We’re kicking it old school for Travel Tuesday today, bringing you a little wanderlust by way of vintage National Park postcards. We wouldn’t mind getting a few of these in our mailbox.
Enjoy!
As one of the leaders of Imagine Ethiopia 2011 I wanted to share a progress update to inspire and potentially involve you in our next steps…
Earlier this year, Vancouver-based charitable organization, imagine1day, launched their second annual Imagine Ethiopia trip: a two-week adventure that takes participants on a daily exploration of the best that Ethiopia has to offer.
imagine1day is a growing global community of people making passionate contributions to ensure that all Ethiopians have access to quality education funded free of foreign aid by 2030. They ran their first trip to Ethiopia last year to great success.
via Michael Henderson in Paris:
[The race] turned into an epic, which I shall detail in the next day or two. It started perfectly with the first day going as planned. What was not in the plan was getting no sleep the first night and catching cold at the same time… I thought I had recovered on the morning of day 3. That was not the case, it caught back up to me that evening. I stayed an extra unplanned night at the last control point before riding in [yesterday] morning in 78 hours and some change.
I’m a little upset at not riding the fastest I could, but I’m very excited to have finished despite the obstacles. Finding ways to overcome the problems along the way is what randonneuring is all about, and I did that in spades. Hope to have some time to begin recounting the details tomorrow…
Congratulations Michael!
Michael Henderson is the CFO at Osprey Packs HQ in Cortez, Colorado. Stay tuned… we’ll be posting updates from his race and recap when he comes home!
Unless you’ve been living in a deep, dark cave… You may have noticed that there is a lot of cool stuff going on out there. So, we thought it was high-time we started rounding up some of our faves each Friday. Every month, we’ll be choosing a theme that fits with the Osprey lifestyle. It’s August which means it’s time to take advantage of the last weeks of summer, and what better way than getting in the water? This month we’re all about swimming holes, waterfalls, ocean breaks and waterways of all kinds. Welcome to the Osprey Friday Round-Up!
It’s the last Friday in August… how are you going to spend it? Out on the water hopefully!
Need some floating inspiration? High Country News has you covered, this time in the form of car-free river enjoyment.
The first steps toward carbon freedom were canoe trips on the Bitterroot River near my home in Missoula, Mont., with my friend Nick and his dog Katie. This was necessity, not environmentalism: Nick had a car, but no canoe; I had a canoe, but no car; and we both had bicycles. Attentive scouting revealed a 13-mile stretch between small towns in which the Bitterroot was paralleled not only by Highway 93 but also by a bike path. En route by car to the put-in, we left our bikes at the take-out; then, after floating, we cycled back to retrieve Nick’s Isuzu to take us home. Katie ran between us. Given her tendency to hop in and out of the canoe, the bike shuttle offered more than good exercise and great views of the Bitterroot Mountains: It gave us a chance to dry off after three hours of splashing.
Still, it felt wrong to drive at all. Enter the packraft. Sold by Alpacka, a small family firm in Mancos, Colo., the best packrafts are extremely durable, ultra-lightweight inflatable rafts designed expressly for those who want to reach river’s edge on trail mix alone. The simplest craft weighs just over three pounds and deflates to the size of a couple water bottles — perfect for stuffing in a backpack or bike bag. Because the raft then expands to roughly 3-by-5-feet, paddlers can fit not only themselves but also their disassembled bikes inside.
Speaking of rivers, did you hear that an enormous underground river was recently discovered in the Amazon? The massive water system is thought to stretch for 3,700 miles across the Amazon basin with an average width of about 200 miles. Wow, pretty cool.
Busting out the canoe this weekend? Gear Junkie has the gear list of gear lists if you’re headed for Boundary Waters. Hint: it requires hammocks and espresso.
And just because it’s Friday, we’ll leave you with this photo from surf photographer Clark Little that’s sure to get you off your couch, into your car and out to the waves.
Happy Friday!
