Probably the visit to McMurdo was the coldest day we encountered-going ashore in the Zodiac, our cheeks almost froze. We struggled up the hill to the base, finding it necessary to sit down for a rest several times. Then I finally commandeered a bus to take us to headquarters.
Robert found many fans among the people in Antarctica. At Palmer Station, one man was sleeping at the time of the ship's visit. When he heard that Robert had been among the tourists, he phoned the ship, and they talked.
On one Zodiac cruise, there were sea lions which played games with our boat. Their heads would come up above water and they would watch us, but when we steered toward them they would go under and pop up in a different place. Sea lions differ from seals in their gait, being able to walk in a fashion with their hindquarters.
One cruise was among icebergs, to see the sculpturing done by the winds, freezing and thawing and melting. Some of the bergs might be as much as a hundred years old, they told us. Bergs come in various shapes-tabular (squared off-just calved from the Ross Ice Shelf), which, after some melting, became castles, medieval monsters and all sorts of imaginative shapes. One evening, while we were at dinner, the captain spotted two huge bergs, and toured the ship all around them. At one point, it was estimated that we were in a field which contained sixty of the monster bergs.
A champagne party was held on a glacier. Ice is a marvelous substance, ice sculpture beautiful, but it's difficult to describe.
There were albatrosses of various sorts, including the wandering albatross-probably the largest bird known. We also saw petrels, and could go up to the nests and look at the young.
On approach and departure, there is a sea area called the Antarctic Convergence, where the water is quite rough. Many of the passengers had to use seasickness remedies, but at most times during these passages, lifelines were rigged permanently around the ship.
EDITOR 's NOTE: Robert and I took one further trip in the Lindblad Explorer through the Northwest Passage to the Orient. Although thirty-three other ships had managed to reach the Bering Strait, this was the first ship to go all the way to Japan, having navigated the Northwest Passage. '
CHAPTER XIII
POTPOURRI
March 30, 1956: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
I am acquiring sunburn and backaches putting in a completely new and very complicated irrigation system. When I get that and some [Colorado Springs] house repairs completed I'll tackle a new story. My intention is to try to turn out some short stories this summer and not start another novel until about Labor Day.
April 14,, 1956: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
We are still gardening like mad and I ache in every bone from days and days of pick, shovel, and wheelbarrow work. I've just finished an enormous irrigation project. Well, it felt enormous to me, but it does not look like much now that the pipes are covered up. Today we have rain, snow, sleet, hail, and gropple, and I am catching up on paperwork. I expect to resume writing two weeks from Monday and plan to turn out several shorts and short-shorts before tackling another novel.
July 25, 1956: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Ginny has worked out a shenanigan with [a friend] to let you shoot on a resident permit if I don't get one...Ginny put in for a license, too-if you shoot on her license all that will be necessary is for you to convince the warden that you are female and redheaded.
P.S. I did my first pistol shooting (aside from one tomcat) in twenty-two years last Saturday. Three 10's and two 9's for a 48 on my first group. I should have stopped there, for I dropped as low as 42 for 5 shots later-averaging around 45.
August 20, 1956: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Take it easy on the stone masonry; it can make you old before your time. But I enjoy it more than any other form of mechanics, except that it half kills me.
October 3, 1958: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Thanks for the pic of Socrates, the super-giraffe. He is not here yet: he is still in quarantine in Hoboken and in the meantime they are trying to plan a route to Colorado Springs which will not involve bridges or tunnels too low for him-if it were up to me, I'd shoot him full of barbiturate, stretch him out flat, and fly him here in a Hying Boxcar. They'll kill him getting him here-if not from bridges, then from pneumonia. In the meantime, two widowed lady giraffes are awaiting him here; their deceased husband managed to hang himself-quite a trick for a giraffe. [This is in response to Lurton Blassingame's sending a picture of the giraffe that was to come to the zoo at Colorado Springs.]
July 14, 1961: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
I'm in good health but Ginny is not. We've been having atrocious weather, which led to a set of cracked ribs for her. Like this-I've been building an irrigation dam for her garden and designed it to be a large ornamental pool as well as useful. We had been pointing towards a big fourth of July party and, since I had installed an electric pump for irrigation, I also rigged it to operate as a re-circulating fountain-a jet thirty feet in the air with spotlights on the jet and floodlights on the sea green pool-very pretty and just right for a garden dinner party.
The rains came.
Golly, how the rains came! And on 2 July the pond silted up with brown slime. Ginny helped me clean it out-and slipped in the slime and fell against a boulder and cracked her ribs. Now she is strapped like a mummy and won't hold still and isn't getting well and everything hurts her-and I am finding out how really useful a wife is when she is well.
(But the party came off prettily anyway. We served sixty-four people-we now have enough picnic tables for a beer garden-Ginny had sewn about a hundred yards of bunting, I made an easel for a full-sized replica of the Declaration of Independence, we had martial and patriotic music over the outdoor sound system, and I set up a bar that could serve anything from a mint julep or a Saz-erac cocktail to a Singapore sling. Fine time! -- and Ginny ignored her wounds until the next day. Shamrock is going to have kittens again.
PATRICK HENRY AD
EDITOR 's NOTE: One morning in early April, I fetched the newspaper down to read along with breakfast, in my usual fashion. Robert was still sleeping, and there were standing orders never to disturb him until he woke up. But this day was different.
There was a full page ad by the SANE people, signed by a number of local people we knew...I flew in the face of the standing orders, and woke Robert up. "What are we going to do about this?" I asked.
I fixed him breakfast and he read the ad while he ate.
There was no discussion about what we would do. Robert sat down at his typewriter and wrote an answer. When he was finished, I read the full-page answer and suggested that he rewrite it, using the same ideas he had used, but not mentioning the opposition. He did that, and the ad is reprinted in Expanded Universe.
Colorado Springs had two daily papers, one morning and one afternoon. We took the ad to the latter, paid for a full-page ad, and later went to the other and also took another full-page for our ad.
These ads caused a sensation. The telephone kept ringing, the mail was filled with a few pledges, and one or two contained checks to help the cause. We ordered extra copies of the page and sent them out to our mailing list, which was not very large at that time.
With the assistance of a wet paper copier, I made copies and sent the originals in to the President, registered, return receipt requested. I strung up a drying line in the kitchen and suspended the copies to dry. For weeks the kitchen was difficult to get around in.
Some people took an ad in the San Francisco Chronicle and sent us a copy. A few more pledges came in.