So, who the heck am I and why should you vote for me?

Thursday, August 26, 2010

As the blog title says, my name is Sharon, and I want to go to Antarctica!

I’m not one of those people who’s wanted to go there since they were a kid. My obsession started about 5 or 6 years ago. That is when I started following the journal of a guy working there who goes by the name McPenguin online. He was working over the winter at McMurdo Base. Through his writing about the place and photos he posted online (both his, and ones from the shared drive down there) I discovered that there was more than I thought to Antarctica.

I’d always pictured it as being just cold and dark (winter) or cold and white (summer). But no, I was wrong. The dark? It’s not just black. With no light contamination you can see more stars than you thought possible, and the Aurora Australis? Puts every Northern Light show I’ve ever seen to shame. In the summer, the ice down there can be so beautiful. Shades of blue & turquoise that I thought was reserved for the tropical waters of the Caribbean. And it’s not lifeless. There are whales & seals & birds. And yes, penguins.

My thirst for knowledge about Antarctica and the people who live there grew. I started reading blogs of people stationed at Amundson-Scott (aka the South Pole). I read books, and news articles. And I knew, I wanted to go there!

By chance I happened upon Quark Expedition’s last contest, “Blog Your Way To Antarctica.” Alas, the winner was determined solely by vote count and had little to do with actual blogging ability. Still, I tried. Out of almost 600 entrants I managed to climb to 22nd place.

The contest running now, Adventure With Julie To Antarctica, is pretty much the same thing except that they will take the top five vote recipients and choose from them. I’m still sitting at about 25th place, slowly gaining votes, but not getting any closer to the top five. If you’re reading this because you took the time to click on my blog link, but haven’t voted yet, PLEASE vote for me, and tell your friends.

I don’t have a cool picture of me with a dolphin or orca or other marine mammal, because I’ve never been close enough to one. I don’t have a picture of my kid and a story about “I’m not entering for myself” because I don’t have kids yet and I am entering for myself. I don’t have a cool picture of me with with an exotic cat because the only time I’ve ever gotten to pet one I was only 2 years old so that picture doesn’t even look like me (and I don’t even remember it!). I don’t have a picture of myself on top of a mountain because I’ve never climbed a mountain. Heck, we don’t even have mountains here in Minnesota!

Yes, all those people probably have more travel cred, or experience, and they will love the trip. But me? Winning this trip would quite literally be the trip of my lifetime. There is no possibility of me getting to Antarctica any other way. If I make it there I will look at it through the lens of my camera, and share it with my blog readers every step of the way.

Do you want to see Antarctica? Vote for me and if I’m selected to go I will produce a PDF for download that chronicles my journey, as inspired by the great Kyle Cassidy:
Arizona iPhonetography, In the Desert Without Fancy Equipment (Or A Signal)
Never Been Lost, A Wyoming Travel Diary
California Velocity, Five Days on the Right Coast 

Gratuitous picture of me with an exotic cat:

I'm on the left, dad in the middle, my sister on the right, 

and the lion cub belonged to our neighbor.

What animal do you think of when you think about Antarctica?

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Yep, that’s right. Moose!
What? That’s not what you were thinking about? Penguins?
Yeah, penguins are pretty darn cool and I’m really looking forward to seeing them. But when I think of travel to anywhere, my first thought is of Moose. If you are confused, you haven’t met my little buddy yet!

This is Moose Snyder.


He has a Facebook account. I feel I can safely say that he *IS* the world’s most traveled Moose.

We already know that I’ve never left North America, despite my desire to see the entire world. There are two ways I travel vicariously through others – I collect postcards, and I send Moose. In his short lifespan (I got him in 1996) this little guy has traveled to six of the seven continents. He’s sat on the equator, and he’s sat on the South Pole. He’s been to the Galapagos Islands, Paris, England, Italy, Croatia, Ecuador, Australia, and Ethiopia, just to name a few of the places he’s been. When friends or family are going someplace fun I ask if they’ll take him along.



He also loves meeting new people. He is a bit of a celebrity stalker. He’s met tv chefs (Alton Brown), authors (Neil Gaiman, Jasper Fford, LA Banks), graphic designers (Chip Kidd), magicians (Penn & Teller), astronomers (Phil Plait), skeptics (The Amazing Randi), comedians (Chris Hardwick, Maria Bamford), comic artists (Jon Kovalic, Len Wein, Bernie Wrightson), musicians (Jonathan Coulton, Sunspot) and many actors (James Marsters, John Schneider, Adam Baldwin, Aaron Douglas, Wil Wheaton). And that’s not even the whole list!



