Location: Summit, Greenland
Writin': Gayle

Hey folks! So we were marooned here in Summit for one day longer than we planned due to heavy fogs and now I am sitting on the couch waiting for the plane to make its second attempt. Hopefully we will make it out of here today!

It was actually WONDERFUL to have a day of rest yesterday up here at Summit. We had already packed up all of our boxes...here is the U-Washington team stacking up their boxes of ice cores (6 m of ice per box).

And when we were marooned we ended up with time to play! Here is the snow volleyball match from last night - it is definitely tougher to play with mittens on and heavy boots!

And then we had some time to hang out in the Big House, watching movies and playing guitar. Here are two Swedish gentlemen resting on the couch in the Big House - they took a 3-day rest here on their way traversing the entire Greenland Ice Sheet on cross-country skis! So far they have made it about 1300 kilometers and it sounds like it has been a tough journey. They have each lost about 35 pounds so far, despite eating over 5000 calories per day.

And finally, here is a picture of me with the girls from U-Washington - Julia, Meredith, moi, and Shelly. We were excited about our matching socks - can you tell which feet go with which body?

Hopefully we'll be out of here on a C130 in two hours! I'll then leave from Kangerlussuaq on Saturday for New York.

Cheers!
~ Gayle

Location: Summit, Greenland
Writin': Gayle

Hey everyone!

Sorry for the slow update over here - my laptop was relegated to run air monitoring instruments so it has been a little tougher to get online. BUT, all is going great over here on the ice! For the past two days, I have been out at an ice core drilling site about 5 km from the main camp. The main driller, Bella, taught me how to run the drill - it is definitely an art form!

Here is me at the wheel of the drill...my left hand is acting as a break on the wheel as the huge drill descended deep into the hole and my right hand is operating the different gears and speed dials. It definitely is tricky to get it all working right!

Here is the very deep hole we are lowering the drill into...


And...here is the 3 m core I drilled! This one was about 150 m deep into the ice (about 300 years back!) and was just for practice...we brought it back to the camp as "party ice" to chop up and put into drinks. When you put the ice into a drink it pops and crackles due to being under compression for so long.

Other interesting things going on here include the raising of the "Big House"- one of the few heated buildings and where we eat all of our meals. Due to the annual accumulation of snow, the Big House is nearly underground and a construction crew from Alaska is here to raise it up nearly 30 feet on stilts! So far it is up about 6 feet and we are very carefully walking up planks to get to the kitchen...


So, I have about 3 more days here, then 2-3 in Kangerlussuaq, then returning to New York and then to Georgia! It will be good to be home and my nose will probably be happy to have some recovery from the winds and sun...I definitely look like Rudolph over here. :)

~ Gayle

Location: Summit, Greenland
Writing: Gayle

Hey all! All is still going great up here in Summit! We have been having packed days up here...for example, here was yesterday's schedule:

2 am: wake up to hike out about 1/2 mile from camp to take set of snow samples
3 - 5:30 am: nap in a chair in the lab building
5:30 - 7:30 am: run samples in the lab cleanroom
7:30 am: breakfast
8 - noon: dig snow pit, take measurements
noon: lunch
1 - 8 pm: keep working on snow pit, take a series of hourly samples
8 pm: dinner
9 - 2 am: sleep...wake up at 2 am for next hike to take more samples

It is definitely pretty intense up here! All the science folks are having schedules like mine - there are several of us who run into each other around 3-5 am and bond over our strange sleep schedules. One perk to doing the 3 am snow samples though is seeing some really neat sun phenomena...here is a sun column I saw a few days ago at 3 am.

And later on that same day we saw a halo around the sun! I unfortunately couldn't fit it all in my camera but here is a piece of the halo:


And, a couple pictures of us working on our first snow pit! Here is me sawing out some snow blocks in my oomah-loompah suit. :)

And here are Roby and Mike looking equally stylish in our clean suits...Mom and Dad, note Roby's neckwarmer!
And finally us taking measurements way down deep. That's me up top handing sample bottles to Mike:


It has been pretty cold here lately! This morning it was around -8 F (-22 with windchill!) when I went out for a sample. I have added a fleece liner to my sleeping bag which is keeping me nice and toasty and I'm putting a small bag filled with "keep warm" things (hat, mittens, socks, camera) in my sleeping bag every night...it is definitely tough to get out of the sleeping bag when I wake up but once I am out I am bouncing around quick to throw on my 4 layers of clothes! So far, I have been staying pretty warm - hooray for good warm clothes!

