember what it was that I was occupying myself with that was not a). data entry or b.) blogging.

I actually enjoyed the weather, miserable though it was. This morning Rob and I agreed that the light snow and the temperature were quite Thanksgivingish, or week-after-Thanksgivingish. As this applies to mid- and lower-Michigan, I’m not sure how it translates for other states or countries. The snow was much more of a novelty, for example, for our comrades from Texas, Florida, and California. The snow also iced up all the trucks and took out the power in the hut last night.

Lab time equals crazy time, and though there is little that is memorable enough to report, Jobby was frequently pulling out his quote book to document small tastes of the cabin fever that set in fairly quickly. Sandra and Gilda can vouch for some of this, too… they caught Rob and I patrolling a back hallway, “disguised” as velociraptors. They were amused but unsurprised at this turn of events.

Lab time also means lunch in the cafeteria. This gets mixed reviews. The food is passable, even, at times, quite good, but not if consumed at too high a frequency. Plus, we are fairly surprised that Jeremy, the Hippie Vegetarian, has not yet shriveled up and died because of the lack of suitable vegetarian-friendly choices. His meals are usually: shady salad, overcooked vegetables, boring rice, boringer potatoes. And yesterday, Santonu from UTEP found a mysterious wire in his macaroni and cheese, so the health benefits continue to decrease. The cafeteria staff were actually quite proud of him for this find, and declared that if he hadn’t said anything they would never have even NOTICED that their mesh spoon was disintegrating, by golly!

We are in Atqasuk now, which presently is only minimally warmer than Barrow. Only a very few of The Kids came in today, and they helped us celebrate our Jeanie’s birthday- her real birthday- by eating a ton of candy. She said it was her best birthday in the arctic circle ever!

Back to Barrow on Monday, though I hope to post again before then. I have been forced to wrestle with the internet this entire evening (but I was getting work done at the same time!).

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…and there was much rejoicing.

July 25, 2008 at 6:57 am · Filed under Barrow and tagged: , ,

I really really ought to stop writing posts at the end of pleasant days. My unending admiration for this adventure (along with the overly-positive vocabulary I use to describe it) is liable to make me ill, should I ever re-read anything I’ve written (and of course I do, that’s the whole point!).

That being said, today was probably my third (or fourth?) favorite day of the season so far. Though it was a dreaded growth measure day, we were filled with optimism and good cheer at the beginning of the day due to A.) the GLORIOUS* weather and B.) the magic hour of 5:00 p.m. that was rapidly approaching (to be explained in due course).

BASC, our trusty logistics provider, has seen fit to throw us one curve ball after another lately. We attribute this to their poor money managing rather than any blunder we have committed for which they could secretly (or not so secretly) be punishing us.

To begin with, the beloved blue truck was sneakily removed from our list of assets through a short series of favors that we warily agreed to comply with. (Bob told us to be helpful!) As our access to the truck grew less, so did our goodwill towards BASC, those sneaks! We harbored no ill will toward the Enemy**, however, as their part in the truck fiasco was quite inadvertent. The replacement trucks we were occasionally offered (they were trying to humor us, no doubt) included a run-down number plagued with a gnome stowaway who’d locked himself in- or so we assumed from the incessant banging noises emanating from the glove box region.

We also were required to abandon Dario’s hotel in favor of a hut that is rented by BASC. It does make sense to save over ten thousand dollars a month by placing six of us in the hut instead of in costly hotel rooms, but as a result, we are forced to live with strangers! That is a lie, they’re not strangers at all, they’re Gilda and Sandra from UTEP, both quite harmless and charming girls. You can imagine how pleased Rob and Jeremy are to have four new female roommates***! The hut, though not without its challenges, has several advantages as well, and it should suffice. The chief difference for me is that my Favourite Walk is now a little longer- certainly no harm in that.

In any case, at 5:00pm today the Enemy was long gone from Barrow and the truck was relinquished to us at long last. This reunion was not without its share of mishaps, since, to begin with, the keys were left behind three separate locked doors in the office, but eventually it was quite a happy ending. We celebrated with Thai food and a trip to the point. Jean hadn’t had a chance to go yet, and the clear sky and sun-sink (not setting yet, but almost!) held out for the whole GLORIOUS trip.

