Group evening in GV Brazil.

After a hard day's paragliding in Valadares, Brazil the tour group retires for SKOL.

Mendoza Sunset - December '09

Wicked lenticular's forming over Andes mountains on while riding south towards Tunuyan.

Fellow Travelers in Argentina

These folks from Germany joined Cheri and I in a nice little campground on the east coast of Argentina. She's travelling on a BMW F-800 and he's on a BMW-1200.

New products and gear from Ozone and Macpara

Hello everyone , In order to change with the times and offer my clients new products I have decided to branch out and bring in 2 different brands of Paragliders. Now I am dealing direct for Ozone paragliders , www.flyozone.com and Macpara paragliders , www.macpara.com . While Advance paragliders www.advance.ch has served me well and will continue to be my main brand, I will filling a void and serving my clients better. I can now offer a variety of products at competitive prices. Let me know if I can help you find a wing to suit your needs ,maybe a new speed wing , paramoter, or land kite for the non flying days , Serving the flying community for 20yrs now and hopefully many more ..... cheers

Brasil tour 2010

Hi , well were finished another tour to Brasil this has been year 10 ... ahhhhh , where does time go . We had 6 on tour and another 6 ex students in GV this year , so their were about 13 of us Canucks flying Gv . The weather was great when we arrived and from what I heard had been nice for the past 6 weeks prier to us coming into Gv . Cloud base was very high this year 8000-10,000ft which is great for XC . Wendy , Steve, Ron , Chris , and Laura and Dominic had their personal best flights ,both in altitude , time and distance. They seemed to be out flying each other on any of the days , all were landing at the 35km mark and Laura and Ron both landed because they had had enought but i'm sure could have flown farther if they had wanter too ...
Day 6 or seven the weather came in on us and we were able to fly but not far and were doing extended sledders to the landing area. Doug did his personal best and logged 300km in 3 days one of the days flying Tandem with richard to 100km mark , good work doug . Greg and I were working and did not get great flights during this time , but it was a fun year working with this group. See you all in Brasil next year and lets fly further ..... chow

Buenos aries to Uruguay

Timing is everything when on a bike, when to leave and when to stay , good thing I know weather so well . I was able to keep us dry by knowing clouds and weather patterns . Riding into B.A. was a challange and finding our hostel ( Dakar motors) was hard... being everything looks athe same when you have a city of 8 millon people , it took me 3 hrs and lots of asking in broken spanish to the locals . We ended up staying in the city for about 3 days to visit cheri's friends and trying to get a Visa into Brasil .. which was bloody usless... Unless you exit Argentina you are not allowed a visa to Brasil. We wanted to leave from Uruguay to park the bike untill next year so we had to get the visa from Uruguay . We did so after taking the ferry from BA to Montevideo on the fast ferry , probably bought from B.C.
Uruguay was so nice , relaxing and friendly they did give us a year to stay for the bike . We stayed in a campground by Pute del este which as deluxe , store , games rooms and swimming pool. We had a chance to exercise, going for runs together and relaxing on the beaches . It was nice, real nice.... !! I would by a place here it is that nice !! I ended up storing the bike in Uruguay again untill next season and another adventure .
My bike now need some TLC when I return ... with my trip from Canada ending up now at 46,000,00 km.
I could never imagine when I started this 3 seasons ago how far this would take me and how much more I know about the world and the nice people I have met along the way. It have changed the way I look at things and how really the same we are, all over the world . Cheers

and back to Brasil ....

Ok ,did I metion how bloody windy it was in the south of Patagonia holy shit .... you could not imagine unless you have been their . day and night it was windy and dangerous for riding ! Getting blown over to the side of the raod constantly and having to keep the bike inline was so f*^%*&ing hard on my body , I was suprised Cheri didn't bail on me it was really a hard trip for her as well . Cold and windy and sometimes rainy sums it up ! I had to put on all the cloths I had and then was still frozen , it was nice to leave this area and head north. Ushaia was nice but it snowed on us but still a very nice place to visit and fish if i could go back !
The route north was boring and desert like , with long riding days and lots of wind . I would have to say many days it was 80km winds from the side and when a truck went by on the opposite side of the road (windward side) it would jerk you over to the truck side as it was the way you were leaning on to try to stay on the road . As we were riding north each day it got warmer and the days shorter which was interesting to me .. after about 8 days it was time to start pulling cloths off again .... Many of the campgrounds we stayed at were dusty and cloths got dirty easy so lots of washing and hanging out our equpment . But all and all we did manage to have some fun and joke about it . We met alot of other bikers in the south telling us of their simular adventures with the wind and dust some of them tales of accidents were they were injured .... we survived . I only put the bike down once when it pushed me to the opposite side of the road on gravel , I got cheri to climb off and then tried to manouver it back to the proper side and when it went side ways to the wind I could not hold it up and over she went !

still more to come ...

After we spent a few days looking around the barriloche area , which was my favorite area in Argentina , we continued south on Ruta 40 , nice road mountains with snow on 1 side , desert on the other simular to riding down in California or Nevada . But always a brutal cross wind from the west , we hit gravel near Rio Mayo and for the next 4 days it was grueling ... it took all my strengh and skills to keep the bike on the road sometimes , the cross winds were about 80km hr and the road was terrible in places , we were down to 20 km hr trying to keep from being blown into the oncoming lane . numerous times we were blown to the right and i has to let the bike go so as not to dump it , then crawl it over to the left again slowly over the loose gravel piles . Lucky we would not see traffic for hrs sometimes on these roads ..

I am sick to the wind down here !! It is so nice when it is at your back and front and not from the side you can hear and your neck and arms do not hurt from the constant battle of keeping straight.

The south area el chalten and el cafate were great , but starting to get cold with glaciers and 40kph winds constantly wind chill was clold riding , wish I would have brought my Gore tex liners... but still it is an Adventure which is what we wanted !

Woild like to come back to this area to expolore , hike and fish again some day ! Cool area ! Fishing looks amasing if it was not so windy all the time. Well it is time to leave and head North to the heat again after about 430000 km I start my journey North !!!! cheers

I'm in Ushaia , end of the road going south !

Well after many weeks of travel and no posting... It has been a long few weeks rought roads , dangerous winds and terrain, and some cold days . But we pushed on and now we are here .... it is cool here , sort of like Alaska, High mountains surround the port clty , and as of last night we have now fresh snow on them and even in town !

We are going to try to head north today for Rio grande which is about 3 hrs away over a high pass , I know it will be slow going with the snow . But time is running out to get back to brasil for the 16th , and we have to get visa's in BA still .

We started this trip south after athe climb up Aconcaugua , which you can check our blog out on www.climbforprostate.com . Cheri , nick and myself rode south for 1 week on the 11 th of January . It was very hot leaving Mendoza around 40c , but easy riding untill south of San Rafael, then we hit a wall of wind , about 90km /hr , so we had to wait at a station for a few hrs , and continued on later under brutal cross winds , soon to learn that this was the norm !!

we traveled with nick for a week testing his riding skills and patience , it was difficult riding for him on the gravel unpaved roads and with wind to boot ! He learned alot before he left to head home 1 week later just north of Barriloche .