We have about 10 more days up here on the ice and a lot of things to do - one more snow pit to dig (tomorrow), keeping up our daily samples, doing a few other day-long experiments, etc. The time is definitely flying by!

Talk to you soon!
~ Gayle

Location: Summit (yep still here!)
Writing: Gayle

Hey everyone! It is 1 am here and I am staying up to do a 3 am snow sample...whoohoo. It's just me and the late night staff hanging out in the big house. I have had a request for more pictures and that I be in the pictures...so here are 3 as evidence that I am alive and well.

Celebrating Bastille Day (French National Day) yesterday in the Big House...from L to R it is: me holding the French boxed wine, Roby, Xavier (our only French person here but reason enough to party!), Mike, Rethopf and Skaskia from Switzerland, and Shelly from U-Washington.

Me celebrating a moment of sun and low winds (very rare so far!)

And...our group actually working! That is Xavier the French dude strangling me with an extension cord, Roby behind us setting out the bottom platform for the shelter we were building for our air sampling instruments.


Other news from the ice....lots and lots of time at work. Today has been about an 18 hour day for me...lots of time setting up equipment, shuttling gear around with these sleds (we have to hand-carry everything because emissions from snowmobiles would mess up the clean air areas), hiking out far distances to take surface snow samples, doing work in the lab, etc. Tomorrow we will start digging our first snow pit - going down about 12 feet into the snow to take samples with depth. Besides that, my French is getting a revival from the dead due to sharing a sampling station with Xavier...he claims that when he's tired he doesn't want to speak in English anymore and so I have to talk in my pitiful French. So far he's taught me how to say "this is a pain in the butt" in French and I'm calling him "chouchou" as a nickname, which means "cabbage". I think the altitude has something to do with all of this. Fuzzy brains up here.

I'm going to catch an hour of sleep before the next sample...it's still bright outside at 1 am! Hope everyone back at home is doing well!

~ Gayle de la Ice

Made it to the ice sheet!! That's me in front of the C130. Today was our second attempt at the ice sheet...yesterday we ended up circling around above the station and had to leave due to high winds. We ended up going back to Kangerlussuaq and went for a nice hike around the area. Today, we tried again and luckily were able to land! I've now been here for about 4 hours...had our orientation meeting, a GREAT lunch (biscuits, tuna noodle casserole, strawberries, rice...good stuff), and are now hanging out waiting for our equipment to show up. OH, and we also picked out our tents! Here is a shot of my home for the next 3 weeks...with the plane attempting to take off in the background (it took them awhile due to "sticky snow"). And, now we are hanging out and taking it easy to readjust to the 13,000 feet altitude (12,000 technically, but it feels like 13,000 due to heavy cold air, apparently).


The folks I've met so far have been really fascinating. We've been joking that almost all of us grew up in cold places...Alaska, Minnesota, Colorado, etc. I was bonding with a girl from Anchorage about waiting outside for the bus when we were growing up and having our hair freeze. The science groups here include one group from Kansas that are using radars to measure the ice structure down to the bedrock, on group from University of Washington measuring nitrogen compounds, a guy from France measuring mercury, a group of folks from Germany who are dismantling some equipment and returning to their lab, some construction guys from Alaska who are going to be elevating a building 20 ft due to it being buried in the snow over the years, and my group! It's about 1/4 gals, 3/4 guys. Everyone is really nice and welcoming. The U-Washington group is actually going to be here for the next two years, so we are making future exotic travel plans, like taking some time next year and kayaking around the Greenland coast. But first, I'd better get some work done up here. :)

I'm going to sign off here and go check out our equipment that just flew in on the 2nd plane. Congrats to Ty on the Worlds!

Brrrrrrrrr,

~ Gayle

Big Hello to all the family and friends reading this!

After three weeks of movement, preparing for movement, moving toward or away from movement, it is nice to finally be still. So I went for an hour run this evening. There was a lot of antsi-ness built up from the 36 hour bus-ride back from Quebec that just had to be removed. Afterward, enjoying the tired, stiff feeling in my legs, I had thai dinner with the sunset and reflected on the past three weeks. I'd rather have been sharing dinner with Gayle, but she was circling over Greenland at the time, unable to land on the ice sheet due to high winds. I hear she's safe in Kangerlussuaq and they're going to try again tomorrow.

