Joyful sorrow: Time flies and this adventure is ending

A sunset. Note this picture has been edited (foreground darkened, and house lights brushed out.

I cannot believe that I it is just a few days until I am home. Time has been flying by (in most ways). I am so close to getting to be home, to see Nicole and Jax,  and to see family.

I have been working on a draft of a paper about the work I have been doing here. The deadline is approaching quickly, but I have an extension, I need my co-authors to read over the draft, improve it, etc. Being almost done also means I have been getting ready to leave, packing, laundry, cleaning and moving out of the apartment, submitting forms, and starting to say goodbye to people.

Saying goodbye is bitter sweet, it is sad to leave friends, but I think I will see many of them again, and or work with them in the future. It also means I made friends, something I do not do that often.

Looking back, I feel positive about my fellowship experience. It was not without difficulties and frustrations but that is always the case.  But I really think the people I have met and friendships I have made, not to mention the work I have done and been a part of, have been worth it. I have had the opportunity to join many project meetings and get involved in other NPI work. I have attended some meetings that have given me insight into how large projects are planned and managed. The people at NPI have really welcomed me into their group and community and it has made it much easier.
I had a chance to watch some proper football (i.e. soccer to all my North American friends), join in Friday beers with colleagues, see some movies, an opera and a couple of symphony/orchestra/choir performances.

 I am very thankful for the Research Council of Norway funding that made this experience possible. The Leiv Eirikssen mobility programme has given me this wonderful opportunity to work with world class researchers at the Norwegian Polar Institute,  and on a personal level, allowed me to meet and get to know some people that I hope (and expect) to be lifelong friends and even collaborators. If you are a Canadian or a Norwegian looking to go to Canada or the US on a LEMP, I strongly encourage you to apply and am always willing to answer some questions.

And I really need to thank my wife, Nicole. Of course when you go somewhere people always have questions and are excited for you and when you go somewhere you have this excitement of being somewhere new, doing new things, meeting new people. But it wouldn't be possible without the love and support of my wife who manages everything back home, easily handling everything plus the little bit that I used to do.

Yesterday was a great last day in Tromso, considering I worked. But there was Christmas lunch and then I went out for some drinks with the few friends who were still around (Angelika even came out after just landing from a vacation in Turkey!). Sebastian asked me what was my most unexpected thing, and I gave an answer, but I really still cannot decide, most things I was expecting.

I was expecting it to be expensive here, but really not fully prepared or understanding of how expensive some things are. I was expecting the wonderful access to nature, to enjoying hiking and hoping to do some fishing, but really not appreciating just how great it is, how accessible it is and how beautiful it is here, though I am not a fan of the amount of rain they get here, which now turns the roads and snow into giant skating rinks. I was definitely not expecting it to be so hard to find a place to live, this was probably the most difficult part of the entire trip, and really, it was not that terrible.
I was not expecting to make such good friends with people as I tend not to anymore, maybe that is changing.

Well that is it for this adventure.  I am at the airport in Tromso now (9:45), but I don't leave for a few hours. I guess I could have gone to work but I felt it would be an easier departure just to leave from my apartment. Here I can get some work done and write this blog post. I fly to Oslo around noon and then go to Amsterdam.  I will spend one night in Boskoop visiting family before leaving Amsterdam tomorrow morning.  I then fly to Warsaw, Poland, then to Toronto (on the new 787 Dreamliner), and then finally to Edmonton. I get to Edmonton Friday at 1am edmonton time, so about 48hrs from now.
The short visit with my family will be very nice and also breaks up my trip a little bit.

It is shaping up to be a busy semester.  I have to prepare for fieldwork that will begin in the middle of March, in a part of the Arctic I have not been to before! This will mean a lot of work but I am very excited for it. At least there will be a bit of break with Christmas, depending on how much work I try to do on my paper.

WHOA! IT'S BEEN THREE MONTHS!

