Flagging

Current Conditions
Temperature: -2F
Wind Chill: -35F
Wind Speed: 65mph
Condition 1

First, allow me to apologize for my lack of concern for timely blog posts. It coincides beautifully with my lack of concern for anything else. Apathy is biting down hard. My thoughts are miles away from this place. I'm over it. And now I'm sick, too (damn new people). But, it's Condition 1 outside and I have nothing better to do until the wind dies down a bit.

So, I've just been reading Andre's blog (the siren song of the anti-bears), and it is so bizarre to see pictures of my fellow winter-overs back in the real world. It's like they're out of place; it's like they don't belong there. I think I've just been seeing those faces for so long in front of the same white backdrop. And upon further thought, It's hard to imagine myself back in those "real world" settings. I immediately keyed in on several things that are so distant in memory, and some will seem strange to you: animals, railings, trees, concrete, open water. But one thing really stuck out: Wade's hand is in the grass. It appears laid-back, nonchalant, normal. But I know, he's not just touching that grass, he's feeling it, absorbing it. It's haunting. I'm almost there, four more weeks (3 weeks, 6 days).

OK, that was uncanny, I just got an email from Wade.

Anyway, It seems that my apathy only applies on this continent, because my attention is very much focused on what's next. I've been collecting gear at discounted prices (because having an Antarctican in your gear is good advertising) in preparation for a lot of traveling. I'm hoping to do a lot of backpacking, so in order to save my precious knees, I'm studying up on ultralight camping methods. I'm hoping to have a traveling pack that weighs under 20 pounds. That will include all my camping gear, clothes and camera. I figure 5 days of food and fuel will add about 10 pounds while actually backpacking. I remember when I was a boy scout and anything under 50 pounds on your back was light. No more. The travel plan is still loose, but the gist of it is: New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Nepal, Tibet. This will put me back in the States, oh... I don't know... April? No sense in going home for winter, had enough of that racket.

Actually, that's not entirely true, I guess. Yesterday I went on a boondoggle (this is a leftover military term used here for basically any trip out of town) to Cape Evans to reflag the road for the coming season. The boondoggle was offered to winter-overs only and they gave us snow machine (snow mobile, skidoo, whatever you want to call it) training for it. Here's how it worked: Someone sat on top of a pisten bulley, throwing out a flag every 50 feet. Two snow machines followed, leapfrogging, stopping to drill a foot deep hole in the ice to place each flag. It was a calm, warm day (often the forecast of doom, and again this time) and we had a blast out there. It is always so refreshing to get away from town.

I spent most of the day on one of the snow machines, only riding in the pisten bully to eat lunch. Brody and I rode a machine together for the second part of the day, and we took every opportunity to go fast. Ok, we created a few opportunities, too. Brody "accidentally" dropped a glove, and "realized" it many flags later. We left our drill and sped back to the glove. 50mph. It occurred to me that the last time I've traveled at that speed was coming to a stop on the runway here last October. On these dirt and ice roads, the speed limit is 25mph out of town and only 15mph in town. And it's not the 15mph you ignore in the Safeway parking lot, because it's truly unsafe for all the peds if you go any faster. I get away with 30 to 35 on my way to Arrival Heights, but that's it. So 50mph was downright exhilerating!

On our way back, we also got a fairly close up look at one of the seals that has been tagged. There is a science group here now that is placing instrumentation on seals in order to study their habits. The sensors are sort of glued to the seals back, and they measure all kinds of stuff: depth, light, temperature. I think they even mount small cameras.

In other news, it is light out when I wake up now, and the sun sets around 8, officially, right over the mountains to the west southwest, but the long sunset lingers for a couple more hours. The southern sky clings to that twilight blue all night long, as the sun swims just below the surface of the horizon. The first flight of mainbody comes in on Tuesday, only 3 days away. Then the madness begins.