The Day the Seagull Laughed

So, as I was saying, fly camp was interesting. Lots of hard work. Finally finished it and got out of there and back to the real camp with communications equipment.

I seem to have finally found a solution to my University problem. Hopefully the professor helps me out getting my courses sorted, as neither the chem department, nor the lab coordinators wanted to do anything for me. Hooray for 3 years of Uni instead of 4.

I have 6 days left in camp, and they're dragging out pretty slowly. The work isn't as intense as fly camp was, with normal hours, and dinner at 6.00 instead of 8.30.

Today has been spent water sampling. And the day is only half done. We had to break for lunch early as I was getting too cold and bad shakes. Basically I stand balls deep in a sub-zero celsius lake and fill little bottles with water. This sounds easy. Except we have no gloves that go nearly high enough up the arm to stop the water getting in. I eventually gave up on the gloves as they were just holding the water and getting me colder, faster, without a chance to warm up. The hip waders I'm using aren't exactly the most water-proof things either, and the water slowly seeps through them as I'm standing there.

It might also help if the opening of the bottle was a little bit larger than 1cm to fill a 500ml bottle. Takes a bit of time. By 11am my hands and arms were pretty numb, and we needed to refuel the chopper anyways, so here I am back at camp for an early lunch, sitting by the heating stove cranked on fool, trying to dry out and warm up before going back out to do it again for another 4 hours.

As for the seagull, we were landed on a small island about to prepare our sample, when over head I heard a segull cawing as they constantly do. But then, right as I was about to wade out into the frigid liquid, I heard it change to a stuttering laughing sound. I have never heard this from a seagull before. The bastard was laughing at us. I was not amused.

But it's better than till sampling.

And in 6 days I'll be on my way to Colorado for some much needed relaxation, and a cold damn beer.