The Top 10 Spartan Travel Adventures of 2012
It’s amazing what’s possible when you free up your time and the need to be in a single location.
My wildest dreams couldn’t have predicted the outcome of 2012. The original plan (launched in August 2011) was 15-18 months of travel, circling the globe while mixing in a bunch of adventure sports.
What actually happened was a frantic potpourri of world travel, randomly divergent adventures, and moderately successful online business shenanigans.
The adventure starts when everything goes wrong. -Yvon Chouinard
While the plan itself was fluid, the framework certainly wasn’t: back in 2011 I deliberately opened up my time (and bank account) to make these adventures possible. It turned out that everything was easier and less expensive than I thought it would be, and I’ve repeatedly tried to convince my friends that they too–if they choose–can do something like this.
Off to Kiteboarding Mecca La Ventana this Week
Tomorrow we’ll be driving from Central California to the tip of Baja Mexico: about 1,500 miles of desert, sagebrush, and endless Negra Modelos.
Destination: La Ventana, a massive sandy bay on the sea of Cortez with absolutely ridiculous kiteboarding conditions.
La Ventana is a of freak of nature in a geographical sense: Every day at about 1pm all hell breaks loose as winds sweep off the Sea of Cortez right into the lower part of the bay. For 4-5 hours the scene resembles a natural disaster that collided with a kite-flying convention. Then, as if someone flipped a switch, the wind shuts off. You can laze on the beach and watch the moon come up over perfectly flat water.Continue reading >>
How to Fix your Kite – DIY Bladder, Strut, and Canopy Repair
A sad, sad, broken kite.
I was sitting around in Hawaii for a week, waiting for the weather and swell to get better, before I opted to try my hand at kite repair.
My friend convinced me to bring kitesurfing gear on my trip to the North Shore (“it’s always windy on the East side dude. That’s why they call it the windward side.) and somehow I managed to sneak it onto Hawaiian airlines without paying the mandatory $100 fun tax (more on how to do that later).Continue reading >>