Whether one calls them “fact-finding missions” or more probably, “junkets,” congressmen are often given the opportunity to make extensive government-sponsored trips to unusual destinations. One such trip is Jake’s journey to New Zealand, en route to visit the US facilities on the continent of Antarctica, where he again manages to make his mark.
Peggy Pickle:
Oh, I remember that trip to Antartica. Beryl was in Texas. The night before he left Washington with the Congressional delegation, he came over to my house in Arlington, Virginia. He had all this equipment and information about Antartica, and for some reason he lugged it into my living room. We sat on the floor and went through everything. He was like a Boy Scout about to leave for summer camp. One thing made an impression. He’d been told during a pre-trip briefing that everybody MUST stay out of the water because if you fell in and weren’t rescued, you had just a short time — I think it was around a minute — before unconsciousness set in, followed quickly by death. A minute! We mulled that over. It was a sobering statistic.