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