Back in Eureka

Here lies the laser, in its final resting place.


We made it to Eureka yesterday, but to catch up on things up to now...
Caribou is delicious! 50$ Gets you caribou, salad, homemade fries and a Heineken for supper for one person. Definitely something I was glad to do once while in Yellowknife. This is at Bullock's Bistro, and the atmosphere there is super cool. It's a small place, and the walls are covered with pictures, postcards, stickers, and writing from people who have visited.

From Yellowknife we flew with Bernard and Mike from EC up through Cambridge Bay and Resolute to Eureka, getting in just after suppertime. We started working early this morning up in the lab. We're here to take out the old laser and put in a new one. Here are Bernard and Mike.

Today we managed to dismantle and remove the old laser. The laser weighs around 3 or 400 pounds, so we had an A-frame crane brought up which we assembled and used. We (including Matt the Operator who helped us all day) are now pros at assembling and dissembling that frame and moving heavy things on it. It does not fit through doors assembled, but needs to be in the laser room to put the laser onto a dolly, and the needs to be in the garage to put the laser up in the truck, etc etc so long story short, we have the operation down to a science. This is good news, as tomorrow we will be installing a heavier new laser which comes with much more dire consequences if we drop it. Such as it is not already broken, and therefore we care whether it becomes so during installation!

After supper we went outside to play on the beach. The ice just broke up this week, but there are still plenty of chunks and mini-icebergs floating around. I have also confirmed that the Arctic Ocean is in fact very cold.
Wildlife seen to date:
- Muskox (with babies!!!!!)
- Arctic Hares (lots and lots and lots and I have a video I might try and post some other day)
- Plovers (I think. They were doing the broken-wing-distract-interfering-humans-away-from-my-nest thing.)
- Other birds. Will have to look these up but they were cool. Altogether we saw at least 3 to 4 different kinds of birds.

Made it to Yellowknife

Just a short post for now as I haven't taken any pictures yet. I traveled to Toronto last night and then caught an early flight this morning to Calgary and then on to Yellowknife. Matt the CANDAC operator is also coming from Toronto, so it's been nice to have some company today. Tomorrow we will meet up with Bernard and Mike from Environment Canada and we will all together take a Summit Air charter flight up to Eureka.

This evening will just be running a few errands getting some things Matt needs to bring up to the weather station, finding some supper (I think I'm going to eat a cariboo. Maybe an arctic char, but I've had that before so I am hoping for cariboo. I'll let you know if I do) and maybe going for a walk? We'll see. I'm pretty exhausted and it will be a long day of flying tomorrow, so I should see whether I can get any work done tonight as there will definitely be none getting done tomorrow!

I'm going back!

It's been awhile since my last blog post, but I found out last week that I'll be headed back to Eureka in several days, so I thought I'd revive ye ol' blog and record whatever new adventures come my way. This time it will be daylight while we're up there (so we can't take data this time), and we're going to replace the laser that quit at the end of the spring campaign. Wish us luck that everything goes smoothly... I'm counting on the extra vitamin D to keep everyone happy and stress free, but we are going to be trying to move things that weigh several hundred pounds, and there won't be much space to move said things around in, so I guess we'll see! I'm excited, anyways. So this week I am packing and writing and packing and writing and re-analyzing data (all of which are not that exciting to watch or read about), and I'll put more updates once I actually get on my way.

To keep you entertained until then: I give you the picture of me, Elliston beach (root cellar capital of the world, in case you were unaware. It's on the east coast of Newfoundland near Bonavista), and the puddle on a rock which had tiny bugs that I seem to be quite enthralled with. Chad thought it was funny and I think he took the picture mostly because it shows an excellent display of Emily Fashion Sens(ibl)e with the legwarmers visible even in the middle of summer. I don't care if it was June - it was chilly!