Wednesday, December 3, 2008

The drill site that was there all the time.


Wedenesday 3rd December

As from this morning, I 'm officially "base camp manager" ad interim. Which is nothing fun really: you got to get up at dawn (ha, dawn, I wish.when I'm in a lyrical mood again, I'll write you guys a piece about how I miss the stars) to send a local weather update to the central station for this part of the continent, every night you write a daily report about activities -nothing to quirky, no, a very formatted document called a SITREP -situation report- comprising the status of personnel, logistics, mission and so forth.And above all -that is the part I truly resent- you're running around with both a VHF receiver and a satellite mobile phone, an Iridium. Please, read mobile here as in begin-of-the-nineties-cellular: not exactly the thing that gets lost in your purse.(purse? purse??? gee, it's true, I used to carry a PURSE!). Hello??? Can we please get a bit of remoteness and isolation??? However, there's one huge advantage to those electronic-stand-by-duty: it allowed me to get a call from the BELISSIMA team at 09.00 AM this morning! So, here's the freshest (indeed!) news:



First, I have to apologize for some incorrect reporting: seems our guys are not camping on a grounding line, but on the edge of a rift, right above maritime ice. The drilling will start today (tadaaa!!!), since there was some very good radar data collected yesterday -after quite a lot of noisy rubbish apparently-, which Kenny described as "enough for a paper", to which Frank replied, of course, that two papers would be written. And after all that chasing tens of kilometers around base camp, they will start drilling 15 meters away from their tent. Again, there's a profound wisdom in this: stop running around to find what's right in front of you (told you the metaphysical would finally got a hold on me!). So, since the drill team will start the real thing today, the radar team will move to continue their survey further away, setting up an auxiliary camp on a grounding line this time. We'll keep you posted on how the core drill behaves (Does it go up??? Does it go up and down??? Does it go up and down and in circles??? Does it do it in the ice??? How Freudian.)!!!


Their morale is extremely high, they sounded like fun, and Denis did a very convincing impersonation of a penguin over the phone. The further social news tells us that this crevasseland" their practically living on, well, Bryn did not only put a feet into, but got in to the waistline. But, and again I quote: "we didn't want to worry you". The time constant of the decay of worrying with the duration passed since the worrisome event is something our modeller apparently considers quite short, otherwise this whole putting off the telling wouldn't really make sense.I should ask next time I see him!

Nathalie

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