Hey there – I didn’t mean to leave you all hanging there on New Year’s Eve. But from Marguerite Bay, our course takes us straight west nearly 100 degrees of longitude, across nine time zones, across the Bellinghausen, Amundsen and Ross Seas before we next see anything that isn’t the occasional iceberg making its way north through the blue, blue sea.

We’ve still got a nibble of satellite broadband, but be losing that, too, once we make about 91W later this afternoon, so I’ll be able to focus on the work at hand and not get distracted by the latest hilarity from the world outside. Yes, yes, we’ll still have email and our daily NY Times feed, so it’s not like we’re going to have to eat the dogs any time soon. (That, by the way, has been the catch phrase for comparing our hardships with those of Scott, Amundsen and Mawsen. And for those who are troubled by the image, rest assured that Antarctica has been dog-free since 1967 by international treaty. Should we reach dire straits, however, we have more than enough Palo Alto Firefighter hot sauce to get us through.)

Anyhow, the point is that the blog is probably going to be pretty quiet from now until we reach the edge of the ice around McMurdo in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I leave you to amuse yourselves with whatever’s out there on Facebook…