As I said, he’s already been all the way to the South Pole, but he still wants to go back to Antarctica. Besides, I want to go!


So remember, a vote for me is a vote for Moose!

Here are some photos of his adventures, and a map of where he’s already been!






View My Adventures in a larger map

PLEASE VOTE FOR US!

NASA Tweetup, part 2

Saturday, June 5, 2010

My Space Shuttle launch story.

Now we're on to the second half of day 1.

After lunch we boarded buses for a tour of KSC.

We stopped & spent about an hour & a half at the Apollo Saturn V Center. It was really cool. They showed a short movie on the history of the Apollo program, and then moved us into the control room. It wasn’t a reproduction either. They had taken the entire control room that was actually used for the launches and reassembled it at the Apollo Saturn V Center. Then, as part of the tour, they went through a simulation of the launch from there, with details right down to rattling the windows.



When you left the theater from that simulation the very first thing you saw was the rocket end of a Saturn V rocket. It’s a real full size one that was built, but then was never used. It is MASSIVE. They have all the parts of it hanging from the ceiling end to end and it goes the entire length of the building. All that rocket power just to get a little capsule that 3 men barely fit into up to the moon.



And here's a picture with me in it to give an idea of the scale:



They had some other cool stuff at the center too. They have a piece of moon rock that you can reach in and actually touch. There is an “Apollo Hall of Treasures” where they have things like the Apollo 14 capsule and Alan Shepherd’s spacesuit that he wore on the moon’s surface.





After the Apollo Saturn V Center we went to the International Space Station Center. This is the building where they assemble and load the modules used to take stuff to the ISS. Not as much stuff to look at as at the Apollo Saturn V Center, but it is an actual working facility. You look down through glass windows at the people working in the clean room environments. While we were there one of the modules they were working on was being reinforced because it’s going to become a permanent part of the ISS.





As we drove to the different stops we also got to see a lot of parts of the base. We drove by the Orbiter Processing Facility, Mobile Launcher Platforms, the Crawler-Transporter, and, of course, the Vehicle Assembly Building. You can’t go anywhere at Kennedy without seeing the VAB!

This is the Crawler-Transporter which moves the shuttle around.



The gravel to the right of the road is the Crawler's track.



And the track leads, of course, to the Vehicle Assembly Building.



One of the buildings we drove past on our tour was the hangar used for the Columbia Reconstruction Project after she was lost on re-entry.



After the tour we took a short break and then boarded the buses again for the highlight of Thursday - the retraction of the Rotating Service Structure!

We were out by Launch Pad 39A just a few hundred yards & one fence away from the shuttle! The RSS is the structure surrounding the shuttle during the time she’s on the pad up until just less than a day from the scheduled launch time. It is how the crews access the shuttle to check systems, load it, etc.

Of course, we couldn’t actually see the shuttle herself yet, just the tops of the big orange external tank and the solid rocket boosters. This was the first place I hauled out The Monster, my 400 mm 2.8 lens. We were TOO CLOSE for me to really use it! I could get some super close-ups, but it was too close to get any kind of good composition. This is a problem I can live with!



Taken with the big lens:



OK, so the RSS retraction? Happens slow enough that you really don’t see the structure move. We were taking pictures & talking and then all of a sudden, “Hey! I can see Atlantis!”





Once the structure was fully retracted we were all getting pictures of ourselves in front of it.



We got a picture of all 4 of us Minnesotans in front of it too.
The girls from Minneapolis: me, Liz (@LizStrand), Melissa (@melissagerman) & Mauria (@MoBea)


Then we did a big group shot of the entire Tweetup group in front of Atlantis.


Photo Credit: (NASA/Paul E. Alers) Licensed Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
We were herded back onto the buses after that. Our view of the launchpad from our little area was a side view of the shuttle. As our buses drove off we pulled around her and got a beautiful full on view. These pictures are taken through the bus windows.





After getting dropped off at the press site, we were done with scheduled events for the day. Melissa, Matthew & I took advantage of that time to get our required “I’m by the countdown clock!” pictures.

