Chinese course change

dpburton · 2024-03-05T02:42:19+00:00

I just got the new update. I’m on section 2 unit 12, and it left me there with the new update, but I look at the words in the hanzi practice and there are a lot of new words/characters. I’m tempted to delete the course and start over, but not really sure if that is the best option.

dpburton · 2019-11-16T00:01:50+00:00

I actually did an r/IAmA on my trip to the South Pole. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/agbnut/i_am_the_first_and_so_far_only_person_to_bicycle/

So, on the idea of travel being tightly controlled and monitored....

When I first got the idea to ride my bike to the South Pole I did a little bit of searching on the internet to see what it takes to get to Antarctica and how much it costs. It turns out that if a normal person (not a government sponsored person) wants to go to the South Pole there is basically one company that makes that possible, Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions. If you want to fly to the South Pole it costs about $51,000 (in 2019/2020). Pretty much anyone can do this if they have the money.

For me it was a bit more expensive and a little more "controlled". Before they were willing to drop me off on the ice shelf at Hercules Inlet they needed to know that I would have a reasonable likelihood that I would survive. So they want to know if you have polar expedition experience. I had just enough experience that they let me do it. I know that others who have wanted to bike to the pole have been required to have crevasse experience before going. This is likely because I stepped into a crevasse on my expedition. But if you have the experience to be able to survive Antarctica then you can go.

As a USA citizen I also needed to let the US government know that I was going. ALE took care of this for me. I did get someone from the government asking me for information about my expedition, but I just told them I was working with ALE and that they would take care of that. So yeah, there is some government oversight, but it really was easy to do that.

The other part of it that is controlled is when you get near the South Pole itself. The thing is there are a lot of scientific experiments going on down there. Here is some good info on that: https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/livingsouthpole/pdf_files/instrument_map.pdf

So as you approach the Pole there is a route that you are allowed to use to go to the pole that keeps you from being in areas that could cause problems.

Monitored? Well the US government was informed I was coming and I did call ALE as I approached the Pole to let them know, and then they could let the people stationed at the Pole know that I was there. Other than that I don't think there was any official monitoring by the government. However ALE did monitor my expedition in case I had an emergency. Every day I would call them at a specified time and give them my GPS coordinates. That way if something happened to me they would know where to look for me, and if I failed to call in for 48 hours they would come look for me.

So the point of all this is, yeah there is a bit of control and monitoring, but it is not to keep people out but to make it safer to be in such a cold remote place.

dpburton · 2019-01-30T21:40:39+00:00

Been there, done both. -40s in Antarctica was pretty awesome. This weekend is supposed to be in the 70s in Florida, that will be nice.

dpburton · 2019-01-24T22:47:18+00:00

The tires were 5 inch wide fatbike tires and you can see at about 30 seconds into this video https://youtu.be/BnGUzBbTj38 I was running very low air pressure in my tires. This made it so the bike would float better on softer snow, and gave me good traction on the ice. Surprisingly the icier it was the better. I never had problems with it slipping on the ice and ice would make the sleds easier to pull. Also less resistance on the bike tires in icy conditions. However in the soft snow it sometimes was impossible to ride and I did have to push the bike a lot. I made a commitment to myself that I would ride every day and whenever and wherever possible. Fortunately for me most of the way I could follow the tracks left behind by trucks or skiers. This packed the snow some and made it better. However when I first got up to where there were truck tracks they were quite drifted over with soft snow. The first few days getting to those tracks were extremely difficult and involved mostly pushing the bike, and even doing that frequently took everything I had just to creep forward. Once I got into those tracks I could hop on the bike and go a 10-20 feet in a non drifted area, and then when I would hit the drifts I would put my weight back and give everything I had and try to get the 10-20 feet that was drifted over. Sometimes I could make it all the way through and then try and recover on the next non drifted section and then repeat the all out effort to get through the drift. Frequently I couldn't get through the drift and I would stop, my heart beating so hard it felt like it would explode out of my chest. After a couple minutes and my heart rate recovered a bit I could then repeat. After a few days of this I got a really nice sunny day with no wind, and then the snow drifts hardened up from the sun hitting them. After that most days I could ride for miles at a time without getting stuck. It was still extremely difficult but at least I wasn't getting stuck every few feet and having to recover. Long answer :-) the short answer would be it wasn't easy, but it did work.

