Hale Pōhaku

Well.

Here I am, in my own little room at Hale Pōhaku. I'm here on Mauna Kea for the first time as more of a visitor, than as someone with things to do and places to be. Well, I do have things to do, but I also have worlds more free time than I've ever had up here before. It's kind of strange -- I hardly know what to do with myself.

Isn't it cute?

It's really nice being up here. With the sun out, the wind blowing across the mountain's flanks reminds me of the prairie wind in Nebraska, a memory for which I have an especial fondness. I was startled earlier by a strange sound coming from outside my window, which I discovered to be emanating from a pair of Francolinus erckelii (Erckel's francolins) wandering by.

The four of us who came up -- Dr. Takamiya, myself, and two more astronomy students working with her -- got here about one `o clock. After we checked into our personal, hotel-like rooms in the Hale Pōhaku dorms, I realized I had absolutely no responsibilities until dinner time. I thought about doing a little hiking, but ended up resting in preparation for tonight. We're going to try and get a ride up to the Subaru telescope with the astronomers going up this evening, not to oberve (that's tomorrow night), but to spend a few hours up there getting acclimated to the high altitude and lack of oxygen.

Well, it's nearly dinner time, so I need to head off and bulk up on some calories. My one complaint with my room is that the thermostat seems to be incapable of raising the temperature to a comfortable level, so I'm going to be burning a lot of calories tonight. (I'll measure the temperature tonight with my watch thermometer and see what it is.)