tonyhaile.com

McCain is right, one can’t trust a man who has been seen in the company of criminals.

We can see from this the quips vs. substance argument Biden will likely take.

via PopTech.

Tags: microloans, Politics

Last year I wrote about my friend John Lake, who battled his way past brain tumours, depression, suicide bids and time in mental institutions to run the London Marathon and in some way find his purpose again.

John took something from that day and, to abuse a pun, he ran with it. On September 7th at 6am, John will zip up his wetsuit and enter the water for his first ironman triathlon. He will swim 2.4 miles, cycle 112 miles and then run 26.2 miles, a marathon. For someone who, two years ago, couldn’t run to the end of his block just getting to this stage is an awesome achievement. He will feel very different when he crosses the finish line.

When John ran the marathon he broke the record for money raised for the Brain Research Trust, with ten days to go he has already raised £7,300 and is aiming for £10,000. John is going to go through 13 hours of pain to show his support for people going through brain tumours, the least we can do is click on a link; please sponsor him now.

Tags: John

Professor Randy Pausch  was three months and 12 days into his three-to-six months of good health left after Doctors diagnosed him with Pancreatic Cancer. This incredibly useful talk is made all the more poignant by the fact that this is a man who truly knows what it means to have limited time.

Footage from the yacht race I was a part of in 2000 has made its way on to youtube. Marvel at our death-defying feats, and see if you can catch the blink-and-you’ll miss it footage of me cowering below decks under my duvet with my teddybear firmly in my grip.

On 6 March, Rosie Stancer stepped off Ward Hunt Island and on to the frozen surface of the Arctic Ocean. With temperatures sinking past -50C, her eyelashes elongated with ice and every millimetre of exposed skin burning with the cold she pulled her sledge over serried ranks of 30 feet high barriers of ice stretching before her for miles and miles. The Arctic, still shaking off the hold of winter would make each night a concert of shivering limbs and chattering teeth as the lightweight stove strove against the world with its rationed fuel and thin blue light.

The cold took no prisoners this year, and the toes of Rosie’s left foot were hit the worst as they froze, thawed, refroze, rethawed and frostbite took hold. As the temperature crawled up through the –40s and into the more temperate –30s, the sun became a fixture in the sky, no longer rising or setting but simply circling Rosie as she pressed north. However, the sun became a fleeting visitor as the rising temperatures brought burnished clouds each staking a claim to their piece of the horizon before enveloping the world completely in a deathly white.

As the clouds fell, Rosie’s senses became almost redundant. What use are ears when there is nothing to hear, what use eyes when all around you is white, what use touch when its only function is to remind you of the pain in your feet? There is no up, no down, no far away, no close up, no sky, no ground, just white and the dead weight of your sledge behind you as your only comfort against complete isolation.

At least as Rosie hauled, climbed, pushed, pulled, levered, smashed and at times dug her way north, the ice conditions began to improve. Then came the storms. Whipping across the Arctic, the snow was coerced into vortices around Rosie, burrowing into every crevice as the wind fashioned the encircling ridges into sails taking her east and south, away from her desired route and course. Continue Reading »

The Swann Galleries in New York are holding an auction of the polar library of Dr. John M. Levinson, a past President of the Explorers Club. Included in the Lots is one of only 65 extant copies of the first book published in Antarctica, Ernest Shackleton’s Aurora Australis, 1908. This copy of the book is known as the ‘Veal’ copy because boards from a packing crate containing veal were used to create its cover.

It seems my birthday fell just a little too early to take advantage of this.

The last six years of my life have been so singlemindedly focused on the poles, so caught up with snow, cold and ice that I sometimes manage to forget that there is a polar opposite to this world. Recently I was lucky enough to head briefly down to Naples, Florida where i met some incredible and inspirational people. I experienced the boundless enthusiasm and vigour of true entrepreneurs and enjoyed my first taste of southern hospitality, both exceeded every expectation.

But sometimes it is the simplest of things that take your breath away and for me that came when I walked down to the beach, took off my shoes and felt the sand beneath my feet for the first time in almost six years. Seabirds were whirling and diving; a group of friends threw horseshoes and two men stood with the lines of their fishing rods stretching out into the dappled sea. I asked them what they were fishing for and they cheerfully replied ’shark!’.

In my normal travels, the sun setting and rising is a rare and ponderous occasion, but here the sun set so fast that I, engrossed in the conversation of my friend, almost missed its fall; as if it too could not resist the call of the water it illuminated. It made me long for the sea and old friends.

For now though, the Arctic has resumed its call upon me and as I do my best to help Rosie reach the North Pole I study weather forecasts and satellite images to track and forecast the Arctic’s mood and intentions. Today’s infra-red was a beauty and seemed an admirable counterpoint to the picture above. A high pressure zone is currently keeping the skies clear over the pole, though it is also pressing down upon the ice. One can see widening leads beginning to make their presence felt to the west as the season pushes towards summer, while in the south-east a particularly nasty storm boils furiously. I hope that neither come to affect Rosie before she reaches her goal.

