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To The South Pole By Bike

Posted by timothy on from the are-those-bugle-boy-jeans dept.

buzzdecafe writes "Doug Stroup is attempting to ride his bike to the South Pole. Follow his progress here: Iceaxe.tv or read the article about him on Wired, including a pic of the bike. He's pulling over 100 pounds of supplies on a sled behind the bike--as well as carrying his own waste. Why bike to the South Pole? Hell, why not? Riding a bike in subzero temperatures in constant danger of losing your life sure beats my job."

2 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. Some random comments by devphil · · Score: 3, Interesting
    as well as carrying his own waste.

    For the standard lazy /. fucker who won't read the article, he's not doing that because of some weird fetish. It's SOP in Antarctica; the article only mentions it to point out that the weight load on the bike will increase with time (like every other Antarctic team has had to deal with).

    Er, no, wait... he's consuming the food he's carrying, so weight load should remain more or less constant. Okay, I don't know why the article bothers to mention it.

    Riding a bike in subzero temperatures in constant danger of losing your life sure beats my job.

    Perhaps you should consider skydiving. Unlike every other sport I can think of, where you die only when something goes awry, in skydiving your death is guaranteed the instant you jump out the door -- unless you do something to change your situation. Any sport where you die by default every time you play, and it's up to you to fix that... yeah.

    --
    You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
    1. Re:Some random comments by joshuac · · Score: 5, Interesting

      ---snip
      awry, in skydiving your death is guaranteed the instant you jump out the door
      ---snip

      Not quite; you could be thrown from the plane unconcious, if your emergency chute is setup correctly the automatic activation device will go off once you've passed a certain altitude a bit too quickly :)

      So if you don't do anything, death is pretty much unlikely.

      Otoh, if you do end up doing something incorrectly (deploy your main chute incorrectly getting lines tangled, don't inspect all gear carefully before using) then yes, you could easily die; a half opened chute could slow you down enough to convince the emergency activation device all is well, but may still be plenty fast enough to kill you.