17 November

Interesting ride up to KHO this morning.  Fred was in the mood for some offroading with the Hagglund.  Only got stuck twice.  He does love to make roads with that thing!  A lot of snow accumulation since we were there on Friday.  The chest high trench that we dug?  Completely filled in.  Not just loose snow, mind you.  Packed.  That's a lot of snow!  Glad to see that the camera boxes and tripods weathered the storm.

Me channeling Madonna, with my reflectors.  I guess I should have thought about the placement a little more carefully :)

Not sure why there's a disco ball in the KHO garage.....

Our "command center".

Ran an hour long test of the cameras, this morning.  The heaters worked perfectly, as did the cameras.  Happy to not have power or GPS issues! 

Made an airport run this afternoon, to pick up another Japanese observer.  They don't bother with paid parking there.  There's a big open space with cars coming from every direction.  Not for the faint of heart.  Nice sign there.

Walking to the butikken afterward, saw this cactus in a window.  Poor thing.

Can't you just hear a tiny voice crying "help me......."  Maybe it's actually beating its little fists against the window.

This is a nice picture of the top of the world with me in the center of that red circle.

Group dinner at Svalbar, tonight.  Most everyone, anyway.  Fun to meet up with people from different places whose paths we've crossed at one time or another.  Brett from the same group Miguel came out of at Cornell, a few years after.  Shigeto, who we've gotten to know at launches in many countries.  Nice to belong to such a small group. 

Time to get psyched for my big game hunting class in the morning!!  I wonder if they'll show us how to get into a tree stand.

Which reminds me.....there are no trees here!  Not one tree.