Amazon Delivers

Yes... with the country in the grip of a postal strike Amazon is still coming up trumps with next day delivery of my Garmin 405.

Now I can track my running whilst in Antarctica and preload a marathon training plan onto the watch. This is all good stuff and definately going to make my trip a lot more fun.

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Signposts

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Signposts.3GP (221 KB)

Testing my phone as a videoblogging device :-) Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

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Parallels

"The noise resembles the roar of heavy, distant surf. Standing on the stirring ice one can imagine it is disturbed by the breathing and tossing of a mighty giant below." Ernest Shackleton

Thanks to my pal Michael Kramer who sent me this quote via Facebook. I love  the poetic way that the explorers of old would described there endeavours. One of the things I am really looking forward to is getting access to the Polar Library on base. My plan will be to as best as I can find a quote or passage that matches my own situation at any given moment as the season unfolds. Not that I will find many quotes on Garmin watches and iPods but I am sure I will find pleanty with regards to Navigation and how the likes of Shackleton and Scott kept the mind occupied. Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

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Nansen the Cat

If I was going to go with the "Wonderland" theme I would need a cast of imaginary characters to accompany me on my travels and to match those of the original Lewis Carol version but with an explorers twist. 

I would quite like to take Nansen the cat along for the ride, as he seems the polar opposite to the Cheshire cat. 

The cat who was named after Fridtjof Nansen who was first person to cross Greenland in 1888  & creator of the famous Nansen sledge, was the ships cat on the Belgica. 

The Belgica sailed to the Arctic in 1897 and was trapped in sea ice for well over a year. Everyone onboard became ill and depressed (as you would) and this included Nansen the cat. Apparently he spent a month in a "listless stupor punctuated by episodes of uncharacteristic bad temper" before he abandoned the ship never to be seen again. 

Poor Nansen ;( 

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Blogging out of time!

I worked out today that I have 22 days left as a functioning member of society before I leave for Antarctica.

I fly from the UK on the 16th of November and then transfer from Cape Town to Antarctica on the 18th of November. I'm due to arrive on the Brunt Ice shelf sometime around the 20th. The crux of this is that I'm fast running out of time and one of the things I am desperately trying to sort out is a podcast/blog format for recording this adventure.

The premise I had in mind was to use my time on the ice to train for a marathon. I would then do a running diary about the experience. It would be an audio diary concept with a few videos thrown in for good measure supported by a blog. The question I have asked and keep asking myself is "what do I call it"?

I want it to be transferable, ie not just about Antarctica, but I also want it to be relevant, the current title that seems to be in my mind is some sort of play on Alice in Wonderland. "Runcasting from Wonderland" or "Philip in Runderland". Another concept I feel drawn to is the words "Terra Incognito" or as it is in non latin "Land Unknown". I'm liking the Runcasting incognito idea but its also a little bit "meh".

I feel both these ideas are relevant to Antarctica as a place of the mind, and for me Antarctica is more than the sum of its physical parts. It represents a natural purity that exists as an ideal in reality and in the mind.

In a place of wonder as is the same with anything unknown, these are personal spaces that exist within the person not the actual thing in question. Therefore they are transferable and for perfect for my purpose. However how I make this into a catchy title is the real unknown and I'm fast running out of time :-/
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Shackleton's Car

I now have less than three weeks to go untill my final trip to Antarctica, and my thoughts have now started to drift towards "what shall I take"?

Last time I went I took way to much crap, lots of things I didn't use. Books I didn't read and games I didn't play. There where things I kicked myself for not taking, a belt being one.

So I have decided to do some research into past explorers and "the equipment they could have done without"!

For anyone who knows the story of Ernest Shackleton and his amazing tale of Endurance, I am sure that you like me would be shocked to find out he took a car with him on one of his trips.

When he left for the Antarctic in 1907 on his Nimrod expedition, he carried on board his ship an Arrol-Johnston car. It had been donated for free and according to the company press release " it would sprint to the Pole".

This was the first time that a car had been taken to the Antarctic, but in the event it took a lot of time and energy to keep it going, for little reward. It would overheat leaving Shackleton and his men standing around in the freezing cold waiting around for it to cool down.

Needless to say I won't be taking a car, but I am wondering if I should go heavy on the tech, laptops , cameras, GPS devices etc or just travel light iPhone and not much less, the less barriers between you and the experience the better :-)

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Crisis Management

"We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We had suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down yet grasped at glory , grown bigger in the bigness of the whole. We had seen God in all his spendours, heard the text that nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man". SOUTH, ERNEST SHACKLETON

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Worked out I can do status updates on Runcast.TV using ping.fm this is rather cool

So tired today, i had a big dinner so hopefully that should give me some energy for tomorrow!