Carbon Monoxide!?

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Weird. The smoke alarm went off, not incredibly odd when I am using the fireplace, but it wasn't the smoke detector. It was the CO alarm. I was totally surprised. It had never gone off as long as I have had one, over many many years. Yep, after resetting it a few times. It was getting a reading over 200 ppm CO. When I took it downstairs I got a reading near 300 ppm. I started getting light headed at this point. After thinking maybe the furnace heat exchanger failed and puzzling around a bit I figured out what happened. As part of the huge winter storm that recently covered almost half of the US, we lost our electricity. So, being well prepared, I rolled out the generator and started doing what I normally do. The generator (although it was completely outside) was creating CO to get in the house. Using the fireplace draft (and possibly other leaks) the whole house created a vacuum around the seal of the basement garage door. After the CO got into the house the forced air heat...
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Today is Saturday (I had to check my watch). I am giving a tour to 14 people off a cruise ship this morning. The price of their cruise was $30 thousand dollars a seat. They are very interested in Antarctica and they are supposedly interested in meeting someone like me and they will have many questions. I have many questions for myself too. I am having some good reflection of why I am doing this. It is definately not in the path of least resistance to have embarked on the adventure. I am reading and reflecting.

I climbed crater hill yesterday to get to some flaky equipment. It was a work out for my ankle but today it feels like it made it stronger.

The first picture is a dive hut out on the sea ice. It gives a good scale for me of how large the outside shots are. The second picture I mistook as a mumified seal in the dry valleys. The mumified seals are in the area here. They are quite a mystery of how they got to where they are. They don't rot because of the cold, dry and lack of other organisms to scavange off the remains (both baterium and larger). The third picture is at Lake Hoare in the dry valleys and finally a shot from the top of Mt 1882. I swear I heard female vocal music over my helmet intercom when we entered Taylor Valley yesterday. The converstaions are often quite good in the helo.

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Carbon Monoxide!?

-
Image
Weird. The smoke alarm went off, not incredibly odd when I am using the fireplace, but it wasn't the smoke detector. It was the CO alarm. I was totally surprised. It had never gone off as long as I have had one, over many many years. Yep, after resetting it a few times. It was getting a reading over 200 ppm CO. When I took it downstairs I got a reading near 300 ppm. I started getting light headed at this point. After thinking maybe the furnace heat exchanger failed and puzzling around a bit I figured out what happened. As part of the huge winter storm that recently covered almost half of the US, we lost our electricity. So, being well prepared, I rolled out the generator and started doing what I normally do. The generator (although it was completely outside) was creating CO to get in the house. Using the fireplace draft (and possibly other leaks) the whole house created a vacuum around the seal of the basement garage door. After the CO got into the house the forced air heat...
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