Important things I’ve learned in the past month (caution—many references to urine follow):
- Active helicopter rotors are terrifying, and one should abandon all shame and just duck the whole time you’re near them.
- If one is, for instance, in theory, pouring one’s pee bottle into a container in high winds, one would do best to stand upwind from said pour.
- Rotating between boots every two or three days lets you mix up blister locations.
- Canned fruit is much better than no fruit.
- A pee bottle with a frozen-on lid can be easily unstuck with two good whacks on a rock.
- If you do not wear head covering while near a landing 212 Helo, your hair will be irrevocably swimming in fine sand.
- Unlike in normal life, a change of pants is more necessary than a change of shirt, because apparently my armpits emit no odor in the cold?
- Helo pilots and technicians are surprisingly not arrogant despite their awesome jobs, n = 6 or so.
- Never go outside in a windstorm without goggles.
- Never allow a full pee bottle to freeze. If a half-full pee bottle freezes, it takes approximately four re-uses to remove the frozen material.
- You didn’t actually lose the thing you’re looking for, it’s merely in one of Big Red’s many many pockets.
- Any gift in the field, even something so seemingly small as a cluster of apples from Rosalind at Crary IT, is the best and most gratefully received gift you’ve ever gotten.
- After a week with your camp using pee bottles, just assume that everything is covered in urine and then get over it. It’s sterile, right?
Ok, that’s enough of that. I’m sure more urine talk will occur in the future.
Rachel having a moment after receiving fresh fruit from Rosalind.