Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Barrow - Part 2 of ??

I had another package of fishy snacks from Japan and these had little red dots on them. At first glance, I just assumed that they would be spicy. But upon closer inspection, they look more like fish eggs. The flavor was about the same as the other bag of snacks that I had posted about last week. Kind of sweet, a little "fishy", very crispy and crunchy, and delicious. This package was also ¥600 but I think I purchased both of them in an overpriced airport gift shop. We needed to use up our Japanese currency.

On Tuesday afternoon, I borrowed the gas card to fill up the truck I've been using. The gas price is set when they get their barge shipment of fuel and I believe that it was last September sometime. Driving is expensive up here. And with the potholes and deep muddy trails that make up the roads this time of year, anything smaller than the F250 crew cab would get beat up pretty badly. These trucks work well but probably go through a lot of gas. Sean, the logistics planner, mentioned that the current price of $6.50/gal is less than it was last year. I rarely fill up the truck as it usually has a full tank when I picked it up. This time it was less than half full.

This is the coast early Wednesday morning with the sun shining on the ice. The temperatures are still only in the mid-20s (°F) but the forecast for the next couple of days is sunny afternoons. I had originally planned to walk out to the Control Shed again on Thursday but a research group is sending me a replacement radio for one of their instrument towers on Thursday. So I'll plan on a nice walk on Friday.

I had posted graphs from this site before as I think it provides useful information. The orange line shows the track of the sun today and the green line is the summer solstice. The sun dips to about 3° above the horizon at about 2 am. You can also see that the sun never gets much above 40° above the horizon and when you are here, it feels like the sun is just circling around. So, if you know the time, it's really easy to determine compass directions. 

10 comments:

  1. Sooo, Richard... Have you noticed a dip in blog traffic since you began posting close-ups and detailed descriptions of your, um, snacks? ;-)

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    1. Oh, probably. But there are always those that wonder what strange things people call food in other parts of the world. At least I haven't posted any bug dishes or live eel soup. Things that you see on the Bizzare Foods TV show. Some of those things are really strange.

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  2. That is a high price for gas to us here in the "outside". Comparable to European prices I bet.

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    1. Especially when I keep hearing about sub $2 gas in the lower-48.

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  3. $6.50/gal is even more expensive than current super plus gas prices in Germany.

    And don't worry about your eclectic food porn... I find the image of raw meat much more offensive ;-)

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    1. I hear of $10/gal gas around Europe due to taxes. But that may be an exaggeration.

      Isn't weird food one of the perks of travel?

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  4. That is some spend petrol. The price you play when living/working in the remoteness of Barrow.

    Our gas just jumped from around $2.09/gallon for regular to about $2.35/gallon for regular.

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    1. That's still incredibly cheap for what you get.

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  5. European gas has dropped a bit but 6-8 dollars is the norm. They continue to drive -cars that get 50mpg and the money goes to universal health care. So I am rather unimpressed by the high gas prices. A night in the ER in the US will take care of a year's worth of gas for some underinsured American with an aggressively non responsive insurance company.

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    1. I agree completely. With the current price of gas, getting 8 mpg is no big deal. Even if you compare it with US prices in the past. It is incredibly cheap.

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