SouthPole

Is Partial Plausibility the Same Thing as Impossible?

Challenges, Health, Engineering & Fabrication, Love / By / / Leave a Comment
Lenticular Cloud over Harold’s Cross Dublin Ireland, Omnisource5 – 2015

My friend Bee,

I hope that you are beginning to see that this entire enterprise truly is all about you.  Is it evident to you that I am not trying to glorify myself?  This is all a pretty strange way of going about things, if that was my intent.

Please understand that I have never wanted to cause you stress, anxiety, fear, anger, or any other unpleasant feelings or emotions.  I know that many of the things that I have written to you have caused you grief, sorrow, and pain.  There are certain things that I knew at the time that I wrote them would be a discomfort to you, but there are other things that I have written where I did not foresee tears in your eyes.  However, I have always been careful to be as truthful with you as I could possibly ever be to anyone.  I have leaned very heavily upon God to lead me as I write to you, to be certain that I really am being truthful with you.

This is the problem.  Often times, the truth can be painful, but it is only by facing up to the truth that we can understand what is wrong and where the deception, the lies, and the subtlety exists in our lives.  The truth is a light that reveals the darkness.  Without the truth, we are unable to see the darkness in our lives.

In all soberness and sincerity, I have never knowingly allowed myself to say anything to you that I thought would cause you pain unless it was for the specific purpose to help you understand the truth.  It is out of love that I have thought to cause you to suffer, so that you might know the truth and to be able to see the darkness and to be free from that darkness.  Is it not better that you suffer sorrow and pain for a season in order to discover and to take hold of eternal joy and light, than it is to live in an undisturbed darkness until you finally realize that you will never ever be free from that darkness – a adarkness that continually becomes ever more dark?  I have only ever wanted you to be happy and filled with joy, but you will never be able to find true happiness and to live in untethered joy as long as you are living in darkness.

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Is Partial Plausibility the Same Thing as Impossible?Read More »

Is Partial Plausibility the Same Thing as Impossible? Read More »

Science is a Wherry

Challenges, Health, Challenges, Nautical, Circumnavii, Route Plan & Selection, Engineering & Fabrication / By / / 1 Comment

When I first began this blog, I did not anticipate that my struggles with my health and my diet were going to be quite as extreme as they have been.  Neither did I expect the Bible Study effort to be so all-consuming.  Do not get me wrong. I fully anticipated that both of these aspects were going to be exceedingly difficult to handle, yet they both turned out to be far greater challenges than I expected.

I knew that the battle with my gastrointestinal affliction was going to be exceedingly difficult.  After all, I have been battling with this affliction for 20 years.  I knew that it was going to be insanely difficult, but I had no clue that, in the process, I would be uncovering this long-standing body-fluid balance issue.  The whole situation has been a huge surprise to me. It is an incredibly complex problem, and it is not a situation that can be resolved quickly by any means.

With the Bible study, it just never occurred to me that the beginning of the Scofield Bible would contain so many comments to grapple with, as well as comments of such complexity and depth.  With the Scofield Study Bible, well over 10% of all the comments in the entire Bible are contained in the book of Genesis.  Moreover, some of the most complex and comprehensive comments that Dr. Scofield includes in his Bible are situated in the first half of the book of Genesis.  Therefore, the effort to produce these Bible studies, here at the beginning, has been about three times as great as what I anticipated.

As a result, I have had no choice but to completely neglect the care and feeding of my blog, and, more importantly, I have not been able to focus my attention on you as I feel that I should.  As I stated in my most recent blog post, “The Waiting Drives Me Crazy,” God has let me face these difficulties for very definite purposes.  There are reasons why these difficulties have come about, and they are very good reasons.  Furthermore, they are all reasons that need to be explained; however, I cannot explain them to you until you understand more about the quest itself.

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Science is a WherryRead More »

Science is a Wherry Read More »

Sleepy Head …

Challenges, Challenges, Nautical / By / / Leave a Comment
A tired black-footed ferret kit yawns for USFWS photographer, Kimberly Tamkun 2012

My dear friend,

I have already established that the starting point will likely be in Singapore, in the summer of 2022.  To be more specific, it would be undesirable to depart out of Singapore any later than the end of July 2022.  If I left any later, then it would certainly dictate a stay in Tasmania for the winter of 2023.  (Winter in Tasmania runs from June to September.)  If I leave Singapore in July (or earlier), then I may have a shot at making it all the way to Cabo de Hornos, Chile before the fall of 2023 fully sets in (around May or early June).

