(calama) live broadcast tomorrow

today was so rich with stories, i can't possibly write about them right now. it's 2am, and we're continuing our dust devil hunting tomorrow. meanwhile, back at yungay station, the ames education folks have successfully installed the huge satellite dish in preparation for tomorrow's live webcast from the field. i won't be there, but it should be fun to watch - tune in if you can. you wouldn't believe the mass of equipment and the amount of time and resources it's taken to get that link up out there.

i will spend some time tomorrow night writing about today. someday in the future, we will be able to record our lives so we can replay them when we need to.

(tent city, yungay station, chile) signal

i'm writing this to you from my tent and my fingers are freezing, so i'll make it quick.

yesterday and today we spent getting the electrometers up and running. one of the electrometers blew out today, so we're down to one already. we invented a new experiment to do with them while we were down here - we're trying to measure variations in the electromagnetic charge of soil itself, in situ. this is a bit challenging, and we're not quite sure whether it's working, but we're collecting data. we drove up to the "rock garden" to take the measurements. our initial system required a ladder, which alfonzo lugged up the hills. tomorrow we'll move into our next iteration, which will use a more manageable tripod to suspend the electrometer's pendulum. i took pictures today but i'm already in my tent and i forgot to bring my card reader, so you'll have to wait till tuesday night or wednesday for pictures of the experiment.

tomorrow alfonzo, don and i will set out on a 3-hour journey north in search of the dust devils they saw a couple of weeks ago. they are said to start up around 2, so we'll leave here around 10 to leave time for setting up on that end. we'll spend the afternoon chasing the devils and then we'll meet up with another day-trip expedition team in calama for the evening. after a few nights of camping here in subzero temperatures, it will be nice to have a warm shower and a soft bed.

here are a couple pictures that jasek took over the first couple days of our stay here. the funny looking shapes growing out of the ground are made of salt. it's one of the coolest landscapes i've ever seen.

(yungay research station) wireless up!

we have wireless! i don't think it will be up for long this morning, but later today perhaps i'll post some pictures. you might continue monitoring the nasa spaceward bound website for official photos. it's both very hot and very cold here. so far no dust devils have been spotted near the camp, but there's allegedly a dust devil hot spot 4 hours north of here where a group spotted 7 dust devils in 5 minutes. we will go there monday or tuesday.

camp is quiet today. it has been bustling with about 50 american and chilean participants, most of whom headed out today for the beautiful solar de atacama 6 hours from here.

i promise pictures soon.

another special hello to my jasmine and nia!

(copiapo, chile) parking lot

there's free wifi in this parking lot of the bus station. :) i'm grabbing the moment to say hello. we have had two sampling stops so far, so we've got samples. no data yet from the electrometers.

it's warm and sunny and beautiful. it doesn't look like we're going to make it to the station before dark. people will be setting up their tents with no light.

(northern chilean town starting with v) triple point

tonight at dinner i decided not to wear my coat and it was pretty cold (it's winter here). there was a delightful spicy salsa that they served with the bread. chilly chile chili.

the drive up today was stunning. i realized i was able to fly from the east coast to the west coast without changing time zones. the waves were huge and it was sunny and gorgeous.

apparently after tomorrow morning i will have no more internet connectivity till the weekend. i'll try to keep up the posting and will put them all up on saturday.

our team seems pretty cool. we've got four carloads of people (with radios) for coordinating during the caravan for the transect: blue van (huge passenger van i'm driving), green truck, red truck, and white truck.

the stars here are unbelievable. it's the sort of thing i can't take pictures of or describe or find a good postcard for. you just have to come here and see it yourself.

(dc -> atlanta -> santiago) hola chile

ok, so i missed my flight on sunday and left last night instead. it's a 9 hour flight in the same time zone, which is strange! i arrived here a couple of hours ago around the same time as the rest of the team. we crammed 20 people and too much field gear into 3 trucks/vans and we're at the hotel regrouping.

it looks like we may not have internet connectivity for the next couple of days, so this may be it for a while.

it's cold and foggy here. i want to say a special hello to jasmine, nia, and ariana (and brooke and hakim!). give each other big hugs and i'll write as often as i can.

all my luggage and field instruments arrived safely and everything was smooth (once i got on the flight in DC). :)

(dc) modern medicine

i've been thinking a lot about modern medicine in the last few days. first of all, i've decided to freeze my eggs (sorry damian, i know you don't like that word, but i couldn't really think of a better one. that's what they are). i know, i know, this should be something that's very personal, but it really doesn't feel that way to me. it's more of a socio-economic medical phenomenon than a personal issue.

