As I write this starting in the early evening I am in the pits of depression. I don't know why exactly. Perhaps it was the fact that I figured out of to operate my alarm asleep and woke up an hour later than I wanted to, perhaps it is that my jaw feels like it is dislocated and hurts to the point that it is tough to chew, perhaps it is that we still don't have a working Internet connect, perhaps it is because we are faced with having to return tomorrow until we can get a guide, perhaps it is because we are feeling frustrated about all the extra work we are doing for lack of parts (That we ordered, but others decided we didn't need. It makes me feel useless. An Engineer is only as good as his parts and tools.), perhaps it is just loneliness - I felt like I got shit on yesterday evening...
I don't know, and really don't care anymore, I got work to do... What now? Well, Usual morning, Check weather (James got it this morning.) check genset, get water, start the morning work. The work I did late last night still looked good, then we started screwing around with the MSAT connect again. We are quickly coming to the conclusion that this will never work. Three different ISPs and none of them seem interested in helping beyond that. Screw them, I have Len looking into what it will take to build an ISP from in one of my NOCs.
So back to plumbing I go. We are almost completely out of parts, and I am basically wasting time, but it will give us a little functionality for when the crew shows up. I just really hate doing temporary work. At least James seems to be getting into it. He found a couple really funny things, like a sub-main wired (as a 240 volt only panel, that was showing signs of overheating, as a primary panel, wired in such a way that if one circuit fails, as many as four could be taken down. Nice...) A fun side note, I basically picked the playlist from the day. There seemed to be a bunch of techno in it, but basically it was one of my my usual “who the hell knows what he's playing next” playlists. This has helped my mood dramatically.
We sent our Inuit guides/helpers/ new found friends Steve and James out on a final patrol and hunt, as Sam, one of the guides that came with mat had said that there was caribou south and east of us. James and continued to work. By the time they got back, (With some spectacular pictures of a running polar bear foot print and a video of a young male polar bear they had been chasing, It was too small too shoot and waste one of the hamlet's bear tags on. I'll post pictures and the video once we get real bandwidth.) James had pretty much done as much as he could with the parts he had, and I was making as much progress as I could with the parts I had, so that after dinner (Well, really just before bed.) I was finally in a decent mood, and the upstairs sink worked (Cold water only.) and the shower worked from the valve, both camp shower hot and cold water! So, as we went to bed, I took the first shower this season. (Turns out that's more of a testing process than an honor...)
There are several points to note in this process.
1. Make sure you get the ice off the shower floor first. It is slippery. It is also very cold on wet feet. Especially the slushy parts. You do however quickly get used to it, or perhaps that's just the numbness and frostbite setting in.
2. Make certain that there is water flowing (near full speed) before lighting the camp shower. This thing gets hot enough to make steam! Steam that makes pressure. (note, high pressure steam + low pressure plumbing = Rockets + fun, until someone gets scalded, then it gets hilarious, unless you're the one that got scalded...) It actually made enough to blow one of the hoses off and spew steaming water all over. I, luckily was not in the way. Opening the hot water valve will reduce this pressure. 3. It is handy to use spewing steamy water to help break up the 1 inch (in places) of ice on the shower floor.
It's 0130, I need a nap...
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