Last day before Toolik

Wohoo, we finally had some equipment delivered! After spending two entire days on the phone, setting up weird arrangements and waking people up in Germany in the middle of the night we managed to close a deal so that Meghan and I could go out to the dodgy industrial areas in town at midnight on Friday, to meet someone who would perhaps be there to hand over the packages... We were expecting anything and regreted that we didn't bring our sunglasses to wear to better melt in with the Fairbanks mafia, but when we got there it was actually the two Norwegian boxes that were waiting for us! The packages turned out to be enormous, weighing 150 kg, so we considered hijacking a fork lift at GI, but we managed to get it out of the car and into the garage in the end anyway, hurrah!

Today was also Tobbes first day in Alaska, and I dragged him out to the campus early in the morning to help go through the equipment (and to get us some skis to bring to Toolik!). We soon got things set up, and you can see the mess we made on the photo below..

A very messy lab, but if you look closely you can find a jetlagged Tobbe somewhere in the chaos!

It turned out there is still a lot of work that needs to be done on one of the computers, but we will deal with it from Toolik. Right now it was a matter of getting everything we need before going, so we set up the guppy cameras in the portable observatory, to check that we had all cables etc.

Guppys attached on the steerable mount in the portable observatory

By the end of the day we had packed everything, and Joe came to pick it up for us. We are now ready to set off to Toolik, a 9 hour drive straight north, over the mountains, tomorrow morning. It's going to be so exciting to finally see what it's like up there! (For those concerned, I've got a lot of survival chocolate in my bag right now, so no need to worry!).

I've been bad at putting out photos lately, so here are a few more from my stay in Fairbanks.

This is the Geophysical Institute (GI) at the university in Fairbanks, and where I've been the last couple of days.

One great thing about being here is that I've been able to meet up with Anna Liljedahl, whom I hadn't seen for 11 years! She's just as happy and energetic as back then, and has really helped me out with all sorts of things here, like finding me warm clothes, gloves, driving me around, lending me all sorts of things, including skis... I didn't have to worry about a thing, thanks so much Anna! She lives with her husband Jeff in a little cottage in the forest, that is really cosy! They don't have running water and the toilet is in a shed with three walls... which makes it slightly cold at wintertime! I'm so impressed that they live like that, and that they seem to enjoy it so much!

Anna and Jeff's house




Anna cooking salmon for us in her kitchen, before heading out to the jam session

On Monday night we went to their house for dinner, and then out to Dave's cottage, for a jam session (Anna plays the drums, and get together with some people once a week to jam a bit). This was the true alaskan experience, we were out in a cottage heated by only an iron stove, playing jazz and blues (well, Anna and Dave were playing, I was mostly humming along). A weird, wonderful and totally unforgettable experience!

Anna and Dave, jamming in Dave's cabin

Fairbanks is really beautiful, I love how the sky turns pink in the morning and afternoon, and the snow glistening from the trees! Here's a photo from our forest walk last Saturday. Tomorrow during the drive up north I hope I'll get to see lots more of the Alaskan nature.. and the mountains!