Off We Go!

First, Allen would like to point out that he won the Favorite Antarctic Animal Poll.

Now, you should know that in approximately 30 minutes, the four of us will schlep our bags down to the heliport for one final briefing before we load up our gear and fly away to the Dry Valleys (we're headed to Sessrumnir Valley first) where we'll collect oodles of rock samples over the next month.

Despite the lack of internet in the Dry Valleys, we have devised a rather convoluted method for continuing to post to our blog so that y'all can keep up with what we're doing and see more pretty pictures of Antarctica. How will this work? How could we possibly transport data without the internet? Well- first we'll write up a post and take some photos, then we'll put this stuff on a flash drive and give that to the helicopter pilot when he comes out to ferry us around the Dry Valleys and bring our resupplies every few days. The pilot will then fly back to McMurdo and give the memory drive to a USAP staffer at Crary (the McMurdo science lab). The staffer will then e-mail the posts and photos to Sujoy back in Boston, who will upload it all to the blog for everyone to see. So the next time you see an update on our blog (after Robert's), keep in mind all the effort that went in to making it.

Goodbye internet land, we'll see you in a month (but you'll see us sooner)!