Today was simply one of those days where as soon as you look out the window and see how beautiful it is outside your simply cant do anything except go outside and enjoy the day. So when it looks like this outside..... you go outside.

So I went for a nice walk out along the road following the water and the old coal bucket lines, which made for some great pictures.

It is also interesting when you walk around Longyearbyen that anything that was built here during the original mining in Longyearbyen in now considered historic and can not be touched. So anything from the towers in the picture above to old rust cables have to be left where they are, which makes for some interesting sights. Also some of the towers and such buildings have been knocked down in small avalanches and all remains can not be touched. Which means that some that when you are walking around you constantly see old rusty cables lining the ground.

I also found a small pool of water by the side of the road with another good example of the rusted cabling that lies all across the countryside.

Farther down the road I had to take a picture of this truck because it truly is the most popular car out here and I cant say I have ever seen one in the US. Also I would say this would make a great advertisement for the Toyota Hilux

Also while I am on the subject of transportation I have thought that it is strange that the only type of road sign that can be seen in Longyearbyen is this.

Which of course means that they don't have any stop signs and at any intersection there is only these yield signs, which I find very odd. Although it works very well and I have not seen anything close to an accident. I am sure this mostly comes from the fact that there is not a lot of traffic out here in Longyearbyen but it is also an impressive view on the people here.

There was also a boat sitting in the bay that made for a very nice picture.

Overall it was a beautiful day here and this may of had something to do with the lack of a large tourist boat sitting at dock but I can only hope the beautiful weather continues.

The question that I have thought about while I was preparing to write this entry was, how do you describe the best day of your life? It is a tough thing to do but I will do my best to take you through it. To start off the amazing trip that I had comes from the fact that the lab that work for back at UNH has instruments setup at different locations around Svalbard. One of these locations is Isfjord Radio where I went. The reason I went there was because the system was no longer working and I had to go out there and attempt to fix it with the help of one of the engineers from back at the lab. So lets start off with a map.

So on this map you can see where Longyearbyen is and then the trip out and down the fjord to get to Isfjord Radio. Since there aren't normal passenger boats going out there I unfortunately had to go on a guided tour of the fjord on my way to Isfjord Radio (sarcasm is hard to convey through text, but that was serious sarcasm). Over the course of these two days that I have been out there, I have taken 400 pictures. I still don't think I will be able to convey how amazing it all was. To start off this is what the fjord looked like on our way out.

Also the boat we made the journey in was this awesome little PVC boat.

Next stop on our adventure we stopped by a bird cliff located on the side of the fjord. It was truly amazing sight.

Now this just looks like an awesomely impressive cliff but if you look close....

The whole thing was filled with birds! It was fun do because there was also an elderly couple joining on the trip and the man was an avid bird watcher and was able point out all the birds. Now on to the next stop in the guide.

This is an abandoned Russian mining settlement that has a very special inhabitant. Living in these house is a mouse and this mouse carries a very special bacteria that if caught by humans will shut down your liver and kill you. So this turns this already spooky settlement even spookier. Next on the list of stops was the port for this mining settlement.

You can see the mine storage over to the right side and the housing and the dock to the left. Some of these houses are even still in use as a overnight cabin because these buildings are located far enough away that they don't have the problem with the mice. This also made for a nice picture, not sure what this structure was used for though.

The rest of the trip was simply to get to Isfjord so I will just show some nice pictures from the way.

This is looking out of the Fjord out into the big blue Ocean. Next we arrived at Isfjord Radio.

Now I will explain the funniest part of having to fix the system out here. It was installed in a building out here that got renovated and when that happened the building the acquisition system was in got turned into the honey moon sweet. So in the back closet of this honey moon suite sits this....




























Not sure what I would say if I found a big black box in the closet of my honey moon suite... Anyways after taking it apart some and following the instructions from our ALL KNOWING engineer Paul, we got it running again.

Luckily I took a break at one point to look outside and see a pack of white whales passing by.

