Archive for May, 2005:
I started yesterday in a foul mood. As we took the tent down and packed the sledes, neither of us could find the tent bag; the large red stuffsack that the rolled-up tent lives in during the day. In brooding silence, we unpacked our sledges, laying the contents out on the snow for each other's scrutiny. No sign of it. I resisted the urge to point the blame at Tony – this is more of a learning curve for him than it is for me, after all.
'It must have blown away', I mumbled, 'I hope we've learnt our lesson. If we can't get it right on a nice sunny day in Greenland, we'll be screwed in Antarctica.'
The hunt for the tent bag had delayed our start, and by the time we set off, the sun was high and strong.
After 30 minutes, sweat mixed with factor 50 sun block was trickling into my eyes, which didn't do wonders for my mood. It took a while to relax into the familiar rhythm, and to start soaking in the majestic scenery.
It was a beautiful day, and after the first 'session' we'd both forgotten about the tent bag and were busy exchanging exciting ideas for the next expedition as we sat on our sledges during the break.
We were climbing continuously today, and spent much of the day navigating towards a lump of rock that we christened 'the bear'; it looked like a giant brown bear, several storeys high, buried up to its neck in the snow.
We pitched the tent in a steep-sided valley, its towering rock faces making our campsite seem very small indeed. As we were to find later on, they also played havoc with our satphone signal, stopping us sending back our evening update (until now).
We had chicken curry for dinner last night (mmnnn!) and listened to an mp3 of one of the 2003 Reith Lectures on my iPAQ (available for download on the BBC website). Happy days.
You'll be relieved to hear the tent bag turned up, 12 hours after it went missing. It was stuffed into Tony's trouser leg the entire time. (I'm not kidding!)
Last up, a special thanks to Mark at Legend Internet for helping us sort out our technical gremlins this morning. It's all working beautifully today, and I'm sending back a whopping 17kb photo of yesterday's campsite to celebrate.
— Filed under Greenland
The boys are currently in a very mountainous area and are having trouble getting a consistent satellite signal.
Expect an update in the next 12 hours or so??
— Filed under Greenland
After we'd cooked breakfast in the tent this morning, I rummaged around for the satphone and called David Jensen, the Managing Director of Brooklands Executives.
'David Jensen.' 'Guess who?' I asked. 'Erm…' The line was surprisingly clear. 'I'll give you a clue' Tony looked across at me and whispered 'you're wearing a silly hat.' I'm wearing a silly hat!' Silence. 'Look, whoever it is, you haven't got long because I'm driving and I'm not on my hands-free…'
When David realised who it was, you'll be glad to hear that yes, he was pleased to hear from us, and no, he didn't crash his car.
Tony and I had a great day today – tougher than we both probably imagined as we set off under the blazing sun this morning, but hugely satisfying nonetheless. We skied hard for six hours, climbing steadily the entire time (800ft of ascent in total, with sledge weights of approx. 100kg each) and found ourselves hauling into a strong headwind after the first hour or so.
We're weaving between some of the most stunning mountains I've ever seen, and the occasional mini-avalanche is the only thing to break the silence. The surface is good – the snow gets a little softer when the sun is at its highest, and there's plenty of room to steer around the couple of crevasses we've seen in the far distance.
Last up, I'm experimenting with sending back higher-resolution photos. I'm very excited by how well our comms system is working, and I might try an even bigger pic tomorrow.
Beef stew for dinner! On on….
— Filed under Greenland
After catching up on a bit of sleep in Isafjordur last night, we flew from Iceland to Greenland this afternoon, landing on the ice at around 1600UTC.
Wow, wow, wow. What an amazing place. The last part of the Twin Otter flight to our drop off point was breathtaking; soaring mountains, immense glaciers, a blue, blue sky and blazing sunshine.
It's a bit cooler now, but this afternoon was gobsmackingly warm – we put the tent up with bare hands and rolled-up sleeves! The next thing to hit us was the silence. Lying here in the middle of such absolute stillness, it seems scarcely believable that we were in London a little more than 48 hours ago…
The photo is of the expedition's special guest star, Barnaby Bear, enjoying his window seat on the flight in.
— Filed under Greenland
…from Reykjavik airport. We're currently waiting for a flight up to Isafjordur, our last stop in Iceland before flying up to Greenland on a Twin Otter (the same type of plane that picked me up from the North Pole last year).
The flight out from London yesterday went surprisingly smoothly; not only did the fantastic Icelandair accommodate our 200kg of excess baggage without batting an eyelid, they also did the same for Paul Landry's four-strong team, heading out to Greenland at the same time as us. We couldn't have hoped for a better start to the trip.
