Me, the photographer (aka MMO) and the assistant with the white screen (aka medical with dry erase board)

The photo shoot in action

one of the actual shots. I'm not sure what look I was going for?

The moment when I realized that Keith was watching.

The motley crew that did the photo shoot.

Spare Time

I am now back in the North Sea. Our current prospect straddles UK and Norwegian waters – we are just about due west of Bergen and North East of the Shetland Islands.

The boat is a limiting place (but potentially liberating?) – I only have 250 feet of space to move around in, therefore you get creative. Last trip our party chief had polo shirts made for everyone commemorating our vessel leaving Asia, as Emerald had been working in Asia since 1992 when she was launched, so it was quite momentous for her to come to Norway. In the instrument room I tried on the T-shirt and modeled it / walked around, pretending I was on the runway. Also – when our Helideck is folded up for bad weather, all that is left of the round deck is a rectangular runway, which I always thought was a hilarious image on a vessel like ours – a catwalk on a seismic ship.

The other day I was eating lunch with one of our MMO’s (marine mammal observers) and it turned out in his off time he does a lot of video-work, but has also done some fashion photography. Half joking, I said “we should do a photoshoot on the helideck with me in my coveralls” and thus our hilarious afternoon on the helideck was born. So we started planning. Sam, one MMO’s would be the photographer, Mark, the medic would hold a dry erase board as the white thing that reflects light onto the face, and Dougie, the other MMO would photograph us doing the Photoshoot. Now I knew this was utterly ridiculous, but I didn’t care, only, I didn’t want one person to stumble upon us and that was Keith, the party chief.

So off we went to the Helideck. Sam telling me where to stand and moving Mark for the perfect light angle. Dougie had his bandana on his head, making him look particularly artsy – photographer style. After a few shots in the middle of the helideck we moved in back towards the vessel. I was pretending to pull on this rope when I looked up, when who did I see staring down at us? Leaning over the railing – Keith - shaking his head saying “my my what do we have here?” in his strong British accent. I about died. I dropped down into the fetal position; however he wouldn’t leave until we continued, so we did. And to top it off, the next day as Sam and I were looking at the pictures, who is the ONE person to find us looking at the pictures. Yeap – Keith. You can believe that I will NEVER hear the end of this one.

The route that we took up Mount Little, one of the "Ten Peaks".


Me climbing Mount Little


Ondrej and I at the top of Mount Little

This is the snow covered valley.

Reliable Sources

Rarely do people go on vacation with someone that they have met for just an hour, but I did during my last break. After 2 weeks in Houston, I flew to Seattle to meet up with Ondrej, the UVA college room mate of my cousin Landon. We had met once briefly a few Christmases earlier at Landon’s house, but that was it, and now here I was flying to Seattle so that we could go on a mountaineering trip together in British Columbia in Yoho and Kootney parks (on the border between British Columbia and Alberta - just west of Banff National Park).

I arrived in Seattle on a Thursday evening and we spent the next day going over our gear, buying food and eating lunch with a girl that I had met at geology field camp3 years earlier. Then Saturday morning we were off. We had to rent a car, because neither of us had a car and in the previous year the total driving hours between the 2 of us was next to nothing. But off we went.

The Trans-Canada Highway through British Columbia is really amazing. I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this much diversity. It went from rolling / flat farm land to high tree covered mountains to high dry desert hills and then to steep jagged peaks. We spent the night in Glacier national park giddy that we could see glaciers and continued on the next morning and that next morning happened to be Canada Day.

Like responsible hikers, we stopped in at the national park visitor center in Field (that’s the name of the town) to get current trail information. A WARNING – the Canadian Park service is not the place to get trail information. We asked about the trail to the first hut we were going to stay in. The first woman didn’t know, so she got someone who did. We told her our destination – Fay hut and she said “ Ooohhhh that trail is snowed in. winter conditions.”

“when you say ‘winter conditions’ what exactly do you mean?” we asked. She responded with, “At least knee, likely waist deep snow”. This was frustrating, because we knew we could do it, but it would be very slow going, and it was already noon and we still had a some driving before reaching the trail head. Then another woman came up and said “oh my friend’s parents did the hike 2 weeks ago – it was great. They started hiking at 5 am and with all the snow made it by dinner time, but it was beautiful”. Hmmm, just what we needed to hear as the minutes were ticking away. Then they brought out the binder with trail info to show us that the trail was indeed snow covered. We just looked at each other with frustrated faces. Then another woman came up and said “I think Fay hut burned down.” Just what I needed to hear. Luckily I knew that it had burned down in 2003, but it was rebuilt in 2005. Clearly the park did not have their facts straight. Meanwhile, the first woman, the one who couldn’t help us at all said, “Do you want some free Canada Day cake?”

