so very tired

April 1
Kangerlussuaq, Greenland

The Air Greenland flight was a dream.  Huge overhead bins.  Toblerone.  Video screen.  When conscious, watched this "Taste of Greenland" cooking show where the Aussie host cooked stream-tickled trout with wild thyme -- all locally harvested -- and iceberg lettuce in the very presence of icebergs.  I slept and watched and wondered again why it was necessary to fly to Europe only to return to practically America.

My first look at Greenland was of ice and rock and rock and ice right at eye level through the window.  My second and third and tenth views were much the same.  When we landed in Kangerlussuaq, it looked something like this:

Science writer Kathryn and I, together with Claudio, a journalist from Brazil, rolled our bags about a half mile over the frozen road toward our hotel/NSF support lodge -- someone had evidently forgotten how far the walk was -- until a kind soul picked us up and saved us half the journey.

Spent the rest of the day settling in, getting to know the Operation IceBridge team, buying groceries, eating at the Thai restaurant, and desperately trying to stay awake.  A short nap gave me the energy to venture out to the local bar.  [More on that tomorrow.]  The trip was necessary, as our lodging was critically short of ice of all things, forcing one tenant to resort to drinking two 'snow and whiskeys.'

The climax of the whole day -- seeing my first Greenlandic aurora.  A light green color, pulsing over a good third of the sky.  Worth the trip right there.

[Thanks to all my readers for your kind thoughts!  By 'all my readers' I evidently mean my mom, my wife, and my aunt, which are easily an esteemed enough group to keep me writing.]