Circumpolar Race Around the World
The journey run (or ride) of a lifetime awaits you. A run that will completely circumnavigate the Earth. The real Earth. Going thru real countries, on real roads. You will get to follow yourself around the Globe on a route that covers nearly 30,000 miles. You will cross the greatest desert that you never knew existed and countless mountain ranges that you had never heard of. You will pass thru tropical jungles, vast plains, and temperate forests. You will ride crowded ferries, and hop between landmasses on one of our fleet of Dornier X 1929 Air Boats. Now, this is not a trek that one person could accomplish in less than a lifetime, so we are forming relay teams of up to 10 people, so that you can make this journey in between one and two years. You will be issued a passport, visas will be expedited, and you can fill your passport with stamps of the various exotic countries thru which you will travel. This is not so much a race, as a journey, and an adventure.
In school they taught us about the directions all wrong.East, West, North, South. The 4 directions, as if they were all the same. But they are not the same at all. And our whole view of the earth is changed by the way they differ.If you go East, you go East forever, no matter how many times you pass the place you started. It never becomes West. But, if you go North, it only goes so far, and then you start going South. Then it eventually becomes North again. We treat the earth as if it had a top and a bottom, but no ends. We dont see it as a sphere, but as a tube.
Truth is, our planet is a ball from every direction. Because of our rather limited vision of the planet there are some things that miss our attention…Like the fact that the tip of South America is only separated from Tasmania by the great land mass of the Antarctic continent. Or that it is only a hop and a skip across the North Pole between the top of Norway and the top of Alaska.
We cannot run around the Earth in any meaningful manner because we give the earth a middle and call it the Equator. It runs from East to West; or is it West to East. Little matter, because the Equator only passes thru South America and Africa from side to side. There is hardly any land at all. There is a largely land route around the planet, but it is far to the North, creating a double issue of being only a small part of the actual circumference, and being so far North that there are hardly any roads! To hit the Equator at any point during the land passage would require traveling an entire continent to the South, and then back.
But what if we look at the earth in a whole new way? What if we lay that classic globe on its side, and make a new equator that passes thru both North and South Poles?
I like this new Earth, with its circumpolar Equator. Because we can now lay out a route around the world that is 80% on land!!!
We have divided the planet into 12 Regions, so that you can complete an entire section in a relatively short time, with a medal for each regions. When you have completed your journey, There will be a world puzzle into which your pieces will fit to show your complete journey around the earth. We begin the trek at the US/Mexico border, and take on Latin America first, traveling down thru Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, before taking a Ferry to Colombia to complete the first Region. From Colombia We cross the Mountains to travel down the Pacific coast thru Ecuador and Peru into Chile to complete the Andes Region. Crossing the mountains back to Argentina to travel all the way to the tip of South America finishing the Pampas region by taking the Dornier to Antarctica. Antactica is our longest continental region, crossing the South Pole on the way to boarding the Dornier for the flight to Tasmania. Antarctica was, unfortunately, the only continent where we were unable to use existing roads, however, we spared no expense in cutting a narrow track all the way across for you and your accompanying support team in tracked vehicles. After running the length of Tasmania, we take the short hop to Australia, and run straight across the center of the ancient land to finish the Down Under Region with a flight to Timor. This initiates the Pacific Islands Region, as we run the length of one island after another, taking ferries in between: East Nusa Tengarra, Komodo, West Nusa Tengarra, Lombok, Bali, Java, and Sumatra, before completing our Pacific Island Journey with a ferry ride to SIngapore. From there we journey up the Malay Peninsula and across Southeast Asia across Malaysia, Thailand, and Myanmar (Burma). After Southeast Asia you will travel all the way across India (and the inclusion of Bangladesh) to reach the Pakistan border. Due to tensions in the area, we have arranged for Human traffickers to spirit you across the border into Pakistan during the dead of night, after which you will have high adventure crossing Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan (we call this region the Stans) to reach Eastern Europe in Russia. Your Eastern European tour will include also the Ukraine, Belarus, and Estonia, before finishing with a trip across Finland and Sweden to reach the Northernmost tip of Norway, ending in a remarkably short trip on the Dornier over the North Pole to reach the tip of Point barrow, Alaska. We tried to arrange a “land” route across the North Pole, but sea ice being sea ice, we were unable to build a road that would stay in place. Once in Alaska, you begin the long and arduous trip across the Great North region of Alaska and Canada. Trust me, it is far, and the most sparsely populated part of the voyage excepting Antarctica! The circuit is completed with a straight shot across the Lower 48 back to your starting point on the Mexico border.
The entries will be teams, who submit their team mileage weekly. If you do not have a team, teams will be created for you. Teams can have up to 10 members. Team members can change teams or be replaced after each region is complete.