We're Still Alive!

Days Walking - 1

Greetings to our concerned public! I must have received a hundred emails asking "Woah, Dudes, Are you guys like, alive?" or some variation thereof. Oops, not quite a hundred. 12 precisely.

We live! Rejoice!

Progress was slow yesterday. Our minds were not focused on the road (or more correctly, the lack of one) and kept dwelling on the idea that we had forgotten some vital piece of equipment under a bed, behind a dresser. In fact, we did leave something behind:

Civilization. Anyone who would argue that Barrow was not civilization has not spent a day walking east-southeast down the coast towards Prudhoe Bay.

We pooped out after 6 miles, according to the GPS. We needed to get the three shelters built before the sun went down - at just after 5pm - which of course we didn't manage to do. One shelter was completed before sundown, which provided a smidgen of respite, even if we did have to use it in shifts.

Yesterday, while we were on the outskirts of Barrow, walking directly into the soul-tearing-void, six different cars and trucks stopped to help us, see where we had broken down, and if we needed a tow. It took some persuading to convince some of these folks that we were intentionally tramping off into an icy hell. That we'd saved up for it even. That we were in full possession of gear and our faculties and would not be dead within hours.

Alaskan people are wonderful, concerned, helpful, and intelligent folks and I salute them!

5 Things We Learned Yesterday:

1) Anyone who has not attempted to pee during a -35 degree wind has not lived. You should try it yourself, you'll see. It should be illegal, like suicide or selling your organs. And as for (the failed-attempted) use of feminine products, well forget I mentioned it. 'Shrinkage' isn't a catch-phrase joke just for men, anymore.

2) Granola bars can and will freeze into solid, in-edible bricks.

3) When an iPod gets cold enough, it has a preference for The White Stripes. There are 109 songs on my Shuffle, and 22 of them are White Stripes. I counted, and 48 out of 64 "random" songs in a row were WS. Skip - 'Hello Operator' - skip - 'Astro' - skip - 'Fell in Love With a Girl - skip - growl in frustration. It's not that I don't like WS, I have 22 songs on my playlist - just wasn't in the mood at that moment...And the songs were liberally distributed in the playlist when I uploaded them. I've never had that happen before.

Someone should apply for a research grant and get to the bottom of this. If temp(-35F) and motion (1.5mph) divided by the square root of the distributed Coriolis Effect and weak nuclear forces = White Stripes ad nauseum... Hm.

4) Jake has a lovely singing voice.

5) In extreme cold environments, clothing needs to be loose enough to allow sweat to evaporate - otherwise, frost forms inside your clothes. It doesn't sound plausible, but let me assure you it's true. If frost does form on the inside of your clothes, you have to turn it inside out and beat it with a stick. Don't laugh at me, I speak the truth.

Thank you Iridium! Your satellite wireless pc equipment rocks! The F1 and F2 keys are frozen together, but you can hardly be blamed for me sneezing on the keyboard. Or can you be blamed? There could be a warning sticker about mucus and spewtum at low temps...

Jake (and the rest of us, for that matter) would like to recommend the 'mold method igloo' shelter type. It was crowded but warm and hardly dripped at all. We could use another mold form frame set, but then we'd have to carry it, so neh.

So yeah. It's another 207 miles or so to Prudhoe Bay. If we continue to make 6 miles a day, that's 26 days. Blink Blink.

- - -
White washed, my world
I can't feel my toes
Ice blinds my fate
and eats my nose.
- - -

Of course, when we reach higher population density areas, we'll probably surpass the '10 miles average' expectation, so it will all average out in the end.

Also - I hate to admit an embarrassing guilty pleasure, but can someone tell me what happened on Desperate Housewives? I don't need a blow by blow (was there blowing?!) but if someone died, it would be neat to know.

Litany Webb, signing off

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