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This is my dog Zion. \u00a0If you haven’t met him, you might assume he’s a labrador retriever of the Canis Familaris<\/em> species. But spend 10 minutes with him and you’ll figure out he’s a slightly different creature; \u00a0Canis Ballhounder<\/em>. \u00a0 On this very frosty morning in northeast Ohio he is interested in one thing, and one thing only- \u00a0chasing a tennis ball, \u00a0running as fast and hard as he can. His breathe pounds the air with steam; \u00a0and the hawk in the tree, looking at him run, \u00a0just grunts and snuggles deeper into her fluffed-out feathers. Zion is a creature motivated by motion, and the cold is just a reason to run harder.<\/p>\n Here’s the good news; \u00a0Zion is not the only one on the move this morning. \u00a0 As of yesterday, Brian has officially departed for Antarctica. \u00a0 He spent a day or two with John before departure. \u00a0I’m not 100% sure where Brian is I write this, \u00a0but it’s somewhere high up, west and quite a bit south of the continental US. By any measure, he’s moving in the right direction.<\/p>\n With Brian on his way, and an imminent government shutdown now kicked further down the road, \u00a0yet another barrier between ANSMET and renewed fieldwork is out of the way. \u00a0 \u00a0We received an additional welcome sign of progress on Friday- the rest of this year’s field party members began receiving their individual itineraries from the USAP travel contractors. \u00a0The result was (as you might expect)\u00a0a few butterflies, a few “are we really doing this?” questions. \u00a0Though it’s easy for me to say this because I’m not actually going, I’m not worried at all. \u00a0Even if this field season is something quite new for us \u00a0(we’ve never returned to the field after 3 years off before), \u00a0we HAVE been doing this for nearly 50 years- \u00a0there ain’t no Antarctic project with better muscle-memory on making this fieldwork come together. Between Jim and Brian and our field team there’s almost a quarter century of Antarctic experience. \u00a0They got this.<\/p>\n Today being Sunday, \u00a0as you do whatever you do to honor or thank this universe for letting you be a part of it, \u00a0send a small “Godspeed” out to Brian and a bigger “you got this” vibe out to the rest of the team. \u00a0 In just a few weeks they’ll be out chasing their own version of tennis balls, \u00a0and retrieving quite a few (I hope).<\/p>\n -Ralph (and Zion), \u00a0from seriously-radiatively-cooled Novelty, OH.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is my dog Zion. \u00a0If you haven’t met him, you might assume he’s a labrador retriever of the Canis Familaris<\/em> species. But spend 10 minutes with him and you’ll figure out he’s a slightly different creature; \u00a0Canis Ballhounder<\/em>. \u00a0 On this very frosty morning in northeast Ohio he is interested in one thing, and one thing only- \u00a0chasing a tennis ball, \u00a0running as fast and hard as he can. His breathe pounds the air with steam; \u00a0and the hawk in the tree, looking at him run, \u00a0just grunts and snuggles deeper into her fluffed-out feathers.<\/p>\n