3/18/2016 – The Last Night

3/18/2016

Kevin’s Log – Supplemental – 6:03 AM

This is the last day on the ship.  If things go according to plan, we should be back in Ushuaia in 24 hours, at 6 AM.

Today’s schedule is very much a “prepare to disembark” day.  The “account reconciliation party” is on the agenda, where we’ll get our shipboard account and see what happens when the “cash-less society” of cruising becomes a “pay your tab” reality.  I guess now we’ll know just how many Diet Cokes I’ve had on this trip.

It really is called an “account settlement party” – I like to imagine that it’s all very civilized and dignified.  Tea and crumpets are served as we leisurely peruse the bill and someone named Nigel hands me a quill to sign my credit card authorization.

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The seas are moving, but the Drake’s malevolence has given way to a gentler, rhythmic rolling.  Steady ups and downs, like a seesaw of our youth or a bumpy country road, provide a means for the creak and groan of the ship.  If it weren’t real, if it weren’t tactile, I’d say it was all being done by Hollywood stage craft artists, the ship moving courtesy of some ill-tempered union guys, the push/pull of metal and wood about the ship as it rides the ocean augmented by sound foley artists.

I need to sort out how I’m getting to and from my hotel tomorrow night.  I’m oddly perhaps most nervous about that.  I just feel like something bad is going to happen – not in a “I’m going to get mugged and left for dead in Buenos Aires” ominous way (it’s all good, Mom!); rather just that a lot of little things are going to go awry.  Counterfeit pesos, a wrong way turn, a problem hauling my over-stuffed luggage.  More than anything, I’m viewing the next phase of this journey, the long voyage home, as a relatively never-ending hurry up and wait.  And I’m really, really bad at hurry up and wait.  I’m much better at hurry-up and finish so it’s on to the next agenda item.

Part of my worry stems from hearing Meg describe the various moving targets she has to hit to get home to accept a ride back to her apartment.  She said a friend offered to pick her up at the airport but then Meg rattled off what she had to do – boat to bus to airport to plane to Buenos Aires, bus to international terminal to a flight that stops in Miami for her to clear customs, followed by a flight to Boston and the hopes that her bags made it successfully all through there.  She ultimately told her friend she’d just email her and let her know how things were going and maybe just take a cab.

It got me thinking about my routing – boat to bus to plane to Buenos Aires, some means to a 2 star hotel I paid USD$33 for a night, some way back to the airport for a 3:15 PM flight on Sunday, a 16.5 hour layover in Sao Paolo followed by a 9.5 hour flight back to Orlando.  There I clear customs and immigration and hope to get my bags.  IF all goes smoothly, I’ll get home around 8:30 PM on Monday night.  So that means I’m currently about 84 hours from unpacking my bags and doing laundry.  Yeesh, I shouldn’t have done the math.

But first of course I need to pack up my stuff here on the Ioffe.  I’m amazed at how spread out things can get in such a tiny ship cabin.

***

Kevin’s Log – Supplemental – 12:32 PM

The accounts have been settled.  Meg insisted she owed me money from a dinner or two and that I had overpaid at some stage on the Marathon Tour deposits.  I ultimately lost that argument.  Amongst the sundry expenses (new fleece, kayaking, a postcard mailed from Antarctica to Mom), the final tally was 7 Diet Cokes at $1.50 apiece.  My head aches though and I’m struggling so today I’m paying cash for cans – three so far, albeit to ease the need for coins, they’ve cut the price by 33% to a buck a pop.

To pass the time, the OneOcean team showed a video entitled “Rounding Cape Horn.”  Originally shot by a sailor in 1929 on a thrice-stormed voyage around Cape Horn, years later somebody tracked the man down and had him narrate his film in 1980.  To come back to a thing 60 years later and relate stories and commentary – what a thing.  The footage was fun but the idea of revisiting one’s past like that – it struck a chord with me.

I’m always a little melancholy at the end of a trip – regrets over things left undone or unsaid, the bursting of the “I’m on an adventure” bubble that enables one to ignore the obligations in real life.  I’ve sprung the proverbial leak sooner than I might have thought, with the weighty waters of reality rising in my bubble.

I’ve packed my bags as much as possible, leaving out toiletries and a change of clothes for the morning.  I’ve pulled out my hotel reservation and double checked my flight times.  And I’ve retrieved my passport – complete with an Antarctica stamp from Bellingshausen Station.

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One wakeup to go and I’ll be back to DryLand.  It’s both time and yet not time for the trip to end.  But I do so desperately need to get outside and run, both for my mental and physical health.

