To The South Pole By Bike

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."

Comments

Bike to the south pole?

[moc.tfosorcimgllib]

This guy is kind of a wuss, isn't he?

I mean, if *I* were going to bike to the south pole, I would at least start from home instead of antartica.
Why not just say: "Guy plans on biking 50 miles in sub-zero temps, hopes no to die". This would have been kick-ass if would have risked mexico, panama, the amazon, just to come close to biking in sub-zero temperatures.

Some random comments

[devphil]

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.

Re:Some random comments

[joshuac]

---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.

Let me guess...

[Deagol]

...this guys funds this excursion by harrassing people for two dollars, right?

Dumb and...

[Bob Vila's Hammer]

I keep remembering the bike trek made by Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne. As I read the passage about this man carting his own waste through the tundra, I can only imagine his toil being not unlike Lloyd and Harry's when they first arrived in bitter Colorado. In their disquieted and inimitable words I find the response: "Just go man, just go."