[Now a special message to the payroll officer at met.no: As I have taken
up the position as manager and coordinator for Øyvind Sætra in his new
life as public lecturer, 40 % of his salary should be sent directly to me.
End of special message.]
Under wise guidance and straight forward leadership from yours truly,
Øyvind managed to give three excellent lectures about our campaign today.
We first visited the air force base commander and his crew to give a brief
overview of the campaign and its so far glorious results as well as the
splendid prospects for the last few days. We expressed our gratitude for
the services rendered by the base and for their understanding of our lack
of understanding when it comes to military procedures. As a special token
we gave them a sample of campaign member Erik Kolstad's great book "Bad
weather". In fact we also gave them a copy to hand over to the merry gang
at the base gate, as they the last three weeks have been doing little more
than finding out if we were who we claimed we were - not to mention all
the guests we dragged along. In return the commander expressed his
pleasure of having had us as his guests, and wished us all welcome back.
And we got a beautiful picture of the Andøya nature to remember our stay.
Øyvind immediately launched the idea of a co-operation with the Orion
squadron on sonde dropping, an idea not directly turned down.
Next on the tour was a stop at the local met office, as it had a scheduled
staff meeting. They served marzipan cake and listened to Øyvind's brief
sketch of polar ups and downs. Particular interest was given to the
timelap-video of the local clouds (to be seen at www.ipy-thorpex.no, click
"Feltarbeid" and look around).
Back to the rocket range, where we were given an introduction to the
exciting work done at the range outside of housing us for a stray
campaign. And in return Øyvind once again gave the story of our polar
luck. (I would really recommend as many as possible to consider ordering
his short and easy introduction. Of course mostly because this will
increase my manager's fee, but also because it is good and quite
understandable.) Some bad weather books were handed out to show our
gratitude to the people at the range, especially the three feeding belles
(mat-tøtten as they should properly be called).
While the tour went on, there of course were a lot of standard activities
at the operation room, planning for the stressful weekend ahead. Jón Egill
was kidnapped by the film team to give some open air remarks in the high
mountains. The team later went down to the lighthouse for some birdview
shots of Andenes. As there is no elevator and Fode's batteries always go
out at the most exciting moments, this surely was a challenge to Astrid's
weak tendency of vertigo.
The afternoon hours by most of us were spent on board The white beauty of
the northern seas, namely the whale ship "Reine". Captain Geir and his
crew took us for a three hour voyage passed the continental shelf.
Strangely enough we didn't fall off. This trip would have been splendid in
itself. An extreme amount of stars were added to the event by the fact
that we indeed spotted whales. Male sperm whales. There: A huge peaceful
creature swimming alongside the boat, 15 meters long, 50 tons.
Occasionally blowing a steam spray of water up in the air, and then -
almost as on the command of our captain's shouting: "Diving!!" - it would
seem to turn 90 degrees head down in the water, showing us for a brief
moment the well-known motif of its tail. And surely it became a motif this
time, too. There was an ugly smell of heated cameras all over the boat.
And this happened over and over again, and our excitement can hardly be
expressed by anything else than pure poetry:
The whales of the northern seas
are gentle as apple trees
when in spring they blossom.
The whales of the arctic waters
are gentle as Nordic daughters
when they shake their
Well, let's just stop there. Small hints are often better than complete
lines of vulgarities. It is nevertheless my humble impression that the
voyage was considered a success by all participants. (Still Emma might
have gotten a little disappointed for a moment as she realized that she
had not heard the silent "h" in "whales".)
We were met at the harbor by a journalist from local Andøyposten who
seemed excited by the early start of the whale safari season, and he got
even more excited at being introduced to our project. Some stuff in the
paper on Tuesday, he said.
After having calmed the swell in our veins we gathered for flight
planning. Saturday and Sunday will be some pretty tough flight days.
Saturday probably going up towards Svalbard measuring a trough that may
become a polar low. After refueling at Longyearbyen a second flight on
huge surface fluxes east of Spitsbergen. (See, I can be hi-brow, too.)
Most people seemed to take an early night after all the exposure to the
fresh air of the marine boundary layer. A few gathered in the living room
to watch some high quality entertainment at TV2. We ended by shouting:
"Ivan, come back and show us some movies."
Torsten and Christian left us today. Bye bye. You really missed something
this time.
Late night greetings,
gudmund-
(I guess I should have mentioned that three of the Germans went bathing at
the local beach. But as it probably was some kind of fata morgana, I will
not say anything.)
