Survivor Ellesmere

Ok, I may have misunderestimated my efficiency at visiting museums. Despite their shortened winter hours, I have managed to get most of what I wanted to do in Oslo done. And, because there is only one daytime train a day to Stockholm from here, and it leaves at three in the afternoon, I should have time to learn about the Sami tomorrow. Then I will have done Oslo.

And what have I done in Oslo? Mostly art. Of all kinds. And mostly free art. Many of the museums here are free anytime of the year, and many of the ones that aren't are free during the winter. So, another benefit to traveling in the winter. Having said that, spring is definately in the air today, as it didn't rain (my first rain-free Norway day! And the only day I had my umbrella!), the Sun was shining, and I could go most of the day without wearing my hat. Though I still think I have perma-hat head.

My favourite part of Oslo was the Fram Museum, something I feel I couldn't have convinced any conceivable traveling partner to visit. It was a half hour bus ride out of the centre, and devoted to the Fram. Which is the ship that has travelled the furthest North and South of any ship ever. It's been further north than me. And south. (But that's not hard to do, at least until I somehow get myself to the South Pole.) The museum was devoted to Norwegian explorers, and their penchant for traveling to the poles. Most of it was an Amundsen love-in, and that was fine by me. Since I know no one else is as fascinated by polar regions as I am, I will spare you the details of all the voyages. But my favourite story is that when Amundsen set out to go to the South Pole (he was the first one to get there) it was meant to be a trip to the North Pole, but since Peary beat him to it, he decided to do something new. Except he didn't tell his crew until they had set sail. In fact, he didn't tell them until they got to Spain. Apparently they were all very confused as to why they were headed south. Then he basically sent Scott (who had set out that way a few weeks earlier) a "race you" telegram. Now that's an explorer for you.

The other highlight of Oslo was the couple making out at the table next to me at the café I had dinner in the other night. Okay, this wasn't the highlight part, but when they went to the washroom to have sex (I presume), and she came back to grab her cell phone, THAT was funny.

I'm halfway through the post-conference section of my trip, and despite the fact that I really haven't been home since mid-February, it hasn't felt like I've been traveling all that long. Except for that my legs are starting to get sore from all the walking I've been doing. The day on the train tomorrow should do me some good.

It seems the rain has followed me from Bergen to Oslo, despite the fact that Oslo is meant to have nicer weather. On account of the moutains to the east. Norway is a lot like a mini-Canada. Which may be why I like it.

So I'm again dodging the rain by updating you on my travels. When I last left you, I was all prepared for my Norway in a Nutshell experience, which is the most popular tour in all of Norway! It begins with a train from Bergen to Myrdal, then a train down 866 m in 20 km to Flåm, a boat ride down two fjords to Gudvagen, a bus ride to Voss, and then the train back to Bergen. It's a long tour, but very pretty. I managed to book it all at the train station the night before, so no getting stuck for me. Unfortunately we didn't have the best weather for it. It was cloudy, so you couldn't see very far. The train from Bergen to Myrdal is quite beautiful, climbing up into the mountains, with lots of great valley and rock face shots. I am sure there is awesome climbing. In Myrdal it was snowing, and I was very glad the woman at the train station wouldn't let me book an earlier train. I had plans of taking the train before the one I ended up taking, and poking around the town a bit. One, there isn't really a town at Myrdal anymore, just a collection of hotels and summer homes. Two, it's closed in the winter. Even the ticket office for the train to Flåm is closed, you have to buy it from the conductor. After fourty minutes of taking pictures we got on the marvel-of-engineering train down the mountain. Easily the best part of the trip. Lots of gorgeous views and frozen waterfalls. Once we got to Flåm, we discovered that it too is closed for the winter. There was one souvenir and one café open. Luckily, it's not really a place you need to waste time inside at, and I wandered about, taking pictures. It's right at sea level (or 2 m above it) with these 900 m cliffs surrounding it. I'm sure it's beautiful in the summer, but I am partial to ice and snow, and so all this made it breath-taking. (Or maybe even magical...?) Next came the boat, which couldn't make it all the way to Gudvagen because of ice on the fjord, so it was a bit shorter than scheduled. The boat had an upper outside deck and a lower inside heated deck. When we got on the boat, everyone was squeezing onto the upper deck. It was about five degrees out, no wind. I had no luck getting a seat, or even a place to perch, so I resigned myself to a two hour standing boat tour. (You couldn't see all that well from inside.) About three seconds after we got started going down the fjord, and it got windy, half the seats opened up. I zipped up my coat and enjoyed the amazing towering cliffs. I made it most of the way outside, but in the end I had to take refuge in the warm interior. So much for my arctic tolerance! Last was the bus to Voss. At this point it had started to rain quite heavily, and the bus can't take the scenic route in the winter because the road is closed. The views from the highway were pretty and all, but nothing compared to what we had just come from. I had every intention of staying in Voss for awhile, but when we got there it was pouring, I was tired, and I just took the train home to Bergen and my warm bed. It didn't look like that pretty a place. And my guide book had one thing to do that wasn't downhill skiing. So, I missed the cathedral. I will regret this always.