John was one of those people who seemed to lead a charmed life. Always the centre and light of the room at any party, he received a first from Oxford University, spoke Italian like a native and went on to become one of the leading lights of his year at the prestigious LAMDA drama school. It was on a holiday in Canada that John began to get headaches and went to see a doctor. Instead of an aspirin, they gave him a CAT scan and found a massive brain tumour.

It was incredibly lucky that they caught it (my cousin was not so lucky and died from a brain tumour a short while ago) but, unsurprisingly, the act of scooping out a chunk of John’s brain had a major effect upon him. Whole chunks of his memory were gone (except strangely for the lyrics of eighties music for which he has a now encyclopaedic memory), he had problems with his short-term memory and his short-circuited brain chemistry gave him severe depression.

I shared a flat with some close friends of John and he came to live with us in Kentish Town. Things seemed to be going well, though at times I would come down the stairs to hear John crying in his room. Shortly afterwards I went off on an expedition to Greenland, and when I returned John had gone. He had taken himself down to Beachy Head and prepared to jump off and kill himself. Luckily the police found him and John was strong enough to tell them that he needed help.

John was taken away and placed in a mental health institute, sharing his ward with people whose mental difficulties at time dwarfed his own. We would get the occasional phone call from John, and it was on one of these that he told us he would shortly be on day release and able to come and see us.

Sitting in our conservatory, John talked about his depression and in some ways it seemed very much linked to not being able to see a future. Acting did not seem to be a viable option anymore and John could not visualise anything else. What was the point in living if you had nothing to live for? Now, Ben and I talk a lot about the importance of goal-setting in life and attempting to do that which you are not sure you can do. I wondered if this might help John, so sitting there I said “John we have six months, next April you are going to run the London marathon”. John pointed out that I was the crazy one, he had never run before and got out of breath walking down the street. At which point I lent him some running trainers and told him we were heading out in ten minutes. Continue Reading »

“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.”
-Daniel Burnham, Chicago architect. (1864-1912). (via)

There is always a question for me as to how we perceive talent when it is something that is difficult to measure mathematically. With a sprinter we can measure his time, but it becomes progressively more difficult with more abstract things such as musical talent that rely on perception.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink, he notes that an orchestra had to erect a screen at auditions between the musician and the judges in order to prevent external appearance (or the sex of the musician) influencing the perception of talent. As an interesting addition to this problem, the Washington Post persuaded the world’s greatest living violinist to take his Stradivarius down to a DC subway plaza and busk for a while to see if anyone appreciated the sheer quality of performance in such an unlikely venue. The results were instructive. . . .

A watch buried at the North Pole by a descendant of Roald Amundsen (one of the official ones rather than the chap I met) washed up on the shores of the Faroe Islands and was found by a young boy a few days ago. (via BB).

There’s a certain blog paralysis that creeps in after a certain amount of time has passed that makes going back to the blog yet more difficult. The urge to precis events is suffocated beneath yet more events, none of which necessarily make for a particularly coherent story. On reflection, I have decided to provide some bullet points and then continue on as though nothing has happened. Since I last posted on this site I have:

• Put together a major solo North Pole expedition
• Simultaneously tested new polar equipment while entertaining a small five-year-old boy with my monster/giant impressions.
• Spent time in Toronto, Ottawa, Iqaluit, Resolute, Montreal, London and New York
• Performed two snowmobile rescues for individuals stranded on the sea ice (mentally playing the Ride of the Valkyries all the while)
• Had my name appear on the inside cover of a major label album release.
• Moved continents and set up in New York
• Met Barbara Bush (the twin, not the Granny)
• Learned what shuffleboard is
• Screamed at UPS “just who the hell do I have to wake up in which country to get this package delivered on time”
• Learned that my street is the major route of choice for all night-time emergency services in New York
• Tried Ashtanga yoga
• Met the Inuit grandson of one of Roald Amundsen’s flings
• Competed in a Scotland 10K in Central Park
• Written a soon-to-be published piece for the Grauniad

And met innumerable interesting and warm-hearted people along the way.

The Smithsonian has an interesting article about Mount Erebus with some wonderful piccies on it. (via BB).

Some footage of the kind of training Rosie does to get ready for her North Pole Solo trek is up on Myspace.

The Democrats take the House and Senate and the US government suddenly recognises that diminishing Arctic ice might be having an effect on polar bear numbers, raising their status to ‘threatened’. Coincidence?

