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 into 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.

CaringBridge 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.

Daily Expedition Data
Date: April 23, 2009
Location: N89° 20.353' W044 13.828'
Travel Time: 12 hours
Distance Traveled: 15 nautical miles
40 nautical miles to the North Pole

CaringBridge Family: Josh Crosby
John and Tyler are committed to raising
funds and awareness for CaringBridge.

DAY 52 - INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY TO THE NORTH POLE