Ben Saunders

The 912mpg solution. A gallon (3.8 litres) of petrol contains roughly 31,000 calories. On the same energy, an average cyclist could travel 912 miles.

— Filed under Aside

Expeditions, happiness and luxury

I stumbled across a fantastic article on Charles Leadbeater's site today. I heard Charles ('one of the world's leading authorities on innovation and creativity in organisations') give a fantastic talk at last year's TED Global conference, and we shared the stage at a recent event for IDEO in London, where the theme was 'happiness'.

Whereas I managed to sidestep answering the question of what actually makes us happy by telling a few stories about frostbite, polar bears and flying around in rickety Russian helicopters, Charles had clearly gone to the trouble of thinking seriously about his response, and he gave a thought-provoking talk.

I suppose we are truly happy – or at least we have the possiblity of being truly happy – when these two strands come together: we escape into commitment. Voluntary commitment becomes the true mark of happiness, when we feel we belong and when we choose to invest ourselves in things.

Expeditions, to me, embody this idea of 'escaping into commitment' absolutely. Being dropped by helicopter at the start of my 2004 North Pole trip represented, on the one hand, utter escape. I was alone in no man's land, thousands of miles from the fetters of civilised society. Yet I was also entering a period of complete commitment; the amount of thought and energy that goes into merely staying alive in those conditions is remarkable. To do so while also walking 1,000km took (perhaps understandably) more focus than I'd ever given anything before.

Charles' article on luxury (pdf) had me nodding in agreement as well:

Luxury experiences come in all shapes and sizes these days. Cheap technology means the average person can walk down a road listening to better quality music than a King could have summoned up a century ago… In every city in the world luxury brands – Gucci and Prada, Armani and Mont Blanc – sell the same products. Anything you can buy in an airport is not a luxury. That means luxury will come from finding oddity, idiosyncrasy, something that has not been discovered by others, and does not have a brand upon it… In a more cacophonous, relentlessly always on world, people will look for sanctuary: pockets of calm and breathing spaces where they can be themselves.

Breathing spaces don't come much bigger than the Arctic Ocean, the Greenland icecap or the Antarctic plateau, yet before today I'd never really thought of expeditions as luxuries. From tough guy to epicure in the blink of an eye…

— Filed under Rumination

'But what will happen, they asked, "when the oil runs out and the land is ruined and the people have forgotten how to live in our old way?"' Article on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the New York Review of Books. (Via 3 Quarks Daily)

— Filed under Aside

Love me, love my bike. (More nice Howies wallpapers here, and they make some super-duper clothes, too.)

— Filed under Aside

Sir Wally Herbert, for one night only

As perhaps the biggest unsung hero of the polar world, I've always felt the epic achievements of Sir Wally Herbert deserved a little more recognition.

He led the first undisputed expedition to the North Pole on foot, and he went on to make a dogsled crossing of the entire Arctic Ocean by its longest route – a feat that no one has come close to repeating. His book Across the Top of the World is an amazing tale of human endeavour, and his accounts of the perils and pitfalls of organising sponsorship and logistics for an expedition on such a scale now seem oddly familiar.

In light of this, Pen Hadow has been busy organising a gala testimonial evening to honour Sir Wally on October 18th at London's Royal Geographical Society. If you fancy coming along (and there are plenty of polar/mountaineering stars there to regale you if you do – Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Robert Swan, Sir Chris Bonington, Robin Hanbury-Tenison, Pen Hadow, Fritz Koerner and of course Sir Wally Herbert himself) then you can read more about the event here.

(Wally Herbert portrait by Martin Hartley.)

— Filed under Inspiration

Between 2004 and 2005, perennial sea ice in the Arctic shrank by 14%, with 730,000 sq km disappearing (an area nearly three times the size of Great Britain).

— Filed under Aside

My favourite expedition book by far (the New York Review of Books said it was "to travel writing what War and Peace is to the novel") – Apsley Cherry-Garrard's The Worst Journey in the World is available as a free ebook at Project Gutenburg. (Via Station11.)

— Filed under Aside

Patience

Firstly, my apologies for the recent radio silence. I'll start with the big news: Tony and I have decided to postpone SOUTH by a year.

Rationally, I know that we did the right thing. "Delay is preferable to error" said Jefferson, and while he probably didn't have crevasses, whiteout and katabatic winds in mind when he said it, it's a valid point. Especially when you're trying to go further than anyone's ever gone before in a place that, as Robert Swan laconically put it, "wants you dead".

Emotionally, however, it's been a strange few weeks. I know now that the challenge of organising an expedition is every bit as tough as actually doing one. Tougher in fact, because when I'm out there on the ice, I don't think there's anywhere I'd rather be. The same can't be said of the time I spend behind my desk. I've been itching to get back out there since 2004 and our two recent Greenland expeditions have only gone part-way to satisfying that desire. Friendly knock-abouts rather than Grand Slam tournaments.

So, a little longer to wait, but ultimately it can only improve our chances of success. And in the meantime, I'm weighing up a couple of Arctic plans for early next year. Watch this space…

— Filed under SOUTH

Dudley and Stan

Aside from sponsoring mile 59 of SOUTH, Anton Uhl has written me into one of his cartoon strips, and sent me this this evening. A bit of background: "Dudley and Stan are two penguins who live in Antarctica in a hotel they made of the two hulls left there by Shackleton in 1916. Dudley has an aversion to cold and is currently on vacation in the Caribbean".

— Filed under Miscellany

Hey, it is

I have flat feet. I still remember my mum taking me to see the doctor about it when I was a kid. "You'll never be a runner" he joked. This year I ran my sixth marathon in 2:55, a time good enough to guarantee me automatic entry into most races.

Sam Thompson is going a touch further. He's running 50 marathons in 50 days in all 50 American states, to raise funds and awareness for Hurricane Katrina victims (you can donate through the link above). Right now, he's cranked out 48 marathon-distance runs in 47 consecutive days, after throwing in a double-marathon for good measure.

CNN's medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta says Thompson's "pushing his body past what it was built to do" and that "there's a really good chance that he will suffer irreversible damage".

Sam's response?

"Most people have said and continue to say that it is not humanly possible to do 50 marathons in 50 days. It's just fun to show people that hey, it is. The human body is capable of a lot."

— Filed under Inspiration

Abandoned North Sea diver swims 3.5 miles to safety (in a storm, at night). 'When Mr Mallard returned to his Arbroath home he had a hot bath, a cup of cocoa and went to bed. "I just got up as normal the next day but I treated myself to a cooked breakfast… I felt great in the morning and went off for a seven-mile walk."'

— Filed under Aside

Red-eye

Sat in a lounge, waiting for the jetBlue red-eye back to New York after a grand total of 23 hours, 45 minutes in Salt Lake City. Two memories stand out: a 6am sunrise run out of town, up past the University, and bumping into what seemed like the entire Hilleberg family on their stand at the Outdoor Retailer show. They're a wonderful bunch, and judging by their hangovers, they approach their partying with the same gusto as they do their tent-making.

Elsewhere, Nic Askew's been sprucing up his website, Monday9am.tv and has opened up his video archives. This week's vid is an interview with yours truly, filmed last December.

— Filed under Miscellany