Carrying out a seismic experiment requires many talents. One of them is patience. After traveling all day on Wednesday, the volunteers sat around most of the day waiting for the equipment to arrive at the instrument center. The delivery was scheduled for 4:30PM, so we took the opportunity to get a good safety and general briefing from Dan, learn few things about the logistics of the ENAM experiment, the scientific goals of the project, and the geology of the region.
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| Dan briefing the volunteers ahead of a day of deployment |
A few people were less patient than others and snuck out of the room after the first two hours (two hours!!) and took the opportunity to show off their new truck.
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| Steve showing off his new truck used for carrying explosives to shot points |
Perhaps this is a good time to clarify that Dan, Hannah and I were preceded in North Carolina and Virginia by the UTEP seismic source team, composed by Steve Harder, Galen Kaip, Ashley Nauer, Afshin Gholamy and Felix Ziwu. The source team task has been to drill and load the explosives at the shot points ahead of us along both seismic lines, and they have been doing so for the past month (more on the drilling and shot point loading in another post).
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| Explosive science! |
After HOURS of continental rifting conundrums, the welcome sound of an eighteen-wheeler maneuvering in the back loading dock of the center gets our attention (and gains us our freedom!)
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| The instruments arrive. |
The equipment has finally arrived, signaling the start of the clock of our experiment. From now on our schedule is locked in and our days will be spent flagging stations, deploying instruments and recovering them along the two profiles. Wish us luck!
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| This is what shipping 720 RT125 (a.k.a "Texans") instruments and seismic paraphernalia looks like. |
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| Finally some action! unloading the pallets and moving boxes to the lab |
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| More box moving |
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| Finally getting the gist of it |
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