Though i have been lax online, it does not mean that i have been idle. New wings have arrived for Russia, volcanoes explored and I am on a brief break on expedition in Tanzania to write this. In the past few months i have been busy scouting places around the world to best train to fly off active volcanoes and land amongst hungry bears... turns out there is nothing like that except in Russia - where we are going in July 2018. Anyway I am back up a mountain tomorrow and back into civilisation end of the year. Stay tuned for some rad footage of our product testing then!
I was lucky enough recently to perform with the Australian Skydive Display Team and land in Sunshine Coast Stadium. Andrew Pike and I were there to help celebrate 50 years of the Sunshine Coast and we did it in true old school style flying out parachutes linked all the way to the ground! What an amazing experience it was!
Well after a series of late nights allowing the creative brain juices to flow, the beginnings of the next big adventure have begun to hatch. While plans and ideas are still being formulated - it seems at this stage to be a whole new level of radawesome. As a teaser I'll leave you with these key words;
Terrifyingly Active Volcanoes Big Bloody Bears Archaic Glaciers Speed wings Completely unexplored and untouched wilderness So it's back to the planning board! Well it turns out somewhere along the way, I got old... 30 years old in fact. To celebrate I decided to undertake a 100km solo open ocean paddle through the Moreton Bay region! Everything was planned to a 'T' and sorted for an awesome mini adventure. Mother Nature however had some other plans... Instead of glassy conditions, she threw me 30+kts of wind and some awesome swell to deal with. In any case I had a rad adventure exploring sub tropical islands and super remote locations. The weather however did force me to alter my plans slightly and I ended up finishing my paddle by exploring all the way up the Brisbane river (against the flow!) and saw some amazing sites.
It truly was an awesome experience that I've been wanting to undertake for many many years. This has only solidified further within me an urge to undertake those adventures that are on the back burner in my brain - so lookout because the wackier ideas are going to be coming to fruition as of now! With a complete lack of communications in the midst of a highly cyber regulated region we could not post any updates whilst in China. However now that I have returned I can safely broadcast to the world that the Silk Road Pirates championed the mighty Taklamakan Desert!
Over a period of two weeks we managed to cross the desert from South to North, with absolutely no support crews and most importantly no camels! At times we were each carrying in excess of 30kg's on our backs through soft sand for over 30km's a day. Times were tough, we got tight on water, food and endurance but we made it. We're still collating and producing all the footage to preview a teaser to the world, but for now here a cheeky sneakpeak of what we went through! After an incredibly drawn out 5 days in the desert border town of Hotan, all the supplies have been bought, caches have been dropped in the desert and everything is ready to go.
We were due to hit the desert today but an unfortunate and terrible bout of gastro hit me during the night and by morning i was so dehydrated that i had literally lost kilos! So today is the recovery day where i boost my levels back up, rest and then hit it hard tomorrow. We have had the most unbelievable luck to meet a couple local boys; yung and tanh. Together they helped us navigate good portions of the desert to drop our supplies out. Though i must mention that after the 6th time i completely lost countat how many times we got bogged. One time we did such a good job that all 4 wheels were completely free of the ground and the toyota was just teetering on its under chassis. 3 hours later and we managed to dig it free! One other thing we quickly noticed was how fine the sand is. So much so that i would struggle to call it sand and more like a very finely ground flour. Within steps the sand had infiltrated through the fine mesh of our shoes and our toe boxes were full and cramped. Our gaiters were of no match at all for thsse conditions. So far we have managed to recycle some old ration pack packaging and together with a whole bunch of duct tape, come up with a viable solution for the sand intrusion problem. Anyway here is a sneak preview of what we have coming up tomorrow in the desert. |
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