From STUFF magazine out of Boston:

“The Amazon Pilgrim”

The globe-trotting adventure seeker has scaled towering mountains, trained in martial arts in Thailand, and celebrated a birthday dodging angry bulls (to think, the rest of us just ride them at Liquor Store). But it was his recent 10-week solo bike ride through 6000 kilometers of the Brazilian Amazon, a journey rapturously documented on his website (amazonpilgrim.com), which got our adrenaline pumping in all the right ways.

Does your experience translate into sex appeal? Hell yeah! Much of what got me through my trip was confidence. Now I’m pretty sure I can handle most situations. Facing a jaguar in a thunderstorm at dusk in the middle of the Amazon alone and coming out unscathed is pretty bad-ass. Who wouldn’t dig that?

Danger is sexy: what’s the most dangerous spot you’ve been in? I pounded a few beers and got in a bullfighting ring on a volcanic island in Nicaragua. The ground was all mud. It was violently raining. When the bull charged, the idea was to jump up the retaining wall to avoid being gored. Absolutely thrilling!

With all the “roughing it,” what’s been your least “sexy” experience? Shimmying my cycling shorts off and running for a roadside ditch “bathroom break” as I cycled through the desert with a raging fever.

Ready? “The wildest place I’ve hooked up is…” The middle of a river.

“The sexiest celebrity is…” Kate Winslet is my go-to fantasy girl. She’s all woman with her curves, composure, and class. I’d cycle back across the Amazon for a drink with her!

The Boston Phoenix ran a column on page 6 this week briefly highlighting my trip. So far this is my first print article after many attempts at contacting various publications. There are a few statements that are off (for instance I biked east to west) but all in all its cool to see the story as a tangible entity in my hands. If you’re in the Boston area find a red Phoenix box and check it out.

You can find an online copy at Boston Phoenix as well. Here is a link to the article titled The Bicycle Feat.

This is a rough elevation profile from Puerto Maldonado, in South East Peru in the Amazon basin, to Nasca which is located on the coastal desert. The profile shows the rise into the Andes, the numerous ups and downs as I crossed hundreds of miles through the range, and the descent back to sea level around the city of Nasca.

The last day in the Andes I had a roughly 60 mile downhill ride from 13-14,000 ft. You can see from the profile there is one final climb to the Pampas Galeras before the profile shows a smooth curve downhill to below a couple thousand feet elevation.

This is a cross section from a day on the Transamazonica between Novo Rapartimento and Pacaja in Brazil. My first day on the Transamazonica proved to be intensely hilly. The TransAm was filled with brutally steep, frequent, but short climbs. Looking back I remember them as being much more demoralizing than the gradual climbs in the Andes.

My longest day was between Humaita and Porto Velho. I made over 130 miles due to the smooth pavement and flatter road. Here is the profile for that section of the ride.