Victorinox Northpole '09 Expedition

Day Fifty-Nine - What Does It Mean?

2009-05-04T09:05:16Z

Audio message from John and Tyler

Day Fifty-Five - Mission Accomplished!

2009-04-26T02:04:09Z

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Day Fifty-Four - (Dispatch Interrupted)

2009-04-26T02:04:20Z

17 nautical miles to the North Pole!

Day Fifty-Three - Sleep Walking

2009-04-24T12:04:08Z

Audio Transcript coming soon!

Day Fifty-Two - International Speedway to the North Pole

2009-04-24T11:04:26Z

Audio Transcript:

"John Houston and I are in a race against time to get to the North Pole. We consider ourselves on the "international speedway" to get there. Our plan is to travel 12 hours and rest for 3 or so, and then travel 12 hours and rest for 3 and travel 12 hours and rest for 3 until we make it. The skiing is fairly straight forward, mostly north. But it's the supporting the skiing that I wanted to explain. There's basically 2 ways that we do that. We have "rest stops" and what I call "pit stops".

The rest stop is like going to a rest area. You pull over. You sit down. You eat some lunch, basically some truffles, some soup, some nuts. You rest for no more than 15 minutes. Maybe you shut your eyes for 2 of those, and then you get up and you go.

Then there's "pit stops". The pit stop is where we actually set up the tent, cook water, have a meal, take a 1 hour nap, get up, pack everything up and away we go again. Sort of like the refueling. Getting everything ready like a race car pulling in to a pit stop and getting new tires and an oil change and whatever else happens at a pit stop.

We want everybody to know that we are well. We will, for sure, be very, very tired and sleep deprived and thinking strange things and a bit giddy at times for sure but we are going to do our absolute best to make it. So, expect the blogs to be short because we are busy. But we will be smart. We will be safe and we will be taking care of each other.

Today, we were skiing for Josh Crosby. He is a 12-year old. He is a leukemia patient and he really appreciates the notes on his CaringBridge website. So, we skied for you today, Josh.

Caring Bridge provides free personalized website for patients and families in health crisis, treatments and recovery. If you would like to support CaringBridge and we sure hope that you would like to do so, if you can please go to our website, www.northpole09.com or the CaringBridge.org website to find out how you can support them financially and if you can't do that, well then, please spread the word for CaringBridge which is their wonderful organization. Thank you. We'll be in touch."

Day Fifty-One - 55 Miles, 4/21-4/22

2009-04-24T11:04:11Z

Audio Transcript:

"What a day! We really had a big mental day. Tyler and I began this day south of 89° latitude even though we camped north of 89° latitude. What's been happening is that we are drifting south at a pretty quick rate, between 4 and 6 nautical miles per 24 hours and that's really been hurting our travel schedule. And it's been frustrating to have entered 88° a few days ahead of schedule and have exited 88° a day or two behind schedule.

We have adjusted our working hours from 13 to 16½ and still have encountered quite heavy conditions, rubble with lots of wind blown snow and a few open leads that take time to swim across. Given these factors and given the drift pushing us south so quickly reaching the North Pole by early morning on April126th will be a huge push and we're ready for it.

Tyler and I knew that we would have some sort of huge push at the end and while that was a possibility all along it was something that we kind of dreaded and we worked very hard to avoid. But at this point due to the drift and due to the pretty hard weather conditions - we have 20-knot winds out of the west pretty consistently with a lot of blowing snow and that blowing snow accumulates in drifts in all the rubble fields and makes a lot of new snow waves, or sastrugi, that really slow down our progress. So, given those factors the wind and the drift, it is a very difficult path to the North Pole from where we are at 89°, 5 minutes of latitude or so, even though we camped almost 2½ miles north of here 10 or 12 hours ago.

So, that's where we're up against and we have very little food left. We have about 3½-4 days and food. We have 3 liters of fuel, which is right where we expected it to be; that is plenty to get us there. And Tyler and I are proceeding north at our own steady pace. We know that we can only ski so fast and that to try and push our bodies, which are thin by 30 pounds each and tired and don't have the normal strength that we had in the beginning of the expedition, too much would be an unwise thing to do.

