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Right. Well, good fortune would have it that instead of trying to quickly bang out an update while on the plane to Adelaide to visit my sister, I instead managed to miss my 6:10am flight by about 8 seconds, and considering as the next isn't until after lunch, I have ample time to leisurely write an update from home - my new home - Terminal 2, Sydney Airport.
First off, just a reminder to everyone about our send-off drinks in Sydney in a few weeks - Saturday 3rd May, at the fancy Ryan's Bar in Australia Square, 6pm till late. Thanks so much to the manager, Zoran, for giving us the venue! We can't wait! We're putting one of our PAC2's on display and will have photos flipping through on all the screens, and a tab on the bar! Wooo! Haha. While the tab is rather generous - thanks iiNet - I imagine we'll all have no problems draining it, so don't be too late! Everyone is welcome - if you're reading this update and over 18, then you're invited.
Last week has been an interesting one - Clark stabbed me on camera, we got more sponsorship, were given two dead kittens, some awesome gloves and full-face WINDSTOPPER® balaclavas, we got questioned by police, and we had a doctor advise we go home and sample some serious drugs to see if we had any particularly spectacular reactions to them. All in a day's work for Chris & Clark. But back to the part where Clark stabbed me:
The big thing on our to-do list last week was to sort out our expedition first aid kit. Having just done our Remote Area First Aid course, we were both psyched to put together a killer first aid kit, and after compiling a list, Clark was personally usured around his local Mega Save Chemist at Erina by the pharmacist - Luca, gradually filling up two huge plastic bags with painkillers, bandages, anti-biotics, anti-nausea's, anti-inflammatory, anti-allergies, and anti-everything-else tablets. Merrily, we had no cause to use our epic abdominal pad dressing on our 2005 expedition, and so we didn't need to buy a new one of those. However, we found it a bit of an eye-opener that just about everything else in our first aid kit had since expired. Might be a good plan to take a squiz at things in your own 1st aid kits at home.
Despite probably being able to open our own bulk-buy chemist with the quantity of drugs Clark brought home, we still felt a bit underprepared in the painkiller department, and I called up my local doctor and told him so. Dr. Peter Saxon Williams is an amazing guy, and has enthusiastically helped me out with advice, check-ups, research blood samples and prescriptions for my previous journeys, but this time he went even further beyond the call of duty. He invited Clark and I around to Avalon Doctors Surgery after hours, where he stayed back and explained our painkiller options. We could take Morphine, but it's a nightmare to travel internationally with, so instead, he introduced us to a relatively new drug, Tramadol. It's a synthetic drug, 3/4 the strength of Morphine, but being a non-narcotic, there's no problems travelling with it into Canada. It comes in both tablet form and intramuscular injections, and after explaining the dosages etc, he placed a pile of both forms in our hands, along with a handful of syringes and medi-swabs. We both wanted to have our flu vaccine that day too, because only being a month away from leaving, about now is when every possible illness and injury on earth tries to inflict itself upon us. He agreed, and proceeded to inject Clark with his vaccination and then turned to me. "I.. I was wondering..." I began, while a little voice tried to shut me up from inside, "if maybe Clark could give me my flu shot, as practice, under your supervision?" Clark looked almost as shocked as I was. "Arrgh, well if you're happy with that..." Dr. Saxon Williams said, "I think that would be a very good idea." A mischievous smile spread across Clark's lips as he reached for the needle. I set the video camera up as Clark ceremoniously snapped the cover off the syringe, and levelled it at my freshly medi-swabbed 'deltoid' muscle on my arm, "So I just stab it in? Yeah?". The doctor laughed. I died a little inside. "Well not so much 'stab', as just, you know, 'move inwards'". I braced myself and Clark 'moved inwards'. The tip of the needle lodged firmly into my skin and stopped. "Wow, it's harder to poke through than I thought..." Clark commentated. "Yes, erm... just keep... move inwards" the doctor urged again, and the needle slipped through the skin and slid effortlessly up to the hilt into my muscle. "And now I just squeeze it all in?". The whole process actually only took about 2 seconds, and was utterly painless. Clark did a first rate job. Thanks mate. Dr. Saxon Williams shook our hands, wished us well, refused to accept any payment, and said "Now I'd advise that tonight sometime you both have one of the Tranadol tablets, just to check that you don't have any abnormal reactions to the drug."
Our Tranadol Party went off without a hitch. In fact, neither of us noticed anything at all. Bit of an anti climax really after the days excitement, but at least we went to bed safe in the knowledge that if the house fell ontop of us while we slept, we wouldn't feel a thing.
