Sampling water in the Arctic in the middle of the night....what could POSSIBLY go wrong? (Check out the blooming Arctic cotton in the background - fields and stripes of white this year)
That is not dirt on the lens......
Claire, eating her peanut butter sandwich in the "security zone."

Holy bugs batman!

So, here we are and I have just finished the first round of Golder water sampling. Another rotation of workin' the night shift and filling bottles with water. You'd think this would be boring, but of course it's not. Claire, the girl from Golder that I was working with, is a kindred spirit indeed and we had a LOT of belly laughs.

The bugs are horrendous this year (on nights), ensuring that each of us check the other for "security breaches" as soon as the helicopter downwash has stopped. As we don nitrile gloves and pull drawstrings, we listen in angonized anticipation for the returning buzz that signals ONE BILLION voracious proboscii (sorry, pendants) waiting to annihilate us. The other night, on Spyder lake, it was so buggy that we couldn't fill the bottles without having to empy them to get rid of the bugs. I had to pee REALLY badly and was almost considering going in my waders, when Claire and I hatched a brilliant plan.

"Claire," I said, "I think what we should do is lock the tiller and throttle and pee when we are on plane." "The bugs fly too quickly otherwise and our butts will be hamburger."

Claire looked dubious. Claire hasn't done a lot of work on boats before. As I locked the boat into peeing position I stood up and said, "GO!" Claire looked...."How do I do this?" "Over the side, over side!" I replied frantically. I was madly attempting to get my pants back up while Claire was still leaning over, yelling, "I CAN'T GET IT OUT!"

"Are you talking to your pee or a bug?" I yelled.
"BOTH!" said Claire.

I laughed so hard that I had to blow my nose, which was a problem, because it was on the wrong side of my bug screen. Claire said, "oh, I wouldn't worry about that...I've been blowing through my bug screen all night."

Later that night, as we ate our lunch (inside our bug jackets), Claire remarked, "Heidi, there is a fair amount of peanut butter inside my bug jacket."

"I know," I said. "I can see the grease stain."

Yesterday the bugs left for about 12 hours. Because it was a hurricaine.