10 July 2008 Tooling around Toolik

Journal

Polar Date: July 10, 2008

After a night of rain, the day continued the trend with rain all day. When it rains here it really rains hard for a while, then lets up to a drizzle then rains hard again, reminding me of someone trying to adjust the showerhead to have the right amount of pressure.

I had planned to go on the boardwalks with Laura Reynolds to visit her experiments, but I ended up working inside all day on a photo montage of all the ways people and goods move through camp, using the pictures I had taken of every wheeled device I could find.

Toolik 4-wheeler — Used primarily by the maintenance crew to quickly get from one end of camp to the other.

Toolik golf cart. — There may be more than one of these, if not, this one gets around a lot. Used mostly by staff to travel from one area to another quickly.

Hand-drawn cart. — Used by people for luggage, lab supplies and sometimes people pull other people around.

Toolik modified golf cart. — This golf cart has been turned into a mini-pickup truck for small hauling jobs.

Toolik bike cart. — This is a modified bicycle with a cart on the front used primarily by people moving their luggage to their residence quarters when they arrive, and back to the van pick up area when they leave. The cart is also used for moving equipment between labs.

Toolik Trucks — A variety of trucks are used to haul goods and people to and from Toolik and remote, road-accessible research sites.

Toolik front-loader — The front-loader is used to load and unload pallets of goods that arrive at Toolik, primarily food and other people-supplies.

Toolik camp bikes. — Bikes are for the use of anyone in camp and are ridden for various reasons both in and out of camp. Sometimes it's nice to just take a spin around camp. Some plots are just outside of walking distance and too close to take a truck, so the bikes come in handy for that too.If you forget something in your tent, it's much faster to hop on a bike and ride from the lab area to the residential area.

Later, after a dinner of baked chicken, mashed potatoes and salad (I skipped the brownie and ice cream dessert) I headed over to the shipping receiving tent to watch the inflatable boat inflation contest. This went along with the theme of how people move around camp, although they of course use the inflatable boats in the lakes and streams. The crowd was enthusiastic and the inflators were ready with foot pumps, hand pumps and their breath. Rules were recited, judges introduced and the inflation began in earnest.

Check out the attached 2 slide powerpoint for some pictures of this monumental event.

Signing off from Toolik Lake, and remember, "There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew”. ~Marshall McLuhan, 1964

Details