Safe in the Magic Kingdom

I am here in Orlando and in one piece. My drive today started off with three hours driving in fog after I left Montgomery. The scenery was nice when the fog did lift and I could enjoy all the forests along the way. Florida's panhandle was nice, and I even got to see a house (on a trailer) stuck underneath an overpass an hour or so east of Tallahassee. Tomorrow morning we're going to try and get tickets for the launch, though a lot of them are already sold out. We'll figure something out, though.

Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what he loves.
~Blaise Pascal

I hope to distinctly see something I love here oh-so soon.

Leg 1-complete

I got to my cousin's place in MO just fine yesterday, with only a bit of a detour due to some vague directions obtained from the miraculous oracle that is the internet. I had a nice visit and got to talk and share a lot about my previous year-plus' exploits, as well as meet their extremely energetic dog Shemp (sp?).

Today will be the big drive, so I better get to it.

To find your own way is to follow your bliss. This involves analysis, watching yourself and seeing where real deep bliss is -- not the quick little excitement, but the real deep, life-filling bliss.
~Joseph Campbell

On the Road

Well, I'm almost ready to strike out for points south and east of here. I'll be driving this afternoon, Monday, and Tuesday to get to Orlando. Wednesday night, all things working nominally, I'll get to see the Space Shuttle (STS-119) lift off sometime after 9:00 p.m. carrying its crew and cargo to the International Space Station. It will be my first time to see any sort of rocket launch, and with the era of the Shuttle coming to an end relatively soon it is going to be somewhat bittersweet. I'll be heading down via Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. I'm not sure what path I will take to get home.

My car's aerodynamics got slightly altered last night. We had a big storm system move through, and my venerable "94 Civic got a bit of hail damage. We had hail up to 1" in diameter, but my car was in the lee of our garage so it didn't get totally obliterated. I've never seen hail so bad here at home before. But, dimples are cute, right... Anyhow, it will be something to take care of when I get back from the trip.

There has been no positive progress on my job hunt, save that I can probably go back to Pole as a science tech again in October should I wish/need to. It's going on 9 months now since I started trying to find my next job. All the more reason to get out and away from that for a while and try to come at it anew when I return.

Here are a few words of wisdom from authors I've been reading as of late:

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
~John Steinbeck

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
~Mark Twain

There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.
~Robert Louis Stevenson

Not all those who wander are lost.
~J. R. R. Tolkien

The road awaits...

Doors open, conversations

Well, I know fairly definitively that I have secured an opportunity to return to the South Pole in the same role as I did this last time. It was interesting talking to my supervisor again and having yet another vastly different hiring experience with respect to going to the Ice. This time the job was the same, no great socio-economic leap from dishwasher to research associate, but the unknown of how I would do in the job and weather the environment of Pole was erased. Having "been there, done that" goes a long way towards making employers comfortable hiring anybody for this sort of experience. This isn't anything new, though:

"The personnel of an expedition of the character I proposed is a factor on which success depends to a very large extent. The men selected must be qualified for the work, and they must also have the special qualifications required to meet polar conditions. They must be able to live together in harmony for a long period without outside communication, and it must be remembered that the men whose desires lead them to the untrodden paths of the world have generally marked individuality."
~Ernest Shackleton (1874—1922)

Knowing folks that have gone through the same experience, well similar experiences actually, of such an undertaking is also a pretty good card to hold in your hand. So much of the way the experiences of a year at a station like Pole unfold has to do with the people that are there. If you know a good number of the folks you will be with, you can worry less about unknown character traits coming forth and disrupting the community. Whether you like it or not, you do get pretty well acquainted with people living this closely to them.

"In Antarctica you get to know people so well that in comparison you do not seem to know the people in civilization at all."
~Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1886—1959), The Worst Journey in the World

Anyhow, the ball has started rolling to ensure this is an option for me to really consider for future employment. With all the news of the failing economy, I'm very much thinking it might be a smart move to come in from the cold and go back to the South Pole. I'll keep you updated.