So we are heading north at our steady pace. We are lightweight because we have very little left. And we plan on skiing a whole lot and sleeping very little. From this point forward, we will blog but they will be short and with our progress updates because we are going to concentrate 100% on taking a few naps, getting a few meals and continuing north. It's going to be exciting. We are extraordinarily optimistic that we will make it to the North Pole on the morning of April 26th and we hope that you enjoy the ride.

Thanks for listening. Think of us out there skiing and send us your positive thoughts and we can't wait to see you at home."

Day Fifty - Skiing and Drifting

2009-04-22T08:04:25Z

Audio Transcript:

"This morning I realized I was tense. I had to ask myself why. Well, maybe it's because I'm on a very long and difficult unsupported expedition, one of the greatest expeditions anybody can do, and there is a chance of failure. And while we haven't talked about this much, but it is possible, we are racing a deadline, the 25th of April. We need to make it to the North Pole by then or we won't make it. So, John and I, as we approached 89 degrees, have been discussing, making plans, and doing everything we have to do so we are ready for the final push, which we are now doing.

So, we've taken care of that, so why are these tense feelings lingering? Well, I realized because I'm letting them linger. We want to get there. So, I decided I needed to let them go. We have our routines; I just need to do it. So, I decided to simplify things. I thought, you know, there's two things going on from here to the end of this expedition: there's skiing and there's drifting. Skiing you can control, drifting you can't. So, I decided I needed to let go of the drifting. Whatever drift happens will happen. All I can do is ski and everything that supports skiing: the sleeping, the eating, the being smart. So, that's all I can do. So, that's what I'm going to do for the next, hopefully, four days: ski as much as possible in the right direction, north.

Today was a great day. It was fantastic. It began with sunny with a slight breeze and then we saw a crack that had opened up just over the pressure ridge, just beyond where we camped, maybe 100 feet away. We heard it in the night and then we saw it in the morning and went, ‘Wow, impressive.' It was only about two to three feet wide, but interesting that we heard it. And we saw quite a few cracks today, evidence of the new moon's effects on the tide. As the day progressed, as we skied quickly, quickly, quickly, it became cloudier and cloudier, and the breeze turned into winds. So, when we camped tonight, well, our tent, as you can hear right now, is buffeted by winds. It is quite windy, probably 20 knots, so we're worried that we're going to drift along, but we're going to sleep on it and see what happens. So, please pay attention. A lot could happen in the next couple days. Take care."

Day Forty-Nine - 27 Hours

2009-04-21T12:04:59Z

Audio Transcript:

"Today was a bit of everything. Tyler and I began with a little tent project or two. He fixed his ski binding using his Victorinox Swiss Army Swiss Tool and a few nuts and bolts. We also had family day this morning. Tyler talked to his wife, Sarah, and I talked to my girlfriend, Jennifer. It's always a highlight to connect with home and everybody at home is excited to meet us in Oslo after the expedition, so we are always thrilled to be thinking about that.

We started with very overcast skies, low visibility, and almost whiteout conditions, which means we can barely make out what we were skiing into as far as things to look at on the horizon to navigate by and what is right in front of our skis. So we're always running into snowdrifts and that sort of thing. The winds out of the southwest at 10, 15, and 20 knots all morning long were the highest of the expedition. They brought blowing snow and also snow with them and that made a tough morning weather-wise. Thank goodness it was warm. It cleared off nicely later in the day.

And after some discussion due to the high speed of our drift to the east and south, and also the fact that we want to have some margin in our schedule to reach the North Pole on time before the 26th of April, Tyler and I decided to bump up to a 27-hour day schedule. So instead of working on a 24-hour clock, we're now working on a 27-hour clock. So we're traveling around 16 1/2 hours each day and then we spend the remainder of that 27 hours sleeping and having breakfast and dinner in camp.