Images: Monica Ray, Clark Little
It’s now into the fifth day of peaceful protest outside of the White House, where a diverse group of concerned Americans are gathering to send the Obama administration a simple message: Do not approve the Keystone XL, a 1,700 mile pipeline that would inextricably link the nation’s energy future to Canada’s tar sands — the dirtiest fuel source known to man. So far, more than 200 people have been arrested in the protests, including well-known author and climate advocate Bill McKibben.
What do you think?
Photo by Ben Canales
National Geographic announced their 2011 Traveler Photo Contest winners earlier this month, and the winning submissions are pretty killer. Here are some of our favorites:
Photo by Robin Moore
Photo by by Ilan Shacham
Photo by Fernanda Credidio
Photo by Leslie Alsheimer
Check out all the winning photos here.
Mountain2Mountain’s short film, Waking Lions, will show on the big screen this weekend in Golden, Colo. as the expo for the USA Pro Cycling Tour rolls through on its finale day into Denver. If you’re going to be in town for the tour, don’t miss this inspiring and thought-provoking film.
Also, make sure to swing by Mountain2Mountain’s booth and support the Panjshir Tour and their work for women’s rights!
Waking Lions Trailer from Allison Otto on Vimeo.
Unless you’ve been living in a deep, dark cave… You may have noticed that there is a lot of cool stuff going on out there. So, we thought it was high-time we started rounding up some of our faves each Friday. Every month, we’ll be choosing a theme that fits with the Osprey lifestyle. It’s August which means it’s time to take advantage of the last weeks of summer, and what better way than getting in the water? This month we’re all about swimming holes, waterfalls, ocean breaks and waterways of all kinds. Welcome to the Osprey Friday Round-Up!
This week we’re bringing you a few excerpts from great water related articles around the web to beef up your reading list. Enjoy!
For all its obscurity, the Lower Pecos flows through one of the loveliest and most pristine landscapes in America. Spring-fed and limestone-bottomed, the river has a clarity matched only by its wild tropical color schemes, which would remind you of a Corona beer commercial except that the colors are far more varied. It is both a whitewater river, with dozens of rapids from Class I through Class IV, and a giant aquarium—jammed with spotted gar, catfish, perch, bluegill, and carp—where you can watch a largemouth bass wheel, rise, and hit your fly. The country around it is a sort of museum of Native American history, home to one of the greatest concentrations of ancient rock art in America.
And so it is surprising that, out beyond the 100th meridian, where vast commercial cultures have arisen to service affluent Americans desperate for a run down big, remote, mythic rivers, no one knows the Lower Pecos. Our predicament in the rapids is relatively simple, in one sense: we’re the only ones here.
-”The Lost River of Divine Reincarnation,” Outside Magazine
Michael Henderson loves to ride his bicycle… really, really far. Michael left earlier this week for France to compete in his first Paris-Brest-Paris Randonneur. First run in 1891, the 1200-kilometer Paris-Brest-Paris, or “PBP” as it is commonly called, is a grueling test of human endurance and cycling ability. Organized every four years by the host Audax Club Parisien, the Paris-Brest-Paris is the oldest bicycling event still run on a regular basis on the open road.
Earlier this month, Osprey ambassador Majka Burhardt, recently published a book called Coffee Story: Ethiopia. In her book, Majka digs deep to tell the story of coffee’s heartland and how the crop has shaped a region, a people and a culture. Spending so much time in Ethiopia, Majka came home with a message of hope and powerful motivation to tell the story of this incredible place and to urge people to help.
In a recent article on Forbes.com, Majka shed some light on how we can all do something to help countries like Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa.
There is famine in the Horn of Africa. Of course. Isn’t there always?
Are you cringing yet? Good. Here are three things we can do now to help the Horn of Africa, beyond just sending famine relief: (1) Change the conversation. (2) Invest in the positive. (3) Tackle the uncomfortable.
PHOTO via
