I’m crossing emotional thresholds every day now.
One moment I’m excited at what lies ahead – an expedition of epic proportions, the unpredictability of the outcome and the freedom of roaming the planet. On the other hand I’m realising more and more how much I’m going to miss Aria and the rest of my family.
Getting to this point has been 5 years of thinking, with the last 18 months being crazy full-time work 7 days a week to make it happen. It would be fair to say this is the biggest single undertaking of my life thus far (except being a father to Aria) and something I’m extremely passionate about … ok, obsessive about.
Since deciding I was going to do this crazy adventure ride from Hong Kong to Brisbane, I’ve been blessed with an amazing group of volunteers who have stepped forward, given their time to ‘live the dream’ and maximise the philanthropic result of Wheel2Wheel.
Our team has evolved as the tasks at hand have intensified and demanded more from us. Starting out with Jessica Robertson as charity guru, Nathan Parris as fellow rider and Nathan King as photographic maestro seems like a lifetime ago. Then Simon Lock was going to ride. Next Levina Poon and Jodi Pritchard came on board to help with marketing.
Then over the last 6 months our team has welcomed Paige Sinclair, Alan Ng, Joy Cheng, Elly Herzog and Aileen Thl. Every person in the team has helped shape Wheel2Wheel and in doing so created an amazing organisation that will undertake many more challenging adventures that shine the spotlight on charitable endeavour.
Activity has really picked up in the last few weeks, we are now sprinting for the START line. The key things I’m working on at present are:
1) Assembling the television production crew to film the expedition. Siren Films whom we have been talking to over the last year is now getting deeply involved in the filming methodology and practical implementation of the TV production. I really enjoy working with Ed, Vesta, Dickie and the team at Siren.
2) Reviewing episodic synopses shot lists for each of the 10 television episodes we are planning to produce. Elly Herzog has been doing a great job pulling together an enormous amount of research on the charities and the issues they are tackling; then weaving that together into an interesting and thoughtful story to tell.
3) Finalizing the expedition route, taking into account the road conditions, the location of the charities and the overall trip duration. I’ve been particularly focused on the remote Indonesian islands I will be traversing (where roads are limited) and the Australian Outback (where roads often don’t exist!). John McIntyre (friend and terrific w2w supporter) provided a much needed piece of location knowledge about getting from Alice Springs to Birdsville, which has enabled me to finally plot the course across the desert.
4) Improving the effectiveness of our online presence, including the website, facebook, twitter and associated media portals such as Yahoo!7’s banzai adventure site in Australia. We recently launched a series of custom-built facebook
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