Survivor Ellesmere

If I'm back blogging it can only mean one thing: I'm off traveling again. And, as promised just two entries ago, it's to Eureka. In the summer! This is clearly the most exiting thing that has ever, or will ever, happen to me. Nobel prizes, graduating, free Pirates of the Carribean themed cruises with celebrity guest Johnny Depp, these things will pale in comparison to this trip North. Not that I'm putting any pressure on Eureka to deliver.

If you're reading this you know how much I absolutely adore traveling to the North and Eureka in particular. I've only ever been for polar sunrise, in February and March. This will be my first foray into another season in the High Arctic. Eureka these days is actually hovering around temperatures I last experienced in Scandinavia (not Finland, it was colder there): +5. A week ago it was +15 or so. Compared to the scorching +47 with humidity we had here in Toronto last week, even -5 sounds like a fantastic vacation locale. (Question: why aren't there more snowbirds the other way? If so many people head south in the winter to avoid the bitter cold, why don't more people head north in the summer to avoid the oppressive heat? I'm not talking Eureka north, but Yellowknife, or really, anywhere outside of Southern and Eastern Ontario and Southern Québec is probably much more comfortable.)

Eureka is known as the “garden spot of the Arctic”. There are actually two reasons for this. The first is that due to some crazy weather patterns that I don't understand Eureka is actually a bit more pleasant in the summer than other parts of the High Arctic (like Resolute) and there are wildflowers everywhere. (If you don't believe me, check out Keith's pictures.) When I'm there in the winter we can see the dead remnants of all these flowers and I'm excited to see the valleys I know so well covered in yellow and purple flowers instead of a thin layer of snow. The other reason Eureka is the garden spot of the Arctic is because they used to grow pot there. It's the site of the world's northern most drug bust. I may elaborate on that more another time.

My last reason for super-excitement is to see the midnight Sun. I'm afraid this will mess with my ability to sleep at night, but I'm willing to give up sleeping to see the flip side of the Eureka light level coin.

The reason for my trip is of course not sightseeing, but science. The lab we work in is being reequipped, and part of that is a new spectrometer almost exactly like the one I work with. It'll live in Eureka permanently, and I'm going now to install it. The whole procedure of getting this instrument has been one long waiting period. We actually ordered it in December, but because of production delays it didn't get delivered until July 4. The past month I've been madly scrambling to get it ready to go to Eureka this summer. Honestly, because I want to go to Eureka in the summer, but also because if it waits until the fall it will be a race to get it installed before sunset. (Which happens in October.) Because we had to wait until the instrument arrived to decide if it worked well enough for us, the whole trip has a very last-minute feel to it, despite the fact we've been planning on going since last winter. We didn't decide 100% to go until Thursday (the 3^rd) and I'm leaving this Thursday (the 10^th).

It was a crazy Friday for me. I had to book my flights and we had to pack up the instrument and get it shipped so that it will be in Resolute to make the produce charter to Eureka August 13^th. (Which I'll be on too.) NEVER start planning a last minute trip to Eureka on the Friday before the long weekend. Shipping is something I don't think I've written about before, but is one of the most stressful parts of any trip to Eureka. There's obviously the worry that something will break on the way, so I encase things in so much foam I think other people think I'm obsessive compulsive about foam. Then there's also this whole timing thing. The instrument has to first get to Ottawa, which is where the flights to Resolute start. Shipping to Ottawa is not so stressful, but it has to get there quickly so that it can have a few Ottawa – Resolute flights to make it up there. They go more often now than they used to – four times a week instead of two – but there's limited cargo space. And if it misses the produce charter it has to wait two weeks before there's another flight. (In the winter it's three weeks.) So I've been obsessively checking the status of my boxes on purolator.com all weekend. (Woo! Crazy long weekend!) Things were all good until last night. I checked it before going to bed, and instead of telling me where it was it told me to call Purolator to discuss the status. So I immediately start worrying. And Purolator is closed. I tossed and turned all night worrying about the instrument. And where it could have possibly ended up, in pieces, all alone and scared. So I called them first thing this morning. (I actually woke up right at eight, which is when they opened.) And the boxes are fine. They'll be delivered Tuesday after the long weekend. There was a glitch in the website last night when I checked. Now everything is fine again. Years ago, Elham, the woman who I inherited the spectrometer from, came in one morning and told me she'd dreamt that we had forgotten to ship a part of the spectrometer that we then discovered we had actually forgotten to ship. I remember thinking at the time that if she was dreaming about the spectrometer she was spending too much time thinking about school. Oh young Master's student Annemarie. How naïve you were. My dreams now regularly feature thesis-related things. I talk about the instrument like it's a person, and I always give it a kiss for good luck before leaving it for any period of time. Someday I hope to have some semblance of a normal life again....

// posted by Annemarie @ 2:54 PM