Today while walking to work I realized that it's now been more than three months since I left Edmonton, and more than three months since I arrived in Tromso. That is three months that I have not seen my wife or my dog. Of course it has also meant I haven't had to do many household chores either (I vacuumed a couple times, and have done some cleaning and lots of dishes, and cooking and even walked a dog (Yukon)). At least with Skype and Apple FaceTime Nicole and I can video chat, still not the same as being with each other but better than a phone call or a text message or email.
But Nicole comes on Saturday, that will be nice (understatement).  We will do a bit of traveling within Norway and just enjoy some time together. Jax is spending a couple weeks with Nicole's parents.  He likes camping with the camper van.  Nicole said he hopped right in, no concern at all.  We met with Nicole's parents once at Lake Louise and even I can admit as a die hard fan of tenting that it can be awfully nice to sit in a warm dry place....Jax fully agreed, and I think he liked that the camper van had windows while the tent does not.  Nicole mom did say the he wimpered a bit once he realized Nicole wasn't with them and wasn't joining (which makes me quite sad), though we know he will have an amazing time.  Jax loves Nicole's parents and their dog tupper (who doesn't want a border collie for a best friend).

Things here are progressing nicely and I am finally starting to feel a bit settled in.  On Monday I went to the police station to get my temporary residence card (which will come in the mail). And this past weekend I moved into my apartment, so I am no longer relying on the extreme kindness of my friends....who now have a place to stay if they ever come to Canada... My apartment is okay, it will do for the next four months but isn't somewhere I'd want to stay long term. It is not that there is anything wrong with it but it is a bit far from work, and is in a massive apartment complex.  Here on Tromso there are many small apartments, rooms for rent in houses that it would be a shame to live in a complex when you could get something with character and soul (and fewer neighbors).

That said, Tromso has about 10,000 students and in a town of 60,000-65,000 people that is quite something.  So when the students start looking in June and July, the rush is on and it is difficult to find something.  There have been plenty of newspaper articles about students unable to find a place to live and last year some students were living in the fire station for a few months.

I still find Norway expensive, but just don't think about it as much.  It is best not to price shop too much and while I was going to do a little blog post on costs of groceries and so forth, I decided it would just make me think more about how expensive it is here....we will see...maybe in a few weeks as right now I am way behind on blogging/posting.

I feel that I have made some lifetime friends here, already, hopefully this is true. It has been great to meet you people and strangely I often feel more in place here at NPI than I do at the U of A. Maybe this is just because NPI is friendly and filled with people who study the same thing as me. Back at the U of A, my office mate and fellow PhD student Alec Casey are some of the only people studying sea ice in the Arctic (there are a few others though we never really meet with them).

When I was staying with Gunnar Spreen and his wife Gabrielle I was working slightly different hours than I am used to, sleeping in a bit and starting work at 9 but then staying until 7 pm or so. This was kinda nice, and I had a really great time staying with Gunnar and Gabrielle (more on that in another post).

Friday afternoon usually means a beer at the end of the work day at 4:30pm, which is nice.  We go to Olhallen, which is a very old pub in Tromso right next to the old Mack brewery (it is closed).  The pub closes at 6pm so it is a good place for an after work beer.  I am not much of a beer drinker but these Friday afternoon beers are helping.  I usually get a Blanding (spelling may be incorrect)..it is a mix of a light and dark beer.  You can get it at most bars in Tromso but the amount of light beer vs dark beer changes with each bar. I'm still not crazy about it, but at least the second one always goes down smoother than the first.

Oh, and work is going okay too.  Met with Christian (my supervisor) yesterday as he is here in Tromso for a meeting this week.  It never ceases to amaze me how valuable his insight is and how quickly he can provide some ideas that take me from not being confident of what I am thinking or what to do next to having a plan.

Okay, well I want to write at least one more blog post this morning before starting work, so I better get to it.

Sorry there are no pictures in this post.  I think my monthly summary post will be text....unless there are some great summary pictures. But there should be a post on my weekend trips the past couple weeks and hopefully I will share some of my travels with Nicole.

Cruise Aborted (For Now): The past week in review

Okay, so by now you know that the cruise I was on was aborted, at least for now. So far I have not had a chance to provide a full overview of the cruise or what I have been up to for the past week.

Last week Thursday I flew to Longyearbyen on Svalbard. As Tromsø is already at  69.64N and Longyearbyen is at 78.22N, the flight is only 1.5 hours and on a regular Boeing 737-800. And it is actually very affordable, especially in comparison to a similar flight in Canada.

