From 35C to 35F

Greetings from Alert!

I’ve been here for a little more than 28 hours now, and it’s been an amazing experience so far. The wait to get up here was a bit much though, but I was eventually able to catch up on the sleep I lost from it. If I may, I’ll start my recollections from Wednesday afternoon, when I was staying near CFB Trenton.

The lodge I stayed the afternoon, and part of the night at. Cozy place; the rooms were your standard hotel rooms at a fraction of the price.

I was lucky enough to have a drive up from Brockville on Wednesday; my mom took the afternoon off from work and moved me and my luggage to the Yukon Lodge in Trenton I’d be staying at for part of the night. Arrived at the motel around 3:00pm (or 1500, as I should start getting used to writing it as), and waited around until I was due to check into CBF Trenton around 1:00am. I couldn’t have slept even if I’d wanted to while at the motel, so I lounged around, watched some TV and played some games to pass the time.



This is the building at CFB Trenton where I checked my luggage, waiting for the C-17

Once I checked my baggage, myself and around 20 others had to wait until 4:00am to board the C-17 (Again, stayed awake and passed the time by reading, as there was no suitable place to sleep). It actually ended up being around 4:45am when we were allowed to board, and the jet didn’t take off from the base until closer to 5:30am!



Part of the cargo from inside the C-17. The majority of the other passengers were a little wiser and slept during the flight, but me and a few others stayed awake and got some amazing shots of the landscape outside.

The ETA was 11:15am, so I did what was finally had some sleep! Only about 2 hours was spent sleeping; the rest was spent either trying to sleep, or taking pictures outside of the portholes. And I took some pretty spectacular pictures, so I think it was worth a few hours of missed sleep. Here's two of the more noteworthy ones here:

We landed about 11:30am, and were quickly whisked away via bus to the base, where upon entry to the building we were greeted with thunderous applause by most of the personnel on base (I at first assumed it was because of how awesome I am, but later learned it’s standard procedure for every arrival and departure).

After random luggage searches were conducted for any illegal materials, I moved my luggage to my assigned room. The residential area is set up very similar to a typical university style dorm, but the room I’m in is considerably larger than your average college room. I’ve got three night tables, 2 sofas, dresser, two coffee tables, and a sink, in addition to your standard bed, desk, and closet. I’ll be doing some rearranging in the coming weeks though, so I won’t be getting too used to the look of the place just yet.

Spent the rest of Thursday touring parts of the base, but went to back to my room as soon as I’d eaten supper around 6:00pm, and fell asleep very shortly thereafter.

Part of my room. I've since rearranged the sofas and TV in my room, but I didn't feel the need to update anyone with a pic of that (I mean, I'll likely be moving stuff around a lot in the next month or two until I find what works best)

Today’s been pretty busy so far. Woke up around 7:00am, had a quick shower, ate breakfast and went the EC GAW office to see what Matt and Kevin were doing. Matt’s the current GAW Lab Operator, who’s position I’ll be filling come the end of August, and Kevin is the co-op student who assists with the day-to-day activities on the base and at the lab.

We went up to the GAW lab shortly after 8:00am, but I won’t bore you with details around that just yet. Maybe once I have some pictures from around there I will, but I’ll save that for another time.

The rest of the afternoon I have off, and Friday nights have a mandatory TGIF at the main bar, so I’ll be introduced to the personnel on station, and contribute $10 along with everyone else who arrived on base to pay for the first few rounds of drinks. Bar closes at 3:00am, and I’ve been told it’s a very surreal feeling stumbling out of the bar after midnight, only to see it’s still broad daylight outside. I guess I’ll experience it firsthand tonight!

Sidenote: I wrote this out in Microsoft Word on Friday evening, but this was my first real chance I had to post it.