It ended up being a pack of about 50 of them, and it was quite a strange sight to see these white whales passing by. Then we got to dinner here at the Isfjord Radio hotel. Now I have had dinner in a few restaurants at Longyearbyen but nothing compares to the food at this hotel. Dinner was a three course meal of, whale and seaweed, Lamp and mach potatoes, and a brownie with raspberries for dessert. My favorite piece was probably the whale, it tasted almost exactly like a thinner steak. Then it was finally time to go to sleep but it was hard this view out of my window.

When I woke up I saw that someone had ventured outside.

Edvard is very much enjoying himself out here and was feeling much more at home.

Then as I wandered around the hotel in the morning I found this polar bear picture...

Ya, a polar pooping... Great sight. Then we had a wonderful lunch or some kind of fish soup which was delicious and a strawberry milkshake. Ya the food here was amazing! Then we headed back out onto the sea but of course you need to wear one of these!

We got provided with these awesome Arctic survival suits where even if you fell in the water you would only loose 2 degrees of heat in an hour, and they look awesome. Plus we got to watch how men put boats back in the water.... with a crane!

Once the boat was in we headed back out onto the fjord and went to go check out another mountain filled with birds.

As we sat there with the boat turned off all you could hear was the screech of thousands of the birds. As we left this mountain mom.... I found you your cabin.

Next we ventured into the next little bay where we got to see a glacier!

Its hard to see but to give it somewhat of a size, on the right side where the end of the glacier meets the sea there is another boat there that is about the same size as ours but all you can see of it is a darker spot. It must have been about 40 meters high. As we got closer to the glacier we got a nice surprise.

A big bearded seal relaxing on the ice, we got very close and it stayed calm and almost became interested in us. We then got a good close look at the glacier.

We then turned around and headed home, on the way back we got another great visitor.

The trip back ended up being a little rough but it was beautiful the whole way back.

Now I am sure I have left somethings out but hopefully I have shown how amazing of a trip I had. I may end up having to post some additions later on once I remember some stories from the trip.

I have to say this weekend started off amazing and then ended amazing. To begin with I went out with a group of students from UNIS and ended up meeting two other people from Vermont! What a small world to meet two people from the same state all the way up here in the Arctic. One of them has gone to UNIS and now lives up here and certainly represents Vermont proudly up here. then on the next day I had to go into work for a little bit, but I am glad I did because on the way in I got to see this.

Oh ya, rainbow up here in the Arctic, certainly not a sight I thought I would see. Then to end the weekend I went out with a friend from UNIS for a great hike. The rain finally cleared and we got a perfect day for the hike.

This is a picture I took earlier on in the trip but I wanted to give you an idea where the next pictures were taken from. This dog kennel is down the road from UNIS about 1km farther down the valley. It was an interesting walk simply getting to the trail because more Tern's were nesting next to the road and we got a nice surprise as we walked by in the form of ferocious birds. Anyway this is what it looked like up here on Sunday.

This is the view off the peak I am pointing to in the previous picture looking out towards Longyearbyen. Now I don't like how panoramic pictures are so small on blogs so I am going to do the next best thing and just show you pictures as I look to the right.

In this Longyearbyen begins to slip away and you can also start to see further up the Fjord. Also the brown lake by the edge of the mountain.... That's the drinking reservoir, I'm glad they have a great facility for filtering it.

In this I am looking straight across towards the mountains, and I just think its amazing to see the different patterns created by the smaller rivers running into the Fjord. Finally this is what was behind me.

This is the back side of the mountain I climbed about three weeks ago that was covered in stones. As you can see there is a mine shaft that comes from the other side and out here which I thought was very cool to see. This mine is all closed down and most of the entrances are caved in as you can see. Just makes for quiet an amazing sight.

Nest we walked up the valley and circled around the Mountain in the previous picture to circle back into Longyearbyen. On the way we ran into some scary wildlife.... A small reindeer. It is hard to make out in the above picture because we simply did not want to get to close and disturb it.

Then we got a great view on the way back of Longyearbyen.

In this picture you can also see Thomas who is a PHD student at UNIS and who led me on a great hike as I hope I was able to show you.

