The March Window

Tonight is the first night of the March launch window. The science conditions are not looking terribly promising and neither is the weather. For the past three nights there has been amazing aurora, but it is pretty much dead by now. Also, it is so windy here that the building is shaking and the water in the toilets is sloshing around a little bit.

I am realizing I haven't put too many photos in my blog lately, so I'm going to try to fix that. These pictures are in no particular order. They are just the ones I like from the past two or three weeks.


This is an ice sculpture at the World Ice Art Championship.

Today on the way to the range we were just in time for Chatanika Days. They have been doing this winter carnival of sorts for many years and apparently thousands of people come out (from where, who knows..) to attend. They have outhouse races, in which people build an outhouse on skis and then race it down the street. The finish line is actually in the parking lot, so it was very amusing when the teams would be running at the crowd of people yelling "turn! turn!" The teams consisted of four people pushing and one person sitting on the seat.


Notice the old man in the center with the cane. He was one of the people riding on the seat. It looks like this guy only moves that quickly once a year, in the outhouse races. He is on his way inside to find his wheelchair.


Here are two of the teams in action.


This is a sock I knitted during the PET conference. I really like knitting. I really like that anything I can draw onto graph paper I can knit onto a sock.


I like this ice art a lot. They are stacked muskox if you can't tell.