NEEM Zombiland rules.

Rule 1: "Cardio"

Due to the altitude in the camp, (~2.5km above sea level), the days after I got back to Kanger, I was in the best shape ever!

Rule 2: "Double tap"

The Greenlandic mosquitoes are fierce bastards... and hard to kill. I now count 20+ bites.

Rule 3: "Beware of bathrooms"

That is a lesson to you! Be glad that you have a nice bathroom, I was sitting in a little tent, doing my business in a hole dug in the snow.

Rule 4: "Wear seatbelts"

Here in Kanga I get to practice my driving a lot. We have tree cars with fore wheel drive at our disposal. They are not in the best of conditions, but since the traffic is extremely light is a good place for driving experiences. Tomorrow I plan to drive out to the sugar loaf (Sukkertoppen) and clime that. Rough dirt roads all the way out there. 

Rule 7: "Travel light"

On the ice, you are carrying all the stuff you need for the job. The suit and boots are heavy and the air is thin so you think ahead of what you are gonna do until you get back inside. 

Rule 8: "Get a kickass partner"

All the people in camp are kickass in each there one way. And fun to spend time with, it keeps the mode and moral up.

Rule 17: "Don't be a hero"

The ice sheet is a dangerous place, and medical assistance is a long way away. "Take it easy" is heard a lot.

Rule 18: "Limber up"

The cold is a hard place to work, mussels get cold and stiff is you don't exercise them while you are working.

Rule 22: "When in doubt, know your way out"

When you work 8 meters under the snow and ice, and you can see the splintering sealing. The weight of the snow on top make the sealing sag. There are to elevators and a set of stairs 

Rule 31: "Check the back seat"

When driving a skidoo (witch I have done as much as I could get away with) it is always important to be aware of what you are driving with. Nothing, a passenger or a sledge, I mostly drove with a waste container from the CFA lab, but I have dropped a sledge by accident. Nothing happened other then I had to go back after it. But you never know if there could be a zombi behind you.

Rule 32: "Enjoy the little things"

This was the first rule i thought of in camp, the day that I sat on a freshly dug toilet, no shit-sickle raising up towards me, only the fresh hole and a tent full of fresh air.

 

Early in Kangerlussuaq

Yesterday was the day that I flew to Kangerlussuaq with the Hercules, had a quick farewell to the camp and an even quicker packing. 

Becourse we in the CFA lab had finiched so much earlyere then expected and we had nothing to do, I was sent out of the camp. The brittle ice we were supposed to analyse was in such a bad shape that, when it was worst, we could only use 3% of the ice core for chemical analysis. The brittle ice is between 600-1200 meter down in the ice, so we had about 600 meters to analyses. In one 12-hour night shift I processed 200 meters and only found few usable pieces for the analysis. 

So now I am in Kangerlussuaq where I will help with ice core distribution. Some is going to Copenhagen, others to france and so on. I help where I can, and tuesday the 5th of July I am going HOME! I'm still getting payed to the 16th of July so that is good, and  there will be some work at the CIC when I get home.

See you  

The grand choice

...but not my choice!

The fact is that a lot of the camp is flying out tomorrow the 28th of
June, and it was expected that our measurements should have taken several
weeks, but the ice quality is so bad, and we so efficient that this morning
we are DONE!
There are still packing to be done before we, the CFA team, is truly done,
but it is all in the end the field-leader's choice.

I want to stay and say hello to all the guests that are coming in the next
weeks, the danish queen among others. But I also miss my girlfriend so I
will not complain loudly if I'm send home tomorrow (I will miss the full
pay tho)

On a off note, the birdy is still alive and have moved into the little
house.

A change of weather

The wind picked up to day and i started to snow a bit. It the first real
change of weather, until now it have been only nice weather. Not what I was
getting used to a Svalbard where storms were common.

Another strange observation - in this minus degrees I would expect so see
my breath but I don't. The air is to clean, you need aerosols in the air
for moister to condense on. Aerosols is small partikals in the air, like
dust or pollutions, so the ONLY place I have seen my breath is when I pass
the diesel power generator

An unexpected guest

A few days ago we had a very unexpected guest. A little bird had found it's
way into the camp. It have happened before last year, where it was a bigger
bird and they cough the bird and send it back with the cargo plane. But for
this little bird we put out some grains and Gunner build a heated
birdhouse.
But we have not seen the bird in days now, eater it is moved on or dead.
But it was good to have some animal life in camp :-)

Contact information

Since I don't seen your comment or question before I get back, I will ask
you to write me on my neem email adresse
"warming AT neemcamp.org"
where AT=@

Now where I'm in the routine of sleeping and working, I don't find so much
to tell... or I now take it for granted.

Work, work, work

So what do I do up here?

My day start at around 1700 where I wake up, do my mails and other stuff
and at 1900 there is dinner/breakfast and then from 2000 to 0800 (night
sift) I work as a helper in the CFA lab.
I prepare ice cores in the science trench, witch is 8 meters below the
surface. It is about -20 degrees Celsius down here. We use a 3.5cm X 3.5cm
X 110 cm piece of the ice cores witch I log breaks, length, remove cracks
with drill liquid and clean the ends of the core pieces. Then I load the
pieces into a holder and places the holder on a melt head. From here we
melt the ice from the bottom up, and the melt water is analysed in the CFA
lab (Continues Flow Analysis). Here we detect different chemical signals
and I try to detect drill liquid in this complicated CFA system. Drill
liquid will make havoc in the system, that is why we are careful in
cleaning the the ice cores.
This goes on until 0800 where the day shift take over and we eat
breakfast/dinner, have a beer and then go to bed.

This should be a standard day - especially after I'm finally is feeling
okey. Altitude+jetlag(changing to nightshift)+an upset stomach really
played a number on me.