Adventure Philanthropy International

At our core ADVphilanthropy is all about relationships.  Every aspect of what we do revolves around us interacting with people, whether it be individuals, groups or organizations.  And our ability to build healthy relationships that foster positive change is not only key to our success, but is also our “mission” in a nutshell.

Some days, this means we’re sending emails to charities, talking on the phone with potential sponsors, and chatting on skype with our web-designer.  Other days it means we’re meeting up with our followers and spending time getting to know them personally.  These interactions, whether over the phone or in person are what it’s all about.  This is where we connect, learn one another’s stories and challenge each other to grow in a positive way.  Today was a great example.  Knowing that the upcoming week would be busy meeting with potential sponsors at the Outdoor Retailer Show, we wanted to put some quality time in with some old friends in SLC, and make some new friends as well.

The day started out at Throttle 215 MX Park, just outside of SLC.  Their course was amazing with LOTS of big jumps and a SUPER well maintained track.  What’s even cooler is that the staff at Throttle 215 MX Park were just as awesome!  They welcomed us to hang out, wander around the course and photograph the riders.  We rolled into the park and met up with Miah’s old friends from SLC who were there to get in some practice runs.  Seeing them whip around the corners and hit huge jumps made me stoked for our trip.  We’re definitely going to be stopping at a few courses along the way to hone our skills on smaller dirt bikes.  The practice will really help us once we’re loaded down on the heavier bikes riding on trails or off-roading.

As the day progressed the sky looked as if it had potential for flying at The Point of the Mountain.  Sadly, cross winds prevented any paragliders from going for a flight, but it did provide the perfect opportunity for the them to practice their ground handling skills.  Although I was hoping to see someone fly, it worked out great because the paragliders stayed close and I was able to meet them and get some great shots as they practiced.  Watching the pilots finesse the wings to keep them inflated in the funky cross wind was nothing short of impressive; especially since it was the first time I’ve ever seen a paraglider in person!

The funky weather also developed into something quite rare and beautiful!  A few minutes before heading home, a Mammatus formation of clouds appeared high above the Wasatch Mountains.  Not only was it amazing to see because of their rarity, but the setting sun across the valley floor illuminated them with beautiful shades of orange and yellow as they floated over the mountain tops.

You’re an important part of ADVphilanthropy and we want to know you better too.  Share with us your stories, your passions, and ways you are building healthy relationships that foster positive change.  We’re always looking to connect with individuals, groups and organizations, state-side and overseas that are creating positive change.  Help us connect with them!  Share the word, share the passion, and thanks for being such an integral part of ADVphilanthropy.

Most of the time people hear about our trip, our mission, our dream and LOVE the idea. They are enthusiastic and encouraging, but we’ve all ran into the people who believe it’s their job to protect us from the dangers of the world, protect us from the tragedy of failure. Let’s call them the dream killers.

“You want to ride a motorcycle how far!? Don’t you know there are two kinds of riders; those that have had a fatal accident and those who will.”

You’re an idiot

“Why do you want to leave to do good. Don’t you know there are people in your own town in need?”

I contribute to my own community too. My passion is to help in the communities that I play in.

“Haven’t you heard about the drug war in Mexico and the cocaine smugglers in Colombia. You CAN’T go there!!?”

Is your world really that small?

“You know you’ll just get robbed right. All those people are just looking for some naive person like you to take advantage of.”

It’s just stuff, one more interesting problem to solve along the way. Ohh, and all “those” people are people just like you, only more accepting.

“But you don’t know spanish very well. How can you possibly travel through Latin America and not know spanish?”

Hablaré con mis dedos

“What if you don’t raise enough money to support your trip?”

We’ll get on our motorcycles and leave anyway.

“But what if no companies help you with light weight paragliding equipment?”

I’ll buy it myself or take what I have and suffer with an overloaded motorcycle and still fly everything I want.

“But your climbing equipment is all old.”

It held a fall last weekend. It will do.

“How do you plan to pay for this if no one donates.”

For one thing, we are selling everything we own to do this. If that only gets us three counties away, we’ll stop when we run out and money and work, play, and volunteer till we can get to the next spot. Simple really.

“But what if one of you guys gets hurt?”

Last man standing keeps riding.

“But you’re not even great rock climbers.”

