The beginnings

       I was on the phone with a friend of mine a couple weeks ago explaining my completely unreasonable plan to travel to Patagonia, Argentina by land from Chicago. I was reminded of our 'plans' for a slick little road-trip up to Pruedoe Bay, Alaska that was supposed to happen before the ending of the Mayan Calender on December 21, 2012. We have been talking about driving to Pruedoe bay for 6-7 years now, but not much progress has been made on the planning front. It occurred to me then that I need to go to Pruedoe Bay. And I need to go to Patagonia. And I shouldn't allow myself to fly. He pointed out that 'the end of the world' happens on the Southern Hemisphere's Summer Solstice, a completely reasonable time to be miles from Antarctica.
     
       It occurred to me then that I need to see two summer solstices: June 21, 2012 on the Arctic ocean and December 21, 2012 at the southern tip of South America. I will (and at this point I am confident that I can make this happen!) need to travel continuously over the period of that six months to reach my goal of reaching both solstices within the allotted time-frame. Given that there are 184 days between June 21 and December 21 and there are 29,800 miles of road on the Pan-American highway I will need to travel an average of 156.521739 miles a day. A very possible amount distance.
     If I were more out of my mind, I would do all in my power to travel that distance and no more, stopping where ever I am in the world at that point and setting up camp. And, I'm not ruling this out. I'll do it. I can imagine the 400+ miles between Pruedoe Bay and Fairbanks being a rather lonely, dangerous place to camp for a matter of days with very little outdoor knowledge being especially prone to bear attacks and having a general fear of tundra. But, if I want to have more fun and actually see more of the world I'd simply have to maintain that as an average.

         Now, I don't want to limit myself to the Pan-American Highway. I would love to go back to Colombia, and spend some quality time revisiting my favorite places, seeing the friends I made there. The Pan-American highway has only very limited amount of length in that Country. I would also like to check out Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Actually, I'm beginning now to realize that I might just say 'fuck the Pan-American highway' and do my own thing. Venezuela's supposed to be nice.

     I've decided that starting now, I am going to make this my ultimate goal/life plan. I need to start saving up and finding rich, generous donors. I can do this for a good pet cause. If you want to live vicariously through me I'll keep you up to date with videos/photos/written blogs. Hell, you can come with me. Just someone, anyone, fund me?