It's a long travel day. We're tired. We feel really good with our progress. It's going to be very interesting to see how our drift works out. Hopefully, these northern winds that are forecast don't push us south too much, but we feel that our travel schedule allows us to adjust for that. Also highlight for the day, we swam one short lead, and crossed the same lead later on, which was kind of funny, but it had changed directions. And we are now into the routines of the big push to the pole.

So, thanks for listening. The steady Victorinox North Pole '09 train rolls forward tomorrow, and we are having a nice sleep right now. OK."

Week in Review, 4/12 - 4/18

2009-04-20T01:04:27Z

Audio Transcript:

"Well, it's been an eventful week for me and John full of things that we would consider good and we consider bad. Now when I say good, I think of things that move us forward quickly, make us feel really confident, and when I say bad, I don't mean bad in that necessarily dangerous or tragic or disappointing way necessarily, but more that this is an opportunity for us to learn something to help us get to the pole faster.

So, you may remember the last week ended with us somewhere in the 87's trying to reach 88. Well, it was within this week we reached 88° of latitude and celebrated that. We also switched to a 13-hour day, a 13-hour workday, which means we're working more, sleeping slightly less, but once we got in the routine, we felt really good. The week began with a little bit of Easter celebration, family-day phone calls; those are great. When Day 43 came, and we approached a lead and we decided for the first time that we wanted to swim. We put on our dry suits, which are very protective, to get across this small stretch of open water. And we realized at the end that our systems were not quite ready for our swim and we made a very safe call, a good thing, not to swim. Of course the bad thing, was that it cost us a little bit of time and we ended up camping on what ended up being the wrong side of the lead because it opened up more in the night and became about a quarter of mile wide.

Of course that led to the good thing the next day by moving up along our lead until we found a crossing with a very easily swum location. So we did swim and we felt very wonderful about that and we tested it like, just what is it like? We had these dry suits on and it was very safe to do. Then we had a few days of testing out some leads, taking a little bit of photos and video, which we hadn't done much of at all because photos and video are really hard when it's cold, I'll be honest.

Day 46 came and it was a great 13-hour day. We felt very steady and John wrote the blog ‘How Hard Is It?,' which was an appropriate question because people have that question, ‘how hard is it skiing unsupported to the North Pole?,' so read that one from a couple of days ago if you are interested. Well, how hard is it was a question we got to ask ourselves because Day 47 began with a wonderfully quick start and then a bad thing happened, although not an unusual thing, almost all polar expeditions have it happen, John went through the ice up to his neck and swam for a little bit. I pulled him out, helped him out, and we dried him out, fed him, and he was very safe. Again, these things happen, a bad thing, but mostly it was an opportunity for us to be reminded this is the Arctic Ocean, we need to be humble, and not over-confident. We need to be smart. We know what to do; we just have to do it. The bad thing is it cost us some time and definitely some energy and some miles, but we're feeling positive and we're definitely recovered. But the good conversation has lead us to a great day yesterday, very steady; we feel like we've had a good plan for the rest of the expedition to make it to the pole. We are less than 100 miles to the North Pole, half way to 89 degrees, in the final push.

Another change will be coming this week: John and I will begin rolling the clock, probably not tomorrow, but the next day. That means that we will add hours to our day and essentially live longer days. We will probably live on a 27- or 28-hour day. That means that we will have longer work days, maybe a little more sleep, and try to cram as many nautical miles into our time as possible in order to make it to this ever elusive North Pole.

I'll leave you with this: John and I have been constantly thinking: what is going to get us to the North Pole? We fantasize about red carpets, moving sidewalks, or little ice slides that will magically get you there faster, well, maybe not in record time, but certainly with a cushion. But in the end I think we both realize that it's hard work, patience, and care for each other. Those are the three things that are going to get us there, and we just have to do them every day. Work hard, be patient, and take care of each other and that will get us to that ever elusive farthest north."

