Clean Underwear

My luggage came last night! I caught a ride with Dr. Bruce Albrecht from the University of Miami to the airport. His group is working down in Iquique, about 300km south of us. He rented a car and drove up to Arica for the meeting today. He had to go to the airport to pick up one of his students and offered me a ride. I am so glad my luggage is here, I no longer have to stress out about whether it will get here before the boat leaves.

Today is the scientific objectives and findings meeting. I look forward to see what everyone on ship is doing.

That's it for now,
Jake

Arica

So I finally made it to Arica. I got here last night around 8:30pm local time. Of course my luggage was not here. It took me about 20 minutes to communicate to the person working the airline booth about my luggage. She told me it is in Santiago, and it should be here today. I am waiting until about 6 to go up to the airport and see if it is there.

Today has been a very productive day. Matt and I went over everything I will be doing while at sea. It appears that nothing is going to be too hard, but there is just a lot that needs to be taken care of on a daily basis. He worked out a pretty rigid schedule, and I am going to attempt to stick to what he has done. It appears to have worked. Between taking cloud photos every 2 hours, and releasing weather balloons every 4 hours, making sure the radar is working, processing all of the radar data, and finally sending all data back to NCSU I should have my work cut out for me.

For reasons not known by me at this time, the departure of the ship is delayed until Sunday, so I will get a few extra days here to experience the country. I will also be using this time to get some school work done, but I am not sure how much time I will actually have to devote to school work on ship.

Arica has been a cool town to visit. It is much more European than I originally thought. All of the locals also seem to be very happy. The food is good and pretty cheap. My hotel is next door to the casino, so I might try to sneak in a trip. See below for some pictures I have taken.



Flying from Santiago to Arica along the Chilean coast


The Ron Brown

Coastal view

That is it for now,
Jake

Thom Yorke in Santiago?

So, something interesting about the Santiago airport. There are flat panel TVs everywhere. From my seat I can see 14. That is not the best part. All they are showing are Radiohead music and concert videos. Old Radiohead and new Radiohead... Thom Yorke is everywhere I look. I love Santiago.

Also sitting here, the smog has disspiated a little. There are snow capped mountains in the distance. Once again, my photography skills have failed. But I should probably just blame it on the glass panes and low visibility.


View from my terminal. You can almost make out the snow on the mountains.

Oh look... it's the Karma Police.

Jake

Lost in Translation

So I made it to Chile. I’m currently in the Santiago International Airport, on my long layover. I got here around 10:00am local time. 8:00am NC time. Once I got here I had to pay a $131 Visa fee. It appears that only people coming from English speaking nations (USA, Canada, UK, and Australia) have to pay it. I find that interesting. After waiting in line to pay the fee for about 45 minutes, I had to wait another 90 minutes in immigration. Finally, I made my way to the baggage claim, and my luggage was nowhere to be found. I went to the American Airlines help desk, and they informed me that my luggage was probably somewhere between Raleigh and here, but it definitely wasn’t here. The woman saw I was upset, and told me that it usually only takes an additional day to find lost luggage. I have to wait until I am in Arica to file a lost claim though. Only the final destination airport can officially help me. This worries me because I figure even less people will speak English in Arica compared to Santiago. There are a few things in my luggage that I really wish I had put in my carry on now. My power adapter being one of them, so I am trying to conserve my computer battery as much as possible, but I really wanted to update here. Also there are two hard drives that we need on ship, one to replace the non-working lap top, and an external hard drive for bringing data back to the states. The ship doesn’t leave until Friday, so they still have a couple of days to get me my bag, but I can’t help but be a little pessimistic. At least I have a change of clothes and a few toiletries with me.

On a lighter note. Flying along the coast to Santiago and seeing the Andes was amazing. At first there were a lot of low clouds and only the highest peaks stuck out. Then as the day progressed, and the clouds burned off, we could see more and more. The mountains are red, and have very little vegetation on them. These are definitely the highest mountains I have ever seen, and it was a great experience seeing them from the air. I attempted to take pictures, but the bright clouds made the images white washed. I might have a better opportunity on my next flight.

The flights weren’t bad. I got to fly out of the new terminal at RDU, which was really nice. I didn’t get as much sleep on the red-eye flight that I would have liked, but there is a starbucks in the Santiago domestic terminal. I have been refueling on caffeine all morning, and they have free internet! Being here I wish I spoke more Spanish. Everyone seems to understand a little English, but I wish I could understand everything that is being said around me.

Alright, I should probably give my computer a rest. I have some reading to do for class and my flight isn’t for another 3ish hours.
Everyone hope I get my luggage before my ship departs on Friday!

Me without my luggage in Santiago.


Jake

The eve of departure

Here I am, on the eve of departure for VOCALS. I feel like I have been talking about this trip for a very long time, and it seems sureal that it is here. I have an overwhelming feeling, but don't really know how to explain it. I have anxiety about my travels there. I am a little nervous about actually being able to perform the tasks that I have been assigned in a way that will meet my advisor's expectations. I am excited about this once in a lifetime opportunity to take part in a field study examining a phenomenon that I find incredibily fascinating in a part of the world that I will probably never visit again. I am sad that Mitch was not able to come visit this weekend because of work issues, and I have been sick and didn't want to push my luck and go there before my journey. I know once I am in Arica, most of these feelings will fade, and I will be too involved in the moment to dwell.

