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Monster Pigs
Monday, November 29, 1999

McKoy

The Team's Call from Antarctica
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Hi, Wade McKoy from Punta Arenas giving you the Antarctica '99 daily update.

	The Bird

The anticipation of this morning's luggage weigh-in and the strong possibility of an evening flight in the C-130 Hercules, that would carry us 1800 miles to Antarctica, over the Straits of Magellan and cut through the haze of wine and rich dinners that we have grown accustom to during our lavish stay in Punta Arenas. At weigh in we thought the scales were reading heavy, so to test them we weighed in ourselves and all came in about five pounds over our normal weight. So we thought we had something there, until we realized we had all gotten fat on the fabulous Chilean food and wine that we've been indulging in profusely over the last two weeks — profusely, use a better word that's a terrible word [laugher in background].

So we're several hundred pounds over weight, which is a small fortune at $30 a pound overweight fees that they charge. Our fearless leader, Doug Stoup, just takes it in stride. Man, this guy is amazing, he just doesn't get...he's just having a good time; everybody's having a really good time. And we're ready to go; we're ready to blast off. We were on deck and now we're in the batter's box and we're ready to take a big swing and knock a home run, knock it out of the park. No, we're not going to try to knock it out of the park; we're just going, you know, for the game. Twelve o'clock departure tonight, possible.

Yesterday we went for a two-hour run out to the outskirts of Punta Arenas. There was a lot of traffic at first and then we ran through a dump — it really smelled bad — and then all of a sudden the road got really pastoral and we saw these pigs that must have weighed 500 pounds each. They were monster pigs. And then we saw some more pigs that were more normal sized. These things, we figured, at least 500-pound pigs. Anyway, the road ended and a trail started and we ran up into this little, beautiful, little refuge up on this mountain — nature refuge — clear rushing stream. You know the mountains are just lush green, the grass is just spring green, everything's growing and it's beautiful and it smells good and it's a real contrast from down here. This is a bustling, kind of a noisy city, but everybody's really friendly and we've really enjoyed our stay here. And there's a little nature hike just not that far away. Talk to you later.

— Wade McKoy, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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