This morning I had an early train to Oslo. The Bergen-Oslo train line is meant to one of the most beautiful in the world, as it climbs through the mountains, and it was quite pretty. Though I've never taken it, I'm sure the VIA train through the Rockies is just as beautiful though. It was snowy/rainy/foggy the whole way, but despite this, it was a nice ride. The first half of the trip my car was full of Norwegian teenagers all set for what seemed like a pretty serious cross-country ski trek. They were loud and roudy. I was glad when they got off. Finally we arrived in Oslo mid-afternoon. Here's my complaint about the off-season in Scandinavia. Nothing is open. I got here and settled by 4, but all the museums that I want to see close at 4. In fact, most of them are only open 10-4. This makes it tricky to see more than one in a day, and as I'm only here three days, I can't see all that I want to see. Oh well, I will have to settle for wandering the streets, looking at the pretty. If only it weren't raining...

I forgot, in my ode to Bergen last time, that it is also like Eureka. I cannot believe I could have forgotten this! It too has fjords, and what seemed like the same topography as Eureka, just with houses and streets and trees. Lots of steep streets and switchbacks. It also reminded me of San Francisco for that reason - they had a few Lombardy-style streets. Anyways, to sum up, Bergen is awesome.

I got up at five this morning, which, since today is the start of summer time in Europe, felt like four. Add to this the fact that two people showed up in my hostel room last night between 11 and 1, and proceded to make lots of noise, AND one of them was a terrible snorer, and I am shocked that at six pm I am still awake. Most of this has to do with the awesomeness that is Bergen. But more on that in a bit, let me fill you in on my last day in Denmark.

I headed a bit out of Copenhagen yesterday, to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humelbæk, about a half hour commuter train ride north of the city. (Named after the three wives of a king, not the state. Conveniently they were all named Louisa, otherwise, the museum would have a more complicated name.) The trip there was beautiful - most of the track lies along the water bewteen Denmark and Sweden, and the sea was beautiful. I had great weather yesterday - super sunny. Not so warm, but I'm getting used to the damp cold. The museum was unfortunately undergoing renovations, so one of its four galleries was closed. It was still well worth the trip. Modern art (circa Andy Warhol, but not so much Andy Warhol) is my favourite, mostly because of the random things that got passed off as art then. Like the cushions painted and shaped like a sandwich and a baked potato that they had. My favourite part ended up being the bronze sculpture garden outside. Normally I'm not a sculpture person, but the location of this garden on a cliff over looking the water made it really awesome. And you had to explore a bit to find all the art. It's always nice to get rewarded for climbing down steep muddy embankments. After the museum I wandered around the town for a bit - it was a sleepy little town, most likely a bedroom community for the big city, but as it was right on the water, so pretty. I like beaches. They had also cleverly planted bushes to block most of the sea breeze when you were sitting on one of their benches. This made sitting for more than a second possible. Those Danes are smart. As I had to get up so early the next morning, I pretty much headed straight home from there, set my clock forward, and went to bed.

