Letters
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
I want one of these!
Not everyone can pedal at 80km/hr, but with this bike you can! I’m sure it’ll never actually get to production availability (especially at a $40,000 price point), but none the less it’s pretty cool. Worth watching just for the crazy German Doc Brown who invented it.
If you can’t see the video click HERE to go straight to the source.
If you can’t see the video click HERE to go straight to the source.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
The next adventure
I’ve been pretty tight lip about what my next adventure is – by that I mean what I’m up to after my Canadian bike ride. Well here it is – Burning Man. Burning Man is a HUGE art festival in the Nevada desert. 40,000 people will move into the baron landscape and after a week there will be no trace – in between it will be a festival of self expression, art and freedom. I’ve finally found a decent video clip that shows what it’s all about. Have a look… the festival runs from the end of August for a week – after BM I’m going to… well I’ll save that for the next post… I enjoy stringing you guys along like a bad reality show…
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Adventureskope Reissued - Japan
Japan – about year ago I was in Japan – what an awesome place! I was going through some photos today and found the Japan file and I thought I would share some favorites from the land of the rising sun….
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Festival Highlights
Today is the last day of the New Zealand Mountain Film Festival and I wanted to share some of my highlights. There have been over 60 films over the last 5 days and there have been some great films. The only criteria for consideration is that the film has to deal in some way with outdoors – so there have been movies about climbing, skiing, surfing, mountain biking, paragliding, environmental issues and epic journeys. Most films fall into two distinct categories – they are either thinkers or stokers. Thinkers cause one to take pause and look at our world a little closer, bringing up outdoor issues that perhaps have been overlooked. Stokers are all about getting you psyched to get climbing, skiing, surfing or biking. Fast paced action by the best athletes in the world. This year there were awesome examples in both camps – here are my picks:
Thinkers:
Sharkwater – as a surfer I’ve always been a little afraid of sharks – not anymore. This fascinating film is all about the misunderstood animal that is at the heart of most of our ocean fears. This year toppling Coke machines will kill more people then sharks. What’s more, sharks are being wiped out for their fins. Shark fin soup is a delicacy in Asia and they are killing thousands of sharks every day. This film was so powerful that within hours of its showing at the festival, there was a petition going around to urge the New Zealand government to ban shark fining.
Saving Luna – what happens when an animal decided that it wants to be friends with humans? Do we ignore it for its own sake? Or do we take the amazing opportunity to connect with another species. Forget what you think you know about whales, what you think is best for animals and witness the complexities of walking the walk.
Solo – In 2007 Andrew McAuley planned a kayak trip like no other. His plan was to paddle from Australia to New Zealand through the treacherous Southern Ocean. This 1600km stretch of ocean is some of the most unforgiving stretch of water in the world – howling gales, 10m waves and unrelenting wind. This film is more then a story of adventure, this is the story of the effect of adventure. What is the consequence when everything goes desperately wrong… really chilling stuff this one. I left the theater shattered.
Stokers:
The Sharp End – this awesome climbing flick is all about the best in the world pushing the limits in the boldest of style. Amazing free solos, base soloing (that’s free soloing with a parachute on your back!), sketchy leads on scary gear and heaps more. The footage is awesome and the climbing is way ahead of its time.
Grit Kids – two teenage siblings from the UK who don’t just go climbing, they climb ‘death routes’ – these are incredibly hard and extremely dangerous climbs where a fall could mean death. When I was 17 I was just trying to climb 5.10 – these kids are climbing 5.13c R X… inspirational and scary….
Hope you enjoyed the mini festival – try and track down these full length movies, they’re well worth it.
Thinkers:
Sharkwater – as a surfer I’ve always been a little afraid of sharks – not anymore. This fascinating film is all about the misunderstood animal that is at the heart of most of our ocean fears. This year toppling Coke machines will kill more people then sharks. What’s more, sharks are being wiped out for their fins. Shark fin soup is a delicacy in Asia and they are killing thousands of sharks every day. This film was so powerful that within hours of its showing at the festival, there was a petition going around to urge the New Zealand government to ban shark fining.
Saving Luna – what happens when an animal decided that it wants to be friends with humans? Do we ignore it for its own sake? Or do we take the amazing opportunity to connect with another species. Forget what you think you know about whales, what you think is best for animals and witness the complexities of walking the walk.
Solo – In 2007 Andrew McAuley planned a kayak trip like no other. His plan was to paddle from Australia to New Zealand through the treacherous Southern Ocean. This 1600km stretch of ocean is some of the most unforgiving stretch of water in the world – howling gales, 10m waves and unrelenting wind. This film is more then a story of adventure, this is the story of the effect of adventure. What is the consequence when everything goes desperately wrong… really chilling stuff this one. I left the theater shattered.
Stokers:
The Sharp End – this awesome climbing flick is all about the best in the world pushing the limits in the boldest of style. Amazing free solos, base soloing (that’s free soloing with a parachute on your back!), sketchy leads on scary gear and heaps more. The footage is awesome and the climbing is way ahead of its time.
Grit Kids – two teenage siblings from the UK who don’t just go climbing, they climb ‘death routes’ – these are incredibly hard and extremely dangerous climbs where a fall could mean death. When I was 17 I was just trying to climb 5.10 – these kids are climbing 5.13c R X… inspirational and scary….
Hope you enjoyed the mini festival – try and track down these full length movies, they’re well worth it.
Monday, July 6, 2009
New Zealand Mountain Film Festival
The New Zealand Mountain Film Festival has been going on over the past weekend. It’s been an awesome event – clearly the best in its seven year history. I’ll post some highlights of some of my favorite films in a future post – there have been some stunners. As I posted about a little while back, I’ve been displaying some photos as part of the associated art exhibition. It’s been great, I’ve had fantastic reaction to the shots and there is some great art to share the space with my stuff. Definitely make sure to put it on your must-check-out list for next year, I know I’ll be back!
