Author: timzimmermann

Wetass of the Week (belated)–Glub, Glub: It’s hard to keep up with all the crazy stunts people are pulling, so it’s easy to miss some of them as they happen. But last week, on Oct. 12, Cuban-born freediver and human fish “Pipin” Ferreras plunged into the water….and kept going, down and down and down. He didn’t stop until he had reached the absurd, body-crushing depth of 558 feet, a world record. Ferreras’ feat–which took 2 minutes and 39 seconds–was particularly moving, because it was attempted in honor of his wife, Audrey, who died last year while trying to set the same record. You can read more about “Pipin” here, and find his account of “Operation Audrey” here.

Pipin Pops to the Surface: “I could probably go a lot deeper if these stupid bubbles didn’t tickle so much……”

(Photo: International Association of Free Divers)

Maegan On the March: Maegan Carney should today be at Camp 3 (23, 500 feet) on her attempt to climb and ski Everest. Weather is holding, and Wally Berg and his team still hope to get her to the summit on October 22 (Wednesday). After that, she will be on her own for the world’s longest ski run. In her latest dispatch, Carney says that the rest of the team will head back to Camp 4 after summitting, while she will tackle Lhotse Face, 5,000 feet of vertical at a pitch of 45 to 52 degrees. Gulp. Carney admits being a little nervous about the fact that she’ll only see about three-quarters of the terrain she’ll be sliding down up close for the for the first time while she is skiing. Ummm, good luck with that…..

“Damn, those bastards are making me carry my own skis……”

(Photo: BergAdventures International)

Shekhdar Sane?: I guess you have to be more than slightly offbeat to want to row the Southern Ocean. But if you read Jim Shekhdar’s diary of his aborted attempt to get underway from New Zealand to South Africa, you have to wonder a little about how he’s going to fare on the world’s most dangerous seas. He’s been preparing for this voyage for months, yet he was still rushing about minutes before the start, buying odds and ends and tossing last minute stuff into his increasingly chaotic cabin. Due to the delay he missed the tide and found himself pushing against the current, feeling queasy. No problem: he had plenty of anti-seasickness medication onboard. Ooops. Big problem: couldn’t find the pills in the mess. No problem: he also had anti-seasickness patches (you stick them behind your ear). Ooops. Big problem: he had consolidated two boxes into one and brought the empty box by accident. What ultimately sent Shekhdar back to land was a malfunctioning wind generator. But he was out there long enough to also discover that the footwell of his custom-rowing craft fills easily with water when there is any sort of sea running. No problem: just pump water out with bilge pump. Ooops. Big problem: bilge pump has a hard time keeping up with King Neptune. We’re rooting for you Jim, but………

Transatlantic Rowing Romp: They’re on their way. On Sunday the 16 two-man crews contesting the 2003 Woodvale Atlantic Rowing Race started stroking. Calm weather prevailed as the teams knocked off the first day of their 2,900 mile track. Leader “Team CRC” plowed through 65 miles in the first 24 hours (an average which would see them home in about 44 days; outside the 41 day record for the course). In contrast, team “Calderdale: the Yorkshire Challenger” put in a measly 13-mile day. What’s up with that? Too much time in the pub? Too much Yorkshire ale on board?

Lancashire Doughboys: These guys better have a lot of suntan cream on board…..

(Photo: Challenge Business)

Expedition Update 2–Shekhdar Reloaded: Southern Ocean rower Jim Shekhdar set out from New Zealand in the wee hours of October 16th. Almost 20 hours, and 45 miles, later he called for a tow back to port. The reason: an unspecified equipment breakdown (back massager? popcorn maker?), and–reading between the lines of his brief report–an irresistible desire to watch the England-South Africa rugby game. He says he’ll be off again next week. I guess there’s no big hurry since he could be out there a year…..

Shekhdar’s Baby: Painted in “Rescue Service Yellow”…..

(Photo: oc2003.com)

Everest Update: The latest dispatch from Wally Berg has a lot of ramblings about fruit cakes and the difficulties of sending e-mail via satphone from the village of Namche. But there is important stuff, too. To wit, the team is all back in Base Camp and ready to start climbing. The weather is beautifully calm, though the jet stream is supposed to sink down toward Everest, bringing high winds (Berg is hoping to find a small window to summit through). The Sherpas were up on the South Col for the past two days, beaking trail and fixing ropes. They report a lot of snow. And finally, Berg says that their latest summit target date is Oct. 22. Now it begins…..

Berg (left) and Sherpas: “Just tossing a coin to see who’s going to carry Maegan’s skis…….”

