You'd think a talk about traveling to Antarctica and studying the movements of glaciers would be interesting. You'd THINK. Somehow, scientists have the uncanny ability to make everything that is interesting sound mind-numbingly boring. I was out of water, the room was dark, the Welshman was snoozing.

"You have to be careful," cautioned the speaker in a dry voice, "because there are many crevasses."

CREVASSES! You could fall into a crevasse! So there's this volcano in Antarctica, Erebus, and it is covered in crevasse fields, and this guy was riding along on his snowmobile and he just went crazily over an ice bridge and the undergrad he was supposed to be leading just followed him because how is she supposed to know? But the weight of his snow mobile had weakened the bridge and she barely made it across. Hours later, the ice bridge was completely gone. Can you imagine? An undergrad?

Then again, there was that advisor who sent his student to do field work in Papua New Guinea and then he was eaten by CANNIBALS. We were thinking that it would be hard for that guy to get new students after that.

But CREVASSES! Imagine tooling along in your snowmobile, and then KABAM! A crevasse you didn't even know existed would collapse under your runners and you'd plummet like 50-100ft into your icy grave. But you wouldn't die, oh no, you'd merely break your leg, and then face the ultimate question between dehydration and hypothermia.

After musing on the subject for a time, I concluded that no matter what kind of shape I was in, I would attempt to climb out. I know in the movies you have to like wait for your brother to attempt a dangerous rescue mission in inclement weather, but I don't have a brother and we're assuming that I'm very far away from help. Like this one guy in Antarctica, he fell in a crevasse and the rest of his party had died by then except this one guy who I think died when they fell into the crevasse, and he had like a broken leg or something, and he CLIMBED OUT and like dragged himself all the way to safety. Those south pole missions, everyone was always falling into crevasses; one time one of the dogs fell in and before they could do anything, all the other dogs fell in because they're connected and then the whole sled of supplies fell in. You'd better believe those people starved to death. Well, many of them, anyway.

So I decided that despite the incredible, insane pain, I would definitely scale the side of that icy crevasse. There's no way at the present time that I (or most anyone else) could get the whole way up just using the upper body. No, I would have to put some weight on the leg. If only my fibula or something was broken that would be no biggy. I mean, I already did that once. It didn't work very well, I must admit, the fibuless leg is not good at bearing weight even discounting the pain, but really all you'd need is for it to be like a wooden peg-stub that you could put a little weight on to balance yourself up the side of the icy crevasse. Naturally you'd hope that you still had your ice pick, and that it hadn't found its way into your eye or your guts during the fall down. And hopefully you'll have crampons, which is frankly a word I try to avoid using because it sounds really gross and unpleasant.

And then I'd pull myself, inch by inch towards the top of the crevasse, and my half-crazed starving expedition-mates would throw me ropes and stuff, and I wouldn't know if it's because they want me to survive or because they were hoping to use my newly dead flesh as sustenance in the days to come. Like that guy who apparently killed his girlfriend and then chopped her up and was boiling a chunk of her flesh on the stove when the police arrived. Which begs the question: why boil? Everyone knows that straight boiling makes whatever it is taste dry!

This course of action could have several results, as I see it: either I make it to the top, in which case I might survive but it's still somewhat unlikely (I shall I always walk with a limp, how tragic!), I fall, injuring myself even worse, (after which I would definitely try again and be even more likely to fall), or lastly, that the pain from my broken appendage would be so much that I'd go into shock or pass out and succumb eventually to hypothermia without ever reawakening. I kind of like that idea better than regular hypothermia because I wouldn't actually have to feel any of it. But any way you frame it, I certainly would never just lie there and give up.

"I have no idea how you kept awake during that lecture," said the Welshman, well relieved to be on his way out of that dark and boring room.

I looked at him enigmatically.

"I have my ways."

Actually, that's a pretty good point... you COULD just climb out, huh...
» randomjunk on 2008-01-07 11:36:14

Oh my
This is certainly a good technique to use when attempting to avoid sleep. Hmm....let's see here...what could I make of sound waves? I'll go on a sonic adventure. Get it, like Sonic the Hedgehog, and Sonic Adventure the video game?? Whatever.

As for these crevasses of which you speak...I would hope that their walls would be close enough for me to climb out by pressing my hands to one wall and my feet another. I could slowly inch my way to safety and still look damn cool.
» The-Muffin-Man on 2008-01-08 04:17:31

Maybe his girlfriend did the cooking.
When you got back, would you become famous for it, or would you just live normally?
» middaymoon on 2008-01-08 10:14:36

I think I would try and get out, too... just because dying in a crevasse isn't exactly on my list of "Things to do before I die", but I don't think I'd be entirely excited about it.

As far as Candide... well if he did come up with THAT solution then that's pretty much what solution I can up with after reading it. I did think that one line was interesting where he said talking about which is better: to live through all the things that they as a combined force lived through, or to sit around after it was all over (lol).
» jinyu on 2008-01-10 07:59:23

Re: Comment
Yes I did. Too bad I counldn't test the lock picking technique I found on this website because no one had a pin.
» Nuttz on 2008-01-13 04:50:37

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