Survivor Ellesmere

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.)