I’m at the Abisko Naturvetenskapliga Station (Scientific Research Station) in northern Sweden. There is a meeting here of scientists and station managers who are involved either directly (or indirectly in the case of non-EU participants) in a project called INTERACT which is about building research & monitoring infrastructure for arctic research. I’ve come along since my husband is here representing the Barrow Environmental Observatory, and we are both giving papers at a meeting in Munich after this.
It was quite the trip to get here, but the station is very nice, and it looks like it will be quite an interesting meeting.
The Town of Ballston, where my mother lives, has been fairly lucky as far as snow this winter. They’ve gotten some, but haven’t really been hammered. As a result, it was a white Christmas, but only just, and the snow was getting a bit worn-looking. The storm that has been creating havoc in the eastern US for several days was expected to miss entirely, but by Christmas it was tracking close to the coast, and so we did get some after Christmas snow. It was a pretty decent nor’easter along the coast, but we just got outer snow bands, for a total of about 5-6″ overnight. The trees were all snow-covered, and the bare patches and dirty spots disappeared, making everything clean & bright and new when I went out to get the paper (Paper delivery! Something we don’t have in Barrow. We can’t even get paper sent to the stores, apparently. And the newspapers wonder why readership is declining…). It’s hard not to feel optimistic when one goes out after a snow storm is over. The winds weren’t too bad here, although we did get enough gusts to take much of the snow off the evergreens over the course of the day.
The other thing was that the snow covered many of the plants, so the seed eating birds were looking for something else, and found the seed bell we’d gotten them for Christmas. We had a pair of cardinals, juncos, a blue jay, and tufted titmice and chickadees. Only the latter two stuck around until I got my camera out.
Action at the seed bell.Tufted titmouse.Chickadee
As far as I could see, there were no deformed bills in the bunch, unlike the situation in Alaska, where they are becoming alarmingly frequent.
I was scheduled to pick up a rental car on Thursday. My brother drove us to Enterprise (who had the cheapest long-term 4WD rates around) to get the car. Seems like a simple thing….but not so much.
First, we were heading up Middle Line (or Middleline, depending on which sign you want to agree with on the subject of spelling), just getting ready to turn right onto Geyser Road to head to Saratoga. My brother had stopped at the stop sign, and a fellow in a pick-up who had the right-of-way started through the intersection. Some dude heading south on Middle Line blew through the stop sign and T-boned him, sending him spinning towards us. He wound up doing a 450+, parts flying everywhere, but didn’t actually hit us. So we pulled over (on top of one of the truck’s running boards, as it turns out), made sure everyone was alive & not bleeding and called 911. I actually pulled my phone out to call and answered an incoming call from my hairdresser, who I promptly hung up on.
My brother's Ford with the front tire on the Toyota's running board.A bit later, with fire police directing traffic. Stuff from the Toyota flew all the way into the snow to the right of the tan Ford!
The fellow in the pickup was fine, having luckily noticed the other guy at the last second, and floored it, so he got hit more on the bed than right on his door. The other guy was limping, although he kept saying it was a soccer injury. He was pretty shaken up, convinced his airbag hadn’t gone off (which it had), and generally freaked out. We had a bit of trouble getting him to sit down and stay put until EMS arrived.
His car was pretty messed up. The windshield was impacted pretty hard on the passenger side, which was odd given that he didn’t have a passenger or any head cuts and was holding his chest like he’d hit the airbag & wheel. Apparently, the starring was from the unrestrained GPS in the front passenger seat. There’s a lesson in that for all you kids out there…
Unfortunate result of using an electronic device while driving...
After the sheriff had statements, we were back on our way to the Enterprise in Saratoga. We arrived to find cars in the lot, but fortunately my brother didn’t leave, because there was also a small sign on the door saying they had relocated the previous day, a fact which the woman who took my reservation on Monday had neglected to mention!
We drove halfway back to Ballston, and located the new offices in a closed car dealership. They were getting the wiring for the alarm system installed on the door, so that every time anyone went in or out the tech had to get down and move his ladder. And one goes in and out a lot when renting from Enterprise…
So we got the Sorrento or equivalent I rented (AWD is a good thing in winter with my mom’s long twisty hilly drive) and set off. Almost immediately a low tire pressure light came on, so we went back. They didn’t have air yet, so we caravaned to a nearby Stewart’s Ice Cream, where they did have an air pump. The Enterprise guy said it was just low because it had gotten colder (which it pretty much hadn’t for the several days before and anyway, we were talking 18F, not -30F) but said he’d give us another car if the pressure was more than a couple of pounds under. It was six under on the first tire, and we did not need to mess with tires, so we said we’d take something else, please. He said all they had available was a Suburban, obviously hoping we’d say it was too big to drive. Since we’ve had, and really liked, 2 of them, that wasn’t a problem, and off we went, to his chagrin :-). So far, so good, although it appears to be about due for an oil change.
Out of Ice and Time 