12 hours 'til takeoff!

Today's blog brought to you by:
Margarita Marinova
Planetary Scientist
http://www.pavilionlake.com/information/contributors/marinova.htm

Yes, tomorrow I leave for Pavilion Lake: 12 hours to be precise. Hopefully with all my instruments ready, my gear packed, and my head still in its place. How busy I am is easy to tell - it's directly correlated with the number of post-it notes on my desk. And these days I look like those office pranks where they cover someone's desk with post-its!

:) Not quite as classy as Bekah's kitcken table, but gets the job done :)

But today I had to do a rather fun TO DO from my myriad of post-it notes - going into the pool to do a little diving refresher with my advisor Oded. Now you may wonder how a 15ft deep pool is any practice for diving at 60 or 90ft in a lake, but it's actually quite helpful and important to review skills and emergency procedures in this rather safe environment (and the fact that today it was 41C (106F) is certainly another good reason). After reviewing procedures while on the pool deck, we splashed in the water and practiced emergency buddy breathing and emergency ascents, as well as staying neutrally buoyant - that is, being able to float in the water without going up or down or touching anything. Being able to float like this in the water is especially important for us because at the bottom of Pavilion Lake is a find powder that if stirred at all becomes a big cloud which means no visibility! And when we need to examine an interesting structure we have to be able to steadily float beside it.

After about an hour of practicing diving in the pool, we felt ready to tackle Pavilion Lake in a few days. That meant the fun TO DO was done, and it was on to a less exciting task - packing. For most trips I can pack in 15-30min, but packing for an expedition is quite different. For one, unlike in the pool where a swimming suit and basic dive equipment was all we needed, in Pavilion Lake we mostly do "dry suit" diving. That means that we put on suits which are waterproof, and then at the hands and neck there are tight rubber seals to keep the water out (think of a baby onesie - but for an adult - with the rubber seals at the wrists and neck). Dry suits are a great idea for diving the cold Pavilion Lake water - it's about 6C (43F) at the bottom - since in water a person loses heat about 4 times faster! But it also makes packing much harder, because not only do we have to pack the suit, boots and hood, but the suit itself is not warm - it's all the winter clothing you can wear underneath that makes it nice and comfy. Which means that with at least 40C (104F) in my room, I was packing for what looked like an Arctic expedition - long underwear, fleecy pants, sweaters, warm shirts. Then with all of that carefully packed and double-checked, I could move on to packing clothing more appropriate for the sunny and warm above-water environment.

Yes! Packing is now done! Now off to deal with all the remaining post-it notes. Can't wait to get to Pavilion!