The Professional Hobo

I was doing my regular morning ritual of perusing the BBC News website and came across this little gem of a story. Apparently the Dutch woman featured in the story is driving a tractor from her home in The Netherlands to the South Pole. While I'm assuming that she's actually shipping her rough-riding vehicle across the portion that trip that's entirely liquid, but it's a pretty cool idea for a publicity trip. She's actually raising money through sales through her website and using more or less half of those proceeds to help fund charitable organizations working in the locations she (slowly) rolls through. She sleeps in a special tent on top of the tractor at night.

That reminded me of Jason Lewis, the Briton who finished his 13-year attempt to circumnavigate back in October. What separated his circumnavigation from the ones that have been going on for hundreds of years is the fact that he did it all on muscle power. No sails. No engines. No motors (there's a difference, actually). No animals involved. He kayaked, pedaled a seagoing boat, rollerbladed and walked. Along the way he used data he collected (along with a couple of partners who participated with him along parts of the trek) to used it as a means of getting students in classrooms around the world interested in environmental science. He often stopped along the way to give presentations at schools in addition to keeping a website up-to-date with new data for students participating from class.

These two stories inspire me. I mentioned in a recent post that I'd love to be a glorified hobo, and what are these two but glorified hobos. They wander, they don't keep a day job during their lengthy journeys, and they wander to whatever destination calls them.

I'm now trying to figure out what my charitable publicity stunt trip would be so I can quit the classroom. I thought about reviving the memory of the Goat Man. I could be the first person to cross the US by animal power in a century or something. I'm not sure what would be my cause celebre, though. I thought about maybe using the publicity to raise money for programs to preserve the languages of American Indians, but it doesn't really make sense in connection to riding across the country in a goat cart (their not having goats an all until the Europeans got here). Going on foot with my supplies carried by dog sledge would be more appropriate for historical purposes, although I could use llamas if I included South America in the plan. Although, really, if I'm going south of US, I'd probably be more responsible to push infrastructure or health initiatives over linguistic and cultural diversity issues. It would be really cool if I could train a team of turkeys to pull a small cart though. They're a native semi-domesticated animal. Araucanas (the breed I raise that lays blue eggs) have recently been found to possess genetic markers that suggest that they may have derived from birds from Polynesia before Europeans arrived, which is pretty freaking cool. The birds were already a part of the tribes they were discovered with when the tribes were first mentioned on historical documents, but until recently, it's always been assumed that the chickens spread inland more quickly than the Spaniards by trade.

It'd also be cool to kayak the entire length of every major river and support River Keeper type projects as well, but I'm not sure how realistic that would be. I'll probably stick with the goat cart and hope that PETA doesn't take notice.