That could only happen if everything were to go perfectly.  If I were able to average 50 miles (80 km) each travel day, it could be possible.  50 mi/day on the water is achievable when conditions are good, but expectations for perfect weather somewhat diminish the closer one progresses towards Antarctica.  By land, that rate of travel is slightly more attainable; however, 50 mi/day on the snow and ice is pure fantasy.  Therefore, the overall conditions would need to be especially perfect and consistent, and I would need to be able to maximize my travel days as much as possible.

Therefore, I suspect that I may have to winter in Tasmania (or perhaps in McMurdo, Antarctica) in 2023.  Then when the weather improves, I would be able to move forward with my crossing of Antarctica in the summer of 2023/2024.  God only knows!  The idea of traveling from Singapore to the South Pole to Cabo de Hornos, Chile in a single year is preposterous!  Even still, I do not want to limit the arm of the Lord.  If it is His will to make it happen, then it will come to pass.

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Sleepy Head …Read More »

Sleepy Head … Read More »

My Strange Story – a Recap of the Introduction

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Hello friends,

Many of you have seen the notifications of my eight previous articles that I recently posted to my new blog site.  If you have not been following from the beginning, you are probably mystified by what you have seen thus far.  Therefore, I thought it would be good to give you a recap, so that the purpose is made clear, without any additional reading of my previous posts.  Obviously, I cannot condense all 30 minutes of reading material into this little post.  Therefore, you would like to understand more, please follow the embedded links to the other articles.

The summary of it all is this: God has blessed me with an errand to do.  He wants me to travel around the world preaching the Word of God … literally!  Not like Paul the apostle or any other great preacher of the past.  No, God is sending me on a conquest to circumnavigate the Earth via the South and the North Poles using nothing but my own human power.  Wherever I go, I am to proclaim the Word of God on this blog and by any other means of communication that will accomplish the task.

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My Strange Story – a Recap of the IntroductionRead More »

My Strange Story – a Recap of the Introduction Read More »

Why Singapore?

Circumnavigation, Circumnavii, Route Plan & Selection / By / / Leave a Comment
The Merlion statue and the Marina Bay Sands Singapore

My dear friend,

    You may be wondering why I chose to start the quest in Singapore.  It’s a good question, and, truthfully, I am not exactly sure why I did.  It was the first city that came to my mind, but I honestly did not think that it would be the ultimate selection for the start and end point.  It really was the providence of God.  I have a good friend of mine who is a commercial airline pilot, who flies to Singapore on a regular basis, and he has shared many stories, pictures, and text messages from and about Singapore.  Additionally, when I went to the RSA conference last year, I spent quite a while at the Singapore booth, learning about the city/nation.  As time has passed, the advantages and benefits of starting in Singapore continue to multiply.

    For some reason, it reminds me a bit of the way that my wife and I came to a decision to marry.  When I first met her, she made it abundantly clear to me that she was not interested in getting married to anyone, at any point in her life.  At the time, I was not especially concerned about that statement.  She seemed to be genuinely interested in me, and it was no more than a couple of months later before we had established a solid monogamous relationship.  Then my father passed; I was working 65+ hours/week non-stop, after which I started up my own business.  Before I really knew what happened, we had been together for about three years, and I started thinking to myself, “I really do want to get married someday!”  With that self-realization, I had to seriously consider why I was still dating her.  I thought to myself, “If she never wants to get married to anyone, perhaps, I should end our relationship, so that I can begin looking for a woman who does want to get married and raise up a family?”

    However, I was too busy with life, and our relationship felt far too comfortable.  Therefore, we continued on like that for another year or more.

    Then one day, out of the blue! … she asked me when we were going to get married! … as if we had already made the decision to do so!

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Why Singapore?Read More »

Why Singapore? Read More »

What is Solo Human-Powered Polar Circumnavigation?

Circumnavigation / By / / Leave a Comment
Colin Angus rowing across the Atlantic Ocean 2014
Roz Savage ocean rowing in Hawaii 2008

My dear friend,

    Perhaps when I use the term “Solo human powered polar circumnavigation” you are not so sure what I mean by the use of those terms.  I am confident that pretty much everyone is a bit foggy of what that means.  In actuality, there is not complete agreement among the experts of what any of these terms mean.  There is not even a consensus of what constitutes a true circumnavigation of the Earth.

    Therefore, with this post we will take a brief look at a few circumnavigations in the annals of history to get a little better idea of what the terms mean in application.  In subsequent posts, I will expand on these topics as they come into view.  The whole business is surprisingly complicated.  It is not something that we want to fully analyze in a single blog post.  If you look at the Wikipedia page on the topic, you will see what I mean.  It is a fairly lengthy article, and it does hardly more that scratch the surface of the subject.

