Saturday 22 August 2009

Too sick for the mountain

I hate it when this happens and it's been rare during my career, but I was supposed to be preparing for an observing run on Mauna Kea this evening and had to call in sick instead. There seems to be some virus going around at the moment that has affected people at work and perhaps one or two others that work at the summit. I'm running out of pictures for my blog and so the blow is a double one!

My shift is being covered by someone but I feel so guilty about this - I knew ahead of time that I'd spend a holiday weekend on the mountain so was prepared ahead of time, but now someone has to go up at short notice while I spend the weekend in bed.

It's no surprise that some of us summit staff get sick every so often, we spend nights in a small room at 14,000-feet with visitors from all over the world. We live on a small island in the middle of the Pacific which viri have a hard time finding without a modern form of transport, so we're all a little susceptible to those bugs when they do actually get here.

5 comments:

Zuzana said...

Hope you feel better soon, I was home sick for two days last week but am fine now.;)) So this too shall pass.;)
Have a good Saturday never the less.;)

Hilary said...

Sorry to hear you're not feeling well. I hope you're up and snapping shots again before too long.

Beep said...

I'm very sorry you are so sick...I hope that you get over the bug quickly. The picture here is gorgeous. Very captivating.

Tom said...

Thanks, all! I was really looking forward to this trip to the summit as I don't have another scheduled for couple of months. No new summit pictures until October. Sigh.

Tom

Keera Ann Fox said...

Funny to see that you have more red leaves than we do - for now. Get well soon!