In-Tent Entertainment
In an effort to avoid going completely barmy during our forthcoming 120 days of isolation in Antarctica, Tony and I have put a bit of effort into thinking up extra-curricular activities to keep our brains ticking over when we're not hauling sledges around.
My 2004 solo North Pole expedition was the first time I'd used music on an expedition, and my three little mp3 players were worth their weight in gold. I had a couple of books as well – Yann Martell's 'Life of Pi' and Piglet's Little Book of Courage.
On last year's Greenland expedition, we took things a step further by saving the BBC's Reith Lectures ('The Emerging Mind' – worth Googling if you fancy a bit of brain spinach for your iPod) as mp3 files on SD cards and listening to them in the evenings on our iPAQs (the tiny palm-top computers we use to update this site). In an ingenious masterstroke, Tony also knocked up mini versions of both Connect4 and chess using the Excel program on his.
Ever keen to push the envelope, we have several lectures this year, courtesy of Stanford University (freely-available online) on everything from Richard Nixon to the Enlightenment to Evolution… Once we've listened to them, we wipe the card and reuse it in our digital camera. As we're here to train, the heavier our sledges are the better, and to that end we have a huge stack of books for bedtime reading. Between us, we have Bruce Chatwin's 'In Patagonia' (highly recommended – I think Alex at WorldChanging put me on to it – cheers Alex!), Noam Chomsky's 'Hegemony or Survival', Louis Menand's 'The Metaphysical Club', 'The Ancestors' Tale' by Richard Dawkins, 'Pragmatism' by William James and 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea' by Dan Dennett.
Phew. We'll probably limit ourselves to one (or maaaaaybe two) books each in Antarctica. Any recommendations?
— Filed under Greenland