Monday, February 24, 2014

National Geographic Inteview

I'm often asked if it was worth it to bike to the South Pole. I half jokingly say getting interviewed by National Geographic made it all worthwhile.

Here is the interview: National Geographic Weekend

Friday, February 21, 2014

KSL News


Jed Boal of KSL always does a good job with his news stories. He is also great to talk to when he interviews me. Anyway here is the latest news story. http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=210&sid=28803794

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Not Puffy Clouds

This may not be as interesting to you as it was to me. This short video shows the "landscape" of the Antarctic ice cap. I didn't realize how much I would be going up and down over and over. It was frustrating to climb a couple hundred feet only to drop back down. Especially since the downhill seldom felt like I was going down. When I was flying back I took this video out of the airplane window thinking I was filming clouds. After a while I realized that this was the ice I had been biking over. Even though I had been biking in this for nearly two months I didn't really understand it until I saw it from the air.




Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Crevasse!

This may be hard to see and understand, but the hole just left of the sled is the crevasse I fell into. The scary thing about this picture is that without the hole you would never know that this is a snow bridge across a crevasse. 

How big and deep is this crevasse? I don't know. I wanted to go back and get a better picture, but I was too scared to get any closer to it. Also interesting in this picture is the number of ski tracks going over the crevasse. All the other expeditions skied over this. In fact Richard Park skied over this just about 30 minutes before I fell into it.



Saturday, February 15, 2014

Three Great Explorers

There are a lot of amazing explorers in this world. I met a bunch of them in Antarctica. I felt like a midget amongst giants when I would sit down with seven submitters and amazing mountaineer and polar adventurers.

However there are three great adventurers that were the inspiration for my expedition. 

Eric Larsen
In December 2012, just as I was getting into snow biking Eric started his expedition to bike to the South Pole. I followed his expedition. In 8 days he traveled 1/4 of the way to the South Pole.  It took me 16 days to cover the same distance. 

I would never have even thought about biking to the South Pole if I hadn't heard of Eric's expedition. I studied his blog to learn as much as I could about biking to the South Pole. While I was on my expedition I would often remember things I had read in his blog, and think that now I understood what he was talking about. Eric is a true inspiration and his expedition convinced me that biking to the South Pole was possible. 

Hannah McKeand 
Hannah use to hold the record for the fastest solo expedition to the South Pole. I read her blog and learned a lot about polar expeditions from it. I was very honored to have her bring me food when I ran out one day before I reached the pole. 

Aaron Linsdau
Aaron set the record for the most days to get to the South Pole. He took 81 days to get to the pole. When most people would have given up he continued on. I felt I needed to train myself mentally to be prepared to continue on no matter what. This was as important, or maybe more important than any physical training I could do. I wanted to have the perseverance of Aaron. I had to draw on that mental preparation in order to finish

There are many great explorers but those three are the ones that inspired me the most as I biked to the South Pole. Thanks Eric, Hannah, and Aaron!

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

I Miss My Bike

My bike is still in Punta Arenas. In order to get it shipped home I have to provide a list of everything in the box it is being shipped in. I sent the packing list to Mark at ALE twice but somehow he never got it. I'm betting it is a spam filter issue. 

Borealis was very generous and sent me a demo bike to use while I wait for my bike to get back from Chile. I still had my  old Moonlander at home so I rode it to the store this morning, and rode the Borealis home tonight. The Borealis is so much nicer in every way. However, the handling/steering of the Borealis vs the Moonlander is probably the biggest thing I notice. The Borealis just feels like it should and the Moonlander just has a funky feeling to the way it steers. 

Anyway the demo Borealis is great, but I miss my bike. I spent a lot of time with that bike and I like my custom build. I will be so glad to get my bike back. 

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Welcome Home Party


On Saturday, February 8, 2104 from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm we will be having a Welcome Home reception with light refreshments. At 7 pm we will have a video presentation after which Daniel will answer some questions about the expedition. All are invited to come and welcome Daniel back.


Schedule:
Reception and visiting 6 - 7 pm
Presentation and Q&A 7 - 8 pm

Location:
LDS meeting house located at
9475 Mustang Way, Eagle Mountain, UT 84005
http://binged.it/1cLkNiy
(note Google maps does not map this address correctly)