I went training alone at Barn Elms athletics track one evening last week, and arrived to find a dozen or so teenage boys (decked out in the archetypal 'chav' regalia of hooded top, tracksuit trouser and fake jewellery) holding court in one corner of the track. Two of them had mopeds, and were riding them around the track, helmetless, when I ducked under the fence to begin my session.
My hackles were up as I jogged towards the posse on my warm-up lap, and I was already cooking up retorts to the abuse that was bound to be hurled and spat my way as I passed them in a vest and skimpy shorts. But none came, and the boys kept themselves to themselves.
After a few more laps in the evening sun, and a great deal more sweat, one of the boys approached on a mountain bike that was too small for him. I braced myself. "'Ere, mate", he said, taking a hand off the bars and angling the peak his baseball cap to block out the glare, "are we gettin' in the way of you runnin'? Just say if we are, and we'll 'ead somewhere else." I smiled spontaneously, thinking of the space I had as a kid, growing up in the countryside. My brother and I had a whole valley, almost to ourselves. "Of course not."
And then, a few minutes later, something utterly surreal happened. A police helicopter swooped low over the nearby trees and circled twice around the boys twice, so slowly that it was almost hovering, before scudding off towards the horizon. I blinked in disbelief, then ran on.
I was done after an hour and sat by the edge of the track with a towel and a drinks bottle. A different kid in a hoodie came up on a scooter. "Mate, is there a water fountain near here?" There wasn't, of course, and the tragedy of the situation struck me instantly. England (and perhaps the world) could do with a few more water fountains, and a few less police helicopters.
Today was one of the most momentous days of my life. I spent two hours on a train this morning, Philip Glass' Solo Piano on the iPod, watching England's rolling countryside being flung past my window and waiting for a phone call.
It was a call, I tried not to remind myself as the butterflies in my stomach beat and quivered, that had the power to transform the next three years of my life. And travelling to a conference where I was expected to tell the waiting audience that anything is possible, it felt strange that so much of my future was see-sawing on the crux of one person's yes or no.
As we passed power station, Halfords warehouse, drab goods wagon with a blaze of graffiti down its flank; as my hope ebbed and flowed with the flickering bars of the mobile signal, I thought about the conversation with my mother this morning, when I learnt that my grandmother, gravely ill, was on her deathbed. A grandmother that I never knew, and that I will probably never know. Another small part of me somewhere, another flickering signal.
When the call I was waiting for came, I felt oddly dispassionate. It was good news. Perhaps the best news I've ever been handed, but expeditions have taught me to face down fear, to see through emotion's flap and facade, to be objective not excitable. Nothing's ever as good, or as bad as it first seems, right?
From train to taxi to another hotel, another stage. People ask if I ever tire of telling the same story, but I think of bellringers: pulling the rope is always the same, but the beauty is in never knowing who might catch the echoes on the wind. Staring into the bright lights in front of five hundred today, I feel oddly detached. One step removed. Handshakes. A taxi. A seat cover with wooden beads. Local radio. The girl next to me on the station bench eats chips in gravy with a wooden fork. Her striped carrier bag blows open in the breeze; two cans of lager.
My grandmother died earlier today, so she won't hear the story you're reading now, that I typed with two thumbs on a phone, on the train back to London. I'll tell you the news as soon as it's official, but it involves a big company, a big sum of money and the biggest plans I've ever made. Finally, finally. Five bars.
2007 was a huge year of challenge, and of growth for me. Perhaps rather tellingly, it was also the first year since 2003 that I haven't been on an Arctic expedition, and all that time in London (and in executive lounges, business class flights and swanky hotels) seems to have skewed my thinking a bit; my first stab at a list of goals for this year looked more like a to-buy list than a to-do list.
Luckily a brief New Year's blast of fresh air and suffering from a training trip spent hammering over the Brecon Beacons in Wales seems to have fixed things, along with a pertinent quotation from one of my favourite books of 2007, Feet in the Clouds by Richard Askwith (Amazon UK, Amazon US) that reminded me of one the joys of expedition life:
"We are richer now, but more overworked, more deeply in thrall to the addictions of getting and spending. We have more possessions, and they tyrannise us. Each new mod con must be shopped for, maintained, insured, upgraded; each new thing must be stored, kept track of, kept secure, tidied; and the whole package is paid for in overwork, time-poverty, round-the-clock availability and round-the-clock insecurity.