Cheesy self portrait.






After hanging out for a little while longer I was going to meet up with my friends Mark & Sarah for dinner but decided I was just too wiped out. I went back to my resort with the intention of napping, but I learned that the pool & hot tub were open until 11:00. Since the flight my husband Rick & my dad were on was landing at 11:12 I figured it was a sign. A nice relaxing soak in the hot tub felt so good. After running to the airport to get Rick & Dad, it was the end of a wonderful day.


(This picture's not blurry because of the water, it's because the phone is in a nice watertight plastic bag!)

Next: Launch day!

NASA Tweetup, part 1

My Space Shuttle launch story.

I’ve already posted about how I got to go to the launch through @nasatweetup. Now I’ve finally got time to tell you about the Tweetup itself!

Wednesday
To minimize time taken off work, since I don’t get paid time off, I ended up going right from work to the airport on Wednesday, and then on Monday going right from the airport back to work. So, Wednesday night Rick picked me up at work and we headed to uptown to pick up Melissa (@melissagerman), another woman from Minneapolis who was also selected for the Tweetup. Actually, out of only 150 people, 4 of us were girls from Minneapolis! Anyway, I had been tweeting with the other girls and it turned out that Melissa and I were taking the same flight down. She didn’t have a way to the airport yet so I said we’d be able to pick her up. Luckily she turned out to be really nice and we got along well.

The flight down was on Delta, formerly Northworst. Ugh. New name, no improvement. The lack of legroom on their flights can get to be downright painful for my 5’10” self! I’m actually typing this out right now while sitting on another flight, a US Airways one. MUCH more comfortable and more than enough leg room. But I digress. Delta flight. We were supposed to take off at 7pm to get to Orlando at 11pm local time. We loaded up and backed on out of the gate. And sat. We sat just there for a freaking hour without moving! After 45 minutes they announced that it was some indicator light that had come on but that they didn’t need to fix anything, they just had to wait for someone to sign off on paperwork. When we finally took off we ended up landing in Orlando an hour late at midnight local time.

I wasn’t checked into my hotel until after 2am because I had to get my luggage, get my rental car, and run to a different hotel to pick up my tripod rental before getting to mine to check in. I couldn’t even just go to bed because I had to rearrange all my bags from travel packing configuration to hotel + tweetup organization. Put all the clothes in the suitcase & carryon, put computer & cords in one shoulder bag that had been packed empty in the suitcase, and put camera gear in my beloved Tom Bihn bag. I have never in my life traveled with so much camera & computer equipment.

I ended up finally going to bed at 3am with two alarms set to make sure I got up at 6am.

Thursday
It’s here! The first day of the tweetup! I had enough adrenaline in me that it didn’t even matter that I’d only had 3 hours sleep. I loaded the SUV and headed over to Melissa’s hotel to pick her up. We were on our way! The drive out to Kennedy was nice. We had enough to chat about the whole time, and I might have possibly maybe seen the eyes & snout of an alligator in the water in the ditch. We did definitely see a cow in a swamp. Yup, one cow, all by itself, standing knee deep in water. We’d recently passed a field with a herd so our theory was that this one cow had gone on walkabout.

Because the route to Kennedy was so well marked, in our excitement we didn’t read the email w/directions close enough. At one point we weren’t supposed to take the highway veering to the left to Kennedy, we were supposed to stay on the one we were already on. But we didn’t. We got to Kennedy and then spent over ½ hour trying to find the press registration area. Turns out that had we followed the directions we would have been approaching the base from the south side rather than the west. We figured it out eventually & got where we needed to be. We got our tweetup & access badges, our swag bags, a vehicle permit, and a map with directions to the press site.



Woo hoo! We went just a little ways up the road and hit a secure gate. After showing our IDs (I’ve finally used my passport!) we got to go through and we were officially in NASA restricted space. And hey, look up there. It’s the Vehicle Assembly Building right in front of us.



That’s where we’re headed, turning just a couple roads in front of it. FIVE MINUTES LATER, we’re still approaching it, and have finally gotten close. The VAB is one freaking HUGE building. When it looks like you’re maybe ½ mile or a mile from it, you are really still 5 miles away. It’s just so unbelievably big that it throws your sense of perspective off. A quick turn where we’re supposed to go, another checkin at the gate to the press area, and we’re parking.