The Ronald Brown ports tomorrow morning in Arica, so leg 1 will officially end. My flight leaves Raleigh tomorrow at 7:40pm and I will not arrive until Tuesday night around 8:30pm, and will meet up with Matt. There is a scientific objectives meeting on Thursday where scientist will present what data they were able to collect or not collect during the first part of the study. Matt will be giving a talk on the work we have been doing and the data we have. It will be a good time to see what everyone on the ship is doing, and to meet some of my shipmates. During the remainder of the time, I will be trained by Matt on his daily tasks, which will soon be my daily tasks. He ran into some obstacles along the way, but it sounds like he was able to iron everything out. I am assuming this will make my life much simplier, and I appreciate his help.

While I am on ship I will not have access to a phone, so my communication with the world will be limited to e-mail and chat. The bandwidth on ship is also pretty low, so those avenues will not be as quick and reliable as most are used to. I guess some communication is better than none. I am hoping word will come quickly and correctly about the election results.

That is it for now. I am sure I will update while in transit, so stay tuned.

Me waving bye!




Jake

Leaving on a jet plane

My departure is approaching. I am pretty much finished with school, well at least what I need to finish before I leave. I will be completing the remainder of the semseter from ship and after I get back in December. Unfortunately I have a caught a cold. Yesterday was pretty rough, but I feel a little better today. Luckily, I got sick right after I finished my last presentation in Convection. Hopefully I will feel better before I depart on Monday. Being the "sick guy" on ship, probably won't make me very popular.

According to Matt, everything seems to be on track on ship. Something that makes me happy, because it hopefully means there is less a chance of something going wrong while I am there.

We have come close to finishing our website that has the radar and sounding data and cloud photos taken from ship. See below for link.

Here a few important websites (some I have mentioned before) that you can check out for updates.

NCSU website

Arica, Chile weather

Postcards from the field - Something I will be taking part in once I am on ship.

Matt's journal

Ronald H. Brown ship tracker


That's it for now,
Jake

Around the bend

So, my departure for Chile is rapidly approaching. I leave in 13 days, and will be in Arica in 14.

There have been many pitfalls along the way, particularly with the ship. As mention before, there was the fire that set us back a week. Then after the Brown made its way through the Panama Canal early last week, one of the propulsion systems went out. This forced them to return to Panama and fly down a technician from the US. They finally got underway on Saturday night, putting us behind another 3 or so days. Timing is crucial for this field study, as the stratocumulus deck hits its peak around mid-October and lasts into mid-December. They have decided to not do some of the sampling they had originally planned, so they will be arriving in Arica a day later than the original schedule. My half of the trip is unaffected (so far).

Then on Saturday, one of the laptops that Matt took with him completely crashed. Fortunately he took two, but two is what is needed to complete the work in a timely manner. He was able to retrieve his processing scripts from the machine, so all is not lost. I will be taking a new hard drive with me and hopefully we will be able to fix it before I depart Arica.

On board Matt is taking cloud photos 360 degrees around the ship. Also we have sounding, radar, and satellite data being sent back to us every day. We are working on getting a website operational to display all of the data as it comes in. Hopefully it will be up by Friday.

Along side of this, my school work has been trudging along. I have one more presentation to give in my Convection class, along with the weekly readings. I also have a mid-term on Friday in my Tropical class. So after about next Tuesday, my schedule will lighten slightly, at least until I leave for the Ron Brown.

Onto the personal life (or what is left of it). This past weekend my best friend Alex came to visit, which was a nice reprieve. We went to the fair on Sunday with my awesome roommates and my friend Kristen, which was a lot of fun. I ate way too much fried food. I will be going back to WV this coming weekend to see the family one more time before I depart. It sucks I will be gone for Thanksgiving, so maybe we can make up for it this weekend with a big dinner. I also hope to squeeze in some time to visit old friends. The next weekend is Halloween. The plan is for Mitch to come visit and then take me to the airport on Monday afternoon to head to Chile. If for some reason this doesn't work out, I will be going there for the weekend. Hopefully that won't be the case.

That's it for now,
Jake

Let the good times sail

So, the RHB left port this morning! After all of the headaches of the past few weeks, things are finally underway. Check out Matt's blog for updates (http://www.millercommamatt.com/journal/).

Fire... Oh no!

So last week, during prep for departure, there was a fire on board the Ronald Brown. I'm not 100% sure of the details, but it had to do with the electrical switch in the engine room. Apparently there was quite a bit of damage. After a lot of frustration, it was decided that the boat will now depart this coming Monday (a week late). My leg of the trip shouldn't be affected. They are doing a sea trial on Friday, so Matt is heading down to gear everything up. The issue with that is he doesn't have a way to Charleston. That is where I come into play. I'll be driving him down tomorrow after my afternoon class. It's kind of nice though because I will get to see some old friends while I am in Charleston. The bad news is that I have to be back in Raleigh for class on Friday at 12:25.

I really hope all of the bad things that might happen on the boat have already occurred. I might freak out a little bit if we are drifting around the South Pacific and there was a fire on board.

I should get back to work. I need to prepare for a presentation I have to give in my Convection class. It is the 2nd of 4 that I have to present before I live in a month. If I can make it through the next 33 days, I have a feeling I shouldn't have any problem with the rest of my graduate school career (I hope).

Online Ship Tracking

My officemate showed me this cool website through NOAA. It is a ship tracker for the Ronald H. Brown. This will be a handy tool to see where we are while on the cruise.

http://shiptracker.noaa.gov/ship.aspx?ship_code=RBSCSACQ&timeframe=cc&mapservice=st_nmao