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Polar Explorers Lonnie Dupre and Eric Larsen send daily dispatches during their unprecedented four-month journey to the North Pole and back. The expedition team will pull and paddle specially modified canoes across nearly 1,000 miles of shifting sea ice and open ocean. Their objective is to complete the first ever summer expedition to the North Pole and to highlight the growing issues surrounding global warming.
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Sunday Homecoming

Jul 14, 2006
John Huston (Expedition Manager)
On Sunday, July 16, Lonnie and Eric are scheduled to arrive at Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport at 11:45 A.M. Their friends and family are waiting expectantly to embrace the two explorers and to see what toll the expedition has taken on their bodies and minds; how much weight have they lost, how is Lonnie's back, how sunburned are they, are they mentally exhausted. These are all thoughts going through the heads of the welcoming party.I will be at the airport too, wondering the same things. However, because I have communicated with Eric and Lonnie almost every day of the expedition, it seems, in a sense, as if they were not very far away. Since I jumped on the team just two weeks before departure, I have spent more time interacting with and thinking about Lonnie and Eric while they were away, than I did when they were home. Communications between Lonnie and Eric, and I have consisted mostly of terse email exchanges and efficient satellite phone conversations. Most of my job has involved coordinating logistics, communicating with sponsors and the media, and updating the web page. Through all of this work I am constantly trying to identify with Lonnie and Eric's perspective on the ice, so I can then coordinate things for them most easily and effectively. It is this thought process that has been most fun and educational for me. It is one thing to purchase a flight for someone; it is another thing entirely to purchase a flight for two yellow Esquif canoe-sleds. In order to navigate to solutions for this sort of logistical issue, I make persistent phone calls at all hours of the day. I work hard to communicate clearly, thoroughly and honestly so that whomever is on the other end of the line does not get annoyed with the countless details that can be involved with Arctic Ocean logistics. While I was not able to experience travel on the melting Arctic Ocean, I gained a tremendous appreciation for the commitment required to bring the urgency, scale and impact of global warming to people's attention. While each individual person can do a lot, it is also their job to educate others. Every evening of this exhausting expedition Eric and Lonnie painstakingly wrote their blog entries and recorded their podcasts. Backed by Greenpeace, the One World Expedition has shown the impact of global warming on the Arctic Ocean and the polar bear to millions and millions of people. Way to go, Lonnie and Eric and Greenpeace. Job well done!

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