Ryan came over at 9:30 last night with most his expedition gear and we piled it my living room and stared silently, dumbfounded at the mountain of supplies: everything that we need to live and survive for nearly two months.

Asnes skis, MSR snowshoes and poles, Wigwam socks, Iridium Sat phone, Sony camera gear, Dry Suits, lots of butter, DeLorme inReach, my Nokia Lumia Windows phone, Alfa boots, repair kit, glove liners, Helly Hansen base layer, cheese... everything sorted in Granite Gear stuff sacks....

On any given day over the past several months, we've had to make an unending series of decisions. Each choice not only affected the size of the pile but our ability to make to North Pole and simply stay alive.

It's hard to impress upon people the stress associated with these decisions. Once we're on the ice, there are no second chances and the consequences are starkly severe! Yesterday, with our departure looming, preparations reached a frenetic pace.

"At any given moment, I had three or four balls in the air," Ryan commented. "I'm surprised that I was able to pull it all off."

Of course, I've always said, one of the best ways to succeed is to put yourself in a situation where you don't have another choice. Still, a huge part of our ability to pull off this logistics nightmare is simply our divide and conquer strategy. Ryan has taken a lion's share of the burden sorting the details of our transport north. I've worked with a lot of expedition partners over the years and Ryan's reliability and coolness under pressure are the perfect compliment to my 'just figure it out' directness.

The Suburban that Ryan arranged arrived at 5 am and we loaded all our 10 bags with a little room to spare. (As a side note, is crazy to think that we will soon be pulling all that gear in sleds across the Arctic Ocean). I said good bye to Maria and Merritt (I could write volumes on that gut wrenching scene). Leaving is never easy.

An hour later we were at the airport checking in. One by one, each of our bags was lifted onto the conveyor belt relieving the burden of making any decisions for at least a few hours.

Image: One of our 6 overweight bags and one of 10 total.