July 4, 2008 Celebrate!

Polar Date July 4,2008

How does a remote science field camp celebrate a major holiday?  In the same fashion as most cities, towns and villages, with special food, a parade and some fireworks.  The fireworks were just sound and a little smoke, since no one would see them in the sunny sky anyway.  The food was delicious, filet mignon and/or lobster tail, duchess potatoes, Caesar salad, steamed mixed vegetables, rolls and butter and strawberry shortcake for dessert.   

After dinner (7 p.m.) lab teams scrambled to begin the work to create a float or marching unit complete with costumes for the parade that would begin at 9:00.  Each lab marches or rides their float around the lab area, then performs for the kitchen crew judges at the dining hall. The lab where I work (Lab 2) chose a theme based on Ghostbusters, called "CarbonBusters”.  It was a wild two hours as everyone ran around camp looking for items that could be used such as cardboard, duct tape, spray paint and other common materials.  Here’s what the Ghostbustermobile looked like when finished.

After looking up the original Ghostbustermobile, cardboard, a bucket, a lot of duct tape and spray paint was used to trick out the Bandit for the parade.

Since we were the Carbonbusters, we had 4 people dressed as carbon atoms and 7 people dressed as oxygen molecules.  They would bond together to form 3 molecules Carbon Dioxide and one molecule of Carbon Monoxide.  Here are the oxygen atoms.

These free oxygen atoms will soon use their bungee cords to bond with the 4 Carbon atoms.

 There were several Carbonbusters (the people in the back of the truck) and a carbonbuster specialist, pictured below.

Donie poses in her costume as the mastermind of the Carbonbusters. her roll was to direct the Carbonbusters to destroy the excess Carbon Dioxide running around camp.

It was a lot of fun to make the float and the costumes and it was also fun to see everyone’s creativity expressed through the floats, costumes and skits. I expected nothing less, I don’t know what the mean or median IQ is around here, but it’s got to be way up there!

Lab 6 created a large dragon from a big blue tarp and lots of flag and duct tape. Caution tape was used as the tail and two boxes were spray painted pink formed the head. This was the winner of the "Best Marching Unit" award.

After the parade and skits were over, we posed for the official Lab 2 picture.  

The entire group posed for a picture in from of the Carbonbuster mobile after the parade and skit were finished. Dr. Peter Ray is in the orange jumpsuit, Dr. Bret-Harte is standing in front with the whiteboard, I'm to the left and slightly behind Donie.

All in all, the celebration was a great success with many smiling and relaxed scientists, grad students, undergrad students, camp staff and one PolarTrec teacher.

 Signing off from Toolik Lake, and remember, "There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew”. ~Marshall McLuhan, 1964