Mom called at about 6:00 tonight to officially inform me that I've been selected for the 2005 USACK Senior World Championship Team! While I've never doubted that I would make it, there was some relief that I wouldn't spend all day tomorrow explaining to the folks at Home Depot why I didn't make the team. Everyone I saw today was asking about the Trials, congratulating me, big smiles and handshakes and hugs. What a supportive place to be, truly a blessing.

I'll definitely be racing K-4, but with five guys in the selection pool, there will be some mixing and matching for 200, 500, and 1000meter. Brandon Woods has to decide if he wants to race K-1 1000. If so, then Brandon has a schedule conflict with the K-4, then Morgan, Tim, Danny and I will race K-4 1000. If not, then we'll be seat racing for the 1000, which is the only Olympic distance for K-4.

Taking stock of all this, I think I've learned something about how prayers get answered. In my wallet is a card that says "2008 Beijing Olympics K-4 1000m Gold Medal" On the back is "Don't expect God to do for you what He can only do through you" I wrote that card two weeks after a dissapointing 2004 Olympic Trials. Every practice after that became a form of prayer toward that dream. I guess prayer at it's heart isn't about receiving, but about becoming. It's the prayer that sustains you through the icy paddles and dissapointing time trials. And sometimes, God answers unspoken prayers with messengers telling you to stop panicking and relax, you'll do just fine at the race :) The other realization was that after the Trials were over, and the outcome was uncertain for the past two weeks, prayer allowed me to not worry and simply trust in God to take care of the rest. I think Mom did all the worrying for me, as she says mothers are supposed to do.

"Rejoice in the Lord always, I shall say it again, Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all, for the Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but with everything, through prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which trancends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus" Phil. 4:4

Gayle and I are certainly blessed to be surrounded by such loving and supportive family and friends.

All the Best,
Ty

Location: Kangerlussauq, Greenland
Writing: Gayle

Hey everyone! I've made it safe and sound to my first stop in Greenland. Today we work up at about 5 am in Schenectady, New York to be bussed over by the Air National Guard to our waiting C130. At about 9 am we finally took flight, about 40 people in total crammed into these netted seats with funny little earplugs (they had decorative racing stripes...very random) to keep us from going deaf. We flew for 3 hours, then stopped in Newfoundland to refuel, then flew about 4 more hours to make it to Kangerlussauq. Tomorrow I'm getting up early to fly again to the Summit Station! Most of the 40 folks are heading to Thule, Greenland (an oceanside village) to do ecology/carbon-cycle research there. About 8-12 of us are heading on to the big ice.

Here are a couple of pictures from the flight...

A shot of the cockpit (for Galen):

Sitting in the plane...the shot shows half of the width, there were two more rows of seats to the left. The empty seat you see was my spot!:


And our chariot from the outside:


So far the weather here is feeling like Georgia in winter...tomorrow I think I am transitioning to more of a New Hampshire in winter. I'm happy the 100-degree drop is over 2 days instead of just one!

A good quote to leave you all with...a professor from another university was talking about past times at Summit and said: "You know, taking a shower up there is a little tough. I went for about 7 weeks last time without a shower." Whooowhee. We are going to be one smelly bunch.

Hope you are all doing well! Hopefully I'll be able to get online sometime later this week up at Summit.

Cheers!
~ Gayle

Location: Atlanta
Writer: Gayle

Hey everyone!

Ty and I are both hitting the road this summer and thought an online blog would be a good way to take you along with us. Ty is off racing around the world this summer - currently he's in Quebec racing in the Pan-American Championships, then he's off to California for training with the USA team going to the World Championships, then to Italy for "more training" (though to me it sounds like a vacation!), then to Croatia for the Worlds. And maybe a trip to Seattle somewhere in there for the USA Nationals.

And, while Ty is buzzing around with his kayak, I'm heading off to Greenland for 3 weeks to camp on the ice sheet and do some air chemistry research there! On Monday night, while you are snuggling under your covers, imagine me sleeping in a tent in subzero temperatures in the middle of a glacier. I am SO EXCITED. Here is a website that shows the science station I will be at...you can see the daily temperatures and laugh at the "summer" I am having: www.summitcamp.org

So, we are off! Ty and I will both try to update the website every few days. I should be able to get online once in awhile from up on the ice...one of my tech buddies is going to have to explain to me how that works - satellite internet I am guessing?

Take care everyone and keep in touch!
~ Gayle