We were so excited. There were the permanent press buildings on our right - CBS, Floriday Today, some unmarked ones. On our left - the freaking countdown clock! You know what I’m talking about. The one you always see on news coverage of the launch. And it was right there!



There was water behind it. And across that water, pretty tiny to the naked eye, the launch platform. The only identifiable part of the shuttle was the very tip of the big orange external tank. But still, there she was, “our” shuttle, Atlantis. And past the press buildings ahead on the right, a big white tent. That was our home base, the NASA Tweetup Tent.



Big enough to hold 150 people, air conditioned, big flat panels up front to air NASA tv, powerstrips for every table and wi-fi. They had hooked up a dedicated fiber for us to have wi-fi. It was so cool. They had everything a techno-addict needed.



This is the first tweetup I’d ever been to. I’d never even been to any local ones. There’s a weird thing about tweetups. Everyone introduces themselves with two names. It’s either “Hi, I’m HellZiggy. My real name is Sharon.” or “Hi, I’m Sharon. My Twitter name is HellZiggy.” Thanks to the STS-132 Tweetup list that @NASATweetup had put together of all the confirmed attendees, there were already some familiar faces and familiar names.
Melissa and I met our fellow Minnesotans, and we also found Twitter friend @MatthewJLB. Our tweetup badges all had both our Twitter name and our real name, so sometimes you’d just catch a name as someone walked past.

Oddly enough, there were two other people at the tweetup that I was just 2 degrees of separation from. A guy named @Oblivion is friends w/one of my local geeks, Kami, and @AndyKilgore from Madison is friends with Sunspot’s drummer Wendy & knows the rest of the band. Out of 150 people from 30 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Netherlands, New Zealand and England, what are the freaking odds of that? Also, there was one person that wasn’t quite a friend of a friend. More like a nemesis. Twitter user @ErikHess was there, and his user name caught my eye because I know an Erik Hess on twitter, but his Twitter name is @fivesixzero. When I told “my” Erik he said to tell the one at the tweetup that he stole his name.

So, while everyone was setting up their equipment, we were all also chatting and getting to know each other. For a large group who didn’t know each other for the most part, it was really easy to just start conversations with people and get to know them. Of course, we were all used to talking to strangers via Twitter.

At shortly after 10am we were greeted by @NASA team members John Yembrick and Stephanie Schierholz. We had a bunch of really great speakers before breaking for lunch:
Robert D. Braun, NASA chief technologist, NASA Headquarters
Astronaut Janice Voss
Jon Cowart(@Rocky_Sci ), Kennedy Space Center
Stephanie Stilson, space shuttle Discovery Flow Director, Shuttle Processing Office, Kennedy Space Center
Ron Woods, equipment specialist, who has been a space suit designer from Mercury to now

I could write up all the cool stuff they told us, but I have a crap memory for the details, so I’m going to just point you toward the Ustream video they shot! :)

Oh hey, that saved me a lot of writing!

We broke for lunch then, and I joined the herd that was heading toward the cafeteria. You know that crappy cafeteria food service you have at most companies? Yeah, NASA may have brilliant scientists, but they get the same average food as everyone else. It was AWESOME though since I hadn’t eaten ANYTHING that day, because I was too excited and too dumb to stop at a convenience store even. When got back from lunch it was pretty much time to get on the buses for our tour.

And that was the first half of the first day.

If at first you don't succeed...

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Well, I didn't win the Quark Expeditions Official Blogger contest. I ended up coming in at about 22nd place or so. Not too bad considering I started a month & a half after the contest first opened. Thank you all for going and voting for me! It meant a lot that so many of my friends & family were willing to help me out. The guy who was in the lead ended up getting over 11,000 votes, so I really wasn't too surprised that I never caught up to him. I guess having a radio show where you can pimp for votes daily helps a little...

So, I've got this shiny new blog, and nowhere to go. What now?

I'm going to keep trying!

Plan B:

Getting votes didn't work, so now I'm trying with my mad foto skillz!