[cue the cliche movie-preview deep-voice-over]

"In a WORLD...."

yes, instead of replacing my beat-up old car, or LOTS of pairs of shoes, i'm buying the luxury of peace of mind and a more possible reproductive future in case i ever do get married and in case whomever i marry wants to have children with me.

here's my reasoning: 1) i don't want the fact that my eggs have all either been flushed down the toilet or simply given up the ghost to deprive my (hypothetical) marriage of the choice. 2) i don't want biological limitations running the conversations in my head and relationships anymore. the first is just logically proactive. the second is more of a rescue operation.

so about a month ago i set up my first appointment with extend fertility, which was set for yesterday in new jersy. the day before yesterday i decided to go to an eye doctor to check out my right eye, which has a floater that had been bothering me for about a week. the opthalmologist sent me immediately to a retinal specialist around the corner (turns out they're the best retinal specialists in DC), who told me that i have a cotton wool spot on my right retina, and that's what's causing the blind spot. it will go away on its own in about 6 weeks or so, but the bad news is that cotton wool spots are caused by systemic disease - they appparently don't just happen. yesterday when i went in for my fertility bloodwork, i took them the long list of other blood tests that the retinal specialist told me i should get: tests for high blood pressure, diabetes, lupus, toxoplamosis, anemia, aids, etc. i don't know what i have, but i'm hoping for anemia or toxoplamosis (the parasite caused by injesting cat feces). mmmmmmmm cat feces. yum.

one really great thing was that even though the nurses at the IVF hospital had never heard of some of the blood tests that the retina doctor wanted me to have, they were very sweet and agreed to draw enough blood for the other tests, and they are REALLY good at drawing blood. they took like 12 or 15 tubes or something, and it was easy peasy. they have this nifty little flexible connector tube between the needle and the test tubes so that when they switch out the glass tubes, they don't have to jiggle the needle. usually the worst thing about getting blood tests is the way the needle grinds around your arm when they switch out the tubes. no more! this makes me feel much more comfortable about the whole process that's in store for me with the egg freezing.

mixed in with all these appointments was also the problem of medical clearance to travel on government orders to Chile and Bolivia. i spent this week coordinating information flow between four nasa medical clinics. ames is paying for the travel, and so the orders were stuck waiting for NASA ames' medical clearance. but i am at goddard now, so the goddard doctors had to see me and fax the signoff forms to ames and my last physicals and immunizations were at headquarters and jsc. fortunately, i had all of the required immunizations when i traveled to africa a few years ago. i was able to decline some of the other recommended ones: yellow fever, malaria, TB.

so these last few days before leaving for south america have been filled with doctor appointments and poking and prodding and photographing and crying and feeling alone and scared. i was amazed that the opthalmologist had me driving with my eyes dilated and anaesthetized - have you ever tried this? i don't recommend it. the one time i laughed that afternoon was when i arrived at the retina specialist's office and they wanted me to take an eye test. hahahahaha. i kept saying to the technician, "uh, my eyes are dilated...." she was like, yeah, i know, but we have to do this, it's protocol.

and so i've been thinking a lot about the socio-economic luxury of my life that allows me to spot a potentially life-threatening systemic disease within hours of seeing a doctor for a relatively minor visual annoyance, and to be able to so easily get blood drawn and tests ordered. i'm not sure i can say anything particularly profound here, but i'm really just highly conscious of how lucky i am.

now i just have to find myself a primary care physician so he or she can help me read the results of all these tests i've ordered. oh, and the opthalmologist wants to set me up with his son. so maybe i'll get a date out of it.

in unrelated news, i've seen an awful lot of gory roadkill recently.