This morning I flew to Bergen, the gateway to fjord country, and, as mentioned, my new favourite city. Except for the language, it's a combination of all my favourite Canadian cities. But since it's in Norway, it's that much cooler. It has the seafood and wooden houses of Halifax, the mountains of Banff, and the feel (and rain) of Vancouver. Plus it has the hominess of Ottawa (which I realise only feels homey because it's my home.) After I left my bag at the hostel, I head out to explore the city. Note to any of you planning a trip here: don't arrive on a Sunday in the winter. Not much is open, including the tourist office. But after wandering the old town for a bit, I soon decided that, like Banff, Bergen is best enjoyed away from the town. There's a funicular up one of the mountains, and despite the rain/snow combination I decided to head up to the hills. The train only takes you about half way up the mountain, and then there are walking trails that take you the rest of the way. The hard part done for me by the train, I meandered my way up, imagining the views I would be seeing on a clear day (you could still see the city, so it wasn't a complete waste), until I got a bit too far up, the weather got a bit too blowy, the trails got a bit too ice covered, and I had to admit I wasn't equipped to go the rest of the way. I shunned the train on the way back and walked through the windy path back to town. Almost directly to this internet cafe, where I am currently enjoying a break from the rain that has gotten a bit too hard for proper wandering. It started to clear up a bit on my way, and I was able to see to the next valley. Bergen is pretty. Of the places I've been in Europe, this is the place that I most want to visit again. In the summer, when the weather's better and the trails are less snowy. I think I'm becoming more outdoors-y in my old age.

Tomorrow is my day for "Norway in a Nutshell", a train-boat-bus tour of the local mountains and fjords. I'm hoping I can get it all in, but as there is apparently no tourist information to dispense on Sundays, I am going on hope that there will be more info once I get started on the journey. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I don't get stuck in one of the towns along the way...

Thursday morning I left my sweet paid-for-by-the-EU hotel and got my train to Copenhagen. I had the best seat mate - he was a 60+ man from Northern Norway (just south of the Arctic Circle) who works as a tour guide on a Berlin-Prague tour for a Norwegian company. He takes that train a lot, and could tell me about all the towns we went through. He also guided me through the unexpected (though not if I had actually looked at my map) ferry portion of the trip. There's no bridge between Germany and Denmark, so the train gets on a ferry. Then everyone gets off the train and heads up to the ferry decks, and heads back down 45 minutes later once you're in Denmark. Anyways, bonus ferry trip. My first outside the Maritimes! The ship was also not unlike those ships, except for the duty free. I spent most of the time up on the top deck, enjoying the sea air. Then I got cold. But luckily only a few minutes before it was time to head back to the train. My first task upon arriving was to find my hostel. It's a bit more out of the centre than I thought, and their directions suck, but luckily the woman at the information desk seemed to have fielded the question before. Twenty minutes later I was in my empty five person dorm. Which in the end had one other person in it last night. Benefits of the off season.

I've quickly learned a few things about the Danes. One: all of them speak English. To the point where my pathetic attempts to speak Danish are probably more insulting than just speaking English. (Which I've started to do. Taler de engelsk was getting me odd looks.) Two: most of them are blonde and beautiful. I do not think it's fair that this city should be so good looking while Toronto is so not good looking. (Those of you reading in Toronto excluded, of course.) Even the ones who aren't blonde are still good looking. Sigh. I need to find and date the Danish community at home. Well, maybe not date them all, just a few. Three: EVERYONE has a bike. I finally understand those displaced Europeans who wax poetic about bike riding in Europe. This is their dream city. Super-wide bike lanes everywhere, bike-specific traffic lights, bike racks all over the place. I've seen bike traffic jams there are so many cyclists. Madness. Also, they just leave their bikes anywhere, rack or not. I thought they were leaving them unlocked everywhere, until this afternoon when I saw someone unlock his. They rarely lock them to things, so if you were a very determined bike thief you'd be in good business here. There's this little device that's basically a circle through the back wheel. So that the back wheel won't turn. It's neat.

I've had such a productive day and a half of sightseeing. Copenhagen is very compact, so I've had no troubles walking basically everywhere. And now I almost know where I'm going. I won't bore you with lists, but I made it to the Little Mermaid statue. It's closer to the shore than I thought - which explains why people can keep stealing her head. Tivoli Gardens is closed this time of year, so I won't make it to the other most-famous-attraction in Copenhagen. But I did walk by it. Okay, one last highlight of the day was the super awesome astronomical clock at city hall. It tracks the actual time, the "true" time (ie. noon is when the Sun is directly overhead, so varies significantly over a time zone), SIDEREAL time (relative to the stars, not the Sun), sunrises, sunsets, eclipses, phases of the Moon, Christian holidays that are related to phases of the Moon, the Zodiac, positions of the planets, Julian Day, the precession of the Earth, and more. That thing is awesome. I will enthrall you with pictures when I get home. I can tell you're as excited as me.

