We'd lava to stay, but...

August 9, 2008 1:41 PM

Stop me if you've heard this one. An Icelandic sea captain, an Alaskan reporter, and a bunch of Russian amateur radio enthusiasts try to get to a remote island in the Aleutians to set up a ham-radio outpost as part of a DXpedition (wiki). From the preliminary report, it sounds uninteresting. They landed on the island, and the resident volcano, Mount Cleveland (wiki), erupted. Solution? Bring on the vodka and big bags of croutons. (WMV or RealAudio)
posted by greatgefilte (11 comments total)

What?
posted by greenie2600 at 2:23 PM on August 9, 2008

dang dang dang, I'm on a machine that will play neither, someone please tell me what they did with the croutons!
posted by dabitch at 2:35 PM on August 9, 2008

The next potluck I go to, I'm taking vodka and big bags of croutons.
posted by isopraxis at 2:35 PM on August 9, 2008

Croutons are a superior snack food, especially homemade croutons.
posted by potch at 3:02 PM on August 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

mp3 link from the podcast.
posted by Space Coyote at 3:14 PM on August 9, 2008

DXpeditions are a LOT of fun, although I go for the shortwave reception and not so much for the point-to-point/amateur communication. I've been meaning to plan one to Egypt for a while now, although so far I've mostly had to settle for places like Cape Cod and, uh, Burning Man. (And I never thought to check Wikipedia for an entry on "DXpedition" before...)
posted by mykescipark at 4:44 PM on August 9, 2008

Wow. "At 3:00 p.m. Alaska Daylight Time on May 23, 2006, Flight Engineer Jeff Williams from International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 13 contacted the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) to report that the Cleveland Volcano had produced a plume of ash. Shortly after the activity began, he took this photograph. This picture shows the ash plume moving west-southwest from the volcano’s summit. A bank of fog (upper right) is a common feature around the Aleutian Islands. The event proved to be short-lived; two hours later, the plume had completely detached from the volcano (see image from May 24). The AVO reported that the ash cloud height could have been as high as 6,000 meters (20,000 feet) above sea level."
posted by acro at 6:52 PM on August 9, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

(MP3 volcano story starts at 12:26).
posted by acro at 6:57 PM on August 9, 2008

acro - that is a fantastic picture. Awesome. Thank you!
posted by Joey Michaels at 7:14 PM on August 9, 2008

Chuginadak Island is a great name.
posted by jeffmik at 7:38 PM on August 9, 2008

Crunchy friends in a liquid broth.
posted by turgid dahlia at 2:57 PM on August 10, 2008