Peter Langone

The Gobi: the only things that move fast here are the gazelles. As beautiful as they are, I wonder why they rush. Camels and horses aren't in a rush, neither am I.

My point of view here is different than the others because I am a photographer and we photographers tend to see what we choose to through a lense. Here at camp Ukhaa the day starts just after sunrise. I get up, brush my teeth, and we have coffee and instant oatmeal or if you like, leftovers from the night before. The group will then split up.

Mike, Mark, Pete, Guillermo, Amy, Jonathan, Saynbayer, Dash, Bolor, and Jim go in all directions prospecting. Murphy sleeps. Ding and I will talk. Ding is from Beijing and we teach each other words. "Forget about it" and "fabulous" seem to be the buzz words from me and "da" which means "big" in Mandarin is Ding's favorite contribution. Ding and I are kinda like the locals here at camp because we don't leave much.

We do go out once a day to scout for a sunset location to shoot the Mercedes G-Wagons and M-Classes. Sometimes, we collect wood for the Mongolian stoves. Lately I've been using some of the wood to cook a hot Italian lunch. When I do, we sometimes have guests and always wake up Murphy. When guests arrive they are people with our expedition.

Mike, Guillermo, and Saynbayer joined us for lunch today and brought news from their prospecting. Very interesting. The news today from outside the camp is that they are recovering a dinosaur from a hill named Camel Humps, located just outside camp. The news is discussed as to whether they should remove all or part of the specimen. They decide and finish lunch.

After a while I go to take some photographs; Ding works on the M-Class and Murphy sleeps. When I get to the site I use a digital camera and a Nikon film camera to photograph Guillermo in the process of applying plaster to the excavated dinosaur. It is a large 18 to 20 inch ball of dirt, wrapped in gauze, burlap, and plaster weighing at least 80 lbs. I have now become a news photographer for our nightly satellite transmission. This is Murphy's job and usually takes place around midnight.

As I write this dispatch, Mike and Guillermo are taking the G-Wagon for an amazing drive, Jim at the wheel, straight up Camel Humps to recover the hardened plaster specimens. Temur, and Ganhoicka have just returned from a 3-day journey to procure a replacement clutch for the Gaz 66 Ü lovingly called the Giigiig Gaz. You guessed it, success; they got the part! This is a very important truck for us. On the way here it served as the monster truck, driven by the fearless Guillermo Rougier, that could rescue any other vehicle from a sandtrap. Well now our minds can rest. The truck will have a new clutch installed by Temur. Yea!

The news here at the camp can be classified as local, regional, and national. Local is camp grounds only. Regional is when one walks out of sight and we speculate as to where they are and what they're doing. National is if someone drives to another location. As each person comes back at the end of the day the news is reported first hand. They are the reporters and newsmakers combined. Well sunset is coming soon and I'm going to make some beautiful photographs for Mercedes. Fabulous!

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