The end of this week has been just as great as the beginning was. It has been cold, rainy, and windy outside, and lots of work to be done inside. These past few days I have been continuing to work on the last few parts that I have to machine for the calibration setup. Today though was by far the best "engineering" day I have had so far. The last part I had to make was one I had to machine on the lathe here at UNIS. Now the other two machines that I used (milling machine, and drill press) had probably gotten used within the last month or so. For the lathe I am not sure the last time it was used. Before I could even get it going I had to wipe the dust off of it and oil it such that it would move properly. The best part about it not being used meant that no one here at UNIS knew the particular ins and outs of this old machine. The great thing about these machines is that they were made to last forever, it is certainly old technology but if it gets taken care of it will truly last forever. These machines are purely mechanical and so when anything breaks it is a simply matter of getting to the issue and fixing it. Now I realize some of you might not know what a lathe is and have zero idea what I am talking about so..

The machine in the corner is the lathe. It is for machining rods and circular parts. In this picture the back of the lathe is open because I had to do some work on it. One of the parts that I had to make required external threads so I had to get out this bad boys user manual and figure out how to cut threads on it. It essentially work by providing the cutting tool with a fixed longitudinal speed. With the tool set into the rod the appropriate distance you can pull the tool along the spinning rod and create different pitch and size threads. To do this on this machine I had to reassemble the gears in the back of the machine in order to be able to produce this fixed longitudinal speed. So that became my first fun engineering task. The next task was to actually make the blank rods up. This took more that I thought due to the fact that one of the threads needed to be an M4 thread. Meaning the rod had to be cut down to a diameter of 4mm. On top off that you had to keep the rod straight during cutting because an off centered part is useless. So here is some of my progression.

The rod all the way to the left was my first attempt, but after placing this rod onto the lathe I quickly realized that the old tools were no match for this stainless steel, so I switched my next attempt to aluminum. Then the rods show the basic blank I had to make then the different sets of cuts I had to make to end in the the final product on the right. The top of which has the M4 thread and the bottom has a 1/4 20 thread. The fun part in this process came in when I starting preforming the top cut and breaking the blanks. Then what better to do then to think back over my engineering career and realize that I could apply something I had learned in school! What I ended up having to do was taper into the small diameter because when I would go directly from the 1 cm rod to the 4mm rod it created what we would call a "stress concentration". Oh ya, one thing I learned last semester that I never thought I would use, nothing better than realizing how practical a lot of things you learn in engineering are.

So I have made up all the parts for my setup and am very pleased with how everything has come out. Once I have it all assembled I will be sure to post some pictures and see if I can bore everyone even more with some more engineering jargon.

On a different note, I normally have my lunch outside my office in a set of chairs because I can look out on to the beach and the mountains behind UNIS. Today I got a special treat in the form of an innocent tourist. With the tourist boats coming in everyday they are always wandering around the town, yet few of them are brave enough to step past the warning signs and venture onto the beach. If you have read all of my posts then you might know what dangerous lerk on the beach, if you haven't look back for that post. Essentially this is the nesting area of the Arctic tern that has to be one of the most territorial birds I have ever seen, due to the fact that they dive bomb you. So this innocent tourist when down to get a better picture of the water but got more then they bargained for when they were attacked by at least three birds. These birds begin to dive bomb you as soon as you step near their nest and she was right in the middle. Rarely do you get truly hurt from these birds besides a good peck on the head but it is more of the confusion that is fun to watch. the birds make a slight whistling noise as they fly out of the sky and it is enough to scare anyone. The most interesting part of this whole event became note only the tourist complete lack of knowledge of these birds but also their persistence to stay once attacked. Overall it made for a very entertaining lunch, and another great part of a productive day. I will end with a picture from these wonderfuly cold rainy days, all of which I blaim on the constant tourist boats.

For the begining of this week I have been working down in the logistics section of UNIS. The logistics department is where everyone gets all of the equipment they need to do thier research out in the field. They have everything in there, rows of survival gear raning from wet suits to snow suits. Then all of the other equipment you would need to truly do almost anything our here in Svalbard. So needless to say it is a very happening place and I have been working in the tool shop machining some parts for my lab work. So I have been working on this bad boy for the past few days.

