Thursday 18 September 2008

Universal time


It's just gone 02:15 universal time; that's 4:15am Hawaiian standard time, or way past bedtime. The constellation Orion is almost overhead, a sure sign winter is approaching. The sun rises in another 105 minutes when we'll leave and brave the treacherous summit road to HP and breakfast!

This is a difficult time of the night, concentration is difficult and it's easy to close one's eyes and drift off, but there's still work to do. Fortunately it's still summer so the nights aren't as long as they could be, it's a mere 13-hour shift tonight. Come the winter, they'll be 14-hours long and would be longer were it not for our safety rules limiting staff and visitors to a maximum of 14-hours at the summit in any 24-hour period. Thanks for small wonders!

It's been a beautiful night and a very productive one. We'll drive down feeling very satisfied.

No comments: