Greetings from the Great White North

The Arctic Ocean is behind me

I flew into Deadhorse Monday afternoon. As the plane dropped down out of the clouds and you could see the barren landscape for the first time, I was seized with terror. It took me a few minutes to figure out why I was so afraid. I realized that with all my world-traveling, I had never really been far from civilization (albeit Japan and Korea were not civilizations I was familiar with). For the first time, I was really far away and I felt like little William Thatcher wondering how I would find my way home. The wind was blowing and the temperature hovered around 17 as I left the plane and walked to the bus that would take me to the Prudhoe Bay Operations Center (PBOC), which would be my home for two weeks. It's a dry cold...at least that's what they say. I'm happy to have my coat and hat and gloves and warm boots.

The saying up here is that "the odds are good, but the goods are odd." There are few women and about 8,000 men...grizzly, gnarled, leathery men. From what I've seen, an attractive woman could make a fortune up here because most of the women have been road hard and put up wet. I decided when I came that I wasn't even going to try and fit in - I'm a towny, not a Sloper - and no matter what I did I wasn't going to look or act like a local. So I decided to go the opposite direction and I brought all my jewelry and scarves and perfume and I was determined to have success being ME! So far, it's working. I get lots of stares but everyone I've spoken to has been very nice and polite and helpful.

I'm in a room with a suite-mate; a young girl named Danielle who works days and takes a shower at 5am every day. We share a bathroom of sorts; a toilet on one end of the hall, a shower on the other and a sink in the middle. A SHOWER. There's no tub. I took my first shower in a year. Our individual rooms come off of the shared hallway. There are no locks on any of the doors; I have no TV in my room and no internet access except in common sitting rooms. The first night I lay in bed and read a page or two of a book I forgot I packed and wondered if I could survive for two weeks. I quickly fell asleep and slept like a rock.

Things are getting really white

At 6am the first day, we drove an hour in the dark to the site for our first presentation. I said it was like the line from the Polar Express, "I could see lights twinkling in the distance - it looked like the lights of an ocean liner sailing on a sea of ice," except it wasn't the North Pole; it was Flow Station 3.  When we got there, the management told us to reschedule and go home - they were too busy to talk to us. Not a very good start. So we took the opportunity to drive around a bit...hence the photo. That's the Arctic Ocean behind me. There's no land between me and the North Pole. You can't tell it from the picture, but I have on my Halloween scarf and pumpkin earrings! It has been snowing constantly for three days and things are getting really white. They are predicting a "blow" on Saturday and I'm told that we'll be lucky to see two feet in front of us. I haven't seen a caribou or a polar bear, but we have seen several red fox. I told Tim, the man I'm traveling with, that this place could be an effective prison because there's no place to escape to.

There are a lot of rules up here:

• you must put "grippers" on over your shoes every time you go outside - sort of like rubber cleats
• you have to put booties on over your shoes when you come back in because your shoes are wet and they don't what you to track wet and dirt all over the place
• you must wear protective glasses when you ride in a car
• you must hold the hand rail when walking up the steps
• don't linger too long in the cafeteria because there's limited tables
• you need to use hand sanitizer before getting in the cafeteria line
• don't make any noise when walking through the sleeping wings as the night shift is sleeping
• and on and on

I'm trying my best to watch and mimic others.

We gave our first set of presentations today and I have to say that all went well...but it was a non-union facility. Tim spent 30 years up here on the North Slope, and he calls the Union sites "the dark side." If I'm honest, I'd have to say I'm a little nervous about presenting to the Union guys - - good thing that's not for a few days.

And lastly, a word about the food. It's plentiful. Hot coffee, hot soup, and snacks available 24 hours a day. Breakfast has EVERYTHING. Dinner is hearty - meat, vegetables, potatoes, salads, pudding - and a frozen yogurt dispenser. So far I'm doing pretty well, sticking to my meat and veggies diet but the frozen yogurt is looking really good. I can hear Stone now, "7 degrees, and the ice cream is selling like hot cakes! We close down the ice cream shoppe at the beach by September."