Good Times and Antarctic Exploration

Happy, happy ramblings about a good day, followed by bizarre musings on IF...

Lucky me: I got to have dinner with one of the coolest gals in the IF blogosphere: Io. And we ate Indian food. And she gave me a Pack and Play she found at a garage sale (where she also found not one but two pairs of perfect, awesomely green shoes for a quarter--I told you, she's cool). We had a great time chatting, chaating, and trading stories. I'm so grateful that this online community has allowed me to meet her, and it's about way more than simple support for our IF trials. It's about meeting an awesome free spirit with loads of joie de vivre and talents.

My guy and I spent the rest of the day in the Big City (where Io resides), enjoying Big City things: the zoo in the rain. Not for the faint of IF heart--everyone was toting idiotic kids and saying stupid shit to them about the animals: "Oooh, look at that cuddly [Amur] tiger! He's like a big kitty cat!" Uh, no it's not, moron: It's one of the most effective predators on the planet and is respected as a fearsome spirit by local indigenous people in SE Russia. Kind of like that polar bear you thought was really cute. It would tear your toddler to shreads without a second though. That is, after all, it's job.

No respect for animals and their natures! This is one of the many reasons why people still have such reactionary beliefs about "environmentalism." They just don't get what's really at stake.

But the dolphin show was really cool. Dolphins rule.

Anyway, we also went to the art museum and got really into the late medieval art and some very intriguing video installations. When video/multimedia stuff works, it can really move you.
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So, I'm reading this very engaging book: Endurance, by FA Worsley. It's a surprisingly engrossing account of Shakleton's total polar fail. You might think this would be as dull as reading about ice melting, but it's not. There's also no mention whatsoever of pregnancy, so it's a very safe distraction for folks in the trenches.

It nonetheless reminded me of how many IF journeys unfold.

The expedition was a disaster: The main ship foundered and sank in some awful pack ice and the crew was stranded on Elephant Island, a towering hunk of rock and ice battered by some of the severest storms on Earth. A handful of men set out in a small boat, in the dead of the Antarctic winter, to find help. They make it, but what really struck me was some of the comments of the guys left behind on the island.

You'd think the physical suffering would be the biggest problem. But it wasn't: It was the waiting, and the despair. The monotony and the endless unknown of when help might come--if it was going to come at all--was their biggest deamon to conquer. Not the cold, the glaciers, the pounding swells, the poor food.

I sometimes felt vaguely like these men: cut off from the rest of the world, trapped, and bored with the seemingly endless wait. It took a greater part of my courage to manage the darkest days, and to keep looking out to sea with the fading hope that something might change. It's the mental challenge that's the hardest.