Doomed

We've left one exotic paradise only to arrive at another. After a full night's sleep, we met up with Bill Brown at the mess hall for breakfast ($2.30 for all you can eat cereal, biscuits and gravy, bacon, fruit, and omelets to order). Afterwards, Bill took us to the southern end of the island for training at the weather balloon launching station.

Our workstation/ship container is set in a vacant tent city. Tent city refers to an area of concrete slabs readily available to house large numbers of military tents. Fortunately, tent city has its own semi-private, white sanded, crystal blue water beach facing the lagoon. Gavin strongly discourages James and me from peeing in the lagoon water. It is that pure and unadulterated.




Work attire now consists of boardshorts. Since we release weather balloons every 3 hours, the 45 - 60 minutes of down time between balloon launches has been spent enjoying our Garden of Eden (before the fall). After being spoiled this rotten, you should fully expect James to never wear a shirt again, and Gavin to persistently wear swimming goggles no matter the occasion or season. Habits developed under these tropically rich circumstances will be hard to break. James is already looking forward to the probable 4 or 5 day delayed flight off the island (over 50% of the scientists trying to leave the island have been delayed at least 24 hours, some up to 5 days). After all, we will need more time here given the plethora of activities including sailing classes, 5k runs, golf tournaments, bowling tournaments, kickball tournaments, table tennis tournaments, windsurfing lessons, snorkeling, and a 37 mile tip to tip bike race across the island. We are very pleased to be studying tropical weather instead of more polar varieties.

If that sounded like bragging, it kind of was. However, you should take consolation in knowing that we will be forever ruined. Our paradigms for work environments have shifted and are not likely to recover. Every job after will be forced to live up to these expectations. We are doomed.



Almost forgot, we met the Commander (an Auburn fan and graduate!) and Lt. Commander of the island and helped them successfully launch a weather balloon.

Also, for the weather weenies out there, here is your fun fact of the day. All one hour weather messages are performed by hand because the automated weather station is broken on Diego Garcia. They also have radar on the island that is not broadcast, accessible, or archived. Yup, I don't know either.

-Adam