*This is an example of “overly-positive vocabulary.”

**The gentlemen from the BBC were the Enemy, since they were given our truck when theirs failed to work. Who could hate gentlemen from the BBC? They were filming snowy owls for “Frozen Planet,” and EVERYONE loves snowy owls.

***They began immediately on the “No Girls Allowed” sign for their bedroom.

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You don’t like Dactylinia? You’re fired.

July 24, 2008 at 2:54 am · Filed under Barrow, Research, atquasuk and tagged: , ,

The most breathtaking and awe-inducing landscapes are usually the ones with dramatic or intriguing changes in elevation. My unofficial observations have led me to believe that this is partially because they photograph well. After six weeks in Flat Land, the team has taken plenty of photos that are quite level, but the gently sloping tundra in the background makes it look as though we can’t be bothered to hold a camera parallel to the horizon. Either way, some would say that we are spending our summers in the most boring landscape on the planet. “Some” have clearly not visited Nebraska. (Nor have I, but I imagine it to be boring.)

We were unceremoniously deposited in this environment on our first field day a month and a half ago. Professor Bob sat us down on the tundra like the little Kindergarten Scientists we were an plucked something (seemingly at random) from the field. “What’s this?” he asked, in the first of hundreds of purposefully shaming questions.

On that first day the tundra looked like it deserved the “boring” label. Interested as I was in all the new and captivating things to look at, a glance at the early-season tundra gave all impressions of a completely monotone and utterly uninteresting field. Plus, the lichens were ugly.

Then, of course, we straight away began spending all our time looking at that same uninteresting, monotone field. The plants became easily distinguishable from one another, and as the season progressed the colors became more different and vibrant as well, particularly in Atqasuk.

Now I quite enjoy the tundra, and, though I dearly love trees, I find the landscape perfectly satisfactory. Certain plants, like BETULA NANA, which I HATE, I could do without, but my favorites (and UNfavorites) are determined more by my personal experiences with them than by any aesthetic value they may or may not have. (For example, I like Eriophorum angustifolium the most because it was the first one I learned from my site, but Salix rotundafolia, the first Barrow plant I learned, can go jump off a cliff for all I care. It is dreadfully confusing. Pedicularus and Ranunculus I enjoy as well [who wouldn't?] but Dupontia and I have a love-hate relationship… that tricky tricky grass.)

I guess my summer should be called Tundra Appreciation for Beginners. I am always amused when we are recording growth measures and we start exclaiming at the dramatic heights the plants are reaching. “Oh boy, this is a big one- eleven point four centimeters!”

Explaining that the richly diverse tundra is really quite a nice place to spend time rather than a barren and frigid wasteland has been on the blog back-burner for some weeks now, but it is suitable that I choose to write about it today, because I am again in a lovely mood, due (in part) to the weather! After the week that included snow in July, a first for me, we were treated to more of my favorite kind of sunshine today… with just the right amount of fog!

The weather, compounded with the fact that the ice blew in again last night, makes for the perfect picturesque opportunity to jump in the ocean. Two girls from San Diego State and a few newcomers took advantage of this, and I accompanied as photographer. Having now watched other people participate in this charming experience, I am moderately embarrassed about how foolish I certainly looked (and how loudly I screamed). Fortunately, the spectators were nice people, though Denver in particular enjoys watching and capturing on camera the suffering of the young researchers.

Oh, and Bob would be quite proud of me for abandoning my initial aversion to lichens- I can now successfully identify approximately half a dozen of them, thanks to the tutelage of Jeremy. (Not bad for the person who spends most of her time with lichens scribbling numbers on a piece of paper.) They seem friendly- more so than the standoffish mosses, anyway.

Unfortunately, Bob would also shake his head in exasperation at my childish delight in… everything.

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Then why didn’t you list that among our assests in the first place?

July 23, 2008 at 2:57 am · Filed under Barrow and tagged: ,

Rob and I played one little game of Crazy Hide and Seek, and that was the basis for our new reputation as the Weird Kids. Just because I may have been crawling on my belly and Rob may have been acting like a crab, Paulo thinks we are weird. He labeled Jean as half weird and Jeremy as the normal one, but Jeremy, as we all know, is boring, so no surprise there.

