Yup, there it is folks. Al and Matt are tying the knot finally! This promises to be a great time, and no doubt I’ll see a lot of you there. If you’d like to read more about the wedding, why not head over to their Wedding Website?
It’s no secret that a large part of my trip was devoted to recording every minutae of the experience. Doing so was no small effort on my part. Once I hit New Zealand, I pretty much wrote a blog post, posted pictures, and created a custom Google map for every single day of the trip. I’d be lying if I said it was easy. In general, I was spending about an hour and a half each and every day putting in the work to share this stuff with everyone. However, once I got into the habit. It wasn’t all that bad. Usually, at the end of a day cycling, I’d buy a giant beer, and sit down with my gear and work at it. I’d usually get some pretty interested people wanting to know what I was up to, so I’d make some new friends. By the time I was done my writing, I had other things to do. Also, I knew there was no way I’d ever be able to capture my thoughts unless it was the same day things happened.
Greetings all! You’ll never guess what this blog post is about. What’s that? My Rudy Award? Damn, you folks are good at this guessing game. Of course you are right that much of this post will be about my quest for a Rudy Award. But it will also diverge a little bit to fill you in on another race that I recently took part in. You are unlikely to ever see this one crop up at the Olympics anytime soon, but it is still a feat in human endurance and spirit. Yes, I speak of that most impressive athletic endeavour, the Beer Mile! If you’re not sure what that it, please follow the link and read a bit for yourself. It is devilishly simple in concept, but can be hard to execute. And I now speak from experience. Before I delve into that particular report, I’ll get into the meat of my Rudy Award, and just touch casually on each of the events that went into making this award a reality for me in 2011. I didn’t get there completely alone, so there are people to thank for their support as you can imagine. Before I go on, please have a look at the pictures and video I took of the beer mile as well as the awards ceremony. You’ll get a good laugh, and can then read on for the real story.
For the third instalment of my Iceland series of posts, we’re moving into the land of the Gammur, which is the Griffin […]
Howdy all!
Well, hard to believe, but we´ve now got less than a week of this great trip left. I guess all things must come to an end. On the plus side, the time really hasn´t seemed to fly, meaning we´ve really been enjoying the trip, and it truly has felt like a proper getaway!
We´re back from the Inca trail, and no worse for wear. If you´ve ever contemplated heading south and seeing this area, I would definitely recommend getting back to nature and doing some proper hiking. Our 4 day journey wasn´t exceptionally difficult, but it had it´s ups and downs (literally). One of the downs would probably be the fact that on the day we started, Apu the sun God decided that it was time for rainy season to start. For most of the trail, the mountains were shrouded in clouds, and yes, we did experience both hail and heavy rains at various points. That being said, it certainly didn´t dampen (get it, dampen?) our spirits or reduce the experience in any way.
My personal favourite part of the journey wasn´t the trail, or even Macchu Picchu itself, but the hike we did on the site of the ruins, which was to climb up Wayna Picchu, (Young Mountain), the bigger peak behind the ruins. It is an uphill trail that is incredibly steep in parts, and culminates in a peak of a few really big boulders that you´re free to scramble around (1000s of feet above the valley below). We took some great shots from there, and both remarked that ´liability insurance´ obviously isn´t something required in South America. But obviously since I´m writing this, we both made it down in one piece. The rain even let up while we were up there.
