Today was an interesting day indeed -- and I think the most interesting part I could've done without. The day started very abruptly. I was enjoying probably the most peaceful sleep I had had in days, and I was awakened by alarms. At first I thought I was sleeping through lunch, which is when they test alarms, and I waited for them to stop. They didn't stop, and eventually the person sounding the alarms claimed that there was a fire on the engineering deck. This was no drill. Mr. Buckley's reading light came on, and I asked him what was up. He said that I should probably put some pants on, so I did, and slipped my bare feet into my Adidas. He told me to go, so I quickly headed out of our bunk to head for the Hangar. I made my way to the staircase which I associated with the hangar, opened it up, and a burst of heat and plume of smoke came through. I quickly shut the door, and followed the "traffic" signs to the next door, and went up a flight right before the hatches were to be shut. That was the main mistake I made in trying to get efficiently to the hangar. The hangar was up two floors from my bunk, and I went up only one. I followed a lady to the stern of the ship, where I realized that I wasn't going to find the hangar on that deck. So instead of trying to navigate my way around the bowels of the ship, I headed for the nearest exit to the outside, and found my way to the hangar. In there scientists and helicopter pilots were slowly trickling in.
It wasn't a delightful Sunday morning. The alarm went off at about 5:55 (about 4 hours after I wrote yesterday's journal), and we got back to our rooms at about 6:40. It turned out that the Westinghouse board in main control down in engineering had gotten overloaded, and caught fire. I'm glad it wasn't anything more serious, because as far as I know, a fire on board is the worst situation a ship can face.
On
Sundays, breakfast is served as a brunch, and not at its usual time. But,
I missed brunch, and slept until Mr. Buckley woke me up about ten minutes
before lunch stopped serving. I was a little disoriented, but I made my
way up to the mess, all of the grad-students in the same situation as
me. Today was absolutely beautiful outside. I stood and admired the views
for a little while, and noticed that in the distance, Cape Lisburne was
visible. I later learned that at that point we were 30 miles away from
the range of cliffs that I was watching. The atmosphere was incredibly
clear today, and the visible distant objects were just another arctic
phenomena that I had become accustomed to in Barrow. Distances in the
arctic are VERY deceiving.
At this point the boat was still being repaired from the morning's mishap, so the boat was still. There was a comfortable breeze, and every once in a while someone would be running laps around the boat. I then went inside, and e-mailed my folks. Bill asked me if I wanted to see what they did in the cold-room, and I of course agreed
In the cold lab, Bill removed a core from its container, marked it off into ten centimeter sections, and sawed it at each one of the marks. He then took the different ten centimeter sections, and ran them up lengthwise against a band-saw, shaving off a piece from the side of each core sample. He was able to tell by looking at the "thin-section" whether the core was granular or columnar. I am not quite sure yet what that means, but he noted that our core was granular, and it was quite filled with air pockets, and not a whole lot of stratification.
After we finished in the cold-room, Bill and I sat on some crates watching
the sea and enjoying the nice weather. We had a long conversation that
ranged from ice-mirages to venison stew, and then he went do other things.
I sat there for a minute, and became more and more anxious to try running
on the deck. I knew that it would be fairly miserable, but I have an incredible
urge to just run. I then proceeded to my state-room, and put on some shorts.
I arrived at the helo pad, and started my run. It turned out to be pretty
much pointless. There
was no way I could keep up a pace that would physically improve me, for
I was constantly weaving my way through very small spaces, jumping over
various obstacles, and going up and down incredibly steep stairs. After
about five minutes, I gave up and went to the stairstepper and did that
for about 40 minutes. I will have to do some serious cross training in
order to keep myself in the kind of shape I was in.
After I "stepped," I went to the mess-hall to get dinner, and they had some very nice shrimp. I then went outside and watched the sea. I had a conversation with Tara, a grad-student scientist, and then left to go get some ice-cream (which is served every Sunday night). After the ice-cream I continued my sea-watching, and saw some interesting sea-birds that skimmed across the water away from the boat, flapping their wings furiously. It turned out that they were common Murres. Soon we hit open water, a lead that stretches about fifty miles along the coast north of Cape Lisburne. I watched the chunks of ice gradually get smaller, until we were in smooth sailing territory. It was then time to retire to the inside of the boat, so I came to the dry-lab and entered in some data. That is when I started on today's journal. I sincerely hope tomorrow's wake-up call is a little less intense.