(dc) spaceward bound

hi

if you want to keep up with us while we're in the Atacama desert over the next few weeks, it looks like there will be several ways:

* the spaceward bound project website

* news blurbs

* i'll try to post juicy (or excessively dry/arid) pictures and stories here

i haven't had much time to think about this trip, but i think it's gonna be really awesome.

(dc) it has finally happened

i've run out of toilet paper. i know this might not seem worth writing about. that's because...well...it's not. but for some reason i found it noteworthy. i don't think i've run out of toilet paper since grad school. or maybe i have and it's just not something i would remember. so why, you might ask, am i writing about it? that's a very good question, indeed.

(dc) no good word for it

i wonder if there's any language that has a word for this feeling i get sometimes of being nostalgic for the present moment. as i was walking home just now, i had a block and a half of this feeling.

this is a neighborhood to drink in. especially on a perfect spring evening at magic hour. you can feel like you've lived a lifetime in that 7 minute walk. it started as i left the starbucks at the top of the u st metro stop with my iced venti sugar free hazelnut soy latte balanced on my mac laptop crossing the street listening to my voicemail on my PDA cellphone. i laughed out loud at how much of a caricature i was in that moment and how different my life is going to be just six months from now. as i was laughing i passed a man yelling in chinese into his flip phone.

i was experiencing every sound and smell and scene with intensity and longing for each the moment that passed, knowing that even if i wrote this as soon as i got home, i'd already have forgotten the details. every person that i saw looked different - different color, height, shape, style - different bits of their bodies jiggling and hanging out. the diversity here is gorgeous. (how will i live without it?)

everything was at once exceedingly diverse but with particular american flair. the hispanic couple in the ridiculously huge shiny red truck trying to make the light but instead stopping smack in the middle of the crosswalk, forcing everyone to walk around it. i loved being able to laugh with them and say "nice" through their rolled down window and have a moment of connection with them that they didn't expect. they were clearly expecting rancor, but got a moment of love and humor.

the fat pidgeons picking at the street garbage
the squishy pizza place that sara loves so much
the intimidatingly hip hipsters at their cafe tables
the flamboyant homosexual and transexual displays
the gentle loving placement of a man's hand on his girlfriend's back
the brick walls and brick alleyway
the open doors of dan and anna's store
the funky bikes chained to parking meters
the star spangled skimpy bikinis in the lingerie store
the hideous pointed snakeskin shoes
the kung fu hustle poster inside the door of the video store entryway
the cool cat standing outside the door of twins jazz club hoping to entice people in

after 15 months of being here, i'm still in love with this neighborhood and this city, and i'm so happy to be here. i'll miss it a lot.

(dc) goodbye, dear yoram

to everyone who rides a bicycle or drives a car, just take a moment to read this blog chronicling the last two days of my NASA colleague's life after getting hit by a car here on friday.

make sure your family and friends know what you'd want them to do if you suddenly came to find yourself (or not be able to find yourself) in a vegetative state or drug-induced coma on life support.

******
To all Goddard Colleagues:

We have the unfortunate duty to announce that one of our Goddard family, Dr. Yoram Kaufman, died yesterday evening from injuries he received in a collision with a car as he was biking along Soil Conservation Road on May 26.

Yoram was a brilliant senior scientist and a highly regarded and well-liked member of the Earth-Sun Exploration Division. A Senior Fellow, Yoram was the Project Scientist for Terra through its launch, worked on MODIS and other earth science projects, and developed methods for remote sensing of fires and aerosols. He wrote or co-authored over 170 scientific papers.

A Memorial Celebration of the Life of Dr. Yoram Kaufman will be held on Sunday, June 4, at 1 p.m. in the Bldg. 8 Auditorium at Goddard Space Flight Center. All are welcome to attend. The Kaufman family has requested comfortable dress for the Celebration.

For more information on Yoram Kaufman, his family, and this tragic event, the family has created a web site for updates at http://yoramstatus.blogspot.com.

Sincerely,


Dr. Edward Weiler
Center Director

Dr. Laurie Leshin
Director of Sciences and Exploration