Hello to all!
My unconventional sport is mega-distance race walking.
I have walked across the Sahara desert, and from China, across Laos into Burma. I've also walked from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, through the jungles of Panama. To celebrate my daughters wedding I walked six hundred miles from Tijuana to San Francisco in 23 days. I have also completed thirty six marathons and fifty ultra marathons where the distances vary from fifty miles to races lasting ten days. [see StrideToTheTop.com]
All this was just a primer toward achieving one of my life time goals - to utilize my race walking skill to make an important contribution to humanity.
I have long been distressed that two million people die annually from Malaria, a preventable disease. The human toll inflicted by Malaria is just too great to be allowed to continue. If we are successful in genetically altering the anopheles mosquito, laser disintegrating mosquitoes, and developing a vaccine these same technologies may be able to be deployed to eliminate other mosquito born diseases such as Dengue, Rift Valley and Yellow Fever, West Nile Virus, encephalitis and other insect borne diseases. The resulting contribution to humanity would be enormous.
"My Dream Walk" combines the goal of combating Malaria with the quest to walk from Point Barrow to Key West. I have divided this 6000 mile walking adventure walk up into fourteen stages.