Some things I enjoyed about the Kaspersky Commonwealth Antarctic Expedition

At the end of last year I was involved with the Kaspersky Lab Commonwealth Antarctic Expedition – a group of seven women from different Commonwealth countries who joined forces and skied to the South Pole.

Here are some things I enjoyed about the expedition:

1. The application form for team members made no reference to fitness or prior experience
2. The team included a mother, an IT worker, a government employee and an outdoors instructor (i.e. a mixed bunch)
3. They only started training, and met each other for the first time, less than a year before standing at the South Pole
4. Bilingual PodCasts
5. The cool interactive map charting their progress
6. The Mojo-Meter (whose great idea was that, anyway?)
7. Trilingual PodCasts
8. Their unfailing consistency over two months (just look at this map)
9. They got a major sponsor in “these difficult times” (a beacon of hope to the rest of us)
10. The level of involvement of their sponsor
11. Eugene Kaspersky, the president of Kaspersky Lab, flew to meet them at the South Pole
12. I got to work with Felicity Aston
13. My old pal Helen got to ski with them after all her hard work
14. They sang me a Christmas Carol down the satphone on Christmas Eve (albeit just before midnight when I had previously been asleep)
15. They asked me to help