The Lady Belt Works!

Merry Christmas!

Just a quick blog today people, coming down from yesterdays sugar high still.

I have had a couple of goes with the lady's leather belt and the tyre and it works a treat. It's incredible how it isolates by legs and helps me utilise my big hairy gluteus maximi! The scary thing is that despite the strain of dragging a 4x4 tyre along the soft sand for an hour today, I feel surprisingly strong. It's like I am made for this sort of thing. I rowed surfboats for 15 years and did quite well from time to time, but to look at me, I'm not 6ft 4 and 104kg, I'm 6ft and 104kgs, hardly the svelte rowing physique! I used to feel sore in so many places after a rowing session with muscle and joint pain everywhere, but with this, I feel great.

Anyway, here are a couple of shots from my iPhone this morning. Like I said, I spend 15 years rowing surfboats and Newport Beach was my training ground for all that time. I feel like I have come back to my spiritual home again after quite a few years on the side line and I feel invigorated by the place! But I wonder how I will feel after doing 1000 laps!

Notice in these shots how the 'Non-Draggers' (beach runners with no ticker) used my drag marks to make their soft sand runs easier! Toughen up!

4X4 Tyre....Check!

G'day folks

Training has started in earnest.......OK, that's the first lie! Training hasn't started at all but I'm so close I can taste the sweat dripping through my well tended beard into the corners of my mouth!

I did, however, take possession of a big ugly 4x4 tyre this week! I tried it out with some cheap rope and my concrete driveway yesterday and yep, it's going to hurt. Today I've been trying to sort out some sort of harness to pull the thing with, which is a task in itself! I didn't realise how difficult it would be to find something suitable that I could use to pull the tyre and then the cart, once it gets built. I went to the op-shop yesterday and got me a nice lady's leather belt with metal rings on each end. I think it could work, but for a very short period of time. If not, it makes a lovely accessory. As for real harnesses, you can get something semi-suitable for pretty much everything to do with OH&S and dogs, but that's about it in Australia.

So, as they say in the classics, persistence really does pay! After retreating to cyberspace USA for inspiration, (you can seriously get ANYTHING you can think of in that country) I finally found a harness that looks perfect for the job. It has wide shoulder harnesses for comfort and the attachment is at the base of the spine where it can take 750lb which is a whole lot more than I can take....perfect! Anything in Australia that came even close to it was about $250. For this one, $US30 + $US30 postage. I could have gone with this Sarah Palin Special, but I didn't like the colour...or it's reason for existing, check out the diagram!! Awesome!

A mate of mine from school (circa 1991) told me about a device called a SPOT Connect. With this I will be able to send short notes from along the trek and you will be able to follow my progress. I wouldn't sit there and watch, more like check every few days. I dare say watching paint dry would be more entertaining!

And lastly, I MAY have found me a support crew. Details need to be ironed out but if they are able to get on board, I'll be showering them in compliments, not just for doing a big thing for Camp Quality, but so they won't bugger off and leave me (or us Seb Terry) if they get bored!

So, this afternoon, all things going well, it's tyre time on Newport Beach! I'll let you know how it goes.

Psyched!

Time To Plan a Fundraiser!

Hello People,

It's frightening the pace at which this blog has taken off, as it stands, one week in, I have ....ah.....one follower! Goodonya Pato! Let's hope week 2 showers me in fame!

Anyway, onward and upward!

My intention over the last few months was to have had a fundraiser by the end of December and have my beautiful cart built so that I could start training with it from the beginning of the new year. Well, that didn't happen. Ignorantly I expected that all I would need to do is mention it to a few people, it would magically happen and I would be dodging big rolls of $50s falling from the sky! Aaah, not quite!

So, after much dialogue with several people (with plenty more to come), it looks like my fundraiser will be held at the beginning of March, exact date to follow! If I'm going to do this thing, I'm going to give myself enough time to get it right and raise some really good dollars for Camp Quality, as well as help Seb Terry hit $100k.

As my training plan has already changed, I will now concentrate on walking with a loaded backpack and doing some hard yards on my brother's rowing machine. Once I get my cart in March, at least I will have some of the foot, knee, back, shoulder, neck etc pains out of the way and will be able to condition myself pretty quickly! It also means that I wont look like a complete numpty walking around the Northern Beaches with a cart loaded with sandbags for 8 months...just 3 or 4!! To be honest though, when you get to 37, have ample back and general body hair, grey receding hairline and nowhere on the body that would look good with a tattoo, it's really time to quit with the vanity thing and just get moving!