I've also started to notice some very definite pros and cons to traveling in the off season. Places are less busy. When Melissa and I toured Europe after graduation, I felt like I was always surrounded by American tourists. This time I feel like I'm surrounded by Danes. Maybe they're tourists too. Despite the fact that I'm still doing touristy things, it feels more authentic than the last time around because of this. It's nice to not hear English except for when you're talking to someone. At the same time, because it's not prime tourist season, places have shorter hours, and my guide book is wrong. I think they did their best to give off-season opening hours and what not, but their descriptions of places are biased to the summer months. And it's colder. It's not super cold, probably about zero, but after a few hours wandering looking at pretty things I start to notice it.

I have one more day here and then I'm off to Bergen on a super-cheap, 8 am flight. Which seemed like a good idea when I booked it, but Daylight Savings time starts Sunday, so it's really a 7 am flight, and I need to be there super-early. Luckily, my slightly out of the way hostel is slightly out of the way towards the airport.

Internet was not all that plentiful during my stay in Bremen, and aside from borrowing computers to check up on my spectrometer still in Eureka I've been going without. So I have a lot to catch up on, blog-wise.

Firstly, this keyboard is almost the same as Canadian keyboards, except that the z and the y are swapped. Also, all the keys aside from the letters/numbers are messed up. It just took me a minute to find "/". And the quotes. I should stick to letters.

Next, if you missed them in the Star last weekend, check out the articles that got written about us and Eureka. I sound like an idiot. Also, it's Beer's LAW, not Beer's equation. Sigh.

I left Toronto Saturday night and enjoyed an uneventful plane ride to Munich. If you'll allow me one last Air Canada rant, I will pose one question. I fly a lot these days, mostly in Canada, and I've been on plenty of AC planes. Why is it that they use the more comfortable planes on domestic, non-overnight, routes? I had very little leg room, and not even those fancy head rests that fold down. I didn't sleep much, though I probably can't blame all of that on the plane. Anyways, in Munich I transferred to Lufthansa, and I'm flying them back, so no more AC for awhile. Yay. In Bremen I found my hotel with no problems, and tried really hard not to sleep. I lost the battle, and instead took an hour long nap before heading "downtown" to check out the sights. Bremen's not all that big, so I don't know if it qualifies as a downtown. There's a bunch of pretty churches and buildings on and off the main square. Also, everything was closed. I eventually found a donair take-away place. Ahh...Middle Eastern food my first night in Germany. Fitting? No...but tasty. Eventually I wandered all that I could wander and head back to the hotel. I again tried not to fall asleep, but I didn't have the energy to read, and the only English channel I get is CNN. Which starts to repeat pretty quickly. So I lost again. I think it was only 8:30.

But it made it pretty easy to get up in the morning for my conference. I won't bore you non-science folk with the details, but it was easily the best conference ever. San Francisco may have been the best location ever, but content-wise, the Third International DOAS Workshop wins hands down. 95% of the talks and posters were either relevant or highly interesting. They do some cool things with DOAS. My talk went well, and I have loads of new ideas to try when I'm back home. Also, I had to tell everyone about the University of Toronto. They had all heard of York, but not UofT. Many of them had heard of Ted or Jim, but hadn't known where they were. It was odd. Also, there's a guy at York doing DOAS. Who apparently knows someone in Engineering at UofT doing DOAS. We have plans to have a mini-DOAS meeting when we get back home. Oh! The next DOAS meeting may be in China in 2008, timed to coincide with the Olympics. A reason to stay in DOAS, or get into it if you're not!

We ended at 3:30 this afternoon, and Florence (owner of the French version of my instrument) and I went to the Science Centre that we've been passing every day on the way to the meeting. I love science centres. Two things of note: (1) they used to have a leaf cutter ant colony, but it recently died. This is interesting because the Ontario Science Centre (which I visited for the first time since childhood this January) also has a recently deceased ant colony. Creepy. (2) They have a "humans" exhibit that contains a walk-in womb. Meli, I took pictures, but they didn't turn out that well. It as cosy and comforting, as you might expect. They had places to sit on the walls. I sat in a womb today. The last time I did that I was negative age.

I'm off to Copenhagen tomorrow morning, when my real travels will begin. I expect I will miss my private room with my own bathroom and double bed. But, Copenhagen/the rest of Scandinavia will make up for it in other ways.

If you were to place a bet on which of my many planes from Toronto to Eureka and back would be delayed, I bet you wouldn't have bet on my Calgary – Toronto flight. You, my friend, would have lost a lot of money. I suppose I should have known, seeing as how all other flights went well, that I wouldn't actually get back to Toronto on time. The airplane gods must wreck havoc on any trip involving the Arctic. But it makes for one more adventure.

