Home Sweet Home

So I've been back in the good ol' U.S. of A for about a week now. Which seems like a long time sort of. Mostly because I have gotten quite a bit of stuff done while I've been here. Except putting away the clothes from my suitcases, that is... Yes, they are still half full / half spilled on the living room floor. Instead of putting the clothes away, I have begun the daunting task of cleaning my room and closets. This is quite an undertaking, because I don't think I have done anything like this since we moved into this house when I was in 5th grade. So needless to say, some cousins will be getting some hand-me-downs and Goodwill will likely see a windfall. I am already on day 2 of this operation, and I foresee it totaling 3-4 days. So why waste my time on this while at home for such a short time? I guess I don't really know when I will have another chance to do anything like this, so I thought while I had the time it would be a worthwhile thing. I won't post any pictures of the carnage in an effort to save myself some embarrassment.

I've quickly been ticking things off the list of things I was going to do here. One of the first items to go was a having a steak. mmm mmm! It was nice to have some real beef. That's neither here nor there though. I got some yard work done for mom, and went swimming one day. Also, I invested (ok, I blew half my summer salary) in a new lens for my camera. I got a super-telephoto lens that I can take some pictures of wildlife and such with. The impetus came when I was in the woods taking some photos, and I saw a really nice pair of indigo buntings, and I tried to take a photo of them, but they were just so far away that they were tiny in the frame. If I wanted any bird photos to turn out in Trinidad, I would have to have something different. So I broke down and got it. Here are a few photos that I took with it.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Archilochus colubris

Wild Turkey, Meleagris gallopavo

I also have been seeing a bit of wildlife in the woods and in the yard around the house. These are various creatures taken using various lenses that I have.

This Five-Lined skink, Eumeces fasciatus

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Eastern Box Turtle, Terrapene carolina carolina

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Papilio glaucus

Things I will do when I get home on August 17th:

Hug my parents.

Eat a big fat steak, medium rare.

Have a real beer.

Listen to “Empire State of Mind” and “Young Forever” by Jay-Z.

Watch TV.

Not be surprised when a stranger waves.

Marvel at how cheap food and beer are.

Ride my bike.

Sweat my ass off.

Make gratuitous numbers of calls on my cell phone.

Wear shorts.

Go swimming.

Get a tan.

See some stars.

Shave my beard.

Listen to insects at night.

Go fishing.

Miss Iceland.

The remnant population

Today is my last full day in Iceland. I have spent the past three days here in Reykjavik, and the few days before I arrived here were spent in Mývatn frantically finishing the processing of our samples, taking down our sites, saying goodbyes and cleaning up the house, barn and field station. This frenetic pace is certainly to blame for my recent lack of posts. I will do a bit of recap of our last days in the North.

About 5 or 6 days before we were to depart Mývatn we were informed that another scientist on our project and his family were to arrive at Kálfaströnd. This usually would be welcome news, but with 3 children already in the house and 3 more arriving we began to be a bit concerned. We three interns and Jamin were asked to move to the field station. Which sounded OK when we discussed it before the arrival, but when the time came it became a bit of a hardship. We kept asking ourselves if we were really to pack our things and move to the field station when we had only 5 nights left in our house? Bre and I had just gotten used to our new quiet space in the attic. And we would come to the house just for meals? And there would be another group cooking in our tiny kitchen? 14 people in our house at meal time? It just didn’t make sense. So we didn’t pack, hoping that we could convince them to go to the field station for a few nights at least. It didn’t work. So we moved. And it turned out to be ok, but at the time none of us were too happy. The field station became a bit of a refugee camp, as the four of us threw all our possessions into bags haphazardly and dumped them on the floor when we arrived in our new home.

Our final days working in Mývatn were quite strenuous. We scrambled finish our samples, and worked ~14 hour days for nearly a week. And while all this was going on we had become addicted to the TV show “Mad Men,” which Kyle had on his computer. This meant we would watch episodes from when we stopped working at 23:00 until at least 1:00 or 2:00. We didn’t exactly get much sleep. Also during these days, I celebrated my birthday, complete with cake and ice cream! I can’t say it was the most special birthday ever, really it was just another day that we were working really hard, but it was certainly nice to be in a beautiful place with people that I like.

We finally finished all our field sampling on the 11^th. Which left the morning and early afternoon of the 12^th to pack up the lab and clean everything. Which we all thought was never going to happen. But it did. Just in time to drive to Akureyri and pick up our rental car to drive to Reykjavik. The drive south was nice, but the landscape in the west certainly is not as scenic as the drive taking the easterly route. We made it to our temporary home, Oli’s apartment. Which also became something of a refugee camp, as there were 6 people (Oli’s cousin was visiting as well) crammed into his studio. Which incidentally has a single air mattress and a single chair. And a really hard floor. We had a fun night in Reykjavik though. It was great to be there again with good friends. We did the usual bar-hopping, hitting some favorites like Bakkus and Boston. Bre even left a souvenir, which I have passed many times as I walk back and forth from downtown.

