Underground

Crammed into what is referred to as "the cage" with about 50 miners we begin our descent. Decked out in my steel toe rubber boots, coveralls, safety glasses and hard hat complete with miner's light I feel slightly weighed down. The cage to me resembles more of a crate; you know the ones that freshly stolen BMW's are shipped in? Besides a couple miner's lamps there are no lights and just a half-door at the front to contain us all. Starting slowly we quickly gain speed and periodically lights from a tunnel flash through the open top-half of the doorway. Jodi pokes me and hands me a piece of gum saying "each level is about 200 feet". That's a lot of levels before our destination of 6800 ft (2km). The gum helps to keep my ears clear as the pressure changes rapidly during the drop.
Nearly all the miners have cleared out, since our lab is at the end of the second deepest tunnel in the INCO mine. I step out of the cage and into a full-out mine tunnel. We walk as a group through the dim, rocky hallway along muddy floors. There are branches at different intervals that go well beyond the range of my light but we continue to follow the main rail track. With wind caused by the ventilation system blowing us through, we pass various vehicles and equipment. After about a kilometer we have arrived at the clean lab. In order to keep it clean all entering persons remove their dirty mine clothing, shower and gear up in similar clean attire on the inside. An air vacuum blows and sucks away any remaining dust before entering the actual lab.
Once on the inside the surroundings resemble any other lab - besides the rocky walls and ceiling. Within are all sorts of tubing, gauges, pumps, vacuums and other equipment that helps in the quest to detect neutrinos. I am given the tour and my week of reading technical documents finally pays off as I get to see the system in action and things fall into place in my mind.
The rest of the day I am the Tails to Jodi's Sonic, since I follow her as she performs light water assays. This is the technical term for turning a lot of valves and checking dials, freezing metal pipes with liquid nitrogen, then heating them up again with heat guns and eventually condensing a tiny amount of radon-filled air into a Lucas cell that is the size of my fist, which is brought up to the surface for analysis.
Besides the occasional explosion heard from the miners blasting in neighbouring tunnels, the day goes by comfortably and my first day underground is an enjoyable experience. Ten hours after making the trip down, we do it all in reverse and I come up to find the fog has lifted and a beautifully sunny Friday evening awaits.