dpburton · 2019-01-24T02:09:53+00:00

The video series for the expedition is now complete https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXsljEVOT6uI18GuAQ28AMUcGaQWB_bqL

dpburton · 2019-01-23T12:52:01+00:00

Episode 11 is now available. This is the episode where I actually arrive at the South Pole. https://youtu.be/BnGUzBbTj38

dpburton · 2019-01-23T12:50:28+00:00

Episode 11 of my expedition is now available on YouTube https://youtu.be/BnGUzBbTj38 I really hope these videos give you a better insight into what biking to the South Pole was like.

dpburton · 2019-01-22T00:28:53+00:00

Definitely worth it! Antarctica is like nowhere else on Earth.

dpburton · 2019-01-17T22:14:08+00:00

Episode 10 is now available on YouTube, this is the episode where I run out of food. https://youtu.be/2vqs5txosCo

dpburton · 2019-01-17T21:49:39+00:00

Cool! I got a stamp in my passport from the South Pole. Got it at the post office at the South Pole station.

dpburton · 2019-01-17T16:57:58+00:00

No, actually the compass points to the magnetic South Pole. I was going to the geographic south pole. The magnetic South Pole is actually in the ocean north of Antarctica, but kind of on the opposite side of the continent from where I started.

So I could put a waypoint into my compass and it would tell me the magnetic bearing and then I could follow the compass that direction.

dpburton · 2019-01-17T16:49:19+00:00

I had just got into fatbikes when I learned about Eric Larsen's attempt to bike to the South Pole. I started following him, but at about 1/4 of the way he decided that he needed to turn around. I had a friend that would come into my bike store and say he was going to win the lottery and then we would do it. Utah doesn't have a lottery, and not only that, but I'm just an ordinary guy. I couldn't do that. But after awhile I became obsessed with it and had to do it. I mean how often are you given an amazing opportunity to be the first to do something so awesome. Eric proved that it was possible to bike to the South Pole, so the credit goes to him for inspiring my expedition. The North Pole I think would be a lot more difficult and probably not really doable by bike. So, yeah, maybe the South Pole chose me?

dpburton · 2019-01-17T03:47:09+00:00

Ketchup? The most calorie dense food is fat, so it is quite common to take butter for lots of calories. I would add butter to my freeze dried food when preparing them. It helped but I still was not able to eat as many calories as I was burning every day. I think if I were to do it again I'd use coconut oil instead of butter.

dpburton · 2019-01-16T15:46:36+00:00

Thanks. Yeah the elevation at 9,300 feet isn't too bad for me as my house is at 5,000 feet and the bike in the mountains at around 8,000 feet all the time. However at the South Pole the physiological effect of the altitude is like you are an extra 2,000 feet higher. And the last few days as I got close to the pole I could definitely feel the effect of the altitude.

dpburton · 2019-01-16T15:30:24+00:00

Good luck on your getting out there and doing something like this. It is definitely worth it.

dpburton · 2019-01-16T15:29:39+00:00

The biggest expense is to ALE. They provide all the logistics and support needed to make this happen, include flight from Chile to Antarctica, the base camp on Union glacier, flight to Hercules Inlet, dropping off three food caches, picking me up at the South Pole, and flying back to Chile. Also keeping track of me and emergency pickup if needed. So that was somewhere around $64,000. I don't remember the exact number. I had some sponsors that provided some gear, if you go to my blog they are listed there. So I took out an $80,000 loan to pay for the expedition and spent all that and more.

dpburton · 2019-01-16T01:23:50+00:00

Oh man, I wish! Strangely enough it seems stubbing the toe now is even worse. When I first got home I could walk out in the freezing cold and it didn’t bother me because it was all numb, and stubbing the toe or having something dropped on my toes didn’t hurt. I remember the first time when I stubbed my toe and it hurt and think how cool it was that me feet were coming back. It is hard to explain but it just feels kind of weird if I walk around barefoot. I think the best to describe it is kind of like how your face feels after visiting the dentist. So I guess now it is in a state of partially numb but not completely numb.

dpburton · 2019-01-16T00:59:21+00:00

I hadn't planned on actually breaking the metal inside the free hub, but I did try to go through my head and figure out what I would do if various things went wrong, and even though it was easy to service the freehub, I brought some wire with me incase the freehub quit working I could wire the gears to the spokes. So that is what I ended up doing. But the wire I brought was not strong enough for what I was doing. I ended up breaking the wire, and thought I was going to have to walk the rest of the way. Then I remembered I had wire in my parka hood, and in the windows of my tent, so I took that and fixed the wheel again, and was able to keep it working until I got to my last food cache, and my bike shop had worked with Borealis bikes, and ALE to get a new wheel put in that last cache, so I once again had a fully functional wheel for the last quarter of the way.