Day Forty-Seven - A Tough, Tough Day

2009-04-19T04:04:28Z

Audio Transcript:

"Whoa! What A DAY we had today! We will never forget this day. And it will probably go down as the most difficult, intense day of the expedition. This is an expedition of managing a lot of variables and when things go well, everything can seem smooth and relatively easy and comfortable. When things go wrong, it can be the exact opposite.

Today, this morning around 10:00, I fell through the ice with my skis on when I was attempting to cross a newly-frozen lead. I was in the water for about a minute. At first, it felt not that cold and then extraordinarily cold. Tyler was right behind me. I was able to swim out with the help of my pulk and ski poles. The wind was blowing around 7 to 10 knots out of the west and it was sunny. And we stripped me down, changed my clothes, which is a frigid, frigid experience right there on the side of the ice, and stuffed me into a sleeping bag, and gave me a little food. And I was warm enough and Tyler went and set up the tent and for the next hour and a half, we dried out some of my layers and prepared to go traveling again. Skiing is the warmest activity out here. We don't have a lot of fuel left, so we can't waste fuel drying all my wet clothes, so to have some damp clothes on and ski, is the easiest way to dry things.

So, that was a traumatic experience, and dramatic. We handled it very well. And we are mad at ourselves that we did not test that lead better because going through the ice and making everything wet makes everything harder for the next few days because it takes more time to manage the wet clothing in the tent. So, we were feeling good after that and then we received the beating of the wind out of the west for all afternoon. The sun went away for the most part and we had a 15 to 20 knot wind for most of the evening and afternoon of our skiing. We skied almost 13 hours total from camp to camp, including the incident, and suffice it to say, my soft Bergans of Norway sleeping bag never felt better.

I was extraordinarily impressed with Tyler throughout the whole day. I had a rough day skiing mentally, but I recovered and we ended on a high note and felt like we had persevered. We felt like that we are still on track to be successful. We're on schedule and it's going to be an interesting finish. We're running right to the margin of food and fuel as expected. And we feel that we have everything in place to reach the pole on the 24th or 25th of April.

Today we skied for CaringBridge user Dora Wild. She is a 60 year old from Waterloo, IL and she has been fighting cancer for 1 1/2 years. So Dora, as we had our tough day, we thought of you and sent you positive thoughts and we thought of all the other CaringBridge community following us and supporting people in need. CaringBridge provides personalized websites for patients and families experiencing health crises, treatment, or recovery. It connects their personal community to their experience in a very easy to use way and we are trying to raise $100,000 for CaringBridge so go to our website www.northpole09.com or CaringBridge.org for more information on how to support our efforts.

All right, keep on watching. We'll try to stay dry. Thanks for listening."

Day Forty-Six - How Hard Is This Expedition?

2009-04-19T04:04:07Z

Audio Transcript:

"We've been skiing for 46 days straight and we didn't plan it that way. We didn't plan to save our rest days or day for bad weather or a storm and we haven't had a storm that's made us think we should stay in the tent and we really had no storm at all. So 46 days of skiing, how hard is it? And this trip, an unsupported ski expedition to the North Pole, has been called the hardest trip on the planet.

Well, answering that question can be done in many ways. First of all, Tyler and I will not likely know how hard of a trip it's been until it's over with. Just like we didn't know how hard it was to live at minus 60° for the first 8 days or so until it was over. And then we started having warmer temperatures and little things became easier and easier as far as managing things in the tent or staying warm and that sort of thing. So once we reach the North Pole and we get out of the groove of skiing every day and the mental focus, our bodies will relax, our minds will relax, and we'll likely be hit by a wall of some sort of exhaustion and we just don't know what we'll feel like, but we will have more perspective on how hard it is.

