OK, don’t tell anyone but I’m a little scared and a little nervous about this whole thing. First of all, I am participating in a scientific research expedition… what if they actually expect me to know what I’m doing? It would be just like me to completely mess something up.. like be a total 7th grader and put the decimal point in the wrong place or add when I’m supposed to multiply…

I leave tomorrow and I still haven’t figured out how I am going to get from the airport to the train station… there doesn’t seem to be a direct bus, but there’s got to be something, right? And then there’s the fact that I’m flying on an Airbus… in deference to my Boeing brother I almost ALWAYS fly his brand, but there was no other way this time… I felt guilty enough booking that flight as it was, and then there was that little upset off the coast of Brazil… not to worry, the next leg (from Chicago to Winnipeg) will be on a little bitty commuter airline..

And here’s my biggest source of anxiety: there are voracious, vindictive, carnivorous insects out there, and they are all gunning for me. I hate mosquitoes and Churchill is supposed to be so rife with them that we are urged to leave no square inch of flesh exposed to the atmosphere.

It is only the female mosquitoes who suck blood, and they only do that to make more mosquitoes. Allegedly, the females rest for two or three days after a “full blood meal” and devote themselves to digestion and egg development… scientists say this like it’s just a bitty thing, but my experience makes me think that a “full blood meal” means a whole lot of ME. I have packed THREE mosquito net hats, long sleeve shirts, long pants, gloves and boots and about six gallons of Deet and fourteen tubes of anti-itch cream. I don’t know why I bothered… I am sure that I will be eaten alive.