Returning to the Ice

It's now been about 2.5 years since I quit my job in Denver and resumed a life of vagabonding. What a privilege it has been to visit friends on the East and West coasts and everywhere inbetween, drive cross-Canada, explore Nicaragua, take campervans around Australia, spend a month in NYC, see New Zealand from north to south, hit amazing tropical islands like Bali and Fiji, spend these past couple months in Europe, and--between every adventure--get extended quality time with my family and friends Stateside.

The travel coffers that I filled via my job in Denver are not quite empty, and lucky me, I got to refill them a bit with my stint working at the South Pole last November to February. But that experience in Antarctica only made me want to return and see what it would be like to spend an entire year on the Ice, including the five-month darkness of a winter at South Pole--so different from the eternally sunny summer I spent there last year. And it never hurts to add more money to the future-travel bank.

So I might be crazy, but I've signed on to return to work at the bottom of the planet for an entire year, starting in late October. I'll definitely be posting on the blog while I'm down there, though probably not as often as I usually do while traveling, as I'll be in the exact same place for an entire year! If you're a newer reader and you want to catch up on the basics of life at South Pole (including the process of getting down there), click here and work your way toward newer posts. I'm not planning to repost about any of the same stuff I described last year.

Some of you have sweetly asked me to pass along the address at which I can receive mail at South Pole. Luckily, an Antarctic posting is a government job and the address is an APO address, which means things can be sent in either direction at U.S. domestic mail rates. From mid-February through the long South Pole winter, there will be no planes to the station which means no mail. So any flat letter mail needs to be sent by the end of January at the LATEST. And packages need to be sent no later than early January 2016 to ensure they'll make it to South Pole before station close. If you want to label something for me to save until later in the winter, I promise I will wait to open it per instructions, but it still needs to be mailed by the beginning of January, even if you don't want me to open it till July.

ANYWAY, here is the address:


(my name), Winter-over, ASC
South Pole Station
PSC 768 Box 400
APO AP 96598

That's it! In any case, I'll see you back here come November when there's something new and different to report from WAYYY down under.