Returning of the Technician...

It has been awhile since my last post, reflecting the work cycle of a marine technician. Once the season ended, so ended (temporarily) my mandatory work period. Prior to departure, each crew member put in for 'winter work' dates, that are extremely flexible, I had mentioned early December and late January as potential dates for myself. After a month living with my girlfriend and her family (October) and two and one half months at home, observing family and food-filled holidays, hiking and lazing around, I called up the Captain. I wanted to go back to the Lake Guardian, it was time to collect paychecks again. Time to do something during the day.

My move was to be a long term one, so I decided to pack more things than before, with the idea of setting up in an apartment somewhere between Milwaukee and Chicago for extended time spent laid up. I broke up the drive out to Milwaukee into three sections: Maine to Happy Valley, PA to Carmel, IN to Milwaukee. I stayed with a good friend from home who is studying at State College and was living right outside of where Jerry Sandusky was being tried (interesting) in PA and then stayed what ended up being two nights in Carmel, due to weather, before moving on to Milwaukee.

I arrived on January 21 to a ship under construction. The galley and the lounge were under construction (I won't tell you what the price of this construction is for your own health), leaving the Captain in charge of providing meals for the crew each night. 5 nights a week, we dine out on the town, giving me much more knowledge of the restaurant scene in the city (one should hope!) and the other two nights, dinner is done on the Webber grill, even if it is only 10 degrees F outside (though it has been a mild winter).

As far as work is concerned, it is much more laid back (for now) than the summer. We do small projects related to organization, book keeping and maintenance. I have spend much of the last month updating inventories and learning my way around the ship's network of servers, a tangled web of computers than communicate with the different instruments in the summer and general files that have accumulated and been littered throughout. The big project, that has just recently commenced is the construction of two benthic sleds. We are looking to upgrade the models that have been left at the bottom of the lakes with a simple design set atop 3 old Mercury snowmobile skis. It should be a good task for the coming days.

I have finally been to some Milwaukee Admirals games. I arrived in Milwaukee too late last year to see any games, so it is a nice thing to do every once in a while. The Bradley Center is a cozy venue to watch a sporting event, which makes it appealing. It was pretty neat to see Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson's jerseys hanging from the rafters as I took in my first two games.

Retired Bucks Jerseys

View of the Milwaukee Admirals v. San Antonio rampage 

from the $3 General Admission Seats

To close today's post, some good news. My fantastic girlfriend and I recently secured an apartment in Zion, IL (about 50 minutes from Milwaukee, near the WI/IL border) and plan to move in on March 15th. We are excited for this event and are sure it will result in some added stressors and relaxors.

(Note: I actually brought a camera this year. I plan on using it in conjunction with this blog. Hopefully, any enhancements are well received.)

Escape from Munising and Homeward Bound

I decided to make the most of Munising. I took young Russ over to the Painted Rocks Golf Course nearby and we rented clubs and a cart for 9 holes and it only cost us 25 dollars apiece, amazing rates for a very well maintained and beautiful track. Broke 50 (49), found 9 balls for Russ (who shot 77), had great fun, relaxed and took a mental vacation. Yep, I golfed for a mental vacation, you did read that correctly. Later in the week, in between a couple of bikerides (some for sightseeing, some for PizzaHut runs), the Captain, Maxwell and I bowled 4 games. Prior to bowling I had to explain what candlepin bowling was and why it was awesome. Apparently, candlepin bowling is a very unique thing. I proceed to not bowl terrible well, hitting 134 for my best game, and did not get the high score during any game, but had plenty of fun nevertheless.

To Cummings Engines: How are you still in business? First, 3 of your turbos blow. The most recent 2 stranding us in Munising. Then we ask for parts and techs. They arrive...3 days later than originally promised, and when they DO arrive you forget half of the parts that were ordered. Then just when everything is fixed, 30 minutes offshore a piston ring cracks!!

This recent engine trouble resulted in a couple of things: limping home to Milwaukee, bypassing the Chicago trip completely (weather may have been an issue anyway) on one engine (again). Once in Milwaukee, after a couple of days disassembling the instruments and putting things away for the winter months, we were finally laid off until winter work called.

As it is, I am leaving the Lake Guardian for a couple months tomorrow!

The summer season has been a trying one, but a successful one in my opinion!

Last survey and the longest way around

I'll skip through the survey and get to the interesting stuff. The survey was a carbon copy of summer survey, just more detailed for Lake Superior specifically. Nothing to report there.

