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Personal Dreams
Over the course of 360 editions, Expedition News has followed some of the more unusual aspects of exploration and adventure, honoring the persistence and dedication of explorers and adventurers who set out to fulfill a personal dream.
These are projects and personalities one might not read in National Geographic, Outside magazine, or anywhere else for that matter, including the late Sir Edmund Hillary’s spectacularly bad haircuts; Andy Warhol’s phallic image left on the moon by Apollo 12; and an adventurer who hit 510 golf balls 1,319 miles across Mongolia (a par 11,880).
Past stories also include a plastic Polar Capsule, once thought lost, that floated from the North Pole to the northern coast of Ireland three years later; and the team that drove from London to Athens – 2,330 miles – on nothing more than cooking oil scrounged from restaurant French fryers and schnitzel shops, a project called “Grease to Greece.”
Who Was Indiana Jones?
The publication also tracked down a letter from American filmmaker George Lucas explaining the original inspiration for famed fictional adventurer Indiana Jones; advised readers on how to solicit corporate sponsorship; and provided tips on generating awareness for their projects.
“There’s never a shortage of expedition news,” says Blumenfeld from his office in Boulder. “There are always more projects than we can fit into each issue. There are new firsts to cover; historic mysteries to solve such as the disappearance of famed aviator Amelia Earhart, or the loss of Mallory and Irvine’s Vest Pocket Kodak (VPK) camera on Everest.
“Every issue focuses on those who push their limits to discover what lies on the other side of the hill.”
Blumenfeld is a graduate of the Newhouse School at Syracuse University where he received a Bachelor of Science. Married, he is the father of two grown daughters and grandfather of two.
He appears in Cosmic Birth, a 2019 Icelandic documentary film about mankind's journey to the Moon and the experience of viewing the Earth from 250,000 miles away. The film also investigates the role that Iceland played in the training of the Apollo astronauts for the first manned missions to another world (cosmicbirth.org).
Blumenfeld is also fluent in Morse code, although he’ll be first to admit it doesn’t come up too often in conversation.
View Expedition News at ExpeditionNews.com. Subscriptions $36 for 12 monthly issues. Contact editor@expeditionnews.com. Tel. 203 326 1200.
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