hatam_soferet (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hatam_soferet) wrote2004-12-20 09:38 pm
hatam_soferet) wrote2004-12-20 09:38 pm
coldness!
My goodness it's cold. Weather.com says it's -11C out and Feels Like -17. I agree that it Feels Like -17, on the whole, although my analysis wasn't so subtle, being more along the lines of "Fuck fuck fuck it's fucking cold, it's the most fuckingly fucking cold fucking cold ever." I suppose this is a consequence of being a southern pansy. I could describe it as "bracing," but I would be lying :)
And Drisha is STILL running the air-conditioning at full blast! I'm going to buy a big blanket at the weekend.
Mind you, I've been reading some of the exploits of the Antarctic explorers, whose shockingly naiive heroism is quite thought-provoking in weather like this. These chaps went down south for two and three years at a time, and made amazingly long sledge journeys into the interior of the continent - sometimes using ponies or dogs, but generally eating their motive power as they went along and ending up on foot, dragging sledges with supplies. They ate biscuit (16 oz per day), pemmican (12 oz per day) and tea for months at a time whilst on sledge journeys, and suffered horribly from scurvy, because this was in the early 1900s before they knew about vitamins. They knew vegetables helped, but vegetables were too much weight on the sledges, so they left them behind at their base camps, and hoped they'd make it back before scurvy incapacitated them.
The most stunning part for me is when they talk about clothes. They had woolly undies, ordinary trousers, ordinary woolly jerseys, and supposedly-windproof suits. They had sleeping-bags made of one thickness of reindeer skin. As they sledged on, their clothes wore out - there are frequent references to patching holes, and eventually references to holes too far gone to be patched (imagine, if you will, travelling over snow with skin showing). The sleeping-bags stopped being furry and became leather. And they were working in anything down to -70F. I went to a polar museum in Dundee with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
livredor and we saw clothes and other kit. It looked so inadequate.
Here I am bitching about 11F, and when it got to 11F in the Antarctic, they bitched about it too. They said it was unpleasantly warm.
And Drisha is STILL running the air-conditioning at full blast! I'm going to buy a big blanket at the weekend.
Mind you, I've been reading some of the exploits of the Antarctic explorers, whose shockingly naiive heroism is quite thought-provoking in weather like this. These chaps went down south for two and three years at a time, and made amazingly long sledge journeys into the interior of the continent - sometimes using ponies or dogs, but generally eating their motive power as they went along and ending up on foot, dragging sledges with supplies. They ate biscuit (16 oz per day), pemmican (12 oz per day) and tea for months at a time whilst on sledge journeys, and suffered horribly from scurvy, because this was in the early 1900s before they knew about vitamins. They knew vegetables helped, but vegetables were too much weight on the sledges, so they left them behind at their base camps, and hoped they'd make it back before scurvy incapacitated them.
The most stunning part for me is when they talk about clothes. They had woolly undies, ordinary trousers, ordinary woolly jerseys, and supposedly-windproof suits. They had sleeping-bags made of one thickness of reindeer skin. As they sledged on, their clothes wore out - there are frequent references to patching holes, and eventually references to holes too far gone to be patched (imagine, if you will, travelling over snow with skin showing). The sleeping-bags stopped being furry and became leather. And they were working in anything down to -70F. I went to a polar museum in Dundee with
livredor and we saw clothes and other kit. It looked so inadequate.Here I am bitching about 11F, and when it got to 11F in the Antarctic, they bitched about it too. They said it was unpleasantly warm.