(Photo: Berg Adventures International)

Annals of Adventure–The Big Schuss: I’m not a climber so I’ve never truly understood the pull of Everest. There doesn’t seem to be much pleasure in scaling it. Your body rebels at the altitude, you endure headaches, possible pulmonary edemas and brutal, extremity-freezing temps. From the accounts I’ve read, climbing Everest is about enduring pain. You trudge upward killing brain cells by the handful, littering the mountain with oxygen bottles and trash because you are too exhausted and turned inward to pick up after yourself, and barely noticing the view. The best part of the Everest experience, it seems, is….the aftermath–having climbed the world’s highest mountain. But skiing Everest? Now that’s a thrill I can picture. And American born Maegan Carney, two-time extreme skiing world champion, is currently on the mountain, aiming to become the first woman and the first North American to ski from the top all the way to base camp–a vertical descent of some 12,000 feet. If all goes well, Carney and her climbing expedition, which is being led by Berg Adventure’s Wally Berg–who has been to the top four times–will summit early next week, on Oct. 20 or 21. Carney has skied some big peaks. But as tame as Everest has become in recent years, with hundreds of climbers swarming all over the mountain in the Spring, the mountain is a tiger in October. According to MountEverest.Net out of 1924 total summits, only 279 have taken place in the Fall, and of those only 17 succeeded after Oct. 20. That’s because the weather starts to deteriorate after October 10. And right now hurricane force winds are expected at the summit over the weekend and maybe into next week. Berg is prepared to wait it out, if necessary, but the odds only get longer. If Carney pulls this thing off, it will have to rate as one of the greatest ski runs in history….

Mad Maegan: “It would be a lot easier if they would just fix the damn T-bar….”

Welcome, Purple Kermit!: If you root around in obscure places long enough you never know what you might find. And in the Western Ghats Mountains of southern India biologists have discovered a wholly new species of……frog. It’s a funny looking little sucker: purple, with a small head, tiny eyes, and the chubby body of a non-frog athlete. Big deal, you say? Consider the fact that there are only 29 known families of frogs and the last new one was identified more than 75 years ago, in 1926. Plus, this guy, who will be known as Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis (he definitely needs a new PR agent), is believed to be the last representative of a type of frog that gamboled at the feet of Cretaceous period dinosaurs 65 million years ago. This frog is also similar to a family of frogs that lives across the Indian Ocean, in the Seychelles, supporting the theory of “Gondwana,” the supercontinent which is believed to have incorporated all of earth’s current continents before splitting apart. Here’s hoping no one decides his funky skin, soaked in boiling water, is an aphrodisiac, or would look good as a purse……..

Barney Beware!: “I’m cute and huggable, and I don’t sing annoying songs….”

(Photo: S.D. Biju)

Row, Row, Row…And Keep Rowing For A Really Long Time: One last note from the wild and wacky world of ocean rowing. Englishman Jim Shekhdar, 57, is about to set off on a voyage from New Zealand to South Africa via Cape Horn. This is Southern Ocean rowing, folks, and that means winds up to 80 mph and seas of 60 feet or more. Oh yeah, it will also be really, really cold. No one has successfully rowed the Southern Ocean before and Shekhdar will have to propel himself more than 8,000 miles through some of the world’s most inhospitable seas. If he’s lucky, he’ll be out there about 5 months. If he’s unlucky it could be more like a year. And if he’s really unlucky, well, he may never get home. In short, the voyage will be wildly unpredictable, and Shekhdar says that if storms prevent him from getting north to Cape Town toward the end of his little jaunt, he’ll just keep on plugging away until he hits Australia, which would add a few thousand miles to the stunt. The good news is that Shekhdar may pull this thing off (it’s mostly downwind) in fewer than the 273 days it took him to row 10,600 miles from Peru to Australia a few years ago. The bad news is that the last guy who tried to row the Southern Ocean–a Frenchman, of course–had to be rescued by the Chilean Navy after his foot turned green and started to smell really bad. You can follow Shekhdar’s progress here. Wish him luck. He’s going to need it.

Shekhdar’s 2001 arrival in Australia: “Damn, I wish I had learned how to Eskimo roll this thing……”

(Photo: Ocean Rowing Society)

BLAST OFF! Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei, 38, officially joined the Many Miles High Club as China successfully launched its first human into space today. Liwei is halfway through his flight, and will plummet back to earth early this evening. He says he “feels good” and–calling Central Casting–promised to “gain honor for the People’s Liberation Army and for the Chinese nation. I will not disappoint the motherland. I will complete each movement with total concentration.”

Astronaut Liwei On His Way: No takeout for a while……