Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Vortex2 - Day 1: "Hurry up and wait"

So my "Day 1" review will actually begin last Friday (6/5). When I showed up to work that day I still had no clue when I'd be meeting up with the crew. I just knew the change was supposed to happen that weekend. Later that day we found out we'd be heading up north somewhere sunday morning. Good, still some semblance of a weekend...and I still had time to pack!

Saturday morning I woke up to an e-mail saying a Monday departure was more likely
 but to be ready anyway. So after a bike ride around Lake Hefner and a BBQ with friends, Saturday night found me unpacked, unprepared and unsure of when I was leaving.

I woke up at 6am to see if I had gotten word. Still nothing. Finally at 11am an e-mail comes through saying a Monday departure is definite. Awesome. Another day with Mike. We spent Sunday at the OKC Zoo and Science Museum. I finally packed late Sunday night. 

After getting to work Monday I still had no clue when we were leaving or where we were going. Was it Wichita? Salina? Finally around 11, we found out we'd be meeting them in Salina and we left Norman around 12pm. 

I drove with Peter, who is an "IT guy" for OU. The drive was a brief 4 hours. It was really weird driving through Wichita, but maybe I'll stop there later this week. When we arrived there really wasn't much to do. Half of the group had laundry and the other half was too worn out to go exploring. We had dinner at a steak place called Tuscon's and we enjoyed watching the locals marvel at one of the NSSL probes which has instrumentation all over the roof and looks as though it has encountered more than a couple severe hail cores. After dinner we came back to freshen up a bit before hitting the bars. And by bars I mean the bar a
t the Quality Inn which had $3 liter beers and Karaoke. Wow. There are some things I didn't ever think I'd do. That was one of them. It was great though. I met a lot of new people on the project and got to hear some really bad singing from Salina locals.

The rest of the week is expected to be quite active. More later.

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