Brilliant Plan

S 82°29.707 W 079°28.320 20 nautical miles.

I didn't realize it at the time but that was a brilliant plan. I decided to get to the cache today. I would do 10 miles, set up the tent, eat and make some new water, and then do another 10. What I didn't realize was that while I was eating the wind would stop and the snow would turn hard. I thought it was going to be an extra long day, but I cranked out the last ten miles in 4 hours. Now I am at the 1/4 way south point (or close enough). Once again that was the hardest day of my life.
These are stupid, but when I was working so hard that my eyes were about to pop out of my head they seemed good.
A few thoughts:
- on a spin bike, turn the resistance up as high as you can and still be able to turn over the pedals, I mean even harder than that. Now ride like that for 10 hours a day for two months and you will have an idea what it is like to bike to the South Pole.
- when working that hard, there are no songs that have that slow of a beat, not even elevator songs.
- in Antarctica there is no one to give you the Heimlich.
- you can't bike wearing skis (you can't roller-skate in a buffalo herd)
- when you listen to songs in alphabetical order you realize how many duplicates you have.
- no matter how puffy and chipmunk looking you are when you wake up you still can't store too many sports beans in your cheeks
- if I had more speed I could have caught some serious air off some of those sastrugi. Just think of a fat bike flying off a four foot drop with two sleds. I, however, was going quite slow and rolled over the drops.
- Patrick could make some nice jumps out here.
- if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make noise? I would tell you, but there are no trees, let alone a forest.
- (edited for another day)
- when you are dead tired and don't want to go on anymore, it is not a good time for Pink Floyd's Goodbye Cruel World to come up on the playlist.
- 2.5 of 150 does not count as biking.
- I'm biking in Antarctica! :-) Meanwhile my family is living in a cold home because we can't afford propane. :-(
- why do I have to make so much yellow snow? OK gross, but the next one is also.
- it is hard to keep your nose clean when there are so many layers on your face. Clearing the nose while biking and not getting it on the layers takes a special technique.
- where is all that snow coming from, and where is it going? (There is a constant flow of snow drifting in the wind coming from the south and headed north, there is a nearly endless supply of snow, and a nearly endless distance it can drift.)
- don't cry over spilled rice, it is less weight you have to drag.