Nathaniel Merriam Thursday, June 17 New Haven, Connecticut

I haven't lost that much weight, but I'm putting it back on with a vengeance. Everyone comments that I look thinner, but I really only dropped between 5-10 pounds over the course of the trip, when we were expecting to lose more like 15-25. It's surprising I didn't lose more as I seemed to tire of the food earlier than the others, but I suppose I can delude myself into thinking I built up some muscle along the way to keep my weight up.

We've been home two weeks now, and are all adjusting to life in the world of flush toilets and safe drinking water quite nicely, thank you. We've spent a fair amount of time dealing with the data from the mission, and we're currently outlining in the neighborhood of a dozen papers for medical journals on the expedition and our accomplishments. When we have developed some good overviews of our dataset, we'll be providing it up here for the world to enjoy, so please be patient as we churn through it all.

I've had it in my head for the past few weeks that I wanted at least one non-beaten-up-and-sunburned-beyond-belief photo up here, so I hereby present: Nathaniel in his natural habitat. Please, be kind and don't taunt the animals.

This time its for real, the end of the show. We're digitizing some video for you, analyzing some data, and I put the top down on the Jeep. Life is good. Send those last-minute comments to NMerriam@ArtBoy.org.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!...

Nathaniel