We weren’t getting any closer to the hut by standing talking to the park service, so we continued on our way to Lake Louise and stopped in there, hoping for better information. None. I was given the safety warden’s phone number. I called. I asked about snow conditions. He said “the trails are clear to Fay hut”. I asked again, “so no snow?” he responded “if there is any snow its really small patches.”. My eyes were wide by this point. I said thank you and hung up. I went to tell Ondrej and we were off. We decided, what ever was there was there and we were going hiking. It was another 30 minutes of driving and as we were going down the valley towards the trail head, there was not a patch of snow to be seen. Anywhere. There were acres and acres of burned trees from the 2003 fire, but no snow. At 3:30pm we pulled into the parklot, tired from 2 days of driving and with 13 km of hiking ahead of us. All we could do was stare at the complete and utter lack of snow that had caused us sooooo much worry and frustration all day.

Over the course of the week, we ended up climbing 2 peaks that are featured on the back of the Canadian $20, which shows the “Valley of the Ten Peaks”. Four of those days in that area we saw no one but ourselves. On the second venture into the wilderness, we ended up meeting an amazing couple, who spent 20 of their years making films for National Geographic. They would do everything – propose the film, go shoot it, edit it, and then send the final thing to National Geographic. They said not once did any of their ideas get turned down.

We made it back to Seattle in one full day of driving. It was crazy to think that we started the day in a hut up in the mountains and ended the day in Ondrej’s apartment – a truly amazing contrast.

The adventures to the archery range in Houston.

Long lost friends - I hadn't seen my friends from Alaska since I left Alaska and now here we are meeting up in Houston - who would have ever guessed that!

Peter and I in the lake near Asker. This is the lake that I can easily walk to from work and where I live.

A Clerk?

Getting off the boat all I wanted to do was walk. I wanted to go further than 82 meters in one direction. And that is exactly what I did. The very first day off the boat I dragged 4 friends along and walked a few km down to the fjords for a picnic. The next day 3 of us walked all over Oslo for this food fest (and tried whale along the way, plus a lot of reindeer and Norwegian brown cheese). That night I walked over to the lake to camp out, and back the next day. Then after work I walked to the lake again go swimming. This is why I love where I work in Norway. After work, I walked home, changed clothes, and walked about 30 minutes over to the lake. The walk takes you through town, up along the road past this old church, past the prince’s house, then down along some farm fields before coming out at the lake. Cliffy hills surround the lake. Fabulous.

I can’t say the same for here in Houston. From work I can walk along some highways. So I’ve had to find other endeavors besides walking. I’ve been finding other random stuff to do or having other random encounters. One guy from work is really into Mongolian horseback archery. He’s rounded a few of us up from work and taken us off to this shooting range to practice. It’s an interesting mix of bows – the ones they use for the Olympics to compounds for hunting. You can shoot at targets, at fake deers, or fake hogs. Its fun.

Where I am staying they have wine, cheese and some small appetizer every night. One night I was down there and an older man was waiting for the wine so I offered to pour it for him. He started joking about having a nice pretty young girl pour him wine, so I started joking about that. As we were leaving he apologized or said he was sorry for bantering about that. I said, oh its no big deal, I work off shore and have to do this banter all the time. He turned and said “oh are you a clerk?” I repeated it, “a clerk? Nope, I’m out there doing the work”. I’m not sure he totally believed me, but he was shocked none-the-less. Nope. Not a clerk.

This is how we celebrated Norwegian national day on board (note my very blue tongue and my color appropriate outfit)

This is Emerald probably around 3 am or so. I got pretty excited taking early morning pictures.

This was around 12:45am on the back deck.

Communities and Decisions

it's been way too long, I know, but after the first week I tried not to turn on my computer after work (since I was sitting in front of one for most of work). Instead I ended up playing lots of foosball, working out in the gym, and doing lots of QHSE stuff for the boat. Now I'm back on land, but I'm actually missing the boat. part of it is the community. Below is an exerpt from my journal from a few weeks ago.