I checked the weather in Toronto yesterday before leaving for the airport, and saw that there were thunderstorms predicted. I dutifully checked my flight, and found that it was still leaving on time. So off to the airport I went and checked myself in and eventually got on the plane. Right about the time we should have been pushing off, the stewardess came on the air to tell those stragglers to sit down so we could get on our way. About five minutes later, the pilot came on to tell us that Toronto was fogged in, and that our flight would most likely be delayed, but to stay seated. About ten minutes later the flight was canceled. They told us to go in, pick up our luggage, and talk to the booking desk to rebook our flights. Right about now I'm dreaming of the Maple Leaf Lounge and first class tickets for a flight later that night. I forgot I was flying Air Canada. When I got off the plane I headed down to the baggage area. I was expecting some sort of customer service representative to be there to tell us about the next flights that we might get on. Of course, there was no one. The other people on my flight were all milled about the first baggage carousel, because there was no indication of where the luggage may come out. Eventually, it did show up there, but there was still no person calming the angry travelers. I found my way up to the ticket counter and instead of a person to talk to, there was a surly woman handing out pieces of paper with 1-800 numbers on them to rebook the flight. Then she pointed me to a pay phone that was out of order. Now that's award winning service.

My first step, according to Air Canada, or rather, their piece of paper, was to call their hotel reservation system for help in selecting and securing a nearby hotel offering discounts to Air Canada customers. As it was only four in the afternoon, and there were still three or four scheduled flights to Toronto that day, I skipped that step and called their booking system. (Though not from the comfort of my hotel room, as instructed. I am a rebel.) The nice woman at the other end of the phone told me that it looked like all flights to Toronto that day would be canceled, and would I like a 7 or 9 am flight the next day. Since she wouldn't let me book a flight that night, I chose hidden option c, the 11 am flight, and called Keith to come get me again. There was not even a hint of first class offering. Or even a taxi voucher to get me to my specially discounted hotel.

While I was waiting for him to get back to the airport, I took a look at the arrivals/departure board. The later Toronto flights were still showing up on the board, but I expected it was a bit too early to cancel them. The WestJet flight leaving at 4 kept getting delayed. When I left the airport at 4:30, it had been pushed back to 6. It turns out the later flights did leave that night, and Air Canada totally lied to me. At the time I was happy that they had outright canceled the flight, because at least I wasn't stuck waiting around the airport for hours. In the end I suppose it was better to get a bonus night in Calgary then wait around not knowing if I would make it out that night. I am of two minds about this. If I hadn't had a place to stay, and had to use their special "discounted" hotel rate, I would have been SUPER angry.

It turned out to be an awesome bonus night in Calgary. We went out for sushi, which I have been missing terribly. (Calgary is closer to an ocean than Toronto. The sushi was good. But expensive.) We also went climbing. And I failed the belay test. Note to Ontario climbers – our method of using a gri-gri is unsafe. The West is going to educate us. They're coming. Wait for it. I didn't get many climbs in, but it was great to get back up the walls, and I look forward to more climbing later in the week. Then we went out for beer and cribbage and my team totally kicked Keith's team's ass. Even though I had never played before.

The *best* part, by far, of my Air Canada canceled flight experience came today on my flight. It turns out that when they cancel your flight, even if you have a Tango class ticket, you get *upgraded* to Latitude class. What does this mean? Same crappy seat, but when they come around with the food cart, you get a SEVEN DOLLAR VOUCHER for food. If you haven't flown Air Canada in awhile, that ends up being a sandwich and a bag of baby carrots. Oh yeah, that's the Air Canada lovin'.

The second best part of my Air Canada experience is that they lost one of my bags. Luckily not the one with most of my clothes and toiletries, but the bag with my alarm clock (Eureka doesn't always have them in the rooms), my arctic gear (better to lose on the way home), and my lab book (WHY did I check this? WHAT was I thinking?). The guy at the baggage counter (who was helpful, albeit a bit weird since he typed all my info into the computer without ever breaking eye contact) told me it was odd to get one bag and not the other. So I'm convinced that it's been stolen/lost to the ether. Oh, and in five days I can file a claim. Once I'm in Germany. I hate that I can't even never fly them again for spite, as I'm flying with them Saturday. Gah.

