Ariel Waldman

Yes, yes.

I sneaked that with me.

And so I was able to at least bring a piece of Simone with me to Antarctica.

So, you know, she was there in spirit.

It's both a combination of quite a lot of things and not as much as you would like.

So typically you're only allowed 85 pounds of gear to go to Antarctica, but that's got to include all of your clothes for several weeks and like your boots and it gets taken up really quickly.

I was fortunate enough, I was allowed 185 pounds.

So that included my microscope, brought that down in a Pelican case, all of my camera gear in another Pelican case.

So cameras, drones, 360 cameras, all sorts of stuff.

So yeah, you kind of like squirrel away what you can, but all of the weight limits are highly controlled because you're on these military aircrafts and they're budgeting the weight with the cargo that they have to take down to Antarctica.

And so yeah, I fit as much camera gear as I can and then enough clothes for two months.

It's kind of half and half.

So with the research team that I was embedded on, which is the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long-Term Ecological Research Team, which is a mouthful to say, but I'll say LTER.

You know, we would be in McMurdo Station for some of the time.

So in that environment, you're like in a small...

town.

You know, you're in what they consider a sort of mining town sort of situation.

There's hundreds of people.

You're living in a dorm.

It's actually fairly comfortable, really.