A cold Week.

So, this week I was up in Barrie doing field work. Annual landfill monitoring. Fun stuff. Only problem was that it is November which corresponds to cold cold rain.

Monday I had to be in Barrie for 7 am. Which meant up at 4:30 and out the door by 5. No biggie because of the time change (insert rolling eyes here). Oh well. That was only the first part of it. It was pretty cool on Monday. A little rainy too. Luckily no snow yet though. It still took me a bit of time to defrost when I got back to my hotel room. 9.5 hours in the field.

Tuesday the Snow came, and so did the wetness. Another cold, miserable 9.5 hours of field work. I seriously considered quitting on Tuesday. And I cried. I had to bail out 130 Litres of water out of a very deep well (60 m?). The bailer was attached to a very light weight string which kept getting stuck to the side of the well and it would take me 10 minutes to get the stupid bailer to the water level. Stupid well. Anyhow, after being frustrated, cold, and wet for 2.5 hours, I had bailed exactly 45 liters of water from the well. Luckily the field parameters stabilized and we figured that was good enough. Man. I was upset with that. Another 9.25 cold cold hours.

Wednesday – was wet. And cold. Again. Woke up Wednesday morning to 4 inches of snow, and they got another 2 inches while we were working. Now. I love snow. And normally I would prefer snow to rain. The problem is, when it is 0 snow is wet and melts and gets you soaking wet. I think my toes were boarderline frostbite most of the day. Another 9.5 hours of cold wet field work.

Thursday – More snow, more wind, more cold and wet. Although, I did go out on Wednesday night and invested in some warmer socks. Luckily it was the last day and when we were done at 5 pm (10 hours of work) I got to drive home from Barrie in a snow storm (luckily the snow wasn’t sticking when you got 10 minutes south of Barrie, so the roads weren’t all that bad.)

So yes, 4 days of ~10 hours in the field with a maximum temperature of 5C and a min of -3C. Rain, snow, wind. Fun times. I’m very thankful to be in our wam (?) office today!

So yeah. I made it through this week without quitting my job, so I think that is quite the accomplishment. I haven’t had to work outside in the winter since my first co-op term, so I think I need to build up a bit of a tougher skin.