Dispatches: Readjustment - Wednesday, 2nd June 2004
I was hurtling around Richmond Park on my mountain bike a few days ago when my mobile (cell phone, for the American contingent) rang. It was Christian de Marliave of Cerpolex, the Paris-based firm that handled my expedition logistics from the Russian side this spring.
'On your BIKE?!', he exclaimed, 'I suppose your legs think they are still skiing, eh?'
I think he might be right. Anyway, 'how does it feel to be back?' has definitely superceded 'why?' as the question I'm most often asked. Neither are particularly easy to answer, but I'll have a stab at the first one...
More than ever, it feels like I've never even been away. Especially now the beard is a merely stubbly incarnation of its former self, and the tan lines have evened out. Trying to get to sleep in the dark is weird. Sitting down to answer the call of nature still feels luxurious. I'm slowly re-mastering the use of the knife and fork. On the whole, though, life is much the same as it always was. How have I changed? That's way more difficult. I think it's probably too early to tell - I'm still spending rather a lot time in cloud cuckoo land. I'll come back to that one...
The one thing that will be changing is this website. As you'll have surmised from the lack of recent updates, my day to day life is now rather less interesting than it was on the ice. (Made 0.3 nautical miles today and reached the coffee shop by 1530UTC. Encountered nasty area of puddles, but managed to skirt around. No sign of polar bear activity.) This site (sercotransarctic.com) will change to being a static showcase for the expedition, with some decent resolution photos, a bit of video, and a few other things we're working on. My old site (bensaunders.com) will be resurrected as a semi-regularly updated blog, for the terminally addicted readers who fancy reading about the build-up to the next expedition...
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