In any case, the Plant People, as some chose to call us, do seem fairly weird when we sit and sort and sort and sort. I mentioned that we had help one day, and Frank the PolarTREC teacher posted pictures from his plant experience. He compared sorting the plants to sifting through gravel, which they have to do to retrieve small items. I put him on my blogroll, and he posted an unflattering picture of me here.

Tonight we went to another talk at the heritage center. Most of the talks are on Saturday afternoons, but we are usually in Atqasuk on Saturday afternoons, so the occasional Tuesday night talk is more feasible for us to attend. This one was ok, but I almost fell asleep. No pictures! The other Tuesday night one was much better.

It’s kind of depressing to be getting to know people for three months… or three weeks… or three days!… and then go back to the normal world in the fall. I don’t like to say goodbye to people. I was happy to run into an unexpected Loon Person the other day, because it made me think that maybe this won’t be the only time we see these new acquaintances.  I also don’t like claiming people as friends without checking with them first, but I think I made a few friends so far… right, Hiroki?

Jean and I ventured out with some UTEP people for the talk and for a late dinner. Everyone eats dinner late except us, because we eat at the cafeteria more than the rest and it closes at 7. I had a nice bowl of soup and hoped that I wasn’t really getting sick, as I suspect I might be.  The past two days in the field were fairly miserable- cold I can handle, but the constant sleet, rain, and snow make even the Write-in-the-Rain paper finicky and greatly reduces dexterity. Our chances for gold in the Tandem Point Frame Olympics seem much more dim when Jeremy is too cold to say the right words and my numb fingers write slowly.

Fortunately we were able to keep field time down to 5 hours the past couple days, and Jeremy and I are STILL ahead of the game, busting out seven or eight point frames when only six are scheduled. Go us. This, of course, does not mean that we can skip a field day. If you get done early, why not do MORE science?

Why not indeed! I love science. Maybe just Barrow science, though- I’ve never tried any other kinds.

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Sky blue. Like the sky. With jet fighters and lightning.

July 17, 2008 at 2:33 pm · Filed under atquasuk, travel and tagged: ,

In other news, Jeremy and his grandiose schemes continue to disappoint. This time he PROMISED that Atqasuk would be magical, warm and fun… I believe the word he used was “phantasmical”… and it rained all day yesterday. It rained on our luggage, it rained on the truck, it rained on our food boxes, it rained on the airplane, and it rained on the other truck. The trucks entered the rainstorm covered in dust, and my new Earnest Science skills lead me to believe that this is how they ended up covered in mud. The new box of Otter Pops got a little muddy. (We got a hot tip from a rogue Loon Person that The Kids had managed to steal the stockpile we’d flown into town last time, so we had to restock.)

It rained so thoroughly that the internet connection was down. We had to entertain ourselves in other ways. My favorite way was coloring (good thing I had 100 crayons on my person), but my second favorite was beating the rest of the team at a rousing game of Texas Hold ‘Em.

Now we’re off to kick some Biomass butt. Vroooooom! (That’s the sound of the ATV carrying us away… though all four of us AND the point frame are going to be on the same ATV, so vr-oo….ooo…OOOmmm…mmm…… might be a more appropriate onomatopoeic representation.)

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So I ask you- when sour cream goes bad, does it become sweet?

July 8, 2008 at 6:07 am · Filed under atquasuk, travel and tagged:

So, I took a break from my obsessive post making yesterday, in part because I was forcefully and suddenly recruited to find all the walnuts in a gallon size bag of trail mix. This was not a problem. I like to be helpful. It was the oddest request that I have had in a while, but I enjoy spontaneity. My efforts yielded, using a stretch of the imagination, 17 “walnuts”. About one-third of a cup, coarsely chopped. These were added to a salad that we (eleven) were served for dinner, by the housemate I described in detail about 48 hours ago. My hands smelled like dried kiwi after I completed my task, but this was mostly my imagination, since dried kiwi hardly has a distinctive scent and no one else smelled my hands or is able to confirm my story.

