Seriously. What a freakin' day. (Warning to potential readers, this is epically long, because it was an incredibly eventful day. So read at your own peril!)
Thanks to being awake from 2-3:40, I overslept my alarm this morning and ended up rushing off at 7 to pick up A and get up to Koffler as early as possible. That meant heading out wearing only a t-shirt, thin hoodie and my winter coat and thin gloves instead of my thick woolen ones which were in my other coat. At least I had the sense to awkwardly hop into sweatpants over my jeans, which saved my knees from the devastation the rest of me took today. It was -11 this morning in Mississauga, which meant at least -15 at the field site. I ended up missing the pre-dawn water potential measurements, not that they were much different from midday anyway since October.
Well, we might have made the water potential measurements, only I ended up in a ditch in the side of the road, because my brain was so fuzzy from lack of sleep that I drove clean past several turnoffs on my way to the field site. The first one was just at the entrance to Newmarket so no biggie, a U-turn which involved some scary slush sliding, which I was able to control. No problem! No sweat!
I should have taken that as an omen, though, because not long afterwards I sleep-drove past the KSR entrance, realized my error ten feet beyond and then, as I backed my way so that I could make the turn in, the car slid on ice/slush again and went right down into the ditch next to the road. Great. Tried to drive out. No luck. Tried to drive left. No luck. Right would have put us back in the ditch. Ultimately the two back wheels were just buried hopelessly in a snowbank and spinning. So I called S, the KSR manager, who said he wasn't on site, but tried to walk me through some suggestions. No luck. I called the boss to see if we had any membership with CAA to get a tow truck over. No luck. S texted me back with a door code to one of the guest houses to at least get us indoors and not lose sensation in all extremities. I didn't check the temperature again as I was conserving my phone battery (which I'd stupidly forgotten the charger for, in my delirious rush to get to the site), but it was so cold that within a couple of minutes my fingers were already numb beneath my gloves. And I tend to have good circulation in my hands.
We headed over to the cabin while I called CAA anyway, because all the other tow companies in the area that I googled were missing reviews (honestly though, who reviews towing companies, clearly my mind wasn't functioning at all at that point). Then I remembered, of course! I have AAA membership, thanks to the amazing foresight of my dad. And on the off-chance of it working up here, I asked if my membership would work here. It does. We were saved! A tow truck was summarily deployed and we just had to sit tight in the cozy house for an hour.
Still, the situation looked dire. The towing was now solved, but as I stared at the unplowed entrance to KSR through the cabin window I didn't know if we could actually get to the plots. There were lots of snowy hills going in and I didn't trust myself not to end up in another snowbank. I was especially worried about bringing A along. I knew that if necessary I could strip my equipment down to the barebones that I needed and carry it in, but I didn't know if she could handle it. Ultimately I felt guilty that I was asking too much because it was crazy enough to push myself to that extent, much less a relatively green field assistant. But as I voiced my uncertainty A, who is an indefatigable optimist, said that we'd put in so much effort already. She is so admirably gung ho about everything.
So she played games on her phone for a bit while I sorted out our plan of action in my head and we chatted and then our truck-driving savior arrived and towed us out. I got back into the car, and I slowly turned it around with A outside watching for any oncoming cars, and then we slooooowly headed into KSR, inching down the snow-laden path, wincing at every bump. Nearly had a heart attack when we went over the speedbump which I had clean forgotten about. But we made it to the upper parking lot, where we unloaded and organized the equipment we needed for our measurements.
I never realized until today how luxurious it really was to have a car that we could drive all the way right up to our arrays. To be able to bring extra "just in case" things and carry everything in their proper cases and so on. I changed the consumables for the Licor, then started loading: Backpack with my laptop, laptop charger, Licor head, Licor cable, N2 compartment, tripod, extension cord, power strip. Shoulder bag contained food, water, hot water thermos, a toolbox, spare N2 cartridges and the Licor repair/spare parts baggie. Then the Licor body in one hand and the dry shipper canister in the other. A carried a nitrogen tank, scissors, gloves, viewing lens and hose connector in her backpack, and by hand the pressure bomb and the styrofoam box of freezing test sample packets. Fully laden and with me feeling rather like a donkey, we headed out.