The next morning it was time for the crew to take off. Bre, Jamin and Kyle’s flight left four days before mine did, so we said our goodbyes and I was left to hang out with Oli and his cousin Dave for a few days. We also did the typical Reykjavik Friday night, visiting some friends at a “house party” and then heading downtown for some bars and eventually ingesting a hotdog to cap the night off.

The following day I ventured back downtown to walk around and hit a museum or two. I ended up at 871+/- 2, which is the settlement museum. Basically this place is a preserved archeological dig of what is probably the first settlement in Iceland. The museum is really quite well done and it gives some indication about what life was like in the 9^th century in Iceland. After this, during my rambling about the city, I ran into Oli and Dave, and we contemplated what to do for dinner. Wit hit the Bónus, and decided on an Icelandic oddity, horse. It really was quite good. Much milder than I expected, and certainly it was not tough. The meat did have a distinct flavor though.

Yesterday I wandered about town again, this time stopping at the National Gallery of Iceland. There was some really great art from Icelandic artists, and a whole lot of it I just didn’t get. I guess that comes with the territory of being a scientist… There also was an exhibit of Edvard Munch, which was quite nice. It contained mostly lithographs and prints he made. Unfortunately “The Scream” was not present.

I returned home and saw Oli and Dave off, as they were heading eastward to camp. And now I am alone in the city, sort of just hanging out. I will hit a couple of more museums, and have a drink with my archeologist friend Frank, who is still in town, but it really is quite lonely. And with that, I am quite ready to head home.

Just picture whales floating by

My time here in Iceland is winding down quickly, I have fewer than two weeks left on this island. But just because our time here is becoming short, it doesn't mean that we have fewer things to do! There are a number of side-effects to the dwindling days. The signs of late summer are beginning to show in the vegetation and animals. Green, green grass is becoming a bit yellowed, most of the birds are off their nests and the ducklings are getting larger and larger. The length of the day too is shortening. No longer is the sun up for a full 24 hours. For the first time since May, there is darkness at night. The darkness is short, but increases by about 7 minutes every night. It was quite striking as we drove home from field work in the North to crest a hill see street lights on in the village below. We may even see some stars before we leave. A side effect of the waning of the midnight sun is the arrival of a real sunset. As of late, the sunsets have been spectacular.

A view from the mountain above Húsavík

As a result of our realization of our imminent departure we are scrambling to check things off our list of stuff we wanted to do while we're here. One of those things was to see a whale. Last time we went whale watching, all we saw were some dolphins, and while cool, they aren't whales. Luckily, we had reports from an acquaintance of ours who works for the whale watching company that blue whales had been spotted in the bay near Húsavík, which was quite fortunate, because Bre, Jamin and I just happened to be heading north to check our transects for the last time, and take down the sampling sites. We worked in the morning and at lunchtime we talked to our friend and got on the tour he was guiding. We were quite excited because it was a beautiful day, and we had a chance to see some whales. After about an hour and a half motoring out of the bay we spotted some dolphins going crazy! There were about 20 of them and they were doing these aerobatic jumps! We were really far away unfortunately, but it was still really cool to see.

We kept on going and finally we saw a whale surface. It was about 100m from the boat, and it surfaced about 3 times, and dove back down for about 10 minutes. We were a bit disappointed because there was no way that this was a blue whale. It was quite small, probably more along the size of a minke. But it was still cool to have seen a whale. 

And then this hulking mass of a whale surfaced 10 minutes later, and right beside it was the small whale. It was a blue whale and its calf. These pictures really offer no frame of reference as to the size, but this link shows a picture with a scale diver. The size of this whale and its calf was just incredible. Not only were we all able to check something off our list of things to do in Iceland, we all checked something off our list of things to do in life. We had seen the largest animal to ever exist. It was really breathtaking.

                                        

North to South

So a while back I mentioned that I had out some applications for jobs for after my stint in Iceland, and thankfully one came through! I was offered an intern position with a group mainly from University of California-Riverside who works on the Caribbean/South American island of Trinidad. I will be flying down to join the project in mid-September and returning mid-December. The project, as I understand it, is looking at guppies (yes the cute tropical fish that many people keep in home aquaria) and how they evolve to different rates of predation in tropical streams. So I will be catching and tagging many, many guppies. At this point I don't know a whole lot about the living situation, except that it is "rustic" which means living in a house in the jungle, but assuredly I will write more when I find out and when I arrive in Trinidad. I am very, very excited for this opportunity. It will be great to be in the tropics and there are lots of scientists on this project that I will have the opportunity to meet and work with. Here is the project's website http://cnas.ucr.edu/guppy/. And so I go from near the Arctic Circle to near the equator. The only problem is that I won't have much of an autumn. I was worried about coming home at the end of the summer from Iceland being all pasty white since the sun isn't very intense here, and I will come home pasty white, but I think I'll have the last laugh, because next time I come home in December, I'll be nice and bronze while everyone else at home is pasty white.