It certainly is not the most high tech machine but to have this type of equipment at a school located all the way up here is seriously impressive. Although the best part about this particular machine is it's name.

Whenever I see that name Luna I can only think of the sleeping pills, and of course the last thing you want to do is operate heavy machinery after taking a sleeping pill. The similarity in their names and their complete incompatibility seemed quite funny to me.
Overall it continues to be cloudy and rainy up here in Longyearbyen, so cloudy that couldn't even see the mountains. This is what the right side of the valley over Longyearbyen normally looks like on a cloudy day like today.

This is what it looked like yesterday.

I guess you would call it fog instead of low clouds but it was seriously strange and even consumed some of the house farther up on the mountain. Talking to one of the locals he said that those days made for perfect hiking days and it took me a second to realize what he meant. On days like this you would be able to hike up the mountains and climb out of these low clouds. That would be a sight to see and I can only hope it will happen again when I am not working.
I did feel sorry for the tourist boat that came in yesterday when it was like that because for all they know there aren't any mountains surrounding Longyearbyen.
Also it was very strange today when my boss walked up to me in the morning and said happy 4th and for about 10 seconds I was clueless to what he meant. It is strange how when you are in a foreigncountry things like that slip your mind, I think had mostly to do with the fact that I knew it was Wednesday but was clearly clueless to the date. This will be my first time not spending the 4th in the US and know that I think about it, it is rather strange. I think if I were to run down the streets and shout America people would look me in a seriously strange way. I will also miss not seeing any fire works, although seeing fire works up here would be truly spectacular. Well anyway happy birthday USA.
Finally another full picture of the school where I have been working, good ol' UNIS!

First I would like to apologize for the extened period inbetween posts, I have simply gotten caught up with work and have had some techinical difficulties. Anyway over the past week as I said I have simply been doing a lot of work at UNIS. An interesting view that I got out my window from work very clearly explained the lively hood of this town during the summer.

In the background of this picture you can see the cruise ship at dock and then the crowd of people streaming from it. Due to the fact that everyone goes on holiday during the summer Longyearbyen is not a very populated place and when these cruise boats come in with 3,000 people on them, they very much overwhelm the town. It is quite an interesting sight to see them all wonder around or hop on buses for a quick tour of the valley. Luckily I am able to hide in UNIS until the ship leaves and the town returns to normal until the next boat. It is also very asuming that whenever a cruise boat comes in it seems to get dark and cloudy, then as the boat sails away the sky opens up and the sun comes out, as I will show later on.

This weekend I got my first chance to go out with some other students from UNIS. Now when I say students they are both PHD students, so a little bit older than myself and have been at UNIS for a while so they had many stories to share. To start off the night we went out to the Norwegian version of a sports bar for dinner. Although it did not show the type of sports that one would expect and through all of dinner there was a extreme snowmobile movie playing that was quite entertaining. I am continually amazed at how seriosuly they take snowmobiling and it is certinaly not what I would expect to be shown in a sports bar.
The next thing that I found to be interesting was dinner, due to the fact it was a small menu I of course went with a hamburger to see how it was done in Norway. Now from my many picnic and grilling experiences I do not know if I have ever seen someone eat a Hamburger with silverware. I would consider it a strictly "hands on" food. This did not seem to be the case for my friends that I was eating with but that still did not deter me from eating in the traditional fashion. The rest of the night contained the swaping of numeruos international stories. It is truly amazing how many different countries are represented in such a small town. There are always interesting people to meet from all over the world and every one of them has thier own unique story. I think most of this is due to UNIS bringing in students from all over the world and it truly makes Longyearbyen a more unique place.
Later on that weekend after the last cruise boat had pulled away the cloud broke and we got a wonderful day.




The last thing that I would like to share with everyone is a sign that I see everyday and always think is very amusing.

These are the door into the post office and bank. As you can see you are not allowed to carry a gun into the bank.