Our good weather karma caught up to us with 10 stations (out of 50+) to go. So we wandered into Houghton, MI again for 3 days. Keweenaw Brewing Company (and their $2.50 pints) saw us coming as soon as the bad weather forecast was posting, I am pretty sure. Many a dollar was spent there during our three day stay, to be sure, but the Captain, Johna and I also made sure to do SOMETHING else. This 'something' was a 23 mile bikeride up the Keweenaw Waterway to the northern end to see the waves crash upon the Keweenaw Peninsula. The bike ride was rewarding, the waves were not. Still, though the Upper Peninsula is beautiful country and the fall air felt good inside the lungs, for sure. After a false start, we finally finished up the last survey of the year; a great feeling. We then kicked the science team off the boat in Duluth and turned out to sea once more, with Milwaukee on our minds...

...but it was not to be. Not only did we spend our whether karma, but we must have incurred some sort of karma deficit in Houghton, as during my watch, bad things happened. Port engine overheated. Then starboard. Black smoke pouring out of both stacks. We used all the power we could muster to cruise 3.5 kts into Munising, MI. Diagnosis, both turbo's toasted (including the one that was replaced a month ago) and bearings are stuck and all SORTS OF BAD. Looking like at least 5 days in Munising.

Munising, MI you say? You ask where it is and what's it's story? Well, let me tell you.

Munising, MI is on the UP, it is surrounded by beautiful woods and hills and the leaves are turning. It is also  very near the Painted Rock National Lakeshore (which people love up here, and its kinda cool, but not THAT cool, pretty bland actually, but I digress) which is the key for it being an eco-tourism town. There are plenty of boat charters for fishing and sightseeing. The Park Service is here, the park is nearby(ish). Here we are, September 19th and nearly all tourist businesses are folded up for the winter. There is also a coal plant here with two huge coal mounds near where we are docked that semi-obstructs the town's view of the water. There is a Pizza Hut and a Hardees. There are supposed to be many waterfalls nearby. According to Wiki, it is a town of 5 sq mi and 2500 people. That's what Wiki says. I say I walked the entire town today and it is 8x7 streets. 2500 people? Maybe...but they stay inside and ...do whatever they do all day. This town could be awesome! Just plop in a couple restaurants, a couple science labs and bang, you've got an awesome, eco-touristy town. What I see is a sad sack village with nothing to do and I can't imagine the people that go to high school here. What do they DO!? There's no sports fields or parks to play around or anything!

Munising, MI, I cannot wait to leave. I'd rather be in Milwaukee (never expected to say that).

A Labor Day in Duluth

Labor Day was celebrated in Duluth by breaking from my routine of just wasting hours biking to Park Point and back and decided to join Max in his plans. He had befriended a local bartender and tattoo artist (and canvas) in the area and we went with them to Jay Cook state park for a hike along the St. Louis River, which took us over some ancient weathered landscape. Then we reached a sticking point. We knew we wanted to grill food, but we had no grill for this purpose, until our new friends volunteered to invest in a $40 dollar propane camping grill. back on track, Max and I provided the grilling labor. Hamburgers, bison burgers, cheddar brats, cheddar and jalepeno brats, chips and potato salad, sun, calm breeze, it was an excellent setting. We then proceeded to hike around some more and did some stone hopping across some rougher terrain to the site of a beautiful falls. The water in this area is very red due to red clay and iron oxide deposits in the region and it looks much dirtier than it actually is.

After leaving the park, 3 of us went to enjoy a beer, where I ran into the family of a former teammate at the University of Maine. they recognized my Maine Swimming t-shirt and proceeded to introduce themselves and then take pictures with me. It was quite the 'small world' moment.

We then rejoined our 4th member and went out to yet another park, this on the northern lakeshore, where we burned up some firewood and chatted around the fire and we capped the great day by trying to stay warm, with temperatures diving into the low 40's that night. It was a fully packed day and a great way to celebrate Labor Day (even if I did have to work during the pre-lunch hours).

Just a finishing touch, before leaving on the Duluth Lower Food Web survey, I bought 1/2 lb of Smoked Salmon, and it is so amazing, the candy of the sea, no doubt.

The Conclusion of Summer Survey, T-R-I-A-X-U-S spells trouble

Arriving in Sault Ste. Marie for a while we waited for the science teams to arrive provided me time to finally walk around this town. Which was 50% under construction, regarding the roads, anyway. A couple of us crew members decided to try out the new brewery in town. They only had 2 beers on tap (4 brewing, though) but both were given positive reviews by us. The setting was very interesting...large booths with little conversational privacy, with families gathering to consume adult beverages while their children played with toys and they all ate tv dinners they brought from home. We then went to this fine dining place and had some very excellent meals (which was an apparent rarity in the town) and even two bottles of red wine. I had not previously enjoyed wine in quite a while, but one of these bottles I didn't mind at all.

