High's and Low's

It’s a common tradition on Outdoor Action trips to reflect on the day or a trip with “highs and Lows”. Its’ been a while since I’ve blogged, so I’ll do a “highs and lows” of my past few months.

High:
Going home for Christmas. I had been out of the US for 13 months. Everyone came home for the snow that dumped on the East Coast this year: Tesia flying from Japan, I flying from India, and Federico, my Argentinian boyfriend also flying from India. All forms of winter were enjoyed – skating, sledding, downhill skiing, cross country skiing, a sleigh ride on Christmas eve. Fantastic. However Christmas deserves more of a description, so I promise to write more in a later post. It was Fede’s first time to meet the Family and I swear a movie could have been made about the 8 days he was there – I promise to expand…

Low:
My whole Fall. Well not the whole fall, but much of October and the beginning of November. I was somewhat forced to go early into the office and push going to Japan to the second half of my break. Somehow I’ve managed to become the ONLY person who can test our acquisition software. After a week of isolated testing, I had to help move our lab & equipment to our new building. This involved working 12 hour days in the basement of a building where no one else was working yet. So needless to say, I saw none of my friends. This may sound petty, but since I’m not around that much, people don’t know I’m in Oslo unless they see me, so this means, no one invites me on hiking trips, or picnics, or dinners. Its rough sometimes. The night before I left Oslo, I broke down crying and weeping that “I have no friends”. I even had to work one weekend. The Japan trip that was supposed to be 2-2.5 weeks was reduced to 5 days since I had been PROACTIVE and had actually gotten my Indian visa. So I had to return to the boat 9 days early.

High:
Last trip I officially became certified as a coxswain on the boats. For some reason this seems to mean a lot to me. I’m pretty proud of being a coxswain. Why I’m not sure – perhaps because not too many girls are? Perhaps because when I first joined I decided this was something that I wanted to do / achieve? However, I was certified at the end of the trip so it was only 5 days ago that I went out on my own for the first time. Trial by fire. Our first job of the day was to go back to a cable to investigate fishing gear. We had the cable in the arms of our work boat and I was dropping back along the cable. The crew was cutting off ropes and fishing gear. The next thing I hear is “we have a dolphin, we have a dolphin in the fishing gear”. Aye aye aye. I shout back “is it dead or alive?”. The respond “dead, very dead”. After 30 seconds or a minute, they managed to cut the ropes and it dropped off into the blue of the ocean. (note having a dead dolphin was NOT a high)

I also took out the Fast Rescue boat (FRB) for my first personnel transfer. Its usually the damsel in distress that gets rescued, but ha, here it’s the other way around!. Fede had had to go over to our supply boat to advise their captain when he came alongside our boat for bunkering of fuel and provisioning. Once the supply boat had been cast off, Fede needed to be brought back to our boat. So I was sent off on my first personnel transfer and I went to Pick up Fede!!! I just keep reminding him that I rescued him…