Moleskine
Moleskine notebooks seem to be all the rage at the moment, and understandably so – they're lovely things, and if you don't own one, you should. A friend gave me my first Moleskine to use as a journal on my 2003 North Pole expedition – you can see it in action on the left, along with a few other tools of the trade – PDA, Iridium satphone, GPS, Kobold watch and a trimmed JNC chart.
I used an A5 Moleskine as a logbook/diary on last year's expedition – it had laminated navigation/timezone calculations, important telephone numbers and the codes for my ARGOS satellite beacon glued inside the front cover, while the wallet pocket inside the back cover held photos, letters and a few other sentimental bits and bobs. I started writing my diary in the front, and filled the back pages with lists of things I was going to do when I got home – books to read, films to watch, food to eat, improvements to make to kit, thank you letters to write and a whopping great 'life goals' list that stretched for several pages.
As you can probably tell by the rambling, the sponsor situation for the next expedition is still up in the air, so I'm keeping schtum for now. More on that soon, but for now, Robert Peary sums it up best:
'I cannot tell you how I long for the good old times when souls were a marketable commodity and always in demand by the Devil. I would trade mine very quickly for the money to get to work at once on my preparations.'
— Filed under Miscellany