***

Runner’s Log – Supplemental – 2:18 PM

They just announced at lunch the results of the “How Far Have We Run?” contest.  Of the 127 people onboard, 86 reported having run at least one marathon.

The tally wound up being 2009 marathons, with an average therefore of just about 23 marathons per runner (not passenger, but runner).

The top five totals were:

Charles Rea with 100 marathons.

David Ingram with 103 marathons.

Janos Kis with 104 marathons.

John Rollingson with 125 marathons.

And then me.

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The total miles run via marathons for the Ioffe were 52,635.8 miles or 2.5 times around the earth.

Mark Hechler guess-timated within 235 miles of the winning total and won a OneOcean snow hat.

I had guess-timated an average 27 marathons per passenger so my guess was way off.  Any distance is amazing and I kinda wish we had included half marathons, 5Ks, 10Ks, ironmans, 100milers, etc.  But that’s a harder thing to know and calculate, especially the total number of races people have done in the shorter distances.  Not everyone is as obsessive about tallying those I guess.

***

Kevin’s Log – Supplemental – 6:52 PM

As we enter the final night, the last few nautical miles rolling be, they offered an abbreviated tour of the Ioffe.  We learned a bit more about the mud room and bridge and got to visit the engine room to see the mighty twin 3500 horsepower diesel workhorses.  As a comparison, the zodiacs are 60 horsepower boats.  One of the Ioffe’s engines can run at 9 knots and when both are spinning, the top speed is 15 knots.

Built in 1989, the Ioffe and her sister ship the Vavilov are Russian research vessels that can communicate with each other over 3000km to coordinate studies and run tests through the ocean waters.  It’s got a fuel range of 22,000 nautical miles and on our entire 10 day trip, we’ll have traveled about 2000 nms.

 

Two side tech notes: It carries enough fresh water for a voyage but can also desalinate the salt water if need be.  And the bridge has a motion detector such that if there’s no movement there for ten minutes, an alarm sounds.  It’s a safety precaution and explains why deck officers are often pacing the small areas of the ship’s command center.

It was a brief tour mainly to give Liz some more time to finalize a slideshow of our adventure.  I cannot fathom the amount of time and effort that went into sorting the submitted photos and putting together such a package.  It was actually quite moving – funny and poignant, full of natural wonders and human moments.  It is my hope that when the time comes that I can post these logs that I achieve a modicum of the emotional impact.

The Captain’s Dinner is tonight and features probably the most dangerous course they’ve ever offered.  I’m not talking about the authentic Russian Borscht or the still somewhat dodgy fish entrée (seriously, the fish has been incredibly bland and poor – everything else has been good to great).  No, the most dangerous course offering is the dessert buffet.  I assume it’s leftovers and a cornucopia of confectionary goodness but given the way we have pounced on desserts during this trip, it’s like throwing chum into the Amity Island waters.

The sharks are already circling.  It’s going to be a mousse massacre all over again.

***

Kevin’s Log – Final Ship Log – 10:48 PM

It dawns on me that I wanted to title this entry, “Antarctica Is…”  At the beginning of this trip, Liz challenged us to answer that question with a single photo, a single phrase, a way to sum up what Antarctica meant to us individually.  I’ve tried to think about that throughout the trip.  I recently grabbed a bunch of shared photos from the multimedia room here onboard.  A lot of people captured some amazing moments, from natural wonders to group fun.

But what does this continent, this trip mean to me?  Have I taken full advantage of the opportunities and adventures available?  I like to think I did.  I’m a little jealous of the shots of penguins climbing all over people but that was the day Meg and I got to kayak around an island so I’m not THAT disappointed.  Life is a series of choices, of opportunity costs inherent in picking one option over another.  I think on the whole I chose well and filled my head with memories that matter.

It’s a bit of a cop-out I know but I think the answer to the question of “What Is Antarctica?” is simply, “Antarctica Is.”

I was incredibly lucky and privileged to go on this adventure, especially with a traveling companion like Meg.  In many ways, this Antarctica Marathon trip dovetails nicely with my view of running as a whole – both are incredibly personal experiences done in supportive, communal environments.

Albeit the harsh natural environment of the White Continent isn’t always supportive!

This is somebody else’s photo from the marathon start line.  I was too frozen to snap this shot on race day but I’m really glad somebody else did.  It’s not mine, but it sums up the adventure in a unique way.  I needed the help of someone else to capture it.  In this world, we are alone and yet so very fortunate to have others in our lives.

The signpost shows the distances to various cities and locations from King George’s Island in Antarctica, in the native languages for home.

Antarctica is… a great place to visit, but there’s no place like home.

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