Spinning Yarn: Dream Realized (The Evidence)

We left Dunedin in 3m swells, most of us queasy, trying to find our sea legs. As we traveled closer to Cape Denison and Antarctica, a distance of 5000+ Nautical miles, the swells became less and less until we glided into Commonwealth Bay on a mirror sea.....                
Flotillas of penguins welcomed us as we zodiac-ed in to “shore” - a huge snow/ice bank with steps cut into it by the Expedition Reconnaissance Team. The seals were quite literally laid back and fearless and we gave them the benefit of the 5m Rule.                
  The sky was overcast, but that is actually better than blue because the contrasts of colour are so much more defined. And in “the Home of the Blizzard”, the windiest place on the planet, God blessed us with not one, but TWO days of NO WIND! The  Temperature was a balmy 0º and not the -5 from Mt Hotham or the -18 in the freezer, or the -10 of the Chill On Ice lounge all of which I had my practice and preparation. I had the additional blessing of spinning bare headed and bare handed for the whole 6 hours we were on the ice.

At one point, I was checked out by a representative of the local Adelie Penguin population, and we had a ‘conversation’ for about 10 minutes while he tried to figure out what I was doing that was so different from all the other foreign ‘penguins’ on the ice. I say “he” because in my experience, it is the males that like to have a look at the mechanics of the wheel – the ladies are more interested in the end product….