Almost Like Riding

On Thursday afternoon after lunch, I went out to the  BEO (Barrow Environmental Observatory) Control Shed to try and get my redundant wireless connections up and running. I had an Action Packer of stuff that needed to be hauled out sometime for future use and this is a whole lot easier than carrying the stuff out walking on the boardwalk. I had brought my old motorcycle gear to use as it's waterproof enough and I probably wouldn't be using it back in Fairbanks.

This is the Control Shed. It really does look like a shed but it has power, heat and Internet. What more does anyone need? (Plumbing would be nice) When we got there, the inside temperature must have been around 80°F or at least that's what it felt like. I put up a small parabolic antenna on the tower in the background and roughly aimed it at the BARC. It has a very small field horizontally and vertically and aiming it while on the tower is very difficult due to the bright sun washing out the LED signal strength indicators. There is a very tedious and time consuming procedure for aiming the antenna with multiple reconfigurations and restarts of the radio. Kind of a hassle when you are hanging off the tower.

Just moving around the shed was challenging due to the deep snow drifts. I need to check an experiment out on this boardwalk but before heading out there, I want to find out where I'm allowed to drive the snow machine. I don't want to trample on someone's experiment. The wooden boardwalk is built like the small removable docks used on some lakes. During the summer, you are supposed to stay on the boardwalk to avoid disturbing the ground. There is a long history of climate studies in this area since the BEO was created back in the 1940s.

This is the group that led me out there. They all work for UIC Science, the science logistics provider. They came by to check up on me before heading back to the BARC making sure that I felt comfortable getting back on my own. If not, one of them would have come back for me when I was ready to head back. I promised to call once I arrived back at NARL. The only challenge was 50' from the BARC, I needed to go over some large drifts and after the right ski sunk in a hole, it was hard to hold the machine upright. I slowly went over on my side. No pictures so did it really happen?

I'll need to go back out again. Hopefully there is still enough snow on Saturday morning when I plan on heading out again....

And since the food pic in my last post generated so many comments, here is the new entry for the unusual-food-of-the-day. How about some home-made habanero pickled muktuk. Sweet, hot and very tasty.