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