Wednesday, August 12, 2009

There is only one way to do it


There is only one way to do it,
and that is to do it.
You can't sit around and wait for inspiration.
You have to go after it with a club.

-- Jack London

So many worries; will the pressure hold; will I forget some item on the checklist (more likely; what item will I forget, and what will be the consequence?); will the demand regulator work? Will the breathing exhaust port clog with ice? What if I have to bail out--how do I cut free of the main liquid oxygen supply and quickly switch to my bail-out bottle, without losing suit pressure, consciousness, and, a little more than incidentally, life?!?

Below, aviation pioneer Wiley Post clambers into his Winnie Mae, clad in his own built-from-scratch pressure suit. Building a strange flying machine of my own, pictures of Post give me the courage to carry out Jack London's decree; you just have to get down to it and do it.



Below, fit-testing my pressure helmet.



A little more tinkering, then off to Ecuador on Saturday for two weeks of underwater exploration.

Below, a message;

The moon bobs in the running river.
Drifting, drifting,
What do I resemble?
-- Tu Fu

2 comments:

Flynn Renard said...

I have always loved that Jack London quote. I'm also a fan of the quote, "There is nothing in contradiction to nature, only to what we know of it."
-D. Scully-

Anonymous said...

ah,
lone gull between earth and sky