I spent Thursday and Friday helping Paul and Matts with setting up an automated water sampler.
The water sampler is programmed to collect a bottle of water each week for an entire year. It only collects water from the depth it sits at.  You could also use this sampler to collect water from different depths if you were to raise and lower it.

Top down view of the water sampler.  Each of the blue caps is the top of a bottle that gets filled.

On Friday afternoon, most of the other cruise participants arrived. I helped Matts and Gunnar with finding, repacking and sorting the sea ice equipment. Friday night we had the cruise dinner so that everyone (or most people) could meet and start getting to know each other.

I ate dinner with everyone and then went for a few drinks with a friend, the helicopter pilot who flew the me and the EM-bird on R/V Lance in 2010.  It was a bit of a late night for me but was nice to see him and catch up.

On Saturday we had shooting practice and a bit of polar bear safety theory. Then spent a bit more time sorting out things and shopping to pick up some junk food and drinks for on the boat.

On Sunday morning everyone was at the ship at 9am. We had a quick safety/operations meeting with the First Mate and stuff was moved around the ship a bit (brought some things up from below, put other things down).  I started putting the bird together.  We started sailing around mid-afternoon, something like 3pm.

On Sunday night we were to drop off a group of 6 geologists onto Prince Karls Forland, a long island in Svalbard.  However, large waves and strong winds meant that we could not really use the helicopter from the ocean side of the island, so the ship had to circle around.  The weather deteriorated and soon using a helicopter did not seem like an option.  When I went to sleep at 11pm, the helicopter was going to do a test flight, otherwise they were considering using small zodiacs to get the geologists and all their gear onto the island.  In the end, it was decided just to wait a few more hours as the weather was improving. By about 5:30am the geologists and their gear were all off the ship.

We then began heading to the first oceanographic mooring.  A mooring refers to an anchor and rope and in the case of scientists a suite of sensors attached to the mooring.  NPI has maintained a series of moorings across Fram Strait for many years now.  Each year the Fram Strait cruise heads out to go to the moorings, bring them up, collect the data, service or replace the instruments and then redeploy the mooring.

Now, if you have been following my blog for its entirety you may remember that I get seasick, and I get seasick very very easily, I mean, very very easily. This time was no different, while heading to the mooring the wind was up a bit and the waves for a few meters, more than I could handle, so I just took a motion sickness pill, no big deal.  I find they leave me pretty drowsy, and I still can't look at a screen or read a book. Since we had already put some of the EM bird equipment together and the sea ice equipment was largely ready to go, I decided to kill the time by sleeping, something made easier by the motion sickness pills.  I slept all Sunday night, most of Monday (getting up only for meals) and all of Monday night.

On Tuesday there was a bit more work to do putting together the bird (attaching the tail and putting the two halves together), and a bit more sorting of sea ice equipment. We finally reached the ice and it was starting to look like we could do a sea ice station and maybe an EM bird flight.  Unfortunately, our pilot was not feeling well.  The first mooring was found and retrieved and we started heading to the second one, hoping that when we got there the pilot would be feeling better and we could do a sea ice station and flight after the second mooring was recovered.

Our pilot did not get better, and the ship didn't make it to the second mooring.   Basically the ship clutch was damaged and after some discussions it was decided that the ship needed to return to Longyearbyen for repairs. The first aid trained people on board thought that the helicopter pilot might have appendicitis and so he was picked up by the rescue helicopter from Longyearbyen.

So we started heading back towards Longyearbyen, I made sure the bird and so forth were securely strapped down. We had supper and watched some movies and then I went to bed.

When I woke up, the sea was a fair bit rougher (6-7m waves, winds 35-40knots gusting to 50knots), so I took a motion sickness pill in preparation and decided again just to sleep the transit day away.  Turns out that during the day it was determined that the damage to the ship was more difficult to fix than initially estimated.  The ship was now going to go to Longyearbyen to allow people and their equipment off and then it would sail to Tromsø. Anyone who wanted off the boat then had to be ready to go as the ship would arrive at the docks at 7pm and leave at 10pm.

Okay so we packed up all the stuff, and got off the boat. NPI had managed to arrange accommodation for everyone (THANKS, was very nice).  A few of us then met up for drinks and some food at around 11pm/midnight.  On Thursday I rebooked my flight back to Tromsø.

