13 November

Today went much better than yesterday.  We got the tripods oriented, leveled, and iced into the ground.  The icing makes it harder for the polar bears to walk off with the equipment :) 

The result of all our effort.  Yes, it was this dark.  Makes compass reading a bit of a challenge.  Also, note to self:  metal flashlights are not the best idea, because you can't hold them in your mouth.  We ran our cables and had time to test one box.  Nice when it all works!  I should finish up tomorrow. 

Barrett has learned from my mistakes so will probably not be making so many himself, when he sets up his site at Ny-Alesund.  He and three others fly there tomorrow to begin their own setup.

Very poor visibility today because of cloud cover and light snow.  I hear that there was aurora last night at around 11:00 but missed it.  Interesting to be in a place where you could actually see aurora during the day.

The lowlight of my day was walking to the Hagglund at the end of the day.  Fred had parked in a different place, since my tripods are where he usually drives.  Just before I got to the door of the vehicle, I ended up in thigh high snow :( 

It's interesting that when you rent a car here, you don't get a contract.  Just a business card, in case their are problems.  They don't care who else drives it, either.  I guess when you only have two roads, you don't worry about someone driving off with the vehicle.  We think we saw one gas station, out near the airport.  I doubt I'll ever have to fill the tank, though.

We passed several reindeer on the drive to KHO today.  There are also large sled dog pens, just outside town.  The pens have very high fences to keep the polar bears out.  Having the pens outside town also helps keep the bears from coming into town.