Banging the keyboard

started.  This document allows authors to flesh out all the aspects of the book, from a simple overview to the marketing and sales prospects.  In order to get the project moving, the blue print has to be made for the book.

This blue print isn’t just the outline like we all learned in high school and college, but rather a much more complete piece.  In fact, I’ve been told by multiple people that the book proposal can be far more difficult than the actual writing.

Thus far, it has proven to be true!

Dehesa Charter School

me out to speak about my expedition to Antarctica.

The class, led by Ms. Beardsley, was very attentive and loaded with intelligent questions.  Thus far, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the level of inquisitiveness by the school children.  Really, “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader”, is quite true.

Antarctic rabbit

The kids knew there are no polar bears in the Antarctic (thank goodness).  Right there, they had masses of adults beat out.  Aside from bears in zoos, there are no polar bears within thousands of miles of where I was in Antarctica.  In fact, other than perhaps a few microbes and bacteria blown in on the wind, there was none, zero, nada life where I trekked, from Hercules Inlet to the South Pole.

The students at Dehesa Charter were massively excited to learn about the

Spirograph artist

expedition and what it was like down there.  Interestingly, one of the most important questions from the kids was about my partially living off of butter.  For me, it seems perfectly normal that it was necessary to chomp down on two sticks of butter a day to maintain my energy and weight.  Yet, for others who have never traveled and camped in extreme cold, eating quantities of butter is an alien activity.

Also, they seemed to wonder if I might have any imaginary friends while I was down there.  I didn’t have any imaginary friends but I did take Monster with me.  So in a way, yes I did take an imaginary friend.  He was Wilson, a la Castaway, in the modern vernacular.  Monster is a book and stuffed friend children’s series being developed for sale mid-next year (2014).

Ms. B’s Class

I was happy to share my story with the students and was extremely honored to receive a book created by Ms. Beardsley’s class.  In this book, the pupils wrote questions and made drawings about the expedition.  I was blown away how good their hand writing is.  In future blog posts, I’ll put in these pictures and answer each child’s question.

And, too, several pictures were given to me, made right after my talk.  I will happily post those up.  Thank you so much!  The children were inspiring, as their inquisitive energy made me smile and their enthusiasm was quite overwhelming.

When looking at the cart full of butter, one of the students asked, “Did they

Spring flower

think you were crazy when you brought all that butter up front?”  Yes, the checker at the register did!  In fact, it took three transactions to ring up the 140 blocks of butter because Abu Gosch’s point of sale system couldn’t handle that many copies of an item.

It was fun to see all three grades, 1-3, immersed in the subject.  They didn’t fiddle or become distracted at all.  The discipline these young children had was amazing, to say the least.  For something that might be boring, like geography, cartography, transportation, and camping, these bright sparks showed no boredom at all.

Thank you, Dehesa Charter Elementary and Ms. Beardsley!

Quicktime screen capture

coming up with a green screen.  No information.  The data rate was really low.  For a minute of video, there was only 1 MB of information instead of 100MB.  Not a good sign.  When I played back the video, there was nothing but a solid green screen.

To fix this problem, I had to use the Macintosh Repair Disk Permissions utility.  This is the one failing I’ve found with Macs – the disk permissions problem.  Why this happens, I’m not sure.  But it does.

Repair disk permissions

To fix it, power down the Mac, then restart it while holding Command-R.   Once the computer completely boots up to the install screen, click the continue in English button, then select the Disk Utility tool.  Near the bottom of the window, there will be a button to Repair Disk Permissions.  Click that button and wait.  There will be a stream of stuff flying by and then in the end, the computer will report disk permissions repaired.  Quit the disk utility, then select restart machine.

The Quicktime screen record utility will start and the video screen capture should start

Quicktime screen capture

working again.

The video screen capture utility through Quicktime in Mountain Lion is invaluable for making videos demonstrating things or capturing something else going on, say a Google Earth animation, to replay in a bigger video.  This is what I have been doing for my film.

There is no particular reason to purchase another screen capture program, as Quicktime already has one built in.  There are so many nice, built in tools in Mountain Lion, I’m still blown away compared to my PC.

