TeamToolik

The good news are: We are finally in for winds, the ALVIS camera seems to be working again (knock on wood), the solar wind is kind of behaving and we used our once-a-week shower allowance today.
The bad news are: It's been overcast the last two days, and it's been snowing lots today, the aurora hasn't cooperated quite as much as wanted, the BLVIS camera is still fighting us and we used up our once-a-week shower allowance today.

Every evening during the rocket window we run outside once an hour (at least, most of the time we're out there anyway, just checking on the instruments or fiddeling in some way) to check on the weather and aurora. This is of course getting slightly tiresome in the long run, so yesterday we decided it was time to get ourselves some extra Aurora watchers, and build the compulsory campaign snowmen! Here they are, we call them Glen and Greg, they're looking out for aurora for us, proudly equipped with the Cascades-2 hats! (The red stick in Glen's hand is what we've used for marking pointing directions for the boxes).

Glen and Greg - our aurora watches

When Glen and Greg were ready, we had to take a group photo of TeamToolik, all with our rocket campaign caps! Steve Powell has been selling specially designed Cascades-2 caps to everyone during the campaign, and we got a bunch with us to give to the Toolik staff. They were very happy to get them, Fay even wanted hers signed! The staff here are really great, they cook for us and make sure we're happy most of the time. This morning they helped out when Tobbe decided it would be a good idea to wake me up by setting off the fire alarm when making toast.. It took them the better part of an hour to stop it, and the sound of the bell was horrendous... thanks Torbs!

TeamToolik eagerly waiting for sunset and aurora!

Right now the window is open, but since we're overcast as well as Kaktovik, and there isn't much activity yet, we are back to waiting.. and trying to get some work done in the meantime.