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Day 25 - the news from 87.218 degrees

I thought it would be good to post a photo of Ray from right before he left, just to remind us of what's underneath the beard:
blog 78
(Audio) Day 25

"Hey everybody, it's Ray calling from the South Pole Quest Team; lots happening. Just want to of course remind you that in the coming days, Richard will be leaving a blog about a plan for our mileage that Kevin, Richard and I have all discussed and we're very excited about, for 88 degrees, but I don't want to let the cat out of the bag yet. So ahhh make sure you tune in for that.

Ummm... on another note we had an interesting conversation this morning with someone on the phone. It was a great question they asked. Ahhh.... cause Ray's on snowshoes and the other two guys are skiing how does it work ? In the deep, I mean in the, in the deep snow, Ray's obviously is going to be quite a bit slower, going to be coming in to camp a few hours later, and the short answer is no. We we get up in the morning. We leave camp together, we trek and ski together all day and then we finish together at night. We're never more than 300-400 feet apart. We're a team and that's the way we do it. Umm on the hard footing ahhh I can usually keep up to the guys who are skiing, and sometimes it's even faster, I'm even faster through the sastrugi. In the soft stuff they are going to be faster than I am on snowshoes, but we help each other out and we wait for each other. It should also be noted that we all drag all of the gear; all of our own gear, equal weights, all of that stuff.

More news, ummm today we accomplished 18 nautical miles, ummmm Kevin had a bit of a down day. He's totally fine but he did have a bit of mild altitude sickness today and it slowed him down, but we rallied around him and he rallied and was like a true champion. It was amazing to see him ski so well, ummmm... knowing that he felt like crap. Last bit of news; I guess you guys probably saw a picture of my blister yesterday and were wondering, Oh my god how is he going to keep going with that blister. That's disgusting. Well we did our own version of ER here, last night and ahhh we've cleaned out the blister, used the scalpel, fixed it up, taped it up, and then cut a hole in the side of my liner in my boot, and it worked amazingly. I felt great today. It really made me think that, I'm sure that all the students following along have seen or read Doc Affleck talking about the historical explorers how all of the things that they would have to go through. It's unbelievable, and here I am with my little blister. So it really puts things into perspective. Anyhow I hope you're all having a great day and enjoy following our blog, we'll talk to you tomorrow. Bye bye. cough cough
"
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