    In the 1500’s there were a number of adventures that made attempts at circumnavigating the Earth in wooden sailing vessels, including Ferdinand Magellan and Sir Francis Drake.  There is no lack of debate about who completed what journey, what ship they were on, and if it constituted a single voyage or not.  Ever since then, men have debated about every circumnavigation that has ever been attempted.  Is it a circumnavigation in the truest sense of the word?  Was it completed in a single set of consecutive uninterrupted voyages?  Was it completed in the same vessel?  Were the crew members all the same? On and on are these types of questions are bantered about.  They are all good questions; however, there seems to be a great deal of splitting hairs among the experts and the onlookers and very little regard for the actual accomplishments.

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What is Solo Human-Powered Polar Circumnavigation?Read More »

What is Solo Human-Powered Polar Circumnavigation? Read More »

I am not Worthy

Challenges, Challenges, Health / By / / Leave a Comment

My dear friend,

    You (and many others that are reading this post) understand how that I am afflicted with a debilitating gastrointestinal disorder.  There have been a few times over the course of this last year where I was completely convinced that I was only days away from a full deliverance from my affliction.  Alas, in each case, I was not able to get past the threshold.  Therefore, even as I write this, I am still suffering from my disorder.  Perhaps you assumed that I must have found a cure to my problem, since I am now publicly telling world that God has called me out to circumnavigate the Earth.  Yet, this is not so.  God truly has called me out to do the impossible.

    When I first accepted Jesus as my savior, I was still young and full of spit.  Moreover, I did not know much about the Word of God.  I certainly did not understand what it was to live by the law of faith.  To the casual observer, I was every bit as heathen as any other twenty-year-old living a life of sin, apart from God.  I have always been a hard worker, but apart from that, the only other thing I knew, in life, was how to party … and party I did!  Therefore, in my folly God blessed me with this gastrointestinal disorder.  I say that with all reverence; because, it was a genuine blessing.  Had it not been for my affliction, I would have continued partying my life away into oblivion.

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I am not WorthyRead More »

I am not Worthy Read More »

The Difficulty of my Errand

Challenges, Challenges, Nautical / By / / Leave a Comment

My dear friend,

    You may have noticed that I added a second position to my LinkedIn profile today.  If you click on the company logo and read through the LinkedIn Company Profile for UNIT Materials and Science, I believe that the company summary will seem a bit familiar to you.

“We develop ultra-lightweight materials engineered to provide exceptional structural strength and remarkable thermal insulation characteristics in concurrence. We provide solutions for applications where any combination of two or more of these significant attributes of high-tech engineering are a design factor: High strength, Ultra-lightweight, Minimal material profile, and Extremely low thermal energy transfer.”

    You may recall when I told you about this invention that I was working on.  It was a revelation that God gave to me about three years ago.  At the time, I did not understand the full significance of the revelation.  I simply thought that it was a great way to make a living and to branch out on my own.  Little did I know that God had given me the idea for this very purpose.

    What purpose is that? … for the purpose of my quest.  Aside from God himself, these materials are the foundation for making a global circumnavigation a reality.  Without these materials the quest truly would be impossible.  With these materials, the quest becomes technically plausible.

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The Difficulty of my Errand Read More »

Polar Circumnavigation Logo

What’s the Point?

Introduction / By / / Leave a Comment

My dear friend,

I am sure that you are wondering what this is all about.  In one sense it is all very simple.  It is all about you.  However, that does not fully answer the question, “What’s the point?”  The complete answer is not quite so simple.  It is not something that can be explained in few words, not even in a single blog post.  Nonetheless, I will, in this post, do my best to give you a reasonable overview of the purpose behind it all.

    What is it that I mean when I say, “Raising the awareness and understanding of the Word of God using the Earth itself as a pulpit?”

As it states on my LinkedIn Company Profile:

“There is a threefold purpose:
• To test (prove) the love of God;
• To make known the Word of God; and
• To serve as a vehicle for His love and His Word.”

    God through His infinite mercy uses the weak and the foolish to confound the strong and the wise (as Paul the Apostle writes in First Corinthians 1:27).  If it were possible that a man could complete a solo human powered polar circumnavigation of the Earth, only by God’s mercy and grace could it be done.  Only by God’s mercy and grace would one even dare to attempt it.  It is by the infinite love of God that Jesus gave His life to make the impossible possible.  Likewise, it is simply by His love that one would risk his own life to make known the love and the Word of God.

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What’s the Point?Read More »

What’s the Point? Read More »

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