By the way, I completed my Padi Open Water Dive certificate last weekend. I know that has very little to do with my trek, but the course involved some underwater navigation skills with a compass! Since I will need to master navigation for my trek, it would have been nice to breeze through that skill without complication. On first attempt I got me out and back no problem, but on the second attempt, whilst in water so merky that I only had 2m of visibility, I got pretty lost. Lost I was, unable to tell if I was ascending or not until I had the presence of mind to read my dive computer. Up was over my shoulder rather than straight up from my head which was a surprise! Anyway, after searching for my buddy for a minute, I raised my purge valve (don't get smutty) and was about to start for the surface when I caught a glimmer of fluro orange in the distance and was saved!

Point is, my navigation skills need a lot of work and I need to spend some time with a few army mates, just so I don't have to press that very embarrassing emergency beacon button at any point on the trek! (shiver!)

Thanks so much for reading Pato, you are a champion!

Dale

p.s. Since I began writing this blog 2 hours ago (duties with a 3 month old interrupted me) several more of my mates have signed up to this blog! Thanks lads, now pass it on and lets get this loco in motion!

I Had This Idea............

Hello People,

First thing's first, a quick introduction! My name is Dale Mervin, I'm 37 years old, I have two awesome little boys and a very awesome and beautiful wife. I work in a pretty awesome job that I love (freelance photographer), I live in a pretty awesome house, in a pretty awesome street, in a pretty awesome suburb. My life so far....pretty awesome. I have travelled and lived over seas, I have worked in several different industries, been a surf lifesaver for 15 years and I'm now my own boss doing my own hours. It's just great, although, the work Christmas Party this year consisted of me, a 6 pack of beer, a pizza, a Santa hat, and a few episodes of Mythbusters!

So, that's me in a nutshell...........not very interesting! Despite having a great life, I haven't really done anything interesting that anyone else hasn't done! I reckon I saved quite a few people from drowning as a lifesaver, but so has every other lifesaver. I have travelled to about 35 countries, but so has almost everyone I know. I have worked in a variety of jobs and finally work in the one I like.........it's all a bit familiar, I'm just missing the 0.4 of a child I need to become the real 'Mr Average'.

As incredibly grateful as I am for my life and how incredibly lucky I am to have it, I need something else, I want something else that when I'm 90 I can tell my grand kids about and they won't say, 'So did I!'. It's all a bit cliche I know, but what do you expect from an almost Mr Average? Hang on, does that make me Mr Below Average???

And so, we come to the crux of the blog, the reason you have endured my banal life-story to this point! I, yes me, am planning a trek across The Simpson Desert unassisted and carrying all my supplies for the 17-20 days it should take to cross the 1100 dunes and almost 450km! Crazy? Possibly. Midlife crisis? Definitely! But as strange as this may sound and having never been to The Outback in my life (unless you call the year 9 school trip to Hill End 'Outback') I have always felt a hunger to spend time out there. I think, without sounding too cliche again, it has been calling me all my life and the time has come to answer the call. Maybe it's the fabled and very much unproven indigenous bloodline, maybe it's my ability to circular breath on a didgeridoo (I don't know how, I just could), or maybe it's simply my life long love of that mighty Aussie band Midnight Oil! Whatever it is, it's getting louder and the opportunity has finally presented itself, so I'm going!

'The opportunity?', I hear you ask? Well, an old mate of mine is currently about half way through his bucket list of '100Things' he wants to do before he dies, and one of those things is to raise $100,000 for the children's charity Camp Quality. Not only is Seb on a quest to complete his own 'bucket list', he is also helping other people complete some of their own bucket lists, and I happen to be one of these crazy people!

To conclude my brief opening blog and hopefully tweak your interest in returning to it, I think a rundown is necessary!

My main goal is to raise as much money as I possibly can to help Seb Terry raise $100,000 for Camp Quality and at the same time, cross the famous Simpson Desert, off tracks and unassisted, ending up in Birdsville (more specifically, The Birdsville Pub). To do this, I will need to raise approximately $10,000 to build a cart, pay for a support vehicle to 'shadow' me via tracks that may well be 100km from where I am at any time, supplies, safety gear, emergency beacon, sat phone, flights to The Alice and out of Birdsville etc etc. Now, of course I will try and get as much of all that donated as possible, so any money that I raise over what I spend will go straight into the kitty for Camp Quality.

At the moment, this is a solo trek, however, there may be a mystery special guest appearance accompanying me in an effort to tick off his Number 57 'Cross a Desert' and raise even more money for Camp Quality. No clues as to who it is, I'll let you work that one out for yourself!

My goal in dollars is open ended,  but whatever the final outcome, this is a fairly ambitious task and I hope you will all stick with me through what I hope will be, the journey of a lifetime. Not just the trek itself, but the whole fund raising process, the building of the cart, the training, everything. I even hope that when I get back, you might want to join me for a beer at the charity auction that I hope to run where I sell prints of some of the images I intend to capture in the outback.

The window of opportunity to do this trek is June/July. Outside these times is too hot so I really need to get cracking. To the fund raiser!

Can't wait to get my hands dirty!

Dale