So. We don’t need to climb 5.12 to have a ton of fun and do a lot of good in the places we are enjoying.

The bottom line is there is no what if. There is no back up plan. There is no room for failure. We. Are. Going. We are backing ourselves against the wall, we are burning our bridges and and charging full steam into this thing.

Let me ask you a question? What if you embraced your dream, your best, invested one hundred percent of yourself into making something happen and managed to change the world in the process. What if..

How did we get here? After all, this started out as a random plan to strap a paraglider on a motorcycle and ride around California and maybe Mexico for a few months. My buddy Matt wanted to do a similar thing but with climbing gear. We decided to join forces and the next thing we knew, we were committed to years riding from the Arctic circle to southern Argentina and building a world changing philanthropic organization as we went. So, how DID we get here?

Both Matt and I have traveled enough to realize that delight comes not from adventures, but from the people we connect with. The most delight comes from giving, helping and touching lives. We knew we wanted to do more than ride our motorcycles and play. We wanted to make a positive impact as we traveled. In the beginning we weren’t sure what that looked like. We had the desire, we had the commitment, but how to tie things together, well, that was fuzzy.

Over time the philanthropy aspect grew. We have strong backs and a diverse skill-set, so we knew our labor could benefit non-profits operating in the places we visited, but we wanted to do more. We really liked the idea of cutting checks to organizations doing good work. We knew that our efforts on the ground would give us the information to make wise choices about where to donate funds. We also realized that lots of other people liked the idea of being able to financially support the charities we were working with.

Since we were already doing the work of networking with partner charities, sponsor companies, and building our media platform, it made sense to share that with other bad ass athletes who had world class plans and a charitable heart. I love the idea of supporting other athletes as they practice their sport at a high level and change the world they recreate in.

But we were missing something. We were missing you. Yah, I know you’re here paying attention, living vicariously, and donating, but you have a vision too. You are one of us and we want to do everything possible to help you make a difference.

Our ultimate vision is to be a resource for YOU to make a difference in your travels or even in your own town. We want you to have access to the individuals and organizations that are making a difference in the places you want to go. We want you to be part of a community of passionate, action oriented individuals who share their stories, spread their ideas, and support each other.

Is this too big? No way. It’s daunting and it’s not going to be done tomorrow, but I believe that together we can change the world.  I’m just honored to be the test dummy for this mission and honored that you guys are coming with us.

We were stoked. We rallied out to Brevard, up the dirt road, the Honda Element bouncing and skidding through the curves. We couldn’t wait to climb! We jumped out of the car  and started throwing gear onto the ground to sort what we wanted for our climb.

“Umm, where’s my pack?” “What, you don’t have your pack!?” “Crap, I took my pack in the house after our last climb.”

What do you do when you realize your entire rack of protection, your  harness and shoes AND guidebook are all missing? Most people go to the bar and complain. Well, like I said, we wanted to climb!

We dug into the gear reject pile and cobbled together a half set of stoppers, some offset brassies and one cam. Thankfully I had an antique pair of climbing shoes and a spare harness. “The dudes in the 60’s didn’t have the fancy gear. If they could do it, we can too!” Off we went, trekking up to the south side of Looking Glass.

I had a rough idea of what I wanted to climb (a route called Windwalker), but wasn’t sure of the rating, exactly where the route went once climbing or how well it was protected.  We knew we had crap gear, so the protection was a mute point.  Matt got the lead and off he went.

The first few moves were thin hard climbing off a ledge 40′ off the ground. Up he went to a flared crack with crap gear. He wiggled in two lousy stopper placements, hoping at least one would hold if he fell. Just above the crap gear was an ugly flared corner that was steeper than we expected. He sketched on this nasty section for a while before deciding to head left onto an exposed face. At this point down-climbing wasn’t an option and falling would have been really bad. The gear was crap and the run-out was huge.

He danced his way up the face and set up an ugly belay off a rusty rivet and shallow stopper. I was pretty sure he was belaying off crap and me falling was not an option. I had the pack with our camera equipment, my antique shoes, and no chalk. Great. I actually felt a little sick to my stomach doing the harder moves up the nasty flair and onto the face. I danced and tiptoed my way up, took the rack and led on to the top of the route. My pitch was fun with good protection and awesome climbing. The summit was a blessing and we were stoked to have made the decision to climb, even though we knew it was going to be scary and dangerous.