So, in a lot of ways, it's not going to be defined until it's over. Physically, it's a very hard trip. We work tirelessly to keep our bodies healthy; drinking, eating right, taking care of our feet, sleeping well, and we work very hard to travel at an even steady pace which Tyler and I are matched perfectly for. And that steady pace is easier on our bodies and minds than trying to push too much, and that's all we can do is ski at our steady pace and churn out the miles. So that makes the challenge not easier, but much more manageable mentally as well. Just get in our steady skiing groove and go north. It's kind of a comfort zone there. In a lot of sense the day-to-day life is as hard as we make it. Every day we're presented with different challenges; wind, navigation, skiing conditions, and how we feel, and how we react mentally through those different conditions defines our experience.

So, these days the skiing is very good, the temperatures are warmer, and we still have hard periods during the day, though. If, me in particular, gets dehydrated, or a little too hungry or something like that, or I just go in a mental place that is not as comfortable as I would like it to be. It's not easy to entertain ourselves for 13 hours a day all the time. So if we keep ourselves "care up" and our minds clicking along, then it feels very, very good and we enjoy the skiing. If we get out of that groove, it can seem like we're having a very hard day. So that kind of decides of how hard it is and that aspect of it.

But, all in all, when we're done at the North Pole, we'll have a lot of energy for a bit, most likely ‘cause we'll be so excited, and we don't want to define what we're going to feel, but our bodies are a lot thinner. We probably each lost probably 20 to 30 pounds and we're not gonna know how hard of a trip it's been until it's over. But suffice it to say that this definitely is one of the all-encompassing, most difficult challenges that we've ever undertaken, personally, mentally, and physically. And we feel good about how we're going about it and that makes it a lot less hard feeling. That‘s exactly what we wanted to do.

We skied for CaringBridge user Kirsten Hildebrandt, who is 3 years old. And February 15th, 2009 she was hospitalized for two months and she's now home. So Kirsten, we are thinking of you and sending you our positive thoughts just as your CaringBridge page allows your friends, family and support network to do so while you are recovering."

Day Forty-Five - Secret Skills

2009-04-17T02:04:14Z

Audio Transcript:

"Hello, this Tyler calling with a blog for Day 45. Well, many of you have been following us for a while now on this North Pole expedition and you've probably gathered that there are some skills that we have. whether it's skiing or maybe camp cooking or just staying warm. We also have some secret skills that are a little less obvious. They're sort of smaller skills, but they can lead to some big comfort and ultimately success. This expedition is an unsupported expedition. Unsupported expeditions are expeditions where you get no help from the outside world and they require some special abilities.

We have the best equipment we could use, but at some point any of it could break or need repairing. The equipment should be durable and it should be functional, but it should also be repairable. Every prepared expedition has a repair kit and every expedition member becomes a repair person. One of the best secret skills that we have on our team is the ability to sew. It's a very simple skill. It can help you prevent something from getting worse, help you patch something that is ripped, help you modify something that, although good because it is the best gear out there, but you're living in it 24/7 or that you're using it everyday, you want it to be just a little different than it is.

Well, in order to sew you need a needle or a couple different types of needles, some thread or maybe some thinner and thicker, maybe even dental floss, which is a great thread, and you need a scissors and potentially a pliers. Our Victorinox Swiss Tool has both of these. And you need some material potentially to work with. The sewing has taken our time now and again and it's helped us feel like we have some control over things; it empowers us from day to day. So that's one of our secret skills. I encourage everybody to learn how to sew. A few different stitches and you're ready to change your world.

Well, hopefully we're done with all that now because we don't have any time. Today we crossed the 88° latitude. We're very happy about this for this means we're in the final push; we boosted up our hours to 13-hour days. We're ready to get to the North Pole, and if everything goes well, we'll be there in about 9 days. We are fighting some easterly drift. The winds are blowing pretty good, moving the ice, and the terrain has been wind-blown and some of the hardest packed snow that we have seen. We hope this helps us move quicker. It seems to be; we've made 14 ½ nautical miles today; that's the most that we've done. So, we're optimistic. We plan on reaching the pole, and because of some of our secret skills, we'll reach it in style, also looking good.