Clark met up with the guys from RODE Microphones - recognised as one of the world's top mic manufacturers - and picked up two VideoMics, two Stereo VideoMics, two RODE shirts, two dead kittens, and two RODE yoyo's. Don't ask. I didn't. When it's free, value for money is infinite, even for a yoyo and a dead kitten. I guess I should explain that a dead-cat is the industry name for those fluffy socks that go over mics to cut out wind noise, and a dead kitten is, well, a small dead cat. The packet actually states: "Dead Kitten". Hilarious. Anyway, we're thrilled to have such amazing mics again for the continuation of our trip - while the onboard mics are great on our little video cameras, they pale to a muffled whisper compared to the piercing clarity of the VideoMics, even when the source of the sound is ages away and masked by wind. Our doco is going to be so much better for it. Thanks very much RODE.
Our gloves turned up! While that might not sound terribly exciting, trust me, it was. It even brought our Tranadol Party to a stand-still as we excitedly unpacked the courier box. We each got three pairs of lightweight WINDSTOPPER® gloves (in our experience they last about 1 month of 24/7 heavy expedition use), a pair of gnarly 'Patrol Glove' North Face GORE-TEX® gloves which are our main work-horse gloves, and for when the ice really hits the fan, we also got a pair of wikkid North Face 'Mountain Guide' GORE-TEX® mitts, which have a removable liner not too dissimilar in texture to a dead kitten. =P Combined with our WINDSTOPPER® gloves, these mits are a force to be reckoned with. Not being much call for such gloves in Australia, W.L. Gore & Associates actually sourced these direct from North Face over in Korea for us. Thanks so much Phil & Michelle! In addition to these, they also got us full-face WINDSTOPPER® balaclavas. Complete with wrap-around nose guard and a small mesh breathing panel so our breath wont travel up and fog then freeze inside our goggles, these things are seriously hardcore. Take a look at the pic! haha.
Skins have also jumped onboard as a sponsor. Skins are basically amazing skin-tight garments designed for athletes to train, compete and live in. They are described as body-moulded gradient compression performance equipment with built-in BioAcceleration Technology(TM) which will enhance performance in training, competition and recovery. They help circulation, increase muscle oxygenation and stop lactic acid build-up along with many other fancy things. We both bought a pair of Skins half-tights back in September and trialled them, wearing them continually as boxer shorts for the 40 day sail across the Southern Ocean to Chile. We were suitably impressed and so the other day Clark rang them up, and now we have almost $4000 of Skins on their way, including half-tights to wear on the trip, as well as heaps of other Skins for training, paddling, riding and running back at home. Take a look at their website, it's pretty cool stuff.
Actually this leads us to the part where we were questioned by police. It was nearly midnight and we were both out exercising at Palm Beach - we'd been dragging the truck tire and running lengths of the beach, and were going for our wind-down run along the road when a police car drew level. There was an awkward silence as we kept running and the car kept level, and then at last the officer broke the spell and asked "So, just what's going on here then?" We explained, without slowing, that we were in fact just going for a normal midnight run, not running from the scene of a crime or, despite appearances, doing a near-nudie run in our Skins, or anything like that. Evidently midnight runs weren't as normal as we thought, and we ended up having to explain 'the whole arctic thing' to him before he eventually wished us luck and accelerated away.
Oh, and very exciting - as of yesterday, the educational resource website centred around the expedition is up and running, thanks to iiNet and Emidio! It's great - complete lessons, supplementary material, extensions - for all 8 of the key learning areas in the Aussie curriculum. It's part of EDNA (Education Network Australia), a well established web resource for teachers to source lesson content from. Hopefully through our trip we'll be spicing up school days for a heap of students right across the country! Take a look at this cool little You-Tube video clip about it all, filmed mostly while Clark and I were giving a talk to Dianella Primary School in Perth last month. We've also put the clip on our 'Downloads' page.
In closing, Clark and I would really like to thank John Leece. This man is a true inspiration. He somehow fits 36 hours into every day, crams in even more time for charity work (In a big way, I mean he's even been awarded an OAM - Order of Australia Medal - for service to the community), and amongst it all manages to find time to get his helicopter license, be the Honorary Treasurer for Scouts Australia, Co-ordinator of the 'Spirit of Australia' South Pole expedition 97-98, and gives invaluable encouragement and media/sponsorship advice to us two information sponges. And just this morning he generously committed some of his own money to help us on our way. Thank you John, for everything.
  
Our live expedition updates are written on our tiny ASUS Eee PC 900 laptops, and sent via Iridium 9505A satellite phones from Landwide Satellite Solutions, using email compression software xGate from Global mareine Networks! Thanks guys - it's the perfect set up!
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