It was such a beautiful, sunny day. As soon as we started walking I just felt my spirits lighten. We'd made it in. We'd make it. I ended up having to wrap my scarf and hat about my hands because my gloves were too thin, and we had to stop many times so that I could rewrap them and try to wring circulation back into my frozen fingers, but eventually we made it. We were horrendously late, as it was 11 by the time we reached the plots, but I had done extra measurements during the last measuring day so I needed to complete only 5 at minimum to have a set of replicates. We set up our equipment and located and bagged our target seedlings in the snowy plots. I set up a music station to keep our momentum and morale up with my laptop at the power cord junction. Unfortunately the local network was down again so we were stuck with the only music in my dropbox: an odd mix of Francis Cabrel, Arctic Monkeys and crap from my music journal. Poor A having to sit through about an hour of my blithely sawing away on a violin to my eccentric music collection. Haha.
Measuring went relatively slowly. My first gas exchange measurement was delayed as I needed to collect samples and take a photo at noon for J, as part of another project. Then as the Licor warmed up I fiddled with various routers trying to get the network to work again, which meant running between the plot and the gazebo a couple of times. Realized I forgot one box with the tubes for my samples up at the car, but then A's pressure bomb started to leak anyway so we decided to hoof it up to the car to switch her pressure bomb and for me to get my box. Someone had been to the lab in the meantime, leaving nice tracks on the snowy road for us to follow, so I moved the car down to the lab parking lot as well so we'd have less distance to trek.
We switched our gear and went back to the plots. A continued to complete the water potential measurements while I ran about taking soil moisture, checking on the Licor/measuring gas exchange, and sampling. The sun warmed the ambient temperature just above 0, which made it much easier for our hands to function. At my 4th target tree (plot 12... the bane of my winter coats) I unbent to move the Licor out of the plot and smelled the scent of burning... Yep. Did it again. Burnt a hole in the back of my coat, almost the same as I did with its sorry predecessor. Feathers exploded out the back and flew everywhere and I cackled and told A I was turning into a chicken and we had a good laugh. I tried running about without it on but it was too bitterly cold so instead I put a temporary duct tape patch on it and went back to work.
After I had achieved my 5 target trees I considered attempting the next 10 but I knew we'd never make it before dark and A was running very late with the water potential measurements, since the pressure bomb's rubber gasket was very hard to tighten due to the cold, so I decided to scrap the third trees and instead help A with taking freezing samples. Then we loaded ourselves back up, with even more than we had come in with this time (I had an extra 25ft extension cord to lug and A took on the samples box, so we swapped so that she was carrying the dry shipper and I took the heavier pressure bomb) and pushed our way up to the lab. As a result we made it out of the plots right at 4pm, while it was still bright enough to see and while the temperature was still not terribly harsh. To celebrate we went to Mr. Greek's where we relaxed and chatted and warmed up and ate good hot food and then we headed back to campus, were shocked at the utter lack of snow on campus, unloaded, finished various tasks in the lab (me: downloading data, uploading photos, setting up the Licor to dry overnight, needle scanning, unloading samples; A: setting up the Thermotron, taking pre-freezing measurements), and then we finally went home.
Finally!
I am in my bed, warm from my shower, tingling all over and exhausted and writing this long epic of a day because it is still too ridiculous for me to even believe. That if the same had happened to me a year ago, or even just a few weeks ago, that if I'd lost my best friend and my love and what had been the best thing in my life up to that point just the day before and consequently been completely sleep deprived and as a result gotten into ridiculous and embarrassing accidents all over the place with A watching, and had to choose between working under such brutally cold conditions and just saying fuck it and giving up, without a doubt I would have just given up. And probably would never have been able to look A in the eye again without feeling like a total chump. Maybe I wouldn't have even made it out of bed, I would have just texted A that we were cancelling. In that case I would have probably shut myself up in my house and cried and given my boss some pathetic excuse the next day for failing to execute on schedule and felt awful and bitter and useless. But I didn't! I didn't fail! Not this time!
I am definitely getting better. I can't believe it. I am going to survive through Thanksgiving and through the conference and through my trip to BC and all the way to New Year's and beyond and I am going to make it!
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