Long Hours...Short Days

Since I got on the plane Sunday night, I've worked every day up here! Needless to say, with that amount of hustle and bustle, the last 2 weeks have flown by much faster than I could have thought possible.

Most of the work stems from the fact that the flight I came in on was one of the last of 'Boxtop' (the bi-annual resupply event). For the GAW Lab it was the largest Boxtop shipment in history...we sent up 90,030 kg (200,000 lbs) of materials and supplies!! Unfortunately, the plan was to load the majority of said materials onto a flatbed trailer and then drive them up to the lab. But, also coinciding with my arrival to Alert was the first real permanent snowfall of the season. That means that we need to break open all the crates here at Station, pack them up one truckload at a time, and drive them up to the lab bit-by-bit.

To make things even MORE....intensive....when the shipment was unloaded, it was deposited with all the things that we need at the VERY back of the pile, with dozens on spools of electrical cable weighing in at 10,000 lbs each at the very front :) So, today was spent with a forklift basically taking the entire yard apart, then putting it back in the opposite order. Since none of us Environment Canada people can drive the forklift, all three of us "supervised" while Oliver the Traffic Tech struggled to interpret three sets of drastically varying and poorly thought-out hand signals. I didn't see any problem with my signals for "Up" (thumbs up) and "Drop it there" (thumbs up) and "I'm clear" (thumbs up).

It is a little bit like a geeky Office Worker/Scientist early Christmas though. Breaking open crates and finding wonderful surprises inside. "WOW, new office chairs!"   "SWEET, bubble wrap"   "OH BOY, a nephelometer!"......OK, it's actually not very exciting at all :)

I really am completely in "winter" mode up here. I realized it when a buddy told me he was going to the driving range, and I almost asked him when he'd gone down to the States...only to realize that it was 20°, not -18° in Ontario, and there was lush grass, not 2' of freshly fallen snow.

Drove Vicram, the week-long visit Tech, down to the Alert sign to get some pictures today, so I snapped one of myself with the Waterloo sign that was previously buried in snow my last visit. Puts it into perspective how far away you are from the ones you love! (click the picture for a larger view to see the distance...and the horrible beginnings of Alert Beard v.2) Also included a picture of the lab from my first visit up early last week...was VERY weird to see it without snow up to the roof. I worked on pieces of equipment at "ground" level last term outside that I now need to stand on my tiptoes to access!

 

Days are getting shorter a lot more quickly now. It is full dark between 6:30pm and 4:30am now, but each day that is extending by 15 or 20 minutes!

I don't want to seem bitter or anything...but I hope you all get heat stroke :P
Graham