Sunday, June 22, 2014

Time to say thank you!

We would like to thank all of you, family, close friends, and people unknown to us, who have shown interest in our adventure, followed our blog, and left kind encouraging messages to the expedition. During the two months out on the ice, we enjoyed reading your messages, forwarded by Romain and Laurent, as much as trying to share a little of our daily routine.

Admittedly, being watched and followed by others catalyzed new energy, when we had to surpass ourselves. Completing the same trip entirely incognito and without news from the outside world would have been a totally different challenge, - much closer to what the great explorers have achieved about a century ago ...

If we simply managed to convey our dream and distill some taste of adventure through our daily updates, we may have been able to give a little something back to you. And we may have reached one of our goals, share the experience for what it actually really was: the desire to surpass ourselves, the selfish pleasure to achieve something unique. Thanks to all of you!

We were only the two of us out on the ice. But in the shadow (no relation with the dark side of the force...) a small team of close friends had formed spontaneously around the project to run the office, forward your messages to us, and to provide all kind of necessary and unnecessary information:

- Maestro Laurent Jégu, logisic coordinator and chief webmaster. Laurent is a guide heading a small travel agency in Iceland (www.aventuresenislande.fr). If you would like to visit Iceland, his agency is certainly a good place to start! He also accepted the huge job of translating the french (Mika) and english posts (Cornelius) posts on our two blogs. Bravo and thanks a lot!

- Romain Moissard, secretary of the Association Wings over Greenland, chief postmaster, second webmaster, and coordinator of the communication on Facebook for Mika. A solid pillar to rely on in all circumstances!

- Rémi Charavin, Facebook coordinator for Mika. How many 'likes' thanks to you? A pleasure that you joined the team! And first virtual footprints in Greenland! Maybe a stepping stone to leave real traces on greenlandic soil or snow one day?

- Sylvie Boileau, Mikas girlfriend, and agent 008. In charge to inform us on the progression of the 'competing' team of Dixie and Eric. We simply called them 'the Belgians' - who knows why? Maybe because Canada is a small country ;-)....? Sylvie even got up during the night to check the position of her favorite team!

- Thomas Roth, a really trustworthy friend of Cornelius. The 'map guy' reporting our daily position on various maps, and agent 009 in charge to get intelligence on the position of the spanish team around Ramon, the inventor of the polar ice vessel, an ingenious kite powered sled raft. They would be surprised to find out about all the fantastic facilities and luxury we imagined this vessel would feature. Maybe it will make an appearance in the 7th episode of Star Wars?

- Not to forget Marc De Keyser, our very sympathic meteorologic router. We had contracted him for this expedition through: www.weather4expeditions.com. He really cared! Excellent double agent (joke), as he also routed 'the belgians' (true). He daily provided detailed yet clear weather and aerologic informations, gave precious routing advice and had always an encouraging word or two for us! You did much more than only the contract and the professional duty. Without you, this huge trip really would have become looong. Thanks also to his colleague Fritz who took over from time to time! Thanks for everything!

Team Wings over Greenland, - our achievement is also yours. We really appreciated you being part of this adventure and gratefully acknowledge your participation!

This project was nearly entirely self-funded. As we were at the limit of what we were able to finance ourselves, we created the Association 'Wings over Greenland' to raise some additional funds.
Laurence & Luc, Hervé, Pascal "Golgoth", Jérôme, Francis, Corinne, Bernard & Jacqueline, Cécile & Pedro, Nolwenn & Pauline, Amélie, Mathiouse: sincere thanks for your support and your contribution! Your names are forever attached to this circumnavigation of the Inlandsis!


Many thanks to our three official partners for believing in this project and to have followed the adventure:

- Roger (SNOWSLED Polar ltd, www.snowsled.com), its for the second time, that we partner up for a big kite-ski trip. And it was once more an incredible journey without any problem for the 'ice blue pulks'. You probably don't even imagine, what we had them go through? We feel safe to say, that if they they survived what we made them suffer, they likely can take everything. Excellent job once more with this 'new' bigger 'expedition' version. Thanks for the reliability of your equipment, the excellent preparation of the rafting kit and the double hull system, and your implication in our project.

- Ramon and Ernst from Flysurfer Kiteboarding. Thanks for trusting us. We are fully aware of our very particular and specific use of the Speed 3 19 m2 and Speed 4 10 m2 kites. We know that most of your clients are different from us and look for something else in these kites. But we believe that every kiter is somehow fueled by the spirit of adventure and dreaming of performing his preferred sport in wild and remote locations. Being with us in this endeavour, Flysurfer now owns the 'designers- and manufacturers-record' for the longest kite - ski trip ever realized!

- Oliv et Joh from the french magazine 'Carnets d'Aventures', thanks for all your messages of encouragement. Thanks for following us closely, and for relaying the information on the 'expemag' website (www.expemag.com) and its Facebook page. See you soon back home in the French Alps!

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