Shopping cart butter

A shopping cart full of butter is one of the ways to get those calories.  This mountain of butter was only part of the food I took to survive in continent 7.  The checkout couldn’t even ring this many items up on one receipt.  She had to run three credit card transactions for me to buy this.

Abu Gosch in Chile was a great place to purchase these supplies, cheaper than in Punta Arenas.  It just required a taxi ride out and a very understanding taxi driver coming back in.

Zits eating butter

calories to stay warm and fueled for the activity.  There are lots of options for calories but only a few efficient ones.  Butter is one of those calorie sources.  It is suggested, based on experience, to consume 6,000 calories per day to maintain weight.  Much less than that and the body begins shedding massive amounts of weight.

Prior to my butter going bad, I had only lost 5 pounds.  Once the butter died (went off, in British vernacular), I dropped 20 pounds in a mere two weeks.  I lost 10-15% of my calories per day when the butter failed.  It was amazing how rapidly the weight came off.  However, Antarctica is a place where losing weight is really bad.

When the weight burns down, staying warm becomes difficult.  Fat reserves really do work well for insulation.  And, once the stuffing comes off, the harness begins to dig into

Kerry Gold Butter

bones rather than riding on a nice layer of fat.  My clothing ended up being two sizes too big, too.  It looked absurd, really.  As though as I was a little kid wearing my dad’s clothing.

Every day up until the butter failed, I was eating an 8 ounce block of butter every day.  That is, the equivalent of two American sticks of butter.  One block for breakfast and then one during the day.  For the snack time butter stick, I ate the butter directly, not spread on toast or anything.  Just like a block of cheese.  A la the Zits comic above.

Yum!

Broken ski in the middle of Antarctica

One day, you’ll be out there 150 miles in the middle of nowhere.  You’ll have no one with you.

Help is in another time zone and you’re having a tough go of it.  And, if you call for help to come in, you’re done.  You’re going home because you voted yourself off the island.  You put years into what you are doing and invested your entire life savings.  Every day, your mind and your body tells you that you should just quit and go home.

“It’s easier, it’s okay, you don’t really have to push through this.  Everyone will understand and no one will blame you.”

But no!  You keep pressing on, even when your mind and body are failing you.  You know that if you just take one more step toward your goal, you’ll be that much closer to making it.  All you just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Then, when you think you’re just keeping yourself together and making progress, it happens.  Something breaks.  Maybe your equipment, maybe your body, maybe someone you love.  And now what?  Something you were absolutely reliant on has failed you.  You break down and cry because you know what this means.  It means what you’ve worked for a decade of your life is going down the drain.

Or is it?

Broken ski in the snow

So, you get yourself up and evaluate what you have left to work with.  Yes, now it’s going to be even more difficult.  Yes, you thought it was hard before.  And life just delivered a near knock-out blow.  You’re on your knees wailing and making deals to try and get out of it.  Yet, there you are, by yourself.  In the biggest, badest wilderness on Earth.  Or, maybe in your office.  Wherever you are, it will happen.  And it will not be the first time.

This is decision time.  You can call it quits, pack it in, and go home.  You can decide that it’s not worth the effort.  Why are you here in the first place?  Maybe you’re just holding on for retirement.  Just a few more, what, years?  Decades?

What happens when the tough times pass and things settle down, when things aren’t as mean anymore?  There you will be, after quitting.  And the opportunity passes by.  And, others will pass you by.  And you will start to look back and start thinking, “That wasn’t so tough.  I could’ve kept going.  Why did I quit?”  That’s it, you are home and you’ll never have the chance like it again.

Do you want to be laying there, waiting to go to sleep at night, knowing that you didn’t do your absolute all?  How often is the thought of giving up going to haunt you for the rest of your life?  Will you be proud of giving up?  Will you be able to tell your friends, family, and children that, “Yes, it was okay that I gave up.  It was too hard.”

Someone else will find a way to do it.  They stayed up later at night.  They kept going even when their skis broke.  They kept walking.

Yes, the greatest have failed countless times.  Michael Jordan missed 26 game winners.

Lone Sastrugi

And yet, he was the greatest of his generation.  How can someone miss that many important shots and still be that great?

