After 2 1/2 weeks on Gan I finally took a day off from work today (Friday). Well, sort of - I got up really early and went to the radar, got my work done, and was off in time to catch breakfast at the hotel. After logging so many hours the past few weeks it's been really nice to relax and spend the day doing fun things instead of work things. I spent the morning reading on the beach and the evening snorkeling on the reef at the resort. In between I went on a long bike ride through all the islands in the atoll. Amazingly, given the recent uptick in rain here in the central Indian ocean, I stayed dry for all 3 hours I was gone (I think that since I had Adam Sobel's bike and Bob Houze's helmet, two big names in tropical meteorology, the weather felt obliged to cooperate). I thought I would make a quick post to share some of my pictures from the day.
First up is the "power plant" for the atoll (group of islands). It's actually just a series of giant gas-powered generators all stored in the same building. We've had some breakfast-table conversations about how much fuel it must consume, reportedly ~75,000 liters per day. Using that rate you can do some back-of-the-envelope calculations to show that their per person daily energy expenses are roughly twice what we have in the US. Makes me wonder what they could do with all that money if they found a more efficient method to produce power.
Nothing special here but I just liked this simple old boat floating in the crystal clear water.
I rode up to the Texas A&M University radar, called SMART-R, which is located about 2 miles north of our radar. Even though I saw this radar in the field on VORTEX-2 it was cool to get up-close and take a look around. To get a clear view they sited the radar on a small sliver of land, which they paid to have developed, surrounded by water. I guess that's cool as long as the dirt doesn't erode away while it's parked there (they're here until March). Even if it wouldn't have been my first choice, it's a creative solution to the blockage problem. SMART-R is a good bit smaller than S-PolKa (C-band instead of S-band for you weather geeks out there). I still think it's a neat engineering feat to mount a radar on a moveable platform.
The next shot is something we've driven by every day and I was happy to be able to stop and get a picture when riding. It's a statue of a lion that has had its face knocked off. The statue isn't that old but right after it was built a group of ultra-conservative Muslims vandalized it. One of the tenets of their religion is that they can't worship idols (look up the Danish cartoon controversy if you're interested in this). I guess they considered the statue an "idol" and destroyed it. Pretty hardcore stuff. There's now a pair of policemen there around the clock until they figure out what to do with it. They didn't seem real keen on me stopping by to look around so I didn't loiter.
The last pic I'll share is just for you, Mom. It seems WOW is now universal.
All in all it's been a very enjoyable, relaxing, much needed day off. I'll be back at it tomorrow (Christmas Eve). We're doing some group Christmasey stuff tomorrow night but I'll save that for what I think will be an entire post about Christmas in the tropics. It's starting to hit me that I won't be home for Christmas; but I have an amazing, understanding family, and skype, so I will survive. For the record though I think Superbowl nachos at the Panthers game should count as Joy and Jared's Christmas Eve present. Merry Christmas everyone.
Cheers,
Casey
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