T-minus 1 month

It's July 27th and I've one month to go until I arrive in Nome.

The paperwork is mostly out of the way, but there's still lots to do to prepare, including making sure my student loan payments get deferred, gearing up with winter-weather clothes, and getting routine medical check-ups.

The loan payments should hopefully be rather simple to take care of, as with the doctor's visits, but the winter-weather stuff is a little more unusual:

Even though Nome is on the coast, and therefore kept somewhat temperate, it still has been known to get down to around -40 degrees in the extremes of the winter, and it will probably have snow on the ground pretty much all the time from October or November all the way until May.

So I'm going to need a jacket... a really good one.