This
morning at about 3:00 we hit our last station. The ice was pretty bad,
but the morning was absolutely beautiful. The sun poured yellow and orange
over the heavily ridged ice that stretched from horizon to horizon. We
were only able to penetrate the bottom of the ice in two holes, since
the ice was so ridged, and didn't bother with any cores, but it was worth
it to see the sun that the rest of the west coast would awaken to in a
few hours. There is nothing more beautiful than the arctic sky, in my
opinion. Montana may be big sky country, but this is the biggest sky country.
I can see why being a polar bear would be worth it. Being out in a place
uninhabitable by humans, just nature interacting with nature. Never a
worry. Everything that happens is for a reason that nature intended, and
nothing is for the ill.
We boarded back on the boat, and I went to watch the ROV work its magic under the ice. It found both stakes (which were twenty-five feet under the water), but the ice had even more relief under the ice. Huge jutting blocks of ice were pinned under each other, creating mountain ranges of negative elevations. I soon could not handle staying awake any longer, and I crashed in my bunk (with a sign on the door telling Mr. Buckley to wake me at breakfast). I had everything on, my shoes and even my hat from outside. It was a very good sleep, but when Mr. Buckley woke me up he confessed that he had slept in, and that it was 0900. Well, I missed breakfast by a good chunk, so I decided to go back to sleep. I didn't wake up until after lunch, which I was lucky enough to scrounge on left-over soup and salad. I helped with various packing things, and went to the "plus-delta" meeting.
The "plus-delta" meeting was basically a meeting to discuss the good (plus) and bad (delta) things about the cruise. That took about an hour and a half, and the issues that were raised were pretty much along the lines of the sentiment that I have expressed in these journals. The main "plus" was how generous, helpful, intelligent, and pleasant the crew was. The main "delta" was the e-mail.
Following the meeting, we had pizza night -- which was quite fun. I started rolling dough for a while, soon migrating to the toppings, and then eventually I was the dictator of the line. I told people they could go in and get pizza, or to wait. I think that the anchovy/seaweed pizza was by far the best. It sounds weird, but it tasted excellent.
During pizza night, a lot of cool funk tunes were playing, and everyone was dancing. I had never really thought of Bob Whritner as someone who might dance, but he was definitely grooving to the tunes. Flour was everywhere, and dough was flying. The worst part, and most exhausting, was the clean-up. Luckily I ran out of things to do, and no one needed my help after a while, so I went to the ship store, and bought a Polar Sea hat and a Coast Guard pin. I was intending on buying a Polar Sea pin to complement my Des Grosseilliers pin, but forgot. I will have to do that tomorrow morning.
I am now in the process of packing, and hope to get all
of my personal stuff packed before tomorrow. I suspect that
shouldn't be too hard to do.
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