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People stared at his nasty, though.
And he got the lurgies from being so fucked up by the trip.
I found the bit where the ferry captain assumed the only ones daft
enough to do it would be Germans, hilarious.

 

Cracking read, Gromit.

 

Something I wouldn't do again? I think the number one thing is pretty
fucking obvious but apart from that I wouldn't take so much kit.

Something that I didn't do? Heated socks. Without a shadow of a doubt
I'd have felt so much better and got going after stops a lot sooner if
my feet weren't freezing.

I'm sure I could do the same trip with a lot less weight in the
panniers and no topbox but you need to pack in such a way that you can
just grab your bag of clothes out of a pannier and walk into wherever
you're stopping without dicking about with lots of small bags. You
still need to take some food with you because there won't always be
anywhere to eat out or buy from a shop but only an emergency supply
and the same with stuff to make a brew.

 

That reminds me - you said exo would replace cables what had gone
faulty? Do you know who you spoke to? I emailed their sales address and
the answer I got was 'buy a new cable'.

 

I suppose it depends on how you approach it. I sent an email asking if
they'd done anything to prevent the cables from chaffing where they
leave your sleeves and it was opened by their MD late on a Sunday
evening and he offered the free replacement.

The connectors are crap, I've got another one with exposed inner cable
and I'll not be bothering to replace it. The gloves are fine over here
but when it gets to seriously low temperatures the leather freezes if
you leave them unplugged for about 10 minutes and exposed to the
elements.

 

[big snip]

Thanks for the write up - was obviously a genuine adventure. It seems
sensible to ensure that people who go on these "missions" are capable of
improvisation and have some mechanical know how. I'd not have lasted 5
minutes if something had gone wrong.

It made me recall a short business visit to Oslo in the middle of winter
when I failed to take any jumpers or extra layers to wear - boy was I
cold when out and about. Your conditions were obviously far worse than
that but some of the numbers you quoted looked a bit familiar.

You may not wish to say but what exactly do frosted / frozen fingers
actually feel like? It sounds horrible given it happened so quickly.

 

Fair play, Alex. Good to hear you all came out of it still as friends.
I missed the planning of all this, but I'm probably too old now to try to
re-create my 1980 "Reid of the Antarctic" persona. :-(

--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
GSX600F, RG250WD "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO#003, 005
WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon)
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

If I remember from a particular incident in 1980, and a few other
occurrences, you do notice it as a sharpish pain if the temperature is low
enough. Apparently the risk of missing it is higher if the temperature is
not far below freezing (people sleeping rough in Melbourne parks spring to
mind). If you are out and about with others (not really applicable in
this context) it's essential that you keep inspecting each other for signs
of whiteness in the cheeks or on the nose. Frostbite in the fingers will
usually be because of a need to remove gloves in adverse conditions -- as
I had to do to keep a rock drill operating while installing beacons for
incoming ships on islands off Mawson; it took about 15 years for my
thumb to lose all evidence of the incident.

--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
GSX600F, RG250WD "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO#003, 005
WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon)
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

Where did you go..

Where did they go ? where ?

 

Excellent write up. I'm envious in the extreme that I wasn't with you,
but secretly somewhat glad

Cheers,
Paul.

 

Brilliant, honest...

 

I think that's what he meant.

 

Stunning, Andy, stunning.

You've no idea how much interest you lot generated with this trip,
really. We were all hanging on every note, text, tweet and pic.
You're a bunch of fuckwits and megastars and all of the couch potato
team raised a glass to you all, every evening.

I owe you all a beer. Your very good health.

 

Fucking deadhead.

 

It is worth it, and you look like a total twonk coming in at this
point and asking to be told what's happened at this late date.

It's much like arriving late at an event where the guest of honor
has been onstage for hours telling a fantastically interesting
story, much appreciated by the audience, then wondering why people
are looking at you funny when you walk in at the very end, after
the applause has stopped and ask someone, "what did he say?".

 

5 Guys Went To Hell, OK?

 

Hell and back.

 

A good plan, particularly now you know the typical range per day once
it gets tough. That was the variable you couldn't predict before
setting out.

This was always going to be an important limiting factor. Presumably
places to stop the night other than camping become scarce as you get
further and further north.


Weather conditions may still sudenly deteriorate and mean holing up
for a while.

An excellent effort, and I'm glad my tracking map seems to have been
appreciated by some. Now it has served its purpose I can delete all
the logged points and deactivate the link, or archive them and reset
the index code ready for the next trip - as the team prefer.

 

I'm keeping track of the free beers after the amount we spent on
alcohol in Norway.

 

You could have had one last night if you'd turned out. You missed out
on huge amounts of heat, too: you might have thawed out.