WorldNomads.com had partnered with the National Geographic Channel & Gap Adventures to award one exceptional individual the chance to go on assignment with renowned wildlife photographer Jason Edwards to Antarctica! (http://journals.worldnomads.com/scholarships/post/32554.aspx)

To apply you needed to do the following:

1. Shoot a series of photos (maximum of 5) that tell a story about a place you have visited. The judges will be looking for:

* originality
* ability to convey a story through photos
* excellent technique

2. Upload your photos (maximum of 5) from this theme to Flickr and;

a. Use the image captions to tell us about the place you photographed.
b. Numerically number your photos in the title if you wish them to be considered in a particular order.
c. Please do not use any Flickr tools that highlight certain parts of your photos as this only hampers the judging process.
d. Add the images to the World Nomads Scholarship Group. Only photographs in this group will be considered.

3. Complete an entry form which includes a 300 word (max) essay on why you should be chosen and copy and paste the links to your photo series. Your written response will have significant weighting in the judging process, so think carefully about why you should be chosen. Remember this is a learning opportunity, not a junket for professional photographers.

So I applied. And now I wait. With fingers & toes crossed.

My photos were a lot better than many that entered. Unfortunately, there were also some I felt were better than mine. We'll see. It's up to the judges. The entry deadline was last Sunday, and if I win I'll know within the next 2 weeks.

The pictures I entered were from the Fort Snelling Upper Post. I went to photograph it twice; once right at sundown with some gorgeous light, but only from the outer edges, and once in early afternoon so the light wasn't great, but it was with a tour so I got to go behind the fence to get different views. Such cool buildings. It'll be a real shame if they don't get restored before crumbling completely away.

The five pictures I submitted were these (Just click on any of them to see a bigger version):

Looking for votes in creative ways

Sunday, September 13, 2009

This contest isn't about getting people you know to vote to send you to Antarctica. It is about getting people you know to vote, and then get people they know to vote, and then get those people to get people they know to vote, etc. It is not just a popularity contest, it is a marketing contest.

As time gets shorter and I need more votes I'm starting to get more creative in who & how I ask. Most of you who know me in real life already know that I am Jonathan Coulton's Merchandise Minion when he plays in Minneapolis/St. Paul. I have already gotten Mr. Coulton to tweet the link to vote for me. Unfortunately his zombie hoards did not come out in the numbers I was hoping for. Zombies must not have email.

I have been avoiding form letters when reaching out for votes. I don't want to annoy people with form letters, and I want to convince them with the personal touch.

On that note, I just send one of my strangest ones so far! Here is the email I sent to John Hodgman, Daily Show Correspondent and the PC in the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials. With over 80,000 followers on Twitter, lets hope he goes to bat for me!

Mr. Hodgman,

As someone who knows everything, can you help me learn SOME INFORMATION THAT I REQUIRE? I would like to know if Antarctica is real. Because the interwebs are full of lies & crazy talk I can not believe them when they say that it is. This is something I must find out for myself.

I am trying to use the interwebs to get to this mythical land to see if it is there. I have entered a contest at http://www.blogyourwaytoantarctica.com/blogs/view/548 and the winner of this contest will be decided by who receives the most votes. I would like to ask you a favor. Would you tweet and/or blog the link to my voting page and ask your minions to vote for me? I have made a conveniently short url for the TwitterLand: http://bit.ly/FrozenSharon or if that is too long, http://bit.ly/frzn will also work, although it is not as catchy & easy to remember.

I have offered to bring back a penguin for everyone who votes for me. I could send you your penguin through the U. S. Pony Express upon my return, or if you would prefer, I could wait and give it to Mr. Jonathan Coulton, Mountain Man Extraordinaire, at his first Minneapolis performance after my trip. Although, given his lack of care for your cats, that is probably not a wise option.

Because I am not an Internet Superstar, or Daily Show Correspondent, or anyone of consequence really, I have been reduced to asking those sorts of people to pimp me out for votes. Mr. Coulton and his two manservants Paul & Storm have already asked the TwitterLand to vote for me. I'm not in the lead yet though, so they are obviously not powerful enough. You sir, would be powerful enough.

If you are thinking to yourself right now that this is intriguing, but you have an aversion to helping complete strangers, we are not strangers. We have met once before in the strange land of St. Paul, Minnesota. I forged a bond with your strange mountain man companion that night by bribing him with homemade cookies. I am his official Minneapolis Merchandise Minion now. On that fateful day in St. Paul, I also had a Moose. Here is evidence of the Moose:

If I can get the votes to go to Antarctica, you won't be sending just me. A vote for me is a vote for Moose. This Moose has traveled to 5 continents and met Celebrities. He will be going with me to Antarctica, if it does indeed exist. Will you help us? Don't do it for me. Do it for the Moose.

