Tuesday, May 31, 2011

FlyWaTüt? & Powerslidepackrafting

Time has come.
Time to get back on track.
Time to dream, plan and do it...

I thought, it would be a good idea to have some "down to earth" and real man work job after some theoretical & mental brain washing & damaging MBA studies, finished Aug2010. So one of the first things I did, was to purchase an old car I can put my hands on. And yes, it surley did do the job: After spending every free minute in the last 6 months on restoring the Volvo, I feel fully healed and released. Pleasure to have it finsihed - including quite some moments I enjoyed doing it.... but for sure, I'm glad it is over: Been there, done that, and no need or desire to do it again :-)

Inspiration!Did you ever see what they are doing with a "rubber" boat?
Did you hear about packrafting?
Check out Alastairs Humphreys blog http://www.alastairhumphreys.com/
For me, he is inspiring! Full respect for his impressive crossing of Island by feet and packraft - cool stuff, looks quite taff - but admirable: http://www.alastairhumphreys.com/adventures/transiceland/
Not to forget to mention Roman Dial with his amazing packraft adventures. Outstanding! http://packrafting.blogspot.com/.

"Unfortunatley" - I'm not living in such an amazing spledid outdoor scenery as in Alaska, and even if I would, it still would be very challenging to do what those keen adventures used to do. But hey - it did inspire to think about what could be possible here in Europe, and how streching my own limits within opportunities offered by the alps... but first step first: I payed for the inspiration by investing some of the printed paper, sitting bored & worthless on my bank account, into a new toy. It bought me a cute Yukon Yak Alpacka packraft, which you can find here http://www.alpackaraft.com/index.cfm (check out their friends tab to see more links about packrafting).

Cool - now I'm could raft with my back-pack and back-pack with my raft! So let's try it and start, what Alastair would potentially call a Mini-Micro-City-Adventure: Ambitious, I stuffed the new toy in my back-pack and started skating directly off my flat 10km south along the river Isar in Munich.

See the surfer on the picture in the back ground?
A surfer in Munich?
Yeahhp, thats right: Munich is a surfer's mecca :-)
Actually, there are two spots in Munich on the Isar river, where it is possible to surf on a "static" wave. Well, it is not the same as in Australia, Hawaii or California - but so what: Cool to have the opportunity to surf middle in a city!

Unpacked my new toy, inflated it and paddled back into the city. Love it. Great day :-) Still not Alaska - but so what!? A luxury, to live in a city offering such opportunities ;-)







Whats next?
I want to realize a mini FlieWaTüüt adventure.
Whats an FlieWaTüüt???

The FlieWaTüüt was introduced 1967 in a childreen book. A small boy invents an device he could fly with (flying in german: fliegen), swim in the water (water in german: wasser), and drive on land (the "Tüüt" represents a blowing horn of an car / a vehicle for land driving) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9laL0ZmiJY&playnext=1&list=PLBFE8A46061EE399E)

Thats what I want to do with the new packraft toy:










  1. Start cycling in Munich 60km south to the montain ridge in Lenggries / Brauneck.




  2. Paraglide 50km into the alps to the sorce of the Isar river.




  3. Packraft back to Munich.

1 comment:

David.H said...

Cool! saw your post on the Packrafting forum... reckon inner city rivers will be worth a go. There is the Wter of Leith in Edinburgj (where I live) so maybe i'll give that a try. Thanks for sharing.

Dave
gridnorth.blogspot.com