It’s really cool how you learn some of life’s basic lessons here on the boat. Kind of like in the wilderness, life is broken down into the basics. Here on board, you have one sole purpose in life and that is to get seismic data. Perhaps the people in the office and I work for the same company, with ultimately the same goal, however, their daily life is not one purpose. They are working on several projects – some people with marine, some with land, some are finance people. They go home at the end of the day, may see people different from work (although perhaps not), they have a life outside of work. But while they all have the “same goal” they are working on it in very unrelated ways. However, here on the boat, the goal is very tangible and it is the same for all of us – how do we shoot seismic, to get the best data and get it fast? Therefore decision making is very different, and more urgent than say in the office. It requires both a single person as well as the group.

Today we realized how poorly ballasted some of the streamers were. And we couldn’t go into production until we fixed it – 8 couldn’t stay at 8 meters, 6 was a roller coaster, and 1 was barely any better. Good thing 1 and 8 are on the outside (just kidding – this is not good). We had 2 options – 1. Go out in the work boat, and ballast by filling with kerosene, all of cable 1, 6, and 8. Or recover all the cables. The work boat option would take 1 day, well one full (24 hours) in the work boat, plus we can only go out in 1 boat due to limited dry suits / survival gear. While recovering and then deploying the cables is estimated to take 6 days. Why not the work boat? The seas are rough and expected to get worse on Sunday (today is Friday). Not sure if we will ever get a window. It came down to an impromptu meeting with most of acquisition, nav, and gunners there, plus Keith. Keith was very good natured about it. Everyone offered their advice and ultimately it came down to Ernie saying what he thought was best. People setting timelines, and then questioning them and determining a new one. First we decided on what was most important if the workboat were to go out. Then we thought – what if we recovered the streamers, then we set a deadline of 3pm – if no weather window, then retrieve. Then we asked, why not start retrieving now and save those 6 hours?

It was cool, because I think in some way everyone felt a part of the process, and everyone agreed with the decision.

I think the cool part as well is that a decision was made – it wasn’t just suggestions that no one will ever act on. We had to make a decision right there and then.

So the last 4 hours it was out on the backdeck again recovering.

Yes it is Winter

Today it was rough and much more like what I expected from the Barent’s Sea. The swell was up to 5 meters (over 15 ft), and the wind was averaging about 25 knots. The temperature without the windchill was hovering just above freezing. Plus a lot of out work was on the boat deck, which is high and fully exposed.

I thought this was a good picture, of me the boat, and the mountains in the background. I've got at least 3 or 4 layers on underneath my coveralls!

2 days ago it was cold, but clear and you could see the new snow on the mountains in the distance.

If you click on this picture and look closely enough, you can see the snow from this morning. This is a view off the back deck - that thing going diagonally across is one of our cables that we were deploying.

Summer or Winter?

First before starting I must note that 2 days ago my Swedish phrase of the day was Sommaren är här, which means the summer is here. How ironic given this morning’s snow.

I was hoping to equate my experience this far in the Barent’s Sea (North of the North sea off of Norway) to the TV show “Deadliest Catch”, however its only half been that way. On the supply boat that we took out last Tuesday it was rocking and rolling, big time. Then yesterday I went out on the work boat (think small motor boat) and I got sick. I have always prided myself on not getting sick, but this was bad. At one point I was sitting and trying to look at the ocean and I couldn’t focus, so my eyes kind of glazed over until I fell asleep. Then I managed to throw up twice. We left around 4am and got back at 9:30 am - those were 5 ½ very long hours. However, then I started to think, why? Because I had also felt a bit queasy on the supply vessel coming over. And there was one link – both days I had eaten an apple, not too long before feeling queasy.

Today around 6:30am the weather got calm enough to go out and I was put in the crew – 4 people usually go out. I was both excited (I hadn’t eaten an apple and wanted to test my theory) and horrified at the same time – what if it wasn’t the apple. So we donned our dry suits and off we went and it was great! No problems, no falling asleep, and beautiful sun.

Ah, and did I mention that it snowed this morning around 4 am while we were working on the back deck? Most of the days the temperature has been hovering around freezing, with the wind blowing and dropping the temperatures even further. And all we’ve been doing since getting on board is backdeck work, so I’ve been out side constantly. Luckily, I put on a lot of clothes under my coveralls.

And yes, it is not dark here. I am working the “night” shift from midnight to noon, but I have renamed it the midnight sun shift.

Rasmus is proving that his home town is indeed not flat, but rather böljande landskap (rolling landscape).

The Easter Parade in downtown Ystad. All of the little kids are dressed up like witches.