It was pretty disappointing to go back without having stepped on sea ice or having flown the EM bird. We did manage to collect some ice observations, but that was it for the sea ice team.  The oceanography team retrieved that one mooring and performed some conductivity, temperature, depth (pressure) measurements.
I did not even take any pictures, well I took one of the heli deck as we left Longyearbyen but I did it with the Google Blogger app on my phone and accidently deleted the picture before posting it (smooth move).

As I don't get my apartment until Sept 2, I was homeless but luckily Gunnar and his wife Gabrielle have welcomed me into their guest room for the week. It has been really nice staying with them. Gabrielle is an amazing cook and it has been nice to see a new part of Tromsø and to get to know some more people.  Because I had left most of my non cruise clothing with Angelika and she was on holidays I needed another pair of pants to wear around so I went shopping on Saturday and bought some stuff so I could make dinner for Gunnar and Gabrielle. I also looked into getting a haircut, I have not had one since before I left Canada and I really need one.  But they are crazy expensive here, as in 50-80 for a regular men's haircut! So I will probably wait another week so that it is a bit closer to when Nicole comes to visit.

Yesterday the weather was very nice so we went to do a hike.  There is a hiking program here where if you complete the 20 hikes they recommend each summer, you get a prize.  You enter  you name in a book at the top of the mountain and record a number from the book into your list which you then submit. There are also prizes if you only complete 7, 10, or 15 of the hikes. It was a really nice day and very nice hike from sea level to 850m in about 4 km (though the first 1.25 kilometers was very flat).

Fram Strait

Tomorrow I leave Norway, sort of, and not for home but for Svalbard.

I am flying to Longyearbyen, Svalbard before heading out on the research vessel (R/V) Lance. I will be joining the Norwegian Polar Institute Fram Strait Cruise. The cruise heads across Fram Strait to the east coast of Greenland.

Arctic MOSIAC from NASA MODIS sensor on Terra Satellite. We will be going between Greenland and Svalbard (which is mostly hidden by clouds in this picture). Click the caption to be taken to the full size image. I acknowledge the use of Rapid Response imagery from the Land Atmosphere Near-real time Capability for EOS (LANCE) system operated by the NASA/GSFC/Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) with funding provided by NASA/HQ.

I will spend a couple days in Longyearbyen beforehand to prepare equipment, help with packing/sorting, getting assigned my polar gear and some shooting training and a few other tasks.

The main objective of the cruise is the retrieval of oceanographic instrument packages called moorings (because they are anchored to the sea floor). The moorings will be serviced and redeployed to collect another year of data.  But while this happens there will be sea ice stations and airborne EM ice thickness surveys. I hope we will manage an EM flight along a CryoSat-2 track, would be of very high interest for me. The oceanographers will also perform CTD and tracer measurements.

CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth/pressure) is a standard suite of measurements that can give you a lot of information on the structure of the ocean and where parts of the water originate.  Different regions form waters with different characteristics that show up as characteristic layers in the ocean.  Conductivity is just a measure of how well the water conducts electricity and then gives you an idea of how salty the water is. I think you all know what temperature and pressure are.

The cruise is going much closer to the coast of Greenland than when I joined in 2010, so I am looking forward to that. It will be nice to get on the ice again.  I always like seeing the ice in summer/freeze up, it looks completely different than in spring. Fram Strait is also a different region and has a different ice regime.  In the Lincoln Sea, the ice often moves against the coast and you have very thick ice.  In Fram Strait, ice is drifting out of the Arctic Ocean and move south.

Here is an ice chart produced by the Norwegian Meteorological Service. The different colors show the different ice concentrations.

Sea Ice Concentration for today, August 7, 2013. Courtesy of Met.NO at http://wms.met.no/icechart/

I will try to blog, at least with text and hopefully an odd picture or two (though they will have to be very small and very low resolution).

Two Months: Boy Time Flies

Hey Everyone,

Well I have now been in Norway for 2 months and away from home for just an extra week more than that.  Things here are generally pretty good. The high cost of food and so forth doesn't bother me as much as it did (and maybe not as much as it should). Maybe next week (if I remember, I will post some pictures of food, and then the prices).  I'll also try to do the same while I am on Svalbard as a comparison and maybe see if I can get someone back in Canada to send me some prices on a few select items.