Because he didn’t quit.  He got up, day after day, and kept grinding it out.  He failed 1000′s of times.  But he succeeded 100 times that.  If you take the easy way out, giving it the old college try, you will fail.  And then you’ll see someone else succeed in your place.

Do you want that as a memory to look back on?  No!  You need to get up, you want to make good on what you wanted to do.  But the only way to do that is to keep coming back to the game.

In Antarctica, my skis broke on my sleds and I knew that making my round trip was over.  And yet I didn’t give up.  I knelt there by my dead sled, wailing, knowing that things had not been going well and now they were going to get worse.  And there was no one to pat my shoulder and tell me it was okay.  I only had me to buck up, tear the thing apart, and keep going.  I couldn’t just stop, set up my tent and call for a pickup.  I knew that I’d have to think and dream about that for the rest of my life.

For me, giving up is the worst nightmare.  Freddy has nothing on the quitting nightmare.

I might get beaten.  I’ve lost a lot in the past and I know I’ll lose more in the future.  But I also know that I’m going to keep coming back.  I’m going to get knocked down.  It’s not how many times you get knocked down but how many times I get up.

You will never regret getting up one more time.

These hills are actually not quite so rolling.  They’re more like slow rolling hills colliding

Sastrugi of Antarctica

into relatively steep, north facing slopes.  One of these places I named Valley 7 because it took me seven 75 minute ski sessions to get to the top of the hill.  The north facing slope was so steep, there were no places to put my tent.  I only needed a 10′ x 10′ area to pitch it and there weren’t any places to be had.  At least none that weren’t steep enough to roll me in my sleep.

The north entrance to Valley 7 is at:  S 86º 44.0′, W 081º 59.288′

The south edge of Valley 7 is at S 86º 44.994′, W 081º 59.288′

And, at the bottom of this valley was The Pit, a tangled mass of sastrugi, huge monoliths.  Here was my introduction to how large the sastrugi would get in the 87 degree area.  Thank goodness the skis on my sleds actually broke, otherwise the pulks would have slid laterally, falling into these pits and possibly damaging gear.  And, most importantly, robing me of precious travel time.

Adventure Blog Entry

even my personal satellite phone blog.

Here is a listing of all the blog entries in part featuring what was happening to me while I was in Antarctica.

It’s been surprising how many people actually followed my expedition.  I met a den mother from Cub Scout Pack 866 from Imperial Beach who followed my Antarctic travel.  Over the time I’ve been in San Diego, so many people I never even thought would tune in actually did.  Not that I’m complaining!  The more people interested in the expedition, the more fun it is!  Hopefully people learned a little about Antarctica and also how to keep going in the face of adversity.

There’s a Japanese saying, “Nana korobi ya oki”.  Literally, Fall down 7 times get up 8. This ended up becoming one of the expedition experiences and now is a centerpiece of my speaking events.  It’s pretty easy to say.  But, when you’re out there on your hands and knees, hiding from -80 degree windchill conditions, it’s much more difficult to make happen.

More on this in another post…

Run!

Shakespeare, I am not.  However, I am exceedingly happy to be able to run at least short distances again!  Granted, I’m not up for half marathons yet.  But, I will be.  Last summer, I’d go out and do a 12 miler almost every weekend to get my body used to being out for long periods.

For polar expeditioning where you don’t have any choice but to keep trekking, staying inside isn’t an option.  That is, except when the winds get above 50 knots.  Then, I just can’t walk.  Getting hit in the face or other valueable places by ice isn’t a fun activity.

Montgomery Memorial Park, CA Historic Marker 711

I’m enjoying the time I’ve been spending with my dad out at Montgomery Waller park, running up and down those hills.  It’s not like running at the beach, but the ocean can be seen from the top of the park.

Now, I’ve added wind sprints (suicides) to the mix to up the leg agility.  That’s one thing I learned in Antarctica – being able to handle incessantly varying landscape is important.  My ankles took a constant pounding from the skis slipping down the edges of sastrugi.  The Alfa Mordre Pro boots were excellent but they just don’t offer ankle support.  As a consequence, I had to strengthen them up doing ankle alphabets.