We have more, and we have less. In such a world, freedom is both more precious and more elusive than ever. And one of the few surefire ways of liberating ourselves from the tyranny of the consumer society is to put ourselves beyond its reach."
A guilt-fuelled (and rather rushed) late night post - a few things that make me happy:
An active glacier has been found on Mars. "On the glacial ridges we can see white tips, which can only be freshly exposed ice." I don't need much ice to pitch my tent, no sirree.
The Whale Hunt. I heard the wonderful Jonathan Harris talking about this at the PopTech! conference this year; it sounded cool then, but the actual website is a masterpiece. Harris calls it "a new interface for human storytelling" and I think he's on to something.
The NASA Earth Observatory's Blue Marble photos of the earth - 1, 2 (thanks Anthony).
Tailwind Sports (aka the now defunct Discovery Channel Cycling Team) are selling off their old bikes and kit on eBay. I'm a size 54 if anyone's wondering what to get me for Christmas.
A thought for the day, from Roz Savage (and found at Al's blog - I told you it was good): "Be mindful of the link between present action and desired future outcome. Ask yourself: if I repeat today's actions 365 times, will I be where I want to be in a year?"
I'm off to my mum's for the Christmas holidays soon, for dog walking, sitting by the fire, home cooking and some long training sessions in the Lincolnshire lanes. I'll write a proper blog post then - a wrap-up of all that's happened this year, and a taste of what's to come in 2008…
That's a difference of 1.9 million square kilometres, a missing area of sea ice area the size of Mexico. By my rusty arithmetic, that's 28 square centimetres of melted ice for every human being on the planet. Here's an idea of what 28 sq cm looks like.
Ten to six on a Sunday morning. Terminal one, Heathrow. The cabbie held the door open. "Where to, mate?" "Putney", I said, before chipping in, "There are several ways to get there". Immediately I felt like a tit. London taxi drivers rarely need navigational assistance. He looked dead ahead, out of the windscreen. He was a big man, with the air of a retired heavyweight boxer; grizzly bear shoulders, pancake nose, sausage fingers gripping a tiny steering wheel. "Which do you prefer, sir?" "I'm never really sure which is best. What do you reckon?" He turned to face me, his head nearly brushing the ceiling. "'Ammersmif Bridge is the prettiest".
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…
Tony's beaten me to writing about it, but we're in New York at the moment. Judging by today's news, it seems we timed our departure (we flew yesterday) pretty well, although our journey here wasn't entirely without incident. It started well (we blagged an upgrade and waltzed through the 'Fast Track' with a cheeky grin) but when it was time to land at JFK, it seems our pilot was a little surprised to see a plane trundling along our landing runway and only saved the day by gunning the throttle and climbing steeply, split-seconds before we touched down. Blimey.
We've had a string of exciting meetings with a string of wonderful people in a string of amazing venues (the roof of Soho House yesterday, the uber-cool Core Club today). The irony of discussing the way expeditions strip away the layers of pretence and artifice - the 'aftershave and hot air', as John Ridgway used to put it - while sitting by a rooftop pool surrounded by New York's strutting and preening Beautiful People did not escape me.
I was invited to join the Times/Flora Pro.Activ marathon team (a wonderful bunch of people, including none other than four-time Olympic gold medallist Matthew Pinsent) for a 20-mile training run around London yesterday morning.
We cruised through the quiet streets at a steady nine min/mile pace and all went swimmingly until fifteen miles or so, when Matthew (who'd be the first to admit that he's hardly built for distance running) started dropping back. I slowed, thinking for a moment that I might be able to say something encouraging before pacing him back to the pack. And then the sheer absurdity of the situation sank in: what on earth was I supposed to say to someone that's won four gold Olympic medals and eleven world championships in one of the most brutal sports imaginable? 'Dig in'? 'Try harder'?!
Overheard at a speaking gig this evening: 'He doesn't look very inspirational to me. He looks quite normal, actually.'
Speaking of normal, recent busyness (and a full-blown but shortlived bout of illness) have meant a lack of recent updates. Bear with me; I'm back on the blogging wagon now…
Ben Saunders is the youngest person to ski solo to the North Pole and holds the record for the longest solo Arctic journey by a Briton.