I'm back in Toronto now for the week, during which time this blog will experience a brief hiatus, and then it'll be back up in “Germany/Scandinavia travel mode” come Sunday. (Though more sporadic, as I won't have constant internet/computer access.)

UPDATE: My bag was returned to me Wednesday night, lab book included. I'm still irked.

I took my annual trip to Banff today - though much shorter than years past. Stupid GCC, don't they know I count on my week in Banff? Keith and I went skiing/snowboarding. Which was awesome - whenever I go skiing I pledge to ski more, and then I get back to Toronto and I realise that there's no skiing in Ontario. Stupid flat province.

We stopped in Banff for dinner at Wild Bill's Saloon - where the triad spent the first game of the Stanley Cup finals in 2004 (Tampa Bay vs. Calgary). My previous visit to Wild Bill's was notable due to free Kokanee when the Flames started to win and some pictures taken of a saddle and various members of the triad. I am sad to report that the saddle is gone. Where will we take compromising pictures now?

Thanks to Melissa for this awesome link. Internet + atmosphere + science = super cool.

I made it to Calgary today and the sun is super high in the sky and kinda freaking me out. It's also super clear and you can see all the way to the Rockies. More once I've done more that watch Days and nap. (The next two things on my list. Keith has "class" that he can't miss, so I am left to entertain myself.)

Note that there is no qualifier to the best day ever. This is because today was truly the best day EVER. We got out of Resolute on time with no problems. It was great flying today - a bit of cloud, but mostly sunny skies and you could see all the way to the ground. And when there was cloud it was neat. (Remember that I'm an atmosphere geek.) But, what made this the best day EVER was the fact that today I flew a plane. A Dormier 223. For like half an hour. And there were other planes around. (Miles above us, flying over the pole from Europe to the US or vice versa.) But still. Me. Who can't read without her glasses. Flying a PLANE. (Note that I'm wearing my glasses.) The pilots let everyone have a turn at the wheel, mostly, I think, because the plane doesn't have auto-pilot, and it was a pretty boring flight from Resolute to Yellowknife. Regardless of their motives, we all had an amazing time. Pierre wins for best scary moment, when he made the plane dive a bit too quickly for us passengers. Now we're back in Yellowknife and off to find beer on tap. Mmmm... And since it's like -5 here, I've also packed away my snow pants, boots, and parka. Regular winter clothes, how I've missed you.

I always hate leaving Eureka. I love being there and it's hard to leave and head South. This trip flew by, and already I'm back in Resolute. Our charter is taking a bit of a detour heading back to Yellowknife, to drop off the part of the team visiting the school in Grise Fiord. (I'm not going because I'm going to a conference in Germany next weekend.) The runway there is a bit short, and the pilots were worried about landing with all the people, so instead of the more logical stopping there on the way to Resolute, they dropped some of us off here and are flying back to Grise. So I'm back in a familiar place: waiting in Resolute for a plane. I guess it's not a trip to the Arctic if I'm not sitting in the South Camp Inn, waiting for a plane to come in. The weather's good. We shouldn't have to wait long...

I'll be back in Toronto Monday night, and then off to Bremen Saturday evening. So if you're there, and would like to hear more detailed tales of my Arctic adventures, and especially if you want to hear these tales while climbing, let me know!

If you checked out thestar.com today you saw my picture on the front page of their webpage. If you clicked on the link, you saw a larger picture of me heading back up to PEARL after my walk the other day. If you saw this early enough in the day, or if you look now in the photo gallery, you'll see the caption describing how I'm making the trek to PEARL from the weather station. And they even spelled my name right. The trek from the weather station is a 20 - 30 minute drive in a 4x4 truck, up 600 m. One could probably walk it, but it would take at least a few hours. As it's uphill, and when not super uphill it's still up a low grade hill, it would probably take me all day. (cf. the time it took me to climb the Grouse Grind.) Needless to say, there was a bit of a miscommunication between our friendly neighbourhood reporter and the person in charge of the site. For a brief moment this morning, I was an Arctic Explorer Extraordinaire. This is also most likely the closest I'll come to being on the front page of a newspaper. Unless my evil plans come to fruition, and then I'll be in all the newspapers. I've already said too much.