Now today we wanted to mention that we skied for Jim "Piker" Hill, recently diagnosed with AML and he is a CaringBridge patient. CaringBridge provides free, personalized websites for patients and families in health crisis, treatment, or recovery. And we're supporting CaringBridge as part of our expedition helping raise awareness and to raise money for CaringBridge. If you'd like to give money to this wonderful charity, please go to our website www.northpole09.com."

Day Forty-Four - An Eventful Day

2009-04-16T02:04:41Z

Audio Transcript:

"We had a big day today. We are happy with it. We are very happy with our distance and we had a few events. So, here's a quick rundown. Last night, Tyler and I camped on the shores of a lead that was open, hoping that it would freeze overnight and it did not. It got bigger, and was more open when we woke up. So, we skied northwest along it, hoping to find a place to swim across, ski across, or a narrows. And luckily we found a narrows. It wasn't totally frozen, so we put on our dry suits, which cover everything completely, boots and Bergans outerwear, and they're quite warm. And we swam through some kind of slurpy, slush-like ice with some chunks in it and pulled our sleds, which float nicely like tops and corks right on top of the slush so nothing inside gets wet, right across. And that was great to have a first successful swim and to get in the water and feel the warmth of the water compared to the air. So, that's two events right there: our first successful swim and also crossing a lead which was stalling our progress.

At that junction, where the lead narrowed where we swam across, we encountered two people, if you can believe it. A guided expedition that had put in at 85-degrees north and was skiing a very similar route to the North Pole. And we shook their hands, Keith and Sebastian, and wished them good luck, and talked for a few minutes. It was good fun and it was really nice to share in someone else's experience and to know that they are having similar successes and struggles as we are out on the ice. So, we are ahead of them now and we will most likely stay ahead of them due to different travel schedules. So, good luck, Keith and Sebastian. It was great to run into you.

Another event, which is our ongoing event, it has been windy out of the west for the past 3 or 4 days. And we like the wind at these kind of warmer temperatures, right now it is -10 Fahrenheit with a lot of sun, because it makes it easy for us not to sweat and maintain a nice even temperature all day. And more importantly that wind is packing our snow surface just beautifully. And we've experienced the very best skiing conditions of the expedition yesterday afternoon and almost all day today. And the terrain, thankfully, is nice and flat with some rubble inclusions and little ridges here and there, but nothing compared to the beginning and this is the stuff that we dreamed of. So, we love that hard-packed snow.

However, that wind is also pushing us east-southeast at a very, I guess, pretty quick drift and we don't like either one of those directions, south or east. Historically the more east the expedition is the more southerly drift it has to deal with. And south of course is the opposite direction of the North Pole. In our case, we are drifting today .3 nautical miles per hour east-southeast. Last night, we drifted almost 1 mile south. So, in 24 hours or so, we lose 2 miles of northern travel. And that definitely impacts us negatively. And we are now over at the 70-degree longitude which can be the danger zone as far as too much southerly drift. We're not experiencing that yet, but it makes us a little nervous about what we might have in the future and these winds are supposed to keep up for the next few days.

So, it should be very interesting. The finish of the race is on. We are upping our travel hours to 13 tomorrow cutting our sleep a little bit, but we feel excellent. Our legs feel good, our pulks are getting lighter, and the skiing conditions are fantastic, and we feel very good about being on schedule. So, hopefully, we will get to the North Pole in 10 days or so. So, stay tuned. The race is starting. Pedal to the metal. Thanks for listening."

Day Forty-Three - Traveling Conversations

2009-04-15T09:04:53Z

Audio Transcript:

"This day was skied for Donna Hornik. Donna is a 3-year-old brain cancer patient from Indiana. Donna and her family use CaringBridge to keep family, relatives, and friends all updated on how Donna is doing. CaringBridge offers free services; free websites for anybody who would like to use them. John and I are encouraging people to use CaringBridge. We are trying to raise awareness for them and also trying to raise money for CaringBridge. If you're interested in donating to CaringBridge, you can go to our website, www.northpole09.com and there's a link that you can click on to go and donate to CaringBridge. So, Donna, we skied for you today.

