Call me Robin Hood

Another Alert First today :) Archery!

I hadn't held a bow since Camp Tawingo when I was like 9, so this was virtually a new experience for me. Sure, I've been working out up here, but when I started out with Dan's 65lbs draw bow I almost died. I think that I dropped down to a 35 pounder and that was plenty. I find it's one of those things that uses very specific muscles that aren't really used in day-to-day life (bowling is another such activity). I just know that tomorrow I'm going to be hurting in some odd places.

After some poor false starts, I actually got the hang of it pretty quickly. We were shooting the entire length of the gym, so even hitting the 5' x 5' target board seemed like an accomplishment. I'm proud to say that I killed one Styrofoam deer, a Styrofoam rat and a Styrofoam bunny :) (and yes, the rodent targets are that little white piece of paper on the right, lower left).
Also, I just found another good picture from that Rec trip last weekend. As we were driving out, the sun was just hiding behind a hill and we got some great pictures of Sundogs. Cool halo rainbows to the left and right of the sun.Only one month left to go!
Graham

Grey, Grey, Grey

First off, to answer some questions that I've gotten from some previous posts:

Kayla: You have to hold your breath so that when you open the evacuated flask and it sucks in 5L of air it doesn't pull in your CO2 laden wind :) Hell, if you're going to sample WAAY up here, put the lab 7km away from the base, and THEN sample 200m away from THAT, makes sense to not screw it up by breathing into the sample :)

Mere: Yes, Kimwipes. I go through more than my fair share of them. Plastic gloves too.

I was just going to put up a quick post about a phenomenon that I experienced for the first time the other day. I've called it a "Grey Out." It's not a blackout, where you can't see due to dark, and it's not a white out, where you can't see due to blowing snow. We were going out to the lab on an overcast day, and with the amount of sun coming through the clouds and the snow colour, everything disappeared. Sure, you can see a building or something, but every drift and mountain was gone. The road to the lab is covered with drifts that you have to slow down to go over, and I couldn't see anything. There was no contrast. I took a picture off the roof of the lab towards the same hills that I've been capturing before for my sunrise shots. I made sure that there was a sampler in the foreground so that you could see that I didn't just take a picture of the inside of a grey bag :) And just to clarify, this shot has the horizon in it!Also, last Sunday we went on a Rec trip to the "Love Shack", an old ice fishing hut an hour and a half away from station. It was a fun BV trip, up and down the hills, and over the lakes. When we finally got there, there was a group of like 9 hares all sitting around eating. They pound a little hole through the concrete-hard snow with their front paws "dog at the beach" style to get down to the grasses. I got lots of good pictures, but while I was taking a video I also captured something that not many people ever see, nonetheless get on film. When the hares are really scared, or trying to run fast, they actually get up on only their two back legs and bounce along like that. I thought people were just joking, but I actually have about 3 seconds of it on film :) I went to see the tracks afterwards, and it's about 7 or 8 feet between the bounces...these hares can move!
Graham

Filters

Seems like I get in a blogging mood whenever I get back from a walk. Just got back from a 14km one (up the plateau too, mind you) to the GAW lab. I know...drive there 3 or 4 times a week for work, then walk there for "fun" on the weekend. I'm a little crazy. I did have to restart the flame on the Gas Chromatograph, so I was able to put in a little overtime (unfortunately not for travel time as well :P ).

This weekend I'll talk a bit about my Monday tasks, which involve changing many of the filters around the lab. The mechanics behind all the instruments is relatively similar: air is pulled in from outside, passed through a filter, then the filter is removed and analyzed. They all do it in a different way though, with different filters looking for different atmospheric constituents, from soot and carbon particles to toxic organics. We even have a radiation sampling kit ready to go in case there's a nuclear event somewhere in the world (e.g. Chernobyl) in order to observe how the particulate moves throughout the atmosphere.

Like with the flasking, we collaborate with several different organizations all around the world. The filters that I'm responsible for changing are: Toxics (first two pics, filter and housing), Hi-Vol (orange box), PS-1 (filter), PSAP (ready to be changed) and Aethelometer.Much like flasking, there are very specific guidelines that must be followed in terms of glove changes, sterility and procedure. The first week was overwhelming, but it sorts itself out pretty quickly. All the changes are on different schedules, so there are some Mondays that have more work than others. Occasionally, you have to do a "blank", which consists of putting on a filter using standard practices, and then taking it right off again without sampling anything. This allows the filter to be analyzed for contamination introduced by the operator (aka: me).

Well, that's filters in a nutshell. I guess next weekend I'll talk about some of the other miscellaneous stuff that happens up at the lab and here at work, and then I'll be fresh out of new information for you guys. Don't worry, there's always something wild and crazy going on up here that I can write about.

Only 5 weeks left!
Graham