If your schedule of Important Business does not allow you the time to write a Tweet, I can do it for you. Perhaps something simple like: "Does Antarctica really exist? @HellZiggy & Moose want to find out. Vote for them at http://bit.ly/FrozenSharon & then RT this."

Thank you for your valuable time, Mr. Hodgman, and I look forward to your reply.

Sharon Snyder, Future Antarctic Explorer

More than 300 words

Friday, September 11, 2009

300 words for a blog entry just doesn't seem like enough to convince someone who doesn't know me to vote for me. Unfortunately this contest is mostly a contest to see who can get the most votes, not who is the best choice to send to Antarctica.

So why am I the best choice? Simple. I really really really really want to go! Honestly, that's why we all entered, isn't it? A better question would be, if I did get selected to go, what would I have to offer?

Well, I'm not a professional writer, but I do know what I am doing. There won't be any of the grammar mistakes that make intelligent people want to stab their eyes out. (Notice the correct use of there/their in that sentence?) I know the difference between its & it's, between there, their, & they're, and between your & you're. I've been keeping a journal online since 2002, and have a very conversational writing style.

In addition to my journal at LiveJournal, I keep up with the latest social media trends. Twitter's popularity may have exploded when celebrities such as Oprah & Ashton Kutcher joined, but by that point I'd already been using it for almost two years. I also have active accounts at Facebook and Flickr.

If I am selected to be the Quark Expeditions Official Blogger, my blog entries won't be just writing. I'm an amateur photographer who has been taking photos since my first photography class 20 years ago. I joined the digital revolution in 2003 with what was then Canon's top of the line prosumer camera, the G3. Since then I've upgraded to a digital SLR, the 40D, which I will be bringing with me to record all the beauty & detail of Antarctica.

My favorite things to photograph are nature, both animals and plants, landscapes, and architecture. Here are some samples of my work. These were taken in a 3 hour time frame on July 18, 2009 when I participated in the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk in Minneapolis.

I also love taking pictures of birds. I can hardly wait to take pictures of penguins in the wild!

Now that you know a little about what I have to offer, how about learning more about me?

I'm 39 years old. I live in a suburb of Minneapolis, MN with my husband of 15 years, Rick, and our two cats. I just received my A.A.S. in Graphic Design and Visual Communication. It took me a while to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. Before settling on Graphic Design, I had studied Zoology and Photojournalism. Currently, I'm employed at a camera store where I work in the photo minilab printing other people's vacation pictures.

Rick & I love to travel, but can rarely afford to. The first time we saw an ocean I was 31 years old and Rick was 32. We never left the country until I was 34 & he was 35, and that was just a day trip to Canada. When I win this trip to Antarctica we will have another milestone. At 39 & 40 years old we will be leaving North America for the first time.

It won't be just Rick & I on the trip. We will be bringing my little buddy, Moose, with us. Moose is a Beanie Baby moose that I've had for over 10 years. He goes with us on our vacations, as well as traveling with friends when they go cool places. I may have never left North America, but Moose has been to 5 continents already. Besides his travels here in North America with us, he's gone to England, Italy, and France with friends. He also just recently went to Ethiopia, and has been to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. The 5th continent he's been to is Antarctica. Yes, he's already been there even though I haven't! I met a guy working at McMurdo Base through his blog, and he graciously agreed to host Moose for a visit. I also take pictures of Moose with different celebrities I meet. He's met folks such as Alton Brown, Adam Savage, Penn & Teller, James Marsters, Kevin Sorbo and even a Blue Man from the Blue Man Group! If you are on Facebook you can follow Moose's adventures on his page here.

Well, that's all for now. I plan to keep updating this page with info about me, about how I'm doing on the contest, with special thanks to people who help put out the call for votes, and with samples of my photography. Even if I don't win this contest, I intend to get to Antarctica some day and this blog will chronicle how I get there.

Thanks for reading and keep an eye out for updates!

Sharon, the Quark Expeditions Official Blogger (hopefully!)