I don’t mean to be flippant about any of the following topics: old people, talkative people, or people named Bob. I forget that my idea of “all in good fun” is not universal. (Our eighth grade teacher had to direct my closest friend and me to be nice to the new girl because she absolutely would not understand our sense of humor.) In any case, I mean no offense to our weekend companion, who was a gracious makeshift host and a generous volunteer cook.

The most characteristic element of Barrow’s weather, at least for the summer months, is the fog. It is clearly visible, ominous and somewhat malicious, on the horizon as you fly in from Atqasuk. We saw it today, flying in from Atqasuk, at about 12:30 pm. This is lovely, and we had beautiful clear skies for the whole flight, but we were meant to be in Barrow by 9:30, so we had another “hurry up and wait” sort of day with the packing, calling, and driving to and from the airport that are all involved in returning us successfully to Barrow.

Therefore, no one can ever be in too much of a hurry to get anywhere. Some are angry or at least slightly annoyed at having unreliable transportation, but I have heard at least one person hope that the fog rolls in thickly on his day of departure. I guess it depends on what you’re traveling and whether you are prone to anxiety.

I am just prone to tired, as a result of staying up late and getting up early. Before eight is early, I don’t care what you say.

Such is the headache of waterfront living!

(I am feeling peculiarly unsettled today. Perhaps close readers will have noticed this from my shockingly disjointed paragraphs. The syntax is off, too, and I am unhappy with my self-important vocabulary choices. I really didn’t sell it this time, and I’ll be a disdainful sort of bemused at myself in the morning. C’est la vie.)

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But my lips hurt real bad!

June 15, 2008 at 4:04 am · Filed under Barrow, alaska and tagged: , ,

I am sunburned already, and we didn’t even leave Barrow yet. Barrow is supposed to be a dreary, foggy land (I always imagine dementors), yet we were out on the tundra for the past two days under very clear skies. Today there was almost no wind, and we were in shirtsleeves. Standing in the snow is even warmer, what with the albedo and all.

The word of the day is albedo. It refers to the amount of reflection of sun radiation off the surface of the earth. Ice caps reflect more than ocean. If there is warming and subsequent melting of polar ice, then less reflection and more absorption is the result- causing more warming, then more melting, etc.

Anyway the sun has been shining since we got here, even at night, hence the sun-blocking aluminum foil window covers that most people choose. I don’t mind sleeping during the light- I do it all the time. In fact, the 8-to-midnight days that we have been having are slightly easier because in Michigan that is noon to 4. Quite manageable indeed.

Today our day would have been shorter if we hadn’t driven into town to buy groceries. The grand total for about one shopping cart full of pop, canned food and dry goods was $647.25. If we had to pay for our own food, we would be coming out behind, money-wise, even with the decent pay we are making. Three meals a day at the cafeteria in Barrow amounts to $60-$75 per person. In Atqasuk (we head there Monday at 8:15) we have to cook our own food, but we have to buy it in Barrow.

Everyone says that the clear weather won’t last, and the clouds did start to roll in today. Yesterday there was not a cloud in sight. Once the sea ice breaks up the fog will come in, and from what they say, the snow melt started on the eighth and it is leaving fast.

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With one week to go before the pageant, I was finishing my outfit, rehearsing my talent, brushing up on current events, and running 18 miles a day on about 400 calories. I was ready.

June 6, 2008 at 12:22 am · Filed under alaska and tagged: , , ,

As promised (though perhaps only two or three people know I promised it) I’m starting a blog to write about my time in Alaska. I only have a week left, and while I’m not ready, perhaps, I’m closer than I could be.

A trip to Cabela’s last week (after some sound advice from my mom’s cousin… “Don’t try to shoot the stuffed goats on the fake mountain with the archery merchandise”) finished up the shopping spree that I was so delighted to be burdened with. Now I am completely and stylishly outfitted in all manner of wind- water- and cold-proof gear. I’ve even obtained a perfectly sized lunchbox-style tin for keeping approximately 100 crayons safe and orderly.

My new laptop, also specifically purchased in time for the trip, has a weather updater on the desktop and I’ve set it to Barrow already, just for fun. The temperature has so far fluctuated from 28 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Since I’m already sick of the heat after one reptile-house day today, I do not object to this in the slightest.

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