I'm sending this via our Iridium satphone – everything seems to be working well so far. More soon…
(Edited to add a photo taken today.)
— Filed under Greenland
As I've been hinting for a while, Tony and I are off to Greenland today for a four-week training expedition in and around the Kangerdlugssuaq mountains. We're going there to test a whole load of new equipment – three prototype sledges, custom-made rucksacks, a new tent, some very cool solar energy solutions and a ton of new technology.
I'm going to keep updating the site via a PDA and an Iridium satellite phone (using a tweaked version of Wordpress that we'll be releasing as open source once I'm back in June). I was hoping to write more about the trip, but I still have a load of last-minute packing to do. You'll just have to watch it unfold, live from the ice, I guess…
I'm going to sign off by saying a HUGE thank you to the individuals and companies that have gone way out of their way to make this trip happen: Brooklands Executives, David Jensen, Tangent Expeditions, Paul Walker, Icelandair, Science in Sport, Expedition Foods, Montane, Crux, Iowa Thin Film Technologies, Cleardome Solar, Louise Higginbottom, John Arnold at AST Airtime, Mary at Waterstones Picadilly, Des at Ellis Brigham in Covent Garden, Damien du Toit, Steve Jones, Valeria, my mum, and everyone else that I've forgotten to mention…
— Filed under Greenland
Apologies for the lack of updates recently. I hope this photo of my sofa goes some way to explaining the pre-Greenland expedition chaos we're going through at the moment.
The big black thing which looks like a body bag on the sofa actually contains not one but three prototype sledges from Acapulka in Norway (thanks Alex!). The red bag on the floor is my awesome new Hilleberg Saivo tent and the big tubs of powder are full of Science in Sport PSP22 energy drink powder (18kg of it).
Did I just say Greenland expedition?
All will be revealed tomorrow…
— Filed under Greenland
As I mentioned rather obliquely a few days ago, I'm off soon (this weekend in fact) to somewhere cold and snowy for four weeks, and for the last two days, tons of parcels and packages have been turning up on my doorstep – everything from ice screws to energy drinks, snow shovels to socks.
My favourite parcel arrived late last week, though – all the way from Canada. A hand-knitted, fleece-lined touque, from the fabulous Lisa Scotch. Thanks Lisa!
— Filed under Miscellany
I started riding my Raleigh Grifter to school when I was ten. Ever since then, I've logged up tens, if not hundreds of thousands of miles of riding on the road without being knocked off by a car.
At 4:15 this afternoon, that all changed. Just before Richmond Park's Roehampton Gate, a black BMW pulled out in front of me, seemingly without looking. I guess I was travelling at 20mph. I remember making eye contact with the driver, shouting 'whoah, whoah, whoah' as if I was trying to placate an out of control horse. And then I slammed into the wing of his car.
It must have looked pretty dramatic, but it felt like a piece of ballet; everything in silent slow-motion. I think I slid over the bonnet, Starsky and Hutch style, before landing on the tarmac on the far side of the car. At some point, my feet came out of the pedals, because the bike was some distance away from me when I picked myself up. I remember noticing the back wheel was jammed, and hoping it wasn't broken (I was intending to tag along with London Dynamo's 'Surrey hills' ride tomorrow morning). My left knee was grazed and bleeding a bit, but I was okay.
Once I was back on my feet, the clock started ticking again. I could hear my heart thumping; the noise of the traffic that was queuing up on all three sides of the junction. I span round to face the car and unleashed a hail of four-letter words (the only ones I can repeat here are 'look' and 'bike') before noticing the car's occupants.
A smartly dressed, white-haired couple, probably husband and wife, late-sixties-ish. He looked half shocked, half angry that I'd ridden into his car. I'm sure she half-smiled at me.
And then they drove off.
They didn't even wind their window down and say sorry. I stood there, open-mouthed and bleeding, holding my broken bike in one hand. I evidently wasn't the only one in a state of disbelief, as three people came running up to me – Brian, Peter and Donna. Thank you all. Especially Brian, for taking their number plate down on a Post-It note. I'm off to Wandsworth Police Station in a minute, to sort things out. I'm fine, and my trusty Litespeed will live to fight another day (with a few extra battle scars). We might still be out on the Surrey Hills ride tomorrow, in fact.
To all the drivers reading this (me included – I love cars, and I love driving cars) – please, please, please be as observant as you can. You're in charge of a heck of an offensive weapon.
And if the Mark I Eyeball does occasionally let you down, at least have the human decency to apologise.
— Filed under Cycling
The bicycle chosen as 'best invention'. (Computers came fourth. Hehe.)
— Filed under Aside
