Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Posting Again

I finally have my internet back in my house. It's been an interesting few days.
Tonight, we missed out on 2 events. We couldn't see the lunar eclipse because the moon hadn't risen here yet and it was cloudy. We were also wondering if we could see the satellite being shot down from here, but since it was cloudy, we couldn't see that either (I don't know if we could have anyway?)

On Sunday we had a small earthquake here. I thought someone was pushing down trees with some heavy equipment in my yard. It only lasted a couple of seconds and didn't do any damage. It must have been less than a 2.5 because it wasn't registering on the USGS website which logs anything bigger than that (we have a seismic monitoring station on the island). The tsunami warning people called to check on us though. We weren't in any danger from a tsunami because it would have started here and gone away. The big island has them all the time too, but our undersea mountain is a few million years older so it's a lot more stable here.

We also got an unplanned cargo flight. A 737 on its way to Saipan wanted to stop by and visit and refuel, so our airport manager (Ben) asked if they would mind bringing a few things. They brought 15,000 pounds of our supplies. As it turned out, they could only stay here for a couple hours in the dark. It was really amazing that they did that for us when they knew ahead of time that they couldn't stay. They did get some T-shirts and hats at least.

All that was interesting, but not really anything that I could take pictures of, so here's some that I took of other things.

The albatrosses have been getting stuck in our old landing craft. They can't get out because they need to run and lift off and there isn't enough room in there. We have to go by and get them out every few days.

An albatross made a nest on the path through the naupaka bushes. This red-tailed tropic bird was trying to get past and the albatross wouldn't let it. They squawked at each other for a bit, then the tropic bird went around on the far side of the chick.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pete,

My two sons and I tried to view the lunar eclipse in LA at around 10:00PM last night. Unfortunatley, cloud cover kept us from seeing anything. Glad to hear Ben is taking care of business. I know all of our air travel is much safer because of his efforts.

Steve O

Peggy said...

Good on ya for rescuing the stupider albatross on the island. I bet the never thank you for the rescue and try to beat you with wings etc.

Anonymous said...

Pete Our neighbor in RV park called us out to see Eclipse here in Benson Az. Nice and clear except for light clouds as was finishing. To bad you were too far over the horizon to view. Midway usually has great sky watching with few lites to interfere.Also great radio skip. we use to listen to west coast radio and sometimes chicago. Midway is a great place to be!! John D