17 April 2009 The start of my voyage home. (Video)

Today has been a bittersweet day...I did not go out to the rig, but instead packed my bags while waiting for the arrival of the helicopter to begin my long voyage home.

Although I am now writing from Pevek, my story is far from over. There are more stories I want to share. (Particularly now that I am back to a slightly higher speed internet connection!)

For starters, I have been working on several more videos to introduce you to a bit more of the work I have been doing for the last several weeks. If you have been following along you were introduced to Drilling 101 back on April 5th. That video showed the drilling basics of tripping pipe and the work from the perspective of a driller. Once we started drilling for sediment, the science team shifted into high gear. Here are two videos from the drill rig.

The first shows the work of extracting the sediment cores from the drilling tools.

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I often helped Volker and Carsten wrenching apart the inner-core barrel and extracting the sediment liner, as well as the scientific recording of the cores as shown in this next video with Julia Gottschalk.

In the next day or so, I want to show you a bit more of the scientific documentation of the cores. I will take you on a trip through the physical properties lab and talk with some of the scientists in the office.Back to today...

The sun rose over the crater rim as diamond dust was once again falling from a blue sky.

We said some goodbyes at breakfast and the day shift headed out to the platform...by mid morning many of the day crew returned to camp due to some drilling issues. As we have continued to drill through sandy and gravely debris in the crater bottom, there has been a bit more wear on the drilling tools than expected. So a science meeting was called to plan a strategy to complete as many of the scientific objectives as possible.

As the meeting concluded, final contributions were made to the hard rock lottery and the two winners divided the jack-pot!

Shortly after lunch, we heard the un-mistakable sound of the helicopter... all in camp went out to meet it and we unloaded some supplies and prepare to load sediment cores and luggage. Jerry was particularly happy with a special order of Coke and Sprite.

At last after another round of good-byes, eight of us boarded the helicopter for our flight to Pevek.

After a safe and un-eventful flight, we arrived in the Pevek airport.

T-Mart... staying warm in Siberia