Story Comments

AP did a story about my expedition. It is great to see more and more people getting excited about this expedition. However, there are a few things in the story that I would like to comment on.

EnergySolutions

I am extremely grateful to EnergySolutions for their generous donation, and to be able to list them as a sponsor for my expedition. It is awesome to have such a great company willing to help me out. 

I Mix Up Dates

The year is almost half over, yet I still have to remind myself that it is 2013 and not 2012. On Friday I finished up my video of the Tickville Gulch and Jake the Snake trails. I was in the process of uploading the video when my son told me that the copyright notice said 2014. Changing that to 2013 made it so the video had to be re-rendered and up loaded taking a couple extra hours.  

Anyway, the Australian team and the Spaniard have said they are doing the expedition this year, 2013.

My income

As a computer programmer for WordPerfect and Novell I was paid well. One year my income, including stock options, patent bonuses, and other bonuses, did approached $500,000. However, my normal income was much less than that. Because of the good income I had as a programmer, I was able to be debt free and have a decent savings. 

I have used that savings to open up a bike store, Epic Biking. I have since had to take a loan on my home, and my families lives an extremely frugal lifestyle in order to keep the store going. The story says the store operates more as a charity than as a business. I do consider my second career as a bike shop owner as a give back to the community career, but I am trying to run the store as a business. There are a lot of times that I make decisions not based on profitability, but on my goal of using bikes to promote a healthy lifestyle. 

One of the main things I hope to accomplish with my South Pole expedition is to continue my efforts to improve the health of others. Not only do I think I can raise the awareness of biking with this expedition, but I also believe the expedition will help me promote my bike store. I also hope to be able to make money on the documentary, which will help fund my continuing efforts to get more people out on bikes. 

It has been hard for me to ask for donations, but I believe that it is a worthwhile cause.