Last Wednesday I sat down for lunch with Rosie Stancer, a veteran of several South Pole expeditions and the ’97 North Pole relay. We had been on an expedition to Svalbard in 2002 and spent one particularly glorious night in a storm that snapped our tent poles as the temperature plummeted to –40. One newspaper described her as a cross between Tinkerbell and the Terminator. They’re not far off.

Rosie has persuaded Mars (the confectioner rather than the planet) to sponsor an attempt to become the first woman to reach the North Pole solo. It’s a tough journey. In 2004, I was one of the last people to see Dominick Arduin alive when she set out from Siberia to attempt the same journey. Others such as Ann Daniels have been hamstrung by logistics failures, while Bettina Aller was stalked by polar bears for days in 2001 getting frostbite from the revolver she had to brandish at all times.

Rosie asked me to manage the expedition for her and I’ve leapt at the chance to bring some of my old team back together again and do my best to make this an expedition to be proud of. This means I’ll be back and forth between New York, London and the Canadian High Arctic over the next few months and will do my best to up the blogging rate round here so that I can give a flavour of what it’s like preparing and running an expedition where the penalties for poor decisions can be severe. There is also lots of exciting news happening around SOUTH, so watch this space. . . .

With the possible exception of a blog post during our 2005 expedition to Greenland where Ben managed to make me look like Sid James, this youtube screencap from a video made for Ice Edge ranks as the worst picture of me on the net.

I realise that now I am opening the floodgates for someone to prove me wrong.

A nice lady was wandering through a shop in the south coast, found these biscuits for sale, and gave them to me. They are apparently exact replicas of the biscuits that Scott took with him on his 1911-12 South Pole expedition. The packaging claims that the biscuits are perfect for trekking adventures, and at 470 cals per 100g they certainly pack a wallop. I just wonder whether basing your biscuit on the famously insufficient and ultimately deadly nutrition strategy that Scott employed is the best advertising to go with. Taste good though.

Frances at 76 Degrees South has been taking a break from her work at Halley station in Antarctica to visit the local penguins. She has some beautiful photographs on her site and you can find more at her flickr page where incredible Antarctic vistas, wildlife and life on an Antarctic base compete with the occasional vodka luge for attention.

Mr Hudson and the Library played the seminal Later. . . with Jools Holland last week, in the company of Tony Bennett, Damon Albarn’s new band and Eric Bibb. Have a listen.

Today I sat on an orange sofa and explained an idea I’d had after my front tyre exploded on the marylebone flyover and I’d had to walk the six miles to Ben’s dragging my bike and cursing my absent-minded shortage of inner tubes. I sat there in the offices of the mighty IDEO and explained an idea for massively improving our performance for SOUTH, while some of Britain’s best design minds listened carefully. They listened, and then they demolished it. Maybe that’s the wrong word, they didn’t criticise it, they didn’t tell me why it couldn’t be done (quite the opposite), they just simply took it apart piece by piece and examined it in a way I had never thought to before. They showed me that I had been asking a question in a way that presupposed a certain solution, and that the question didn’t nearly go deep enough into the problem. In a flurry of brightly coloured post-it notes they anatomised our problems, staking out each segment, each component like a medical exam and kindly but firmly drew me back every time I began to gallop down a particular path towards a single solution.

Ben had been caught by a delayed delivery man and was unable to make it over so we skyped him in on my laptop and occasionally he would pipe up with ideas as they came to him or useful nuggets of information that I had overlooked. It was a little surreal, as though HAL from 2001 or KITT from Knightrider were suddenly spouting away on the table. I don’t know if he got the full impact of the meeting, but to me it was like seeing something so innately familiar for the first time, jamais vu maybe. It was also deeply humbling to see the company that designed the first laptop, the first mouse dedicating manhours to SOUTH for no other reason than they believed in our dream.

Walking through the city tonight, my ipod choosing pitch-perfect tracks for me, it felt like seeing London for the first time too. I got to the station but just carried on walking; I felt like a tourist, and I realised that London doesn’t really start until one floor up. If you walk along Regent street you can see dingy woolen goods shops mixing with over-priced suitmakers, but one floor up and it’s an infinitely long palace of french balconies, stone-wrought urns and architectural intricacies that seem to be the last true vestige of empire. Up Portland Place, past the conical All Souls Church standing guard over the BBC and the windows are interspersed with wreaths and ornate overhangs, through Park crescent with its gleaming porticoes that really show you what old money means until Regents Park interjects a vista of darkness among the lights and London has never seemed so much a part of me. On expeditions I often imagine streets in London in the most vivid of detail, today I was reminded why that’s no bad thing.

Ben and I are big believers in pushing your boundaries, and like to think that on occasion we walk the walk. However, I doff my cap and tug my forelock to the Burmese python that swallowed an alligator whole. The act of eating the Alligator did cause the python to explode, but definitely an A-star for ambition and follow through.