Respectability for an old fart?

Another abridged version of the North West Passage transit - this one appropriately acknowledging Corrie and Kimbra - in the Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum Newsletter. What an erudite spot for a scruffy old geezer to hang a byline! And all from talking to a spaceman on Berrimilla's batphone. Thanks to the Editor for permission to post the page - and to Leroy Chiao for a special kind of erudition.

For those of you who don't know, there's a longer article in the July issue of Yachting World. It would be interesting to know how the Friends overlap with the readers of Yachting World.

Devon Island YES!

From Keith Cowing www.spaceref.com 

Alex:

At last , you get to see our smelly, isolated, quirky, home away from home!

Pictures, blogs, PLEASE!

Get Pascal to take you north to the canyons and inlets.  And please get to Beechey Island if at all possible.

Working on it mate - working on it. Watch this space.

Haughton Mars Camp

For anyone still following, the blog will resurrect in a few days. I have been invited up to Devon Island by Pascal as part of the summer programme for the Haughton Mars Project (www.marsinstitute.com and click on HMP) and I'm flying up there on august 1st for about 10 days - almost exactly two years since we got so close in Berrimilla.

I'll take a laptop and the satphone so that I can keep the blog going but will only be able to send photos if I can use the camp internet connection. If not, then lots when I get back.

Crossing the fingers and all other appendages that I might be able to visit the Fraknlin graves at Beechey Island. We got so close enough in 2008 to see the cliffs behind Beechey. Go to  http://www.johngeiger.net/frozen.html  for the book and the story. The photos of young John Torrington, who died on January 1st 1846 and his two colleagues have for years haunted me - until I met Pascal in Louisiana, I never imagined that I might one day visit their graves.