After we stepped outside of the restaurant, we decided to play the miniature golf course next door. I led things off with one of my 3 holes-in-one and proceeded to coast to a first place finish. This clearly means that I need to hit up an actually golf course very soon. It has been too long. My confidence is far too high.

The next day was a perfect day, with sun all around. This was a perfect opportunity to swim. So many of us took the plunge into the St. Mary's River. It was advertised as very cold...these were blatant lies. The water was a nice 72 deg F...and the air was 75 deg F...awesome conditions for a relaxing swim. 1 hour later, up the lock we go, Superior at long last.

Lake Superior, I called it 'The Vacation Lake', due to the 2-3+ hour transits in between stations compared to that of Erie, which was more like 20-40+ minutes between. The pace is much more relaxed, though Superior did take a while to get through, as a whole. The northern shore of Superior has a very similar landscape to that of coastal Maine, without the tidal effect. It's nice to be visually reminded of home every once in a while, even if it does make me more anxious to return.

Eventually, we made it to Duluth. We unloaded all of the samples we had gathered along with most of the science team and recharged our batteries before we were to embark on a circumnavigation of the US side of Superior with the Triaxus debau-machine.

I decided to ride out to the end of Park Point on my bike with perpetually flat tyres. 30 minutes to the nice park area. Nice open area for activities, nice playground for the kids, nice sandy beaches with cool sand dunes and dune trails to walk... and maybe 10 people were there total. Sad. It took 40 minutes to ride back against a stiff breeze. It felt good to exercise, something that often gets lost in between watches on the boat. I plan on returning in the future, without a doubt. I also tried to bike up Duluth's massively steep hill and regretted it. I mean, seriously, how can these people possible travel in the winter? Accidents just must be assumed. I would build a cage around my entire vehicle just to live here in the winter. Everything is on a hill. I was tired and I gained absolutely nothing from it. No finding cooler places in town (just the ghettos) and nothing but pain and then wearing on my already feeble brakes heading home.

In seemingly no time, it was Triaxus time, yet again. There was nothing much to this. Just steer the boat along the coast, about 3/10 mile offshore, and take it out for a checkup about every 6hrs. Until the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula heading west, near Bete Grise Harbor (ok ok ok, we also may gave acquired a fishing net too...but that is a minor one and the pump not working that one time, mysteriously). My shift has 1 hour left. All of the sudden the Triaxus decided to do its best impression of Shamu, it (without any human intervention or program change) flew towards the surface and breached unexpectedly. I kept it from hitting the bottom (in 20m water), as goal #1 always is) and we retrieved it for inspection. Nothing out of the ordinary was found, nor WAS there anything out of the ordinary. It was all very confusing. Unfortunately, this was a bad omen. A really bad one. For after we retrieved it next, the moisture alarm sounded (very bad) and once that was supposedly fixed, the battery would not receive power. The Triaxus survey was...NOT COMPLETED...we put it on IR for the year. Not even the Danish engineers could put Humpty Dumpty back together again (but our head Marine Tech since HAS, hat tip to Johna). What does this mean? Another day in Duluth (almost a week total) before our next survey. Lake Superior again, lots of stations. Looming large. Yikes.

Just before this event happened, I saw my second display of the Northern Lights; this time, a more brilliant, longer lasting display of dancing greens on the horizon...but still nothing over my head. Something to shoot for, Mother Nature.

Duluth has a restaurant with 3 dollar pizzas during happy hour. These pizzas are also delicious. The restaurant chain? Old Chicago.

Back at the boat, we are working on getting the 3 decks painted in between what has been and will be some nasty weather here in Duluth. Speaking of which, Autumn has definitely arrived. Low 60 F high temperatures and dry Canadian air. It feels good. No more oppressive humidity. Though it may be chillier on the lake, that is fine with me.

The Welland Experience, Port of Rochester, Fated for Failure

After a rough ride in Erie, we took the Welland Canal through to Ontario. For those who do not know, the Welland Canal is a series of eight locks that allow ships to move 100m up and down the Niagara Escarpment and to bypass Niagara falls without having to navigate shallow, uncertain rivers from Ontario to Huron. The Welland Canal broke ground in 1824 and was initially completed in 1829. The current version of the Canal was started in 1913 and finished in 1939. It is allegedly due for a replacement/facelift in the year 2030, so there is that to look forward to, I suppose. The canal is quite something to pass through, but it sure it an antique. Crumbling rebar concrete is all around you, and the gates to each lock are somewhat shaky. Still, though, the feat of engineering cannot be discounted. I worked the sternline downbound for the entire 8 hours it took us to pass through, and I apparently did a decent enough job.

