My last days on DG

I left Diego Garcia a few days ago and had some mixed feelings about it. I met a few great people that I will almost certainly never see again, which is a bummer. I also had just got to the point where I felt at home. I knew where everything was and how everything worked. I got to know the people who ran the dining facilities and the marina. I knew all the rules about what you could wear and when you could go places. I knew when mongolian grill night and make your own pizza night happened at each of the restaurants. But like all good things, it had come to an end.

Every day for the last few days on DG I went to the marina and rented a "stand-up paddle-board" or SUP. I have actually seen people doing this in the past at the beach and then riding waves back in, but I always thought it looked kind of awkward. My friend DK in Western Australia has been doing this a bit lately and it sounded like fun so I tried it out. I really enjoyed it. They let you go about a mile off-shore, and there's plenty of shallow places where you can stop and look down at the fish and corral. The great thing about SUP is that you can get a decent core workout, but it can also be really relaxing if you want it to be. Here's some video I took with my GoPro

Another cool thing that happened at the end of my stay was that we got a tour of the GEODSS site, which monitors stuff in orbit for the military (mostly geostationary stuff). The telescopes they have there are amazing. They are mostly automated while they are scanning the sky for any changes in satellite orbits. They didn't let us take pictures of the cool stuff, but here's a photo from outside the facility.

I was also pretty happy to move on from the island. I was tired of slow internet and crappy food. As soon as we got into Singapore it instantly felt like I was travelling again. It was so easy to feel at home in Diego Garcia. You never had to worry about converting between currencies or whether it was worth it to ship stuff back home or what the ATM fees would be. Now we are in Bali, bartering with cab drivers and zig-zagging on a scooter through congested streets.

Here's a picture of the 3 people on our shift; Steph, Steve Cohn and myself:

All-in-all it was a great experience for me and a great thing for my career studying the weather and climate in the Tropics! I guess there's a small chance I could find myself back on Diego Garcia for a future field project. Maybe I'll even have a bunch of grad students I can send out there too!