In other news today, it may be time for me to come home if only to save me from myself. I'm not ordinarily a dessert junkie, but something happens to me above the Arctic circle and I can't stay away from the sweets. Maybe it's because of the lovely dessert table, which is 95% free of nuts, and has no cross-contamination issues. Oh, this picture is only of the dessert table, there's also a dessert fridge full of pie and berry crisps at the moment. And an ice cream fridge, full of guaranteed to be nut free ice cream. And for some reason we keep bringing multiple desserts with us up to the lab each day. It's 6:40, and I've already had three desserts today. Ordinarily, I wouldn't even have had dinner yet. I also can't stay away from the cheese up here. Every time I walk through the kitchen, I have to have some. Pierre tells me its on account of the cold, and that my body thinks we're entering an ice age, so it needs to bulk up. I'm fully willing to accept this hypothesis, if only so I don't need to admit that it's really because I have no will power. Oh, and because of the altitude. It always comes back to the altitude.... (Those astute readers will note that the weather station is located at sea level.)

I want to draw your attention over to the right side of the screen, under links. Our campaign website has been up and running for awhile, and has loads of pretty pictures. Newly added is Peter Calamai's "Arctic Diary". Peter is a science reporter for the Toronto Star reporter who is here this week taking pictures, asking questions, and writing about his experiences.

Tobias and I went for the best walk ever yesterday, down the opposite ridge towards the fjord, and then back up AStrO ridge. This walk is basically my favourite view in all of Eureka the whole way there, and then, on account of the sunny skies, super-great white on crazy blue sky with bright red AStrO in the background all the way back. It also provides plenty of opportunity for sliding down snow covered hills and - newly discovered this year - a tiny tiny amount of climbing! Funnily enough, this is really hard to do in boots rated to minus fourty. When/if I come back this summer, this little stretch of rock had better watch out.

On the way back we walked through the valley between these two ridges. The wind was blocked by the ridges, and was dead calm. Normally you can hear the wind rushing past you, or, when close enough to the lab, or anywhere at the station, the low rumble of the power generators. Literally the only things making noise were us. We stopped and sat there for awhile, listening to absolutely nothing. Almost every day here I find something else to love about the Arctic. This trip has flown by, and weather permitting we'll leave Friday. As much as I look forward to not having to spend ten minutes getting dressed to go outside, and meals that don't involve meat and deep fried things, I'm not looking forward to heading south. Except, maybe, for the sushi. And people (hey that's yous guys). Oh yeah, and my next trip north-east. The life of a grad student is hard sometimes.

Finally, after five days of varying degrees of thick cloud, the midlatitude air mass that has been sitting over Eureka has finally left. Temperatures are back to normal: 35 below or thereabouts, and the Sun is back. I'm pointing to it in this picture with my club for a hand (if I had thought, I would have taken off my mittens), but the auto feature of my camera clearly didn't read my mind and know that I wanted the Sun visible in the washed out sky. Anyways, it was exciting to finally see it again. This is normally the time of year where I fool myself into thinking that it's super-bright out, and then I look at my pictures a few days later and realise that the skies are still pink and it's still sunrise/set in all of them. After the week we've had, I'm just happy to have something in the sky to look at that isn't cloud. Or blowing snow. Incidentally, that's not my spectrometer to the right. Mine is much cooler. And didn't require modification of the building to install (note the missing guard rail).

This is my fifth trip to the Arctic, and though I still experience a sense of amazement at the landscape, I sometimes forget exactly how far away from everything I really am. And how dangerous it can actually be to be here. Yesterday I was reminded of this. Another couple of firsts for me - the first time the truck has gone off the road, the first time we've had to call to the station to get towed, and my first real Eureka-style blizzard.

