Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ravenous appetite and would be pleased with anything, but it's won-
derful to have a change from the freeze-dried dinners.
People have contacted me to ask how I deal with the isolation, the
lack of people apart from my crew. I've never been one for big crowds,
and I don't really enjoy running in cities clogged with people and traf-
fic: I feel I have to live up to their expectations. But in the polar regions
or the desert, I've found that I have to be true only to myself. I enjoy
being alone with my thoughts, mulling over problems and making
plans. I've been doing that a lot here in Antarctica, probably the most
remote and isolated place on earth.
January 9
My feet hurt as I squeezed them into my boots this morning. My toes
are a mess; they feel like they have been through a mincer. I took one
step, and the pain nearly made me jump through the tent roof. How
am I going to cope with another eight days of this? All I can do is focus
on something else, something completely different from what I'm
doing now, and concentrate so hard that there's no room in my mind
for pain. For a while, I thought about Dillon playing basketball and
Brooke singing at school, and it helped.
January 10
The two things that were supposed to help me the most—the vehicle
and its driver, Scotty, whose devotion, I suppose understandably, to
safety first at all costs—are becoming the biggest hindrances. I woke
at quarter to five, dressed as usual, went out of the tent at five and
started to run, only to be stopped by Scotty claiming that there was
thick fog and there was a possibility that the vehicle could fall down
a crevasse. He said it would be too hard for him to see the trail. So it
seems that the six-wheel drive vehicle that is supposed to be able to go
anywhere can now go only on a designated trail. It has GPS, and the
South Pole is easy to find, but Scotty said it wasn't in his contract to go
off the trail, and so I had to wait for hours for the fog to clear. I have
since learned that there will be another late start tomorrow—at eight
o'clock—because Scotty says he won't start before then.
The vehicle also broke down today: the air-pressurised suspension
