Storm Dancers

I will now continue with the posts I promised to write about my trip to Greenland!
Things here have been crazy.......but that's another post!

   Anyway, I was supposed to leave Greenland on December 30, the day before our 5th anniversary. But you know what? I was having so much fun eating at the chow hall and playing video games and watching Oprah and being with David that I just didn't want to leave!  When I turned on the weather channel slide show and saw that a storm was expected on Wednesday/Thursday, I started to entertain the hope that maybe, just maybe, I would get stuck there for a few extra days.
   At first, it was just a thought..."wouldn't that be fun if the storm came and we ended up spending our anniversary together?" and then, after the deputy commander of the base said, "You're supposed to leave on Wednesday? I don't know if that's going to happen!" an obsession was born. The slides on the weather channel said the same thing as they had before, but I was certain that if Lt. Col. Wigg said that, it was because he had some extra information that hadn't been shared on the weather channel yet. Suddenly, I was checking the weather like a fiend. I started telling people, "Oh, I'm not leaving on Wednesday after all. I think I'd prefer to leave on Saturday." (Well, that was mostly because the chow hall was going to be serving the soup I really liked on Friday and I wanted to stay for that!) David told me that the sign that the storm was coming was rising temperatures. I watched the temperature like a hawk! I got excited everytime it got just one degree warmer.  When we were outside, I told David we needed to do a "Storm Dance". He complied and did a storm dance. I shouted at the sky, a la Ted Mosby in the How I Met Your Mother episode "Come On", in which he needs to make it rain. I needed to make it storm.

So I did.

The weather started really getting worse on Tuesday, but we were still in storm condition Alpha (storm expected within 24 hours). There were a couple of times when David said, "I can't believe we're still in Alpha!"  On Tuesday afternoon, we went to the terminal to drop off my luggage  Someone there said that they weren't sure that the plane would even come. But, still, they took the luggage, so I tried not to get too confident in my storm-starting skills. We asked what time I would need to be there on Wednesday and they said to keep checking channel 53. That's the airport channel. As nothing was changing on the airport channel, and we were still stuck in Alpha, I started losing confidence. That night, I created a storm dance and performed it for a full minute. When we woke up in the morning, my flight was still listed on the airport channel. I was sad...and I felt so defeated! We went out somewhere (breakfast? or maybe to see if the Danish Police Inspector was there to stamp my passport?) and as we were walking out the door, we heard the announcement that we had moved into storm condition Bravo.  I felt a tiny glimmer of hope that maybe we'd get put into Charlie before I left, then I'd be stuck in the building! By now (I think) the airpot channel had posted that my plane would be delayed about an hour or two. David could barely see while driving. But still, my plane was scheduled to come, and we weren't going into Charlie. David couldn't believe it... and I started to get scared. Originally, I only wanted to stay because I wanted to stay. By this point, I wanted to stay because I was afraid to leave! The winds were crazy and there was just tons of snow blowing around... I'm not a nervous flyer, but I started to freak out a little at the thought of taking off in that weather.
   Just before we left for the terminal for the delayed flight, I turned on the airport channel... and saw a wonderful thing: "The AirBus has been diverted to Sondrestrom. Updates will be posted here as they are available." I was so excited!!! But not as excited as I was a little while later when the airport channel said, "The AirBus has returned to Copenhagen and will not be coming to Thule today." I was just thrilled!!! I was practically shouting, "WE DID IT!! WE DID IT!!"

    And, then, the best thing of all was that we still were not in Charlie! So we were still able to get to the chow hall for the most delicious lunch of the week... stir fry! In the early evening, we went to the post office to help pitch mail and we turned on the airport channel and saw that my plane wouldn't be coming for me until Saturday the 2nd! We went to the club for wings and everyone knew I'd be happy with the storm coming! We made just enough storm come to prevent me from leaving, but not to keep us locked up on David's favorite eating-day of the week!

This is us @ 11pm, 1 hour before our anniversary and 3 hours before S.C. Charlie.

    We finally went into Charlie at about 0200 while we were sleeping. We were stuck inside for 36 hours, so we had no choice but to spend our entire anniversary together! We ate microwave soup for lunch and oven pizza for dinner.  We played games, watched movies, and just enjoyed being together! We watched the storm through the window, marvelled at our storm-inducing powers,  and stayed up until 1 in the morning so we could countdown to 2010 with Ryan Seacrest. And promptly fell asleep at midnight and 30 seconds, New  York time.