A hot time on the old homestead

Well, I earned my keep yesterday. I was just inside minding my business while stitching up some hiking boots when I heard something that sounded like a very close gunshot. At the same time the power dropped out for a split second. I threw on the same boots that I was mending and ran outside, only to be greeted by the smell of smoke. I looked over the retaining wall between the house and the barn to see what was happening with the utility pole up there. Sure enough, a grass fire was burning right by the eaves of the house. Our home, you see, is earth sheltered, and the roof in back is just above ground level. The fire was also pretty close to our propane tank, but the wind was blowing the fire away from it and toward the house. I grabbed the bucket of water for the pets that was sitting on the patio out front and climbed up and over the retaining wall. I doused the flames right by the eaves and stomped out the other flames I could, but they kept igniting on their own. We have had a pretty dry winter, so the grass was really parched. All the while, I am keeping an eye out for any sign of further electrical current from the utility pole right above me. I jumped down the retaining wall and grabbed some garden hoses, strung them up and over the wall, and soaked down the area that had been burning. It went out easily at that point, so I got a chance to go call the electric company and request a technician to come out and see what had blown up. Scattered around in the grass were some pieces of ceramic shrapnel that had blown off a component that was previously attached to a ground wire that led down the pole into the earth.


A while later the technician came and fixed what was actually the lightning protection device that had melted down. Naturally, this being a small community, it turned out this was the dad of somebody I had been a year ahead of in school.

So, that was the excitement of the week thus far. It was a nice chance to see whether or not I had forgotten my firefighting basics from Pole. Unemployment has at least let me save my folks' house from potentially burning.



On the left side of that picture of the broken insulator chunks is something I found in the yard last weekend. It sure seems like it could be some sort of stone tool, but I don't know fore sure. I need to find a more learned person than myself to make that call.

NTR on the job hunt.

Fear can't hurt you any more than a dream.
~William Golding, "Lord of the Flies"

Holding pattern

Well, there have not been loads of developments on this end of things in the last week. One option in Los Angeles dried up, but it was not all that big a surprise to me. I'm just keeping my eyes peeled for any sort of good opportunity. If I were to go back to Pole in October I would not want to be unemployed that whole time in the interim, so I have begun looking for employment options that might be good to keep me occupied over the summer. I might return to work at some old stomping grounds that helped shape my young mind back in the day, but we'll see what comes of it. Nothing is very certain nowadays.

Last night a bunch of friends and family gathered for dinner over at Cottonwood Falls to celebrate some birthdays and a wedding anniversary. It was nice to see folks again after such a long absence, if however briefly. It also feels good to be able to patronize businesses in these small towns. It is amazing to think how much more vibrant the business scene was even as recently as when my parents' generation were kids.

I got word of a pretty awesome trip being put together by the folks I sailed with on the Soren Larsen (from Auckland to Easter Island, 37 days underway in 2007). They will be sailing a circumnavigation route, starting and ending in England. It will be a voyage of over a year, and the inner sailor in me sure wishes I could afford the time and money involved to tag along. It certainly will be an adventure of pretty epic proportions.

The same little voice in my head tells me that I would have ended up contacting Sir Ernest Shackleton after reading his call for expedition members:

"Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success."

Sounds great, when do we leave?


Soren Larsen setting sail from Easter Island, 2007

Still looking

Well, this week's interview out with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory folks certainly was a whirlwind. I did not really get much of a chance to experience the Boston/Cambridge area, but I did have a really interesting time talking to the folks during the lengthy interview process. My first flight headed out east aborted the take-off roll while still on the ground, which was a little exciting. It was followed by 2.5 hours of sitting on the ground waiting for a faulty generator to be fixed, which wasn't quite as thrilling. The pilot's screens in the cockpit had gone black as they throttled up for take-off, which is never a particularly desirable thing...

I am still looking to find out what all my employment options out there might be, and am trying to cast a pretty wide net. There are a lot of paths I could travel, which is far better than being trapped into any one position by the forces that shape all of our lives. It can still be difficult playing the waiting game. I am trying to keep an open mind about different living and working situations, but we all have our preferences.

Seeing the Space Shuttle launch might be in the cards after all. Due to some problems with the propulsion system, the launch has been rescheduled to no earlier than 27 February. As usual, there are a lot of precautions being taken to ensure the launch can be as safe as possible, and it looks like they are taking it slow and sure establishing that the problems have been resolved.

Well, I'm just hanging out here at home on Valentine's Day. I may take a hike over to the Bass Bridge and see what I can see.

Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.
~Joseph Campbell