Today was a great day for travel along what John and I feel is mostly older ice, the wind-packed crusts, the smaller pressure ridges, the kind you can see over when you finally get to them. It was smooth consistent skiing and we were able to stay close to each other and not have to wait for each other or catch up to the other person after rubble. Because it was easier to stay close, we've begun to have conversations, which I don't know what to call them, but they're either the longest or the shortest conversations on record.

Perhaps the longest because the conversations span miles before they're done or the shortest because it's just a sentence and an answer or maybe a couple sentences and then the conversation breaks for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and then it continues. You see as one person checks the compass and checks the bearings to see where we are going, the back person can ask a question and then the front person can answer. The front person may then ask a question back, but then it's time to go.

The questions can be either about future plans for the expedition, the upcoming week and a half or two weeks, or they can be random personal trivia questions. And again, the answer may not come right then. We have to keep skiing. The person might interrupt and say, "Oop, got to go," or "Oh, I've got my point. I'm leaving." So it keeps our lives interesting, these conversations, and John and I think we'll continue them because we've enjoyed the company while we're skiing.

So it's been a fun way to go through the day. And right now we are camped on the south side of a lead that we came to at the end of the day and that lead happens to be open, or mostly open, and we decided that it was better to camp now and potentially have it freeze overnight and we'll be able to cross it rather than try something riskier at the end of the day. We did see one seal swimming in the water and we do wish that that seal could tell us what will happen. So stay tuned tomorrow to find out what we did."

Day Forty-Two - Fat Boy Burger

2009-04-15T09:04:36Z

Audio Transcript:

"Out on the sea ice, skiing 11 hours a day, our minds wander all over the place. Tyler can hum and sing songs. I'm not so good at that. We both think about our lives in the future, activities and spending time with the people that we love and our friends back at home. And we also daydream. Daydreaming is a very effective way to pass the time and it could be quite satisfying if we are patient with our thoughts.

However, certain thoughts pop in my mind, I am sure Tyler's too but I am talking about me here, more often than others. And in particular, I can think about food and almost taste food that I don't have here at great length, sometimes hours, like today, I probably had 10 or 12 different meals around ethnic restaurants in Chicago.

Tyler and I are eating roughly 7,600 calories per day. We just finished our dinner, a wonderful pemmican stew with some curry, salt and black pepper added in. Also, with freeze dried cheddar cheese, milk, and ramen noodles, along with the lamb, chicken, and vegetable pemmican. We really like it every night and every morning. It's just fantastic food.

So, one daydream I've been having is about the Fat Boy Burger. In November, Tyler and I had the pleasure of visiting Bergans of Norway headquarters in Hokksund, Norway, outside of Oslo. And we went out to lunch with Ragnar, Rune, Jon and Terja to a little bar/pub nearby. And everyone at the table ordered something called the Fat Boy Burger and I have been salivating over this burger at length.

The Fat Boy Burger is half pound hamburger, Norwegian cheese, bacon, fried egg, mayonnaise, catsup, tomato, lettuce and I'm not sure if there's avocado on there but I'm going to put avocado on there too, and then a whole plate of French fries on the side. And I have thought a lot about that Fat Boy Burger. And I want one. So, when I get off the North Pole, I'll probably have lost 20 to 30 pounds, and I'm going to be coming for that Fat Boy Burger. So, look out.

So, there's a little window into the simple minds of the long distance skier and how we often think about our loved ones and people back home or CaringBridge and people who that wonderful organization is helping out and our sponsors and people who support us. It all means a lot but also we could caught in wonderful day dreams, that are sometimes tantalizing painful day dreams, about food and the Fat Boy Burger.

So thanks for listening. We're on our way to the pole. It's a windy day but we are happy with our progress. We're drifting east quite a bit so that should be interesting to see how that plays out and tomorrow we'll put some more miles. Good night."