I still haven't received my residence permit.  The system is just backed up or delayed or whatever.  I have spoken with the immigration office numerous times but there is not much to be done about it. The decision is now 5 weeks over their targeted processing time.  Part of the reason is undoubtedly that many Norwegians take extensive holidays in the summer, making sure to enjoy the good weather and all the daylight hours.  Otherwise, most thing are sorted out, or nearly so.

Work is going well, spending lots of time in front of my computer.  I am working on two main projects right now, one for this exchange and one more directly related to my thesis.  As a result I end up working many 12-16 hour days but that is okay, it is what I am here for. The past two weeks I have been house sitting and enjoyed working on a deck overlooking the ocean; it made it a little easier to work late each night.

On Thursday I will head to Svalbard and then on R/V Lance for a research cruise to Fram Strait off the east coast of Greenland.  I will be on the boat for just about 3 weeks.  I don't know if I will have the chance to blog from the boat. I will try, otherwise I will just write the blog posts up and then upload them when I return to internet land.

When I return to Tromso my supervisor visits Tromso for a few days. Then, and much more exciting (sorry Christian), my wife Nicole arrives for her visit just a few days later. She and I will take a few holidays together. I am really looking to seeing my wife, and imagine I will be looking to it even more in another month. We can still communicate fairly regularly using email, Facebook, FaceTime and Skype but it is not the same.  We will be doing a little sightseeing in Norway and just spending some time together.  We only get a couple weeks together, but that is so much better than no visit at all.  I am very excited to see her and talk to her and sightsee with her.

Thinking on all my trips, my workaholic nature and love of my research, I realize how lucky I am to have such an understanding and supportive wife.  Someone asked me once how we (as a couple) deal with the absences, and it is still a question to be answered.  I feel like time apart is definitely good for couples, you miss each other, appreciate all the little things each other does and so forth.  I guess both of us also don't want to be the person who is holding the other one back from doing what they love and/or what will help their career.

Unfortunately for her,Nicole definitely gets the short end of the stick, I travel far more than she does and for much longer periods. It is easier to be the person who goes away, they are usually on an adventure or seeing something new or some new country. The person back home gets to do all the household work without help and without the excitement of a new place.
While I am here in Norway I do have to look out for myself but I still have the excitement of new people, a new place and culture.  Although honestly, I have probably been doing far to much working and far to little enjoying my surroundings.

Saturday Morning Hike Up Nordtinden

Wow, there is just not enough time in the day to get done everything I want.
This quick post is just a few pictures from the top of Nordtinden, a 640m mountain near Skulsfjord where I was staying with my friends Harvey and Angelika and their dog Yukon for the past month.

Now, I am temporarily house-sitting for a researcher who works at NPI. His name is Hakon Hop and he is a biologist and an extremely experienced under-ice diver.  I met Hakon in 2010 when I joined two cruises with NPI.  He is going on a cruise for two weeks and his family is going to Canada to visit relatives. So this luckily Canadian is house sitting in a BEAUTIFUL house with an great view.

The house is near Tonsvik, another small town near Tromso (about 22km away).  The bus connections and internet are a bit better here than in Skulsfjord, but I already notice how quiet it is without Yukon, Harvey and Angelika (probably no great fishing trips in store for me for the next two weeks).

OKAY, back to the real blog post content, my hike up Nordtinden.  Saturday morning I woke up and checked the weather forecast.  It was going to be overcast until 2pm and then start raining, and it would keep raining all day Saturday and Sunday.  So I decided I better take Yukon out while I could stay dry.

Nordtinden is the mountain you can see in this blog post, 7th picture down (from my last longer hiking trip near Skulsfjord). (or you can just look below for the small version, the link has a bigger version).

Nordtinden

I wanted to climb up this the last time, but did not, I was tired already and so I just went to the small waterfall you can see in the picture above.

So by about 10:30, off I went with Yukon.  It was a nice hike, the very beginning and a short bit near the end were the steepest sections but overall a nice hike, not too difficult.

The clouds were low on Saturday, very low, sometimes they would buildup and surround me and Yukon and then quickly fade away.  Luckily when I got to the top we had a bit of a break, the clouds where a bit above us and away from the views.

Well that's all for this post.  Want to work a bit on the post about a buoy....coming up very soon I hope, just need to analyze some of the data for you to give you a few figures and facts.