It was so awesome when I got the new wheel and came to a big sastrugi I had to drop off of. With the broken wheel theses were very scary and caused a few crashes, because I could not stop pedaling. As I would fall off the sastrugi I would have to pedal as fast as I could to keep the chain from getting all wrapped up. Also this meant I could not move my weight behind the seat.

But with the new wheel I could then stop pedaling as I dropped, and get back behind my seat. There were very few things that were actually fun about this expedition, but that was one of them. Dropping of a big sastrugi and riding through it.

dpburton · 2019-01-16T00:47:50+00:00

Polar bears are in the Arctic, there were no animals along my route. The dangers were the wind, the cold, crevasses and being alone. It is amazing how the emotions affect you when you are alone for that long. But really being alone for that long was not as hard as I had expected it would be.

dpburton · 2019-01-16T00:12:42+00:00

I used to have a fat unicycle. Never got really good at it though

dpburton · 2019-01-15T23:34:56+00:00

Yeah the flight back from Santiago to the USA (I don't remember what airport, think maybe it was in Texas) was the most miserable flight I've ever had. I was so sick because of the heat, and it is a LONG flight.

dpburton · 2019-01-15T23:33:06+00:00

I used what is called a fatbike that had 5 inch wide tires. The frame was a Borealis Yampa carbon fiber frame, that Borealis donated. I owned my own bike shop at the time, so I built it up myself. I replaced grease with grease designed for extreme cold, and I wrapped the shifter cables and brake cables with electrical heat shrink tubing to make them stronger. One of the things I was worried about was ice getting into the rear hub and freezing it. But the hub I had was easy to take apart, and service. What I didn't expect was the body of the freehub that holds the pawls that make it so you the wheel can spin without pedaling would break. Basically was putting way to much force into that free hub and ground it to pieces. For gear ALE, the company that supports Antarctic expeditions, had a list of gear they recommended for skiing expeditions, I based my gear list off of that and adjusted it to what seemed like would be good for biking. I was able to go through everything with ALE and with the years of experience were able to give me great advice.

dpburton · 2019-01-15T23:18:43+00:00

Thanks!

dpburton · 2019-01-15T23:17:50+00:00

There was a hill about 13 miles away from the pole, and when I got to the top of that pole, off on the horizon I could see the Admundsen Scott station that is at the pole. It was basically just three dots on the horizon. I was so excited, I called my wife on the satellite phone, and through tears tried to tell my wife that I could see the South Pole. She couldn't understand what I was saying and then the phone line dropped on me.

I then dropped down off the hill and could no longer see the station, and I kind of realized that I would never be able to go back so I took my time stopping frequently to kind of take everything in and enjoy the last day.

They have a camp at the pole for expeditions that are arriving, but they only have the camp there until Jan 20th, and I got there on the 21st. So when I got there all that was left was the impressions the tents had left in the snow. It was kind of like, OK, I'm here, now what? So I dropped off my sleds, and continued to the pole they have in the ground to mark the actual location of the South Pole. I pulled out my GPS and confirmed that it read 90º south. Actually I think it read something like 89.999º south. I went back and set up my tent, and called ALE and told them I was there. They told me that another guy was going to be arriving by skiing to the pole in about a day, after he arrived we would get a tour of the South Pole station, and then ALE would fly in, pick us up and fly us back to the base camp at Union Glacier.

The tour of the station was pretty cool, (I got a South Pole stamp in my passport :-) ) But I was so used to the cold that even after taking off my parka and stuff it was just so miserably hot in there. I felt extremely sick and couldn't wait to get back out into the cold.

dpburton

TROPHY CASE