#whike

Whike? And Type-Null

By Nintendo

The mornings only feature the remnants of a head cold, the post-adventure common denominator that chases up the sore muscles that had been put to work day-in, day-out with barely a break for a month.

Only after a brief spell in shoes does the numbness in my toes reappear, but along with the tight quads and tired calves it feels like there's only a week or so left of physical recovery before it'll be time to move again.

The processing has begun. Two back to back expeditions. 2115 miles pedalled, a few of them with the assistance of a fairly inconsistent Chilean prevailing wind which decided for three weeks only to prevail in the wrong direction.

20 days on a Whike and a further 23 on another trike - this time sail-less - designed by the Cornish company Inspired Cycle Engineering: two more expeditions of just over 1000 miles, but most importantly a fairly gentle two.

They certainly weren't easy (sometimes utterly brutal, physically, especially on those hour-long uphills, which are not the ideal realm of tricycles) by any stretch, but individually they held no flame of difficulty to expeditions lasting multiple months - it is the passage of time (and indeed, the days and weeks that remain ahead) that really eats into the psyche and then, once that's gone, the body.

But back-to-back this was quite the test. It's something I've only tried once before; in 2012 I hopped straight from a Pacific sail to ride a Bikecar across the American South with just a two week gap in between, which offered just enough time to stand up paddle the Wolf River in 7 days.

But this year's combo was more testing, not least because I'd been off this endurance stuff for the best part of a year and the culprit - my back and its formerly damaged disc - had to stand up and be counted.

I decided this would best be done by sitting down in two consecutive (and effortlessly comfortable) seats.

And now, not only is the aching and the numbness going, but I wake up in the morning without holding my back any more. Which means these two journeys, numbers 8 and 9 in Expedition1000, were a success across the board.

It'll be a while before Jamie finds the time to create what will no doubt be an artistic take on our Whike journey across the Atacama Desert, but I really hope you enjoy Ben Sadd's calm and pleasant short film about my most recent journey, which really was as lovely as it appears to be in this beautifully shot film.

If this film only serves to whet your appetite, here are all the short videos I made on my ICE Trike, you won't have to scroll down too far to find a gallery of Instagram stills from the trip, and please do visit the Whike and ICE Trikes websites to check out some awesome-looking (and very fun) three-wheeled riding machines.

Late on the evening of the 21st April Jamie, Ned and I rolled through a desert valley and pulled off to the side of Highway 25. We took a dirt track a hundred metres away from the rush of long haul traffic, and paused for a moment's silence. Then I looked at them both:

'One thousand miles, boys, nicely done.'

We whooped! We're grown men, and we whooped! It hadn't been an easy ride. The hills took their toll on our bodies and our morale. We've climbed more than twice the height of Everest over the past three weeks and just, only just, managed to average the 50 miles per day that were required to make this the 9th edition of Expedition1000.

And that tells the story. When allowed to roam in their natural habitat, Whikes are capable of covering hundreds of miles per day. The Chilean topography reigned us in and when we were given a rare session of sailing it was joyful. Not taking something for granted certainly makes it taste sweeter.

We started by bursting out of Santiago just in time for sunrise on April 3rd. We finished as friends in the heart of the Atacama Desert, staring at the sun as it descended behind some of the driest hills in the world. What an adventure. 9 down, 16 to go.

Jamie and I have been in Santiago for the last two weeks, slowly getting things in order for our journey north, by Whike, to the Atacama Desert.

With our departure time set for 3am on Wednesday April 2nd we settled up on the minor factors of prep, then headed to the airport late last night to pick up Ned, the CEO of Whike UK and, critically, the man equipped to build the Whikes.

That is, he would have been equipped had his bag not been lost somewhere between London and South America. An exhausted Ned appeared through the Arrivals gate, half happy to be here, half glum that some essential kit had been misplaced.

So, writing this at noon on April 1st (so you know I'm not joking), here's the situation. They still don't know where the bag is.

In it are tools essential to complete the assembly of our three Whikes, and although we could probably forage around the city to get round this problem, the spokes that ensure the integrity of the wheels will be harder to replace. Plus, our camping gear and other bits and bobs are also in the sack.

So, we may well have a delay. With only 20 days to ride on this journey each one is important, so we can only hope that the airline gods are kind to us. 

For now, we're going to do as much as we can to ensure we're ready. Ned is starting to piece together the bits of the Whike puzzle. We've just wrestled the frames and spare pieces (total weight just under 100kg) down six floors and then a few hundred metres to a wider yard (as opposed to a snug box room). 

We'll call the airport every hour to see if the bag has materialised, but until it does, we're staying in Santiago!

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The Whike Atacama expedition begins on April 2nd (we hope)

Follow the adventure on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube

The clear road out of Santiago

'Sorry, man,' groans Injeet, as his elbow rakes down my back. It's a relief, feeling empathy from a man whose fingers could snap me in half if they wanted to; his words give me comfort. At least he knows his own strength.

I've had a couple of aches and pains spreading down my leg recently, a knock-on effect from the back injury I sustained during my last expedition, so Injeet is executing a deep tissue massage, book-ended by some quite delightful foot and head reflexology, in the hope that the first five minutes of every future day don't see me hopping around like a pogo stick.

And no, I'll never do one thousand miles on one of them.

In one week's time I'll be on the road again. These last few days in Santiago have been fruitful. A backlog of work pushed aside during four weeks at sea has been reeled in, and all the little jobs needed to be ticked in order for a successful expedition to start…well, they haven't all been completed yet, but bit by bit...

Our expedition t-shirts. YES!

The brilliant Ariel Body knocked out some cool designs for our expedition t-shirts, our Whikes arrived safely with no apparent damage, a road trip determined that there was indeed a route out of Santiago that we could take without much risk of repeating the beginning of Expedition No. 6, and I've watched this video enough times to make a beer can stove with a blindfold on.

For the rest of the week I'm going to go more in-depth with the build-up to this journey, including idea conception, publicity, raising funds, gear selection and dealing with all of those fears that naturally come along no matter how many bleeding' expeditions you've done.

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The Whike Atacama expedition begins on April 2nd

Follow the adventure on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube

Back in 2010 I made my first Expedition1000 video which at the time was a little short on content.

Gladly, I've been busy these last couple of years. Paddleboarding and tandem'ing and sailing and swimming and stuff, and with 8 Expedition1000 journeys now completed I felt it was about time for a new video to explain the project and my motivations for living an adventurous life.

It's not easy summing yourself up in 6 minutes, but I had great fun rummaging back through hours of footage and trying to tell a story worth telling. I hope you enjoy it.

With 17 expeditions left to go I'm constantly working hard on my next plans and in 2014 I have three new expeditions pencilled in. The length of Chile's Atacama Desert by Whike, a completely unplanned journey around Europe, and a coastline-skirting epic around Brazil by kitesurf.