Idaho Connections and great community at Summit

6/14

More good food today. For lunch we had macadamia nut encrusted Mahi Mahi with a mango-lemon butter to drizzle on it.  There was also spicy Kimchi to go with it. For dinner we had pork chops with a butternut squash kale side dish and a good salad. I mentioned in my previous posts that the food was gourmet. I forgot to mention that for most of the meals she makes an artisan salad, she bakes fresh bread (randing from focacia to sourdough), and makes a home-made dessert. We had lots of pies, crisps, some varieties of cookies, cinnamon rolls, and more. I mostly try to avoid the deserts, but sometimes they look just too good. Tonight was one of those nights. She made a most delicious cream cheese cheesecake. 

The runway has become too soft and drifted--since they're not grooming it with no planes coming--to bike or skate ski it. So today I did a nordic ski along the clean air sector flags. You can just keep going and going along this flag line out towards the flat, white abyss. It's a strange feeling just skiing out towards nothing, a white nothing. It feels like if you kept skiing, you'd just ski off the edge of the Earth. It's also a crazy thought to think that the very ice that has lifted me 2 miles high in the air could melt in the next century and cause the ocean to flood entire cities like Manhattan.

One of the best parts about a small research station as I have found out at other small stations (Mpala in the fall, Shoals Marine Lab, Continental Divide Research Learning Center) is how close you become to people. The community is always amazing. I haven't been here very long, but it already feels like I'm part of an amazing community.

Interestingly there are 3 Idaho connections that I have already discovered. Dave's  (the awesome medic) parents recently retired to Coeur D'Alene, so he visits there often. He said he and his girlfriend are looking at buying a house up in Sandpoint if he can get a job. The incoming station manager lives in Sandpoint. 

Hannah, the ICEcaps tech and I had a long talk about Idaho today. Hannah is a really cool gal. She is from Maine and was on the nordic ski team at St. Lawrence Univ, so she knows a lot about skiing. She met her boyfriend up here in greenland. He is currently working at Palmer station in Antarctica. But they own a small condo together in Sandpoint to live in when they are in the area for the winters. But otherwise they live on their sail boat that is docked in Bayview on Lake Pend oreille when it's not too cold. She's loves to talk about Schweitzer and the backcountry skiing in the area. Her and her bf bought one of those epic passes that is good for 22 resorts around North America, so she's super excited to ski around Colorado, BC, California, etc this summer. I have to admit I've always been super tempted to buy one of those passes. If you get them early enough they are less than $400. Of course it involves a lot of travel, but that's what I like. She's definitely cool and it would be fun to hang out with her when I'm back in North Idaho.

I sat with a guy named John at lunch today. He's a very quiet guy, but I knew when I saw him walking around in Albany that he would be cool to get to know. He works on the construction crew here. He's lived in Colorado, but has lived in Lander, WY for the past 17 years during which he was a NOLS instructor. He used to take NOLS groups for 15, 20, or 30 days backpacking, climbing, mountaineering, caving, etc through places like Patagonia and Alaska. He has a big heart and his desire for conservation and teaching kids to love nature and have a land ethic is really inspiring. He's not a scientist, but he likes to ask lots of questions to try to understand it more. He was telling me how sad it was for him to see the glaciers in Patagonia melt so rapidly during his 17 years taking trips around there. And he was trying hard to figure out a way to set up something to pick up our weather balloon launches since they just end up as litter wherever the wind blows them after they pop. He's spent lots of time in Alaska with NOLS and by himself and he was giving me some cool and interesting tips about really exploring Alaska. Like getting certain bush pilots with special wheels that can fly you to glaciers, mountains, or wherever you want and then you can hike back to civilization or get picked up again. I think this is similar to what cousin Greg and Connie do when they do their 10 day river fishing trip in Alaska.

There are some funny characters of course. Perhaps the funniest is a guy named Storm. I really can't describe him in words and with a tired brain, but he's a great character and really funny. He cares a toy dinosaur in his pocket and people often try to steal it and then he brings it up on the radio or in morning meetings if it gets stolen. He works on the ice as well as the person in charge of the traverse to the south pole. But he's a really nice guy and great to have around. He stopped by our office today to make sure we are doing okay living up here and to give us some tips and advice and just to check in. 

And actually tonight our station, Kaija manager stopped in to ask us how things were going and if we needed anything and if we needed any more help or attention from her. he said she felt bad she couldn't help us out with sciencey stuff but wanted us to know she is there for us if we need her.

And of course Dave, the super awesome, upbeat, positive medic. We are all sad to see him go. As Elissa said, "he's the only one on base that can ALWAYS improve her day and make her feel good" And some of the girls were talking about how approachable he seems for medical issues too, which can be a problem when you live with the person giving you sensitive medical care. They laughed liking it to the opposite of how they felt with their doctors, who were friends with their parents, in highschool when they had start telling the doctors they were having sex.

Most people up here are either from Colorado, New Hampshire, Minnesota, or Michigan. Though there is one poor freezing guy from South Carolina.

Well, taking a break from doing stats to write this blog. Both Elissa and I are in the office late usually. Me working on my stats, her playing remote computer chess with her boyfriend, Dan. Elissa told me, with sad eyes, she loves playing chess, but a bedtime chess game just can't compare to a bedtime snuggle with Dan. I know she's definitely been struggling a lot being away from Dan and is probably already counting down the days.

Time to get back to the stats...that's the update from the high arctic