Cheers
S.
Cheers
S.
photo of the day
weekend wrap-up - 'Light Snow' on Friday. 'Bottles' on Saturday. 'Green Lantern' on Sunday. 'Wood' on Monday.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Canada Day
L to R: Mark, Greg, Julia, Dave, Scott, Mike photo by Grant Johnson
July 1st is Canada Day - Canada’s birthday. It’s a national holiday and a summer highlight for most Canadians. So what happens when you are a Canadian who is living overseas? Well, you have to make your own party and that’s just what we did yesterday. In fine tradition we started the evening off with a game of hockey down at the rink, Canadian born players vs. The World. We had a great game and not really surprisingly we did rather well as a team! Not sure what the final score was, the last I heard was 10-3 after that we stopped counting. In doing our best to keep it Canadian through and through we had a few beers on the bench and the quality of play deteriorated proportional to that. Extra points go to Dave who managed to put together a passable bottle of Molson Canadian Beer. No big deal you say? Well as you can’t get Canadian beer here, Dave got his brother to scan a label from a beer back in Canada, email him the image, print off 24 of them, soak the labels off of 24 Speight’s and then glue the ‘Molson’ labels on. Now that is commitment! After the game we headed into town to a Canada Day party at one of the local pubs – pizza and cheap Crown Royal filled the rest of the evening. Despite the hangover today, it has to go down as one of my better Canada Day’s ever – even if I was 13,000KM from Canada...
Happy Canada Day!
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Photo of the day
Queenstown a pretty popular intergalactic tourist destination – people from all over the universe come here in hopes of having a good time and maybe meeting someone special. Unfortunately for this Clone Trooper and Imperial Guard it didn’t go so well, alas they could find no metal bikini clad Princess Leia’s and were left to play Star Wars in the park all by themselves…
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
so close to going so far
So why did I buy a little laptop? Well it would be easy to think that I’d just fallen into the trap of bandwagon consumerism. Yes, it’s true these little beauties have become the techno accessory de-jour for cyber geeks, teenage girls and those who profess to be on the cutting edge of whatever. There is reasoning behind the purchase. The first part is the fact that they are desperately cool. My Asus Eee PC is slightly larger then a hardcover book, weighs about 1.5kg has 1GB of ram, 160GB hard drive, 6hrs of battery life and cost me about $400 US. It’s amazing how far computers have come in the last year – forget the last decade. While all this is cool – the reason why I bought it has more to do with what I do then anything. As a travel writer and adventurer having a portable laptop is worth its weight in gold. This little guy will swim in my daypack and is sure to ride shotgun on every overseas foray for the foreseeable future.
So why now? What am I not saying? It’s true; I’ve been keeping pretty quiet about plans as of late. The reason being was that I didn’t want to jinx things as details were still being ironed out. But seeing as I have the flights booked and the trip is happening whether I want it to or not – it’s time to come clean.
On July 16th I’m headed to San Francisco and then quickly onward to Toronto. In Toronto I’ll get on my bike and start riding west. The plan is to ride either to Calgary (where I grew up) or all the way to Vancouver. Though it may sound like a cop-out to stop at Calgary, it is still a 3000km ride – Vancouver is another 1000km beyond. I’m planning on going super light - crazy, ill advised light actually. I’ll have a change of clothes, rain jacket, iPod, this laptop, a micro sleeping bag and an emergency tarp and that’s it. I’ll be on my road bike, with a rack and arrow bars – and going as fast as I can. I’m planning on averaging 140km per day arriving in Calgary in about 4 weeks. It’s going to be huge. It’ll be an awesome adventure to say the least – which I’ll be blogging about the whole way, and shooting a photo of the day too, of course.
So is that it? Nope, there is still another month in North America after that filled with and even crazier adventure… but that’s a whole different post!
Watch this space…
So why now? What am I not saying? It’s true; I’ve been keeping pretty quiet about plans as of late. The reason being was that I didn’t want to jinx things as details were still being ironed out. But seeing as I have the flights booked and the trip is happening whether I want it to or not – it’s time to come clean.
On July 16th I’m headed to San Francisco and then quickly onward to Toronto. In Toronto I’ll get on my bike and start riding west. The plan is to ride either to Calgary (where I grew up) or all the way to Vancouver. Though it may sound like a cop-out to stop at Calgary, it is still a 3000km ride – Vancouver is another 1000km beyond. I’m planning on going super light - crazy, ill advised light actually. I’ll have a change of clothes, rain jacket, iPod, this laptop, a micro sleeping bag and an emergency tarp and that’s it. I’ll be on my road bike, with a rack and arrow bars – and going as fast as I can. I’m planning on averaging 140km per day arriving in Calgary in about 4 weeks. It’s going to be huge. It’ll be an awesome adventure to say the least – which I’ll be blogging about the whole way, and shooting a photo of the day too, of course.
So is that it? Nope, there is still another month in North America after that filled with and even crazier adventure… but that’s a whole different post!
Watch this space…
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
This is the end of her world as she knows it – and I feel fine.
This is either a sign of the apocalypse or just the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages. To put it into context, here is some teenager watching the results of American Idol – apparently her horse didn’t come in…
Tele-rail
Here is a video of me having a bit of fun on opening day of the ski season. We had a great tour into the backcountry, found some nice steep lines, heaps of fresh tracks all bathed in glorious sunshine. Heading home, we cut through the resort and I spied this rail sitting perfectly above the inversion layer in the valley – I couldn’t resist. Sliding rails on telemark skis is always good fun and never without nerves on the in-run. Happily my first go of the year went off without a hitch.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Friday, June 19, 2009
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