The station manager called up to the lab yesterday afternoon to tell us a storm was coming in, and that if we wanted to get to the station, we should leave soon. Pierre, who had been at the station with one of the trucks, was on his way up to get us. While he was fighting the drifting snow back up, we packed up and Oleg tried to get the other truck started. (There are ten of us up here this year, so we need to take two trucks every day.) Unfortunately, that truck is a bit temperamental, and since it hadn't had its 8 hour cooling off period, refused to start. Meaning that Pierre would have to do two runs to get us all down from the lab. It wasn't blowing all that hard yet, so we thought it would be alright. I managed to weasel my way into the first truck load of seven people. Driving down, the winds had gotten stronger. In some places we couldn't see the tracks the truck had made just a few minutes earlier. Since the road gets pretty unidentifiable in conditions like these, there are marker posts every few feet with shiny tape on them, so you can tell where the road is. Some of these posts are missing, and Pierre and I were commenting on how that wasn't really a good thing. Karma being the bitch that it is, about half way down to the station, in a place with a few missing posts, and one badly placed post, one of our wheels went off the road and into a ditch. Another one followed. It was pretty warm out - minus 15 - so the time we spent trying to dig, push, and pray our way out was not terrible from that standpoint. It was a bit frustrating that the testosterone levels shot up, and suddenly I was stuck on the side of a road at 80 degrees North with three men who were experts on getting a truck out of a ditch in the Arctic. And who wouldn't admit that we were STUCK. There was a two foot drop off from the road to the bottom of the ditch. At one point we had the left side wheels in the ditch and the right side wheels nicely displaying the concept of conservation of angular momentum, as they were a few inches off the ground. Ten minutes in, Kaley and I were pretty sure we weren't going anywhere without help. One hour in, the front end loader was on its way to pull us out. We broke a rope, and then on the second rope it pulled us up and out of the ditch, and we made it back to the station just in time for the winds to really pick up. By the time the loader got back, we couldn't see across to the old building (about 10 metres). If we had waited much longer to call for a tow, they couldn't have come out in the weather and we would have been stuck, seven in a truck, waiting for the winds to die down. Which would have been overnight. Oh yeah, I'm in the Arctic.

Luckily, we did get back home, leaving only a few people up at the lab overnight. (Which is well equipped with food, a computer projector, movies, and beds, just for such an occasion.) The rest of us hunkered down to listen and watch the winds getting worse and worse. The new building shakes. I was watching a couple of lights out the window, one 10 metres away, one 15, to gage the visibility. For about an hour, the furthest one was out of sight, and the closest one was blowing in and out of the snow. The building they were attached to was not at all visible. The windows in the rec room that were receiving the full wind gusts were visibly moving. This was the strongest storm they've had in the new building (open since September) and I'm happy to say it withstood the winds. And in case any of you were worried, the satellite TV held out through Survivor, only going out a few times, and only for a few seconds. Then the winds picked up and the satellite dish was moving so much it couldn't hold the signal.

This morning we woke up to winds that had died down significantly. It's still blowing out there, but nothing near last night. A plane is meant to come in today, bringing new people and taking away old, and last I heard they were planning to leave Yellowknife as scheduled. This means the front end loader has to be used to clear the road to the airport and the runway, so can't clear the road up to the lab. So we're stuck at the station, and they're stuck at the lab, and I'm just glad I didn't have to spend a night in a truck off the side of the road at 80 degrees North in a blizzard with six of my closest friends.

We were shrouded in cloud again today, making for badly contrasting photos, but this, my friends, is the farthest North I've ever been. We didn't take a GPS with us, so I cannot quantify the exact latitude, but it was at the end of the AStrO ridge, down the steep bit. (I realise this means nothing to you. I also realise that walking a little bit more North of the lab isn't really shattering my previous Northernmost record. It's the little things that keep you going here. Like Hershey's Kisses filled with caramel.) This picture is looking North-North West. This afternoon, Kelly, Paul, Oleg, Tobias, and I headed off for a hike along the next ridge over, and then back on our ridge. Half way down the first ridge, it occurred to me that I had never walked that way before, and that with every step I took I was the furthest North I'd ever been. It is really hard to stop walking North when you realise this. Really, the only things stopping me from walking all the way to the water were (a) no one else wanted to, (b) we didn't have time if we wanted to get back to the station for dinner, and (c) it was DOWN to the water, and when you're wearing a few pounds of gear, and when you've been somewhat sedentary for the past week and a half, and when you're at 600 m altitude (I blame everything on altitude - c.f. any trip to Banff) with every step down you are painfully aware that there will be a compensating step up, if you would like to make it back to the lab. (Which is located at the crest of the ridge, so there's really no way you can walk and NOT have to walk up hill back. This was bad planning on the part of the people who chose the site.) Speaking of painfully, the walk back to the lab after this brave venture into parts unknown was perhaps the hardest walk I have ever done. Picture the hardest walk you've ever done. Then put on a really big parka, boots, and snow pants. Then make it only about -15 out, so you're over-heating even without the walking. Then make it up rocks that are loose, and covered with snow, so you can't really tell what's going to fall where when you step. Now you can imagine the fun we had walking back to the lab. But complaining aside, it was a fun hike, and now I can really say I've been further North than you.