Brainstorming with the team - Ardennes (1)

Yesterday after work we drove direction Ardennes (Redu) for our first brainstorm weekend. One of the goals of this weekend was to meet the whole crew again, and get to know the new people interested to join our group. Until now the team existed of Joost, initiator of this adventure and father of my husbands godchild, Jo who we met already during our first prep in the Alps, Raf, friend of Joost and chocolatier which made him from the first start very popular to me as I love chocolats (on top he deliveres his chocolat to my favorite delicatesse shop in my home town), Wim, a mutual friend that joined the wine trips Joost and my husband use to organize and an experienced mountaineer, Koen, friend of Joost and Ruud, my husband. The weekend was organized by Boudewijn, a friend of Koen, not able to join the Switserland prep.
Boudewijn hired a magificant house in Redu, plenty of space, a cosy living room where the brainstorm session would take place. We all have received our tasks upfront. Some in charge for cooking, others for supplying groceries, again others for inviting externals to feed us with additional information.
When we arrived in the house, we made acquintance with Patrick and Pieterjan, new potential expeditioners. The spaghetti, prepared by Raf and Joost, was stuck in the traffic jam, together with the guys transporting the most important thing at that moment. After a long day at work, plus a drive at rush hour, this was what I was waiting for...
One after the other popped in, the spaghetti - prepared by Raf's wife (thank you, Kristel!!) - was delicious and after a couple of bootles red wine, the atmosphere was going to the right direction. During our the evening we enjoyed a movie from Dixie "In the trail of de Gerlache", a boat trip to the Antartics where Pieterjan was one of the crew members. Seeing all the beauty made us all very excited about the adventure that soonly would take place and we would be part of.

The Pee Bottle

On of my biggest concerns at this time about the trip are not the polar bears (oh, many men to protect me agaist those creatures), not the cold (we'll see what "cold" really means once we'll get there), not the deprevation of comfort (I alread didn't wash myself for more than a week), but the pee bottle. Our guide, Dixie had explained us during a first briefing, that due to the cold leaving your warm down quilt at night, isn't a good idea and therefore some exercise in peeing into the bottle wouldn't be a bad idea.

Easy to say, men can do it in their sleeping bag, but as a woman, you have to stand up - meaning you have to leave your sleeping bag anyway - and just do your thing by very well targeting the bottle (diameter app 5 cm).

I see myself already standing up in the middle of the tent, surrounded by 8 or so men that are completely strangers - at this moment - and me doing what I have to do.

I really can't get this image out of my mind

In between

Between November 2007 and now, time has passed quickly and step by step I got more informed about what we would do. The expedition will be a trip by foot from the 89th degree up to the 90th, somewhere March-April 2010. I will have to prepare intensively and train for that, both mentally and physically, gather and save money - it's an expensive thing - and I will have to leave my two kids behind for three weeks. I will encounter aggressive polar bears, face cold temperatures up to -45 degrees C, possibly swim in ice cold water, but somehow at this point I cannot imagine what that will be. In the meantime I also met some of my fellow "expeditionists" - although the group is not officialized - and it's a diversity of people. Only one thing that appears a bit awkward: I'm the only female in the group! The only concern I have is that it makes me a bit insecure. How come that only men want to do this? OK, they are all 40-ers, but I refuse to link this to the so called midlife crisis where an average male goes through around this age. I'm really wondering why no other woman can be found for such an adventure... Maybe I'm just too ambitious.

How it all started

It must have been somewhere in November 2007. I was sitting in a wine restaurant, dining with a bunch of good friends, when one of them came up with the idea of going on an expedition to the North Pole. He already had contact with an expedition leader and was looking for people that were interested in joining him on this extraordinary journey. Being quite adventurous - and and that time not knowing what it really meant - I told him I was interested in doing such a thing. Before I knew, I was on a list of "potential expeditionists", not aware of how cold it could be, potential dangers of polar bears, and even not knowing the route that we would take... Totally unaware of what I really committed myself to.