John says "hello" to friends, family and everyone following the expedition.
by John Huston
Tyler and I are lifelong educators. We have worked at Outward Bound for many years and Tyler still does work there. We are passionate about educating and teaching people to push their limits and to follow their dreams and to explore this wonderful world of ours.
The Victorinox North Pole '09 Expedition has partnered with two organizations to bring our expedition into classrooms around the country. We partner with Reach the World - Chicago to get our expedition into several public schools which I had visited a few elementary schools before leaving for the expedition. So a warm "hello" to those schools that I had visited.
We are also partnering with the Will Steger Foundation out of Minneapolis, Minnesota and Tyler visited several schools in the Minneapolis area. We also have friends who are teachers and just meet people who are teachers and have been in schools throughout the fall talking to students about our expedition, about following their dreams and about climate change.
So a warm "hello" from a cold tent to all the students from the different schools that we have visited. And just a reminder to dream big, be positive about yourself and about the people around you and to go out there, explore the world and learn about the environment. The environment is changing drastically these days especially on the Arctic Ocean.
And the Arctic Ocean for us changes every day. Today we started with perfectly smooth ice for the first two hours and we were thrilled about our progress and then things got slower and slower and slower and eventually we ended up in rubble like we had not seen for two weeks. Basically car size blocks of rubble everywhere in our path where we are camped right here. So it can be frustrating sometimes to run into little roadblocks but what we do is keep going forward with optimism and positive thoughts and we know that things will turn out in the end.
Well thanks for listening, everybody. We are happy with our travel day and hopefully we will get past this rubble tomorrow.
Daily Expedition Data
Date: March 28, 2009
Location: N85° 19.943' W074 39.113'
Time Traveled: 9 hours 30 minutes
Distance Traveled: 8.0 nautical miles
AM Temperature: -38°F
PM Temperature: -28°F
slightest W/NW breeze, calm and sunny
280 nautical miles to the North Pole