I then fell asleep, which is regrettable, because I missed the station that took us right outside Toronto at night and we were not to pass by it on the way back west, much to my chagrin, but I did enjoy my rest.

Lake Ontario surprised me with its depth. I had expected it to be much like Lake Erie, which has an average station depth of 30m, but instead, Ontario showed an average station depth of around 150m, much like Huron and Michigan. Lake Ontario also played tricks on my mind (I think). I swear that every so often, when I stepped outside, I smelled the ocean. Or some sort of brackish water mass. I swear it. Either my sense of smell is fine tuned for this particle or my mind is trying to get back to the biggest of lakes. I cannot decide which is actually the case.

In Ontario, we stopped in the Port of Rochester, NY for a day and a half for some R & R. I found it to be a cross between a retirement community (most street walkers looked like Florida winterers) and a tourist destination (beachgoers, bar patrons). Speaking of beachgoers, that was our crew of younger sailors. We went to the beach. The most regulated beach I had ever seen in my life. A lifeguard chair for every 20m of beach. A designated swimming zone (by the way, us 6 ft and up folks could WALK out to the edge of this zone, the beach gradient was so gradual and if we overshot the line by 2 feet, we'd be squawked at by a lifeguard). Want to bring a toy to the beach? Don't bother, they're not allowed. All this fuss over what? The beach was right beside a rivermouth. This means nutrient loading of the water and the result of that is algae. Lots of algae. Rancid clumps on the beach and 2-4 inches underneath your feet within the swimming area. When a lightning storm drew near (but not overhead) the lifeguards started buzzing like bees, forcing people off the sand and out of the water as if an alien invasion were imminent, coupled with repetitive, obnoxious announcements over the loudspeaker every 5 minutes, which inevitably drew mockery from us, much to the delight of obviously annoyed beach patrons. Overall, I was disappointed.

I saw a grown man ride a carousel. Oh wait, that was Russ. Never seen someone so old so hellbent on riding one. Lightning shut it down (why?) so he had to convince them to let him sit on it while not in motion (this is different that turning it on during a storm how?) so he could get a photo snapped.

After Rochester, we started our journey back west. I slept through the upbound transit through the Welland and was only on watch for one of the 3 stations designated for this graduate student. Her survey plan, which included the deployment of sediment traps in the Spring, was awfully faulty. The traps has no real marker to retrieve them by and predictably we went 0/3 on recovery. She wanted to do a net trawl, but the net for so poorly designed it shredded immediately. Wasting our time, is all we have done for her.

After a quick science team trade off in Detroit, we are headed for Ste. St. Marie and beyond into the last lake of summer survey: Superior.

Michigan, Back Alley dental deals, Huron, the city formerly known as Detroit and pea soup on Erie

This summer survey is surely moving fast!

We flew around Michigan in 4 days before stopping for the night in St. Ignace, a tourist town on the northern side of the Mackinac Bridge. It was here were two very strange things happened. Number one: I walked into a bar and they had the largest TV dedicated to NESN. What? All the others were broadcasting Det v KC, naturally. The second oddity came when Russell, the ordinary seaman, decided that enough was enough with a toothache. He called every dentist in the area before one offered to pull it (that was Russell's wish anyway) for $75 at 9.30pm. Russell showed up at the bar 1 hour later with a bloody mouth full of gauze, a drink order and one less tooth. Bridgework is undoubtedly on the horizon. He's signing Captain up to remove the stitches in the coming days. Should provide mid-cruise entertainment, at the least.

Huron flew by just as fast and we stopped in Detroit for a full night this time. Max's friends came down and took us out to the Greek part of the city...where I saw...less people than I would have thought. Apparently, Mondays are 'stay home days' for (most) bums looking for handouts and citizens of Detroit alike...if a Tiger game were occurring, the city would 'have really been alive' said Detroit residents...I'm not so sure. I agree with Captain, take a look at Detroit/Hiroshima in 1945 and then now and try to guess which one got nuked. Most would guess Detroit.

Once we entered Erie, it was mandated by higher powers (who have indeed, just stepped onboard the ship during our stay in Detroit in a science crew turnover), that we do a nice and nerve wracking Triaxus (remember this character) through a very large algal bloom in the west basin of Erie at 3 m deep in 8m deep water. The water was thick as pea soup (or a 'shot of wheat grass' as the term was by others on the boat) with the plankton. Very cool stuff to be in the middle of, to be sure.