Station-Bound Days

After Tuesday's servicing of Pecora, we had a couple of days at the station. We are trying to first visit the sites that are collocated with GPS stations, since Thomas, who is in charge of servicing these site, needs to leave in a week. In particular, there is one site, Fallone, that is a top priority, because a mountaineer is required and Mike has to leave by the weekend. Unfortunately, weather at Fallone did not allow us to visit on Wednesday and Thursday. On Thursday, however, we were given clearance to go to N100, a seismic-only AGAP site, where Guy and I would demobilize (i.e. pull out and take away) the station.

In an effort to be very proactive, I got dressed for the field very quickly, grabbed things we would need from our lab space inside the station, and ran out to the Cryo Lab, where we had a larger workspace. I got the things we needed there, and was a bit surprised that Guy hadn't caught up with me there as I walk rather slowly. But, I took the supplies and my bag of ECW gear to the flight line, where the remainder of our gear was, and from which we would start loading the plane. Still no one there, and I didn't know everything we'd need from there, but I loaded the things I knew we would need onto the sled to drag over to the plane. But, by the time I was done, still no one had showed up.

At this point, I figured something had happened, we had a delayed departure or something. I didn't want to waste all the packing I'd done, so I left one of my bags and the packed-up sled and walked back to the station, checking in at the Cryo Lab on my way there. I made it to the top of the stairs at the station and Guy opened the door and said they'd been looking everywhere for me and that the flight had been cancelled. I thought at first he was joking, but he wasn't. He and Mike were both there and did look like they'd been a little concerned about where I was, but I can't imagine why they didn't think to look by the plane. That was after all where I was supposed to go if the flight was on. So, then I got walk back out to the plane, put up the gear I'd loaded onto the sled and drag my ECW gear back to my dorm room. I'll admit that I was in a bit of a bad mood, which was probably unreasonable for such a minor inconvenience. :(

So, we ended up having two station-days in a row. Our flight was cancelled because of fuel issues. There is a location where we can land to refuel, but the plane won't hold enough fuel to fly from that location to the station and back to the fuel depot again, so we would need to carry fuel barrels with us. Unfortunately, the barrels that had been allotted for that purpose were still buried under the snow berms that formed during the winter! It turned out that it was probably a good thing that we didn't fly on that day. I later got an email from fixed-wing (the department in charge of scheduling airplanes) and they had the wrong coordinates on record for station N100! So, had we flown, we might have ended up in entirely the wrong location. Or, more likely we would have arrived at the correct location, but later than anticipated.

Days at the station are a bit slow. On Wednesday, I spent the day looking through the data we'd gathered from AGO3 and PECA (Pecora). On Thursday, I did this some more, and also worked on processing some data for my surface wave project in Cameroon. I also watched some movies, and spent some time wandering aimlessly. When the satellites were up, I called home to talk with my parents and sister, and spent quite a bit of time on Facebook. There are things to see around the station, but most require permission and/or a tour guide. There are also activities, and I've just recently discovered the rec schedule that tells when the activities are. Hopefully, in the future I can find some more exciting things to do during station-days!d