Just think. Only eight more months and we’ll be doing this full freaking time!

Check out the rest of the shots at http://www.flickr.com/photos/advphilanthropy/sets/72157624494106282/

You’d think the choice of which climbing lines to bring with us would be easy. I mean, we climb cliffs, we need a good rope. The problem, again, is space. We can only carry so much stuff on our bikes. Many routes only require one rope to get up and down, but longer routes stretch a full hundred and fifty feet or more. The math is easy – one rope won’t get us back to the ground.  It’s imperative for expedition climbing to have two ropes.

Two conventional climbing lines weigh a lot and take of a lot of space.  Enter twin ropes. Twin ropes are typically used for ice climbing and mountaineering. The idea is pretty simple. You use two thin ropes like they are one. You tie into both lines, your belayer has both lines through his belay device and you clip both ropes into each piece of gear. It’s a little more complicated for rope management, there is a little more rope drag, and your pulling more weight up with each movement, but for a silly trip like ours the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

Advantages: We’ll always have two ropes with us for long descents. They give us an extra layer of protection in case one rope gets chopped from rock fall. This also means each of us only carries one anorexic (typically 7.5 mm – 8.5 mm) rope on each bike.

The ever awesome TradGirl has some more details about twin climbing techniques if you’re curious.

So now that we’ve decided twins are the way to go, which one do we go with? This review from The Colorado Mountain School helped me with my choice. I’ve long known Sterling makes world class ropes.  I have countless hours falling on, climbing with, and generally loving their ropes.  They make a lovely 7.7 mm dry twin rope appropriately called the Evolution Ice Thong. I’m excited to add this rope to our list of active expedition gear. Expect a full report once we get a little play time with these sexy twins!

One of the early challenges I identified was my total lack of fitness to handle the rigors of crashing motorcycles, climbing rocks and sinking out in the wilderness on my paraglider. My blog post, Back Fat pretty much sums up where I was at.  The key word is WAS. The reason is CrossFit.

The day I decided to get fit, I started doing little things, you know, like parking far away from the bar, or hiking more often than I usually would and cleaning up the trash in my diet. I even threw some yoga in for good measure. That was good and all, but elite athlete I would not be on that program.  I HAVE to be in the best shape of my life for this trip to be a success. I have to know enough to keep my fitness level high as we travel too. I also have the challenge of a severely damaged shoulder. I’ve known about CrossFit for a long time, but It has always scared me. I never felt the necessity of working as hard as they do or being as fit as they are. Now I have my reason.

For the last six weeks I’ve been going through their on-ramp program. Mine was a twice weekly privately coached program where you learn the basics of CrossFit philosophy, how to lift, how to eat, and how to properly move your body. You do the work too. Every workout was full of new information, practice to reinforce what I’ve already learned, and work to reach a level of fitness I’ve never seen before. For me that was just the start.

The Co-Owner of Crossfit Asheville, Corey Duval, is a Chiropractic Physician with a lifetime experience treating elite athletes. Day one of my on-ramp, Corey did a movement assessment with me, realized how limiting my shoulder injuries were and went to work fixing those problems. It amazes me how one session with him opens up range of motion, and how five sessions with him have increased mobility to levels I haven’t felt in over a decade. Incredible.

I have eight months before we leave, eight months to train. That works out to about ninety CrossFit sessions. The day I get on that motorcycle and ride out of town, you can bet that i’ll be doing it with a body ready for the challenge.  Corey, Shanna, and the rest of the coaches and the amazing community of athletes get full credit too.  I couldn’t do it without you guys.  I’m excited to see what you throw at me next.

If you’re considering changing your life, getting fit, and getting healthy, find a CrossFit facility in your community. Remember, six months from now, you’ll wish you started today. GO!

It’s a no brainer. The moment we decided to do this trip, we knew we wanted to do it on the new BMW 800GS.  We are going to be living on our bikes for years and traveling on every kind of terrain and weather imaginable. Since climbing, paragliding, and documenting our journey are as important as riding, we need bikes that can handle the load and the abuse we will inflict. The performance, reliability and versatility of the 800GS puts it far above the rest.

I can’t wait to put this thing in my garage…

Load carrying mule!

Full disclosure: These shots belong to the the amazing Joe Finn. I wouldn’t mind riding a few miles with this guy next year.