Meh. June 21, 2008
Posted by summeratsummit in Camp life, Frustration.1 comment so far
Just a quick note to say that it’s Greenland National Day, so I hope you did some celebrating. More frustration yesterday and a little bit today…but the important thing is that I’m half way home. All downhill from here and before I know it I’ll be sweltering in the northeast. During all the struggles I have made a point to remember that this is a once in a lifetime experience and it should be enjoyed for what it is.
Apparently a contingent from the Danish parliament will be dropping by camp for lunch on Wednesday, so there’s something to anticipate. Of course I’ll probably be sitting out in my remote location doing ‘work’, so maybe I’ll catch it on the news.
Time for dinner now, so that’s it from here. -Jeff
June 18, 2008
Posted by summeratsummit in Frustration, Life at the Top.add a comment
Well that was another long, frustrating day. Things were supposed to be nice and easy today, with the big instrument running on its own, me working up a little data, and then looking into the question of atmospheric transport for a couple periods of interest from last year. That would be it, then off to bed a little early and all would be right with the world. Of course after lunch I had the pleasure of seeing this bad guy go down
Left side is the back end, right side is the front…the syringe pump on the right failed this afternoon, so that was the cause for about 8 hours of
consternation. The box itself is over 5 feet tall, but there isn’t a whole lot to the analytical system. There are air and water pumps, IC columns for the samples, and syringes (with pumps) that inject the samples and can move water around. I like the old-fashioned push buttons (yellow numbers) and toggle switches. Having said that, I was not happy to have spent most of the day sitting around watching Luke trying to get the system up and running. (He is a PhD candidate at UNH and was up at Summit doing this work last year, so he has to make sure I can function after he leaves next week.)
Well, long story short is that it was a software problem and the syringe got to a position it didn’t like and just sat there grinding away any time another command was input. Things are back up now and I’ve been checking on the temperature remotely for the past hour. Unfortunately it’s almost 3AM yet again and I am the last one in the Big House. I do enjoy the quiet time by myself, but I really should be getting more sleep. There’s a big soccer match this evening, with the teams divided up age-wise. I just missed the cut and get to be the youngest on the old team instead of oldest on the young team…should be interesting. I’ll try to get a picture or two posted.
Let me know if you have any specific questions. I was thinking of doing a Q&A post later this week to cover some of the things that people have already asked about. Now that it’s after 3, I’ll wrap up with a few more pics. Top two are from Summit, the bottom left is meltwater from the ice sheet that I saw during my layover at Kangerlussuaq and the name of the hotel where I spent the night before heading to Summit. Hope you are well. -Jeff
Tough sledding June 7, 2008
Posted by summeratsummit in Frustration.2 comments
It’s been a real grind the past couple days. Up and going before 8am and at it through 2am, so not much action on the old blog. There have been multiple issues concerning the instrumentation I’m using to do air sampling, so that has frustrated me to no end. My advisor left Friday morning, but that hasn’t put an end to the hard work. I’d like to say more, but right now I’d like even more to get a few hours of sleep so I will post a few pics to keep people coming back.
Here is a sled with 6 jugs of water (~9 liters each). Guess who’s going to pull this to the buildings in the distance. If you guessed me, treat yourself to a cookie. Here’s the half-way rest stop with a thrilled look on the face of yours truly:
There were a lot of people who left today, so things are a little quiet around camp. Still, there are people out and about, like Craig and Craig. Here they are preparing to get a vertical profile of the lower troposphere using a tethersonde. It’s like the balloons that the National Weather Service launches twice a day, except tethered. They got temperature, dew point, and wind information…I got to watch:)
While watching them, I got to see a real nice sun pillar. I don’t think my photos do it justice, but here are a couple attempts:
It’s been a couple real long days, so you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t respond to your comments/emails…I do want you to know that I am reading and enjoying them!! If you leave a comment I have to approve it (anti-spam thing from wordpress), so you might not see it right away. If you want to just send a private note, you either know my e-mail address or know someone who has it. Anyway, it’s almost 3am now so I’ll leave by saying that I’m over my funk, so don’t worry about me:) I’ll sign off with a neat silhouette of someone walking to their tent as I was heading back to camp around 2am…they are in the middle with the tents on the left. -Jeff
