The following comment left in my guestbook is worthy of closer examination:

 Mary Sep 18^th 2009

 “Okay, so you’ve told us the problem, but you haven’t told us the solution that you are working toward to solve it. What do you plan to do about this issue of funding and Russian bureaucracy? Sitting around in Mexico waiting for an angel to come and sponsor you isn’t proactive. To be honest, you seem a little defeated. In this day of instant and global communication, you have so many options and opportunities!”

 I don’t like to boar people with endless sermons on the politics and business of what goes on behind the scenes as it bores the crap even out of me.  However, as this plays out and drags on I can understand why I am accused, almost daily, of just sitting around on beaches in Mexico.   

 I hope now everyone dose understand the challenges and reasons behind the challenges, yes I have spoke of it at length.  Largely because its difficult for a lot of people to see why these issues are challenges at all.  

 So, lets look at events from the point of return from Russia May 2008.   The day I returned to Alaska everything went pear shaped after some, seemingly minor misunderstanding between me, supporters and my friend in Alaska who had been supporting and aiding me and the expedition for years and was working on a press release with current supporting companies.  The problem was timing and content of the press release, the result was my ‘friend’ finally finding a away out of been involved with the expedition by sending an email that painted me as one of humanities worst, and include a supporter of the expedition.   The 8 year struggle with Catalina came crashing to an end the following day.  Not a good start to the summer. 

 The summer began by looking at our usual contacts and following up on some lose ends that where left open on the return to Russia.  For example,  a prim time US news network ABC had suddenly become interested and was talking about producing something for either a news show called 20/20 or (as was most likely) a program called ‘Night Line’.  These offered us the greatest exposure we would have had up until that point and was fantastic news.  However, as is normally the case, I  was just about to return to Russia and as such the project was put on hold.  On returning I was told ABC had ‘lost interest’ the project was dropped.  In a similar fashion, correspondence and plans with a documentary film maker where dropped do to ‘lack of interest’, see if you spot a theme developing here?  In the mean time we had started requesting help from the Russian authorities to obtain a visa waver to over come the new visa restrictions the Russians had just implemented, a major stumbling block.   Contacts had put me in contact with a US company that seemed very interested in getting on board.  Again things looked promising.  It turned out they had been excited by our web traffic, this turned out to be a mistake on their part and with realizing the error with the numbers the interest dwindled.

 Around the same time we begin discussions with a middle east  based PR firm that believed we (the expedition) could be of interest to a large property developer out of Dubai U.A.E.  This became the expedition focus.  By now I had to start thinking about leaving the US as my visa was counting down.  Short on cash, none of our options where good until a good friend asked if I was interested in been his co-pilot for a drive down to Tucson Arizona.  This was the exit plan out of the US.  I even had a good friend in Arizona and Las Vegas I could visit.  Mexico now became my focus.  In the mean time an editor from National Geographic was interested in running a story.  National Geographic had never shown any interest before. 

 On the drive down we stopped off in Las Vegas to visit friends there within a few days had a meeting with a business entrepreneur and bank manager.  These friends of a friend saw potential to invest in the expedition and organized them selves  into the Expedition Management team, providing the expertise backing and support the expedition had been lacking for the last 9 years, how cool was that?.  In the mean time the deal in the U.A.E was looking very promising.  The company had doubled the amount of financial support we had requested in a proposal we had put to them.  It was the stuff dreams where made of!   I could almost start packing for Russia!

 Then the financial crisis hit!  And everything vanished over night, like waking from a wonderful dream to reality.  Oh, and National Geographic…wait for it…had lost interest.  The BBC were not interested in running anything until the expedition had made it far enough into Russia that I was accessible.   

 Mexico

With the end of the world upon us, everything went silent.  We still had not heard anything from Russia months later.  We, or rather father, (when hes not working) had started making a list of potential contacts in Russia that might be able to help us, via embassy’s.  One by one, dead end after dead end, and so it continued. 

 Now into winter.  Hits on my website were dropping.  Money running out and the reality of my situation hitting home, the winter was lost and I would not be returning to Russia, I suddenly faced a very bad situation.  I got a job working with a new business that opened here in Melaque Mexico. Two young yachting coaches  from Canada opened a boating school and I earned $10 a day helping out.  In the mean time I was faced with some very real questions as to the future of the expedition.  No one seemed interested?  Not even those who’s business included travel and adventure, non of the adventure travel media networks not even boot companies that make boots for people to walk in over long distances…HELLO! THERE IS A PROBLEM HERE!!!!  But I could not figure it out.  By now im becoming some what paranoid, is it me personally?  Maybe!  A lot of soul searching followed. 

 Ultimately I believed the answer consisted of a number of issues, but one in particular.   I don’t walk for a cause.  This had dogged me for years.  It would appear the ‘Challenge’ is dead.  No longer can an individual simply set forth on ‘The great challenge’ without ‘saving the world’ at the same time!   I fail to dance to the crack of the Politically Correct whip, and as such, I am told I cannot expect to find support.   I am virtually black listed.  I talk about this on the website and I am not going to cover it here again.  

 Finally I hear back from Russia with a simple polite automated response ‘no you get 3 months’.  The boat school folds so I no longer get my $10 a day.  I try speaking and give a presentation to tourists, this works and I make about $400 in one presentation to keep me going, I start to look at the possibility of doing more talks in Puerto Vallarta, as the tourist season ends here.  In the mean time the expedition is going throw an identity crisis.  I am pushing for a major overhaul of the expedition as I believe we cannot sell the expedition in its current state.  The question becomes just how much of a change?  I want to rebuild from scratch as I don’t believe we have anything to lose.  However, other don’t necessarily agree with me and the discussion drags on.  There is just no interest in the expedition out there.  The expedition is not marketable.  At this point it becomes impossible to even try sell the expedition whilst we are not sure who we are or what we are saying.  At this point, during the summer, there is an uncomfortable period where very little seems to happen.  Where we don’t seem to know what to do next.  It was early 2009 when and I realise I am not even in a potion to look for sponsors without clear path forward, message and image. What I knew for sure was that whatever we had been doing was not working.  

 At this point I am facing the bottom of the barrel and looking at going broke very soon.  Moving from place to place with the help of friends to keep a roof over my head, cutting down on food intake, faced with either spending my remaining time on looking at making a dollar or on the expedition problem.  website hits reach an all time low.  How much time is been devoted to learning Russian?  Not a god dam minute.  Not while I am relearning Spanish for sure.  Friends and contacts find more film documentary film makers who might be interested in Canada.   

 Plans move forward for possible talks in Vallarta, I find a venue, but it will cost!, I begin looking at making posters, numbers and marketing possibilities aimed at tourists in Vallarta.  Then some one gets sick in Mexico city and it’s the ‘End of days’ all over again.  As tourist leave Mexico like rats leaping from a sinking ship and Swine flue panic spreads like a fire storm, I toss my speaking plans into the street as restaurants bars and gathering places are closed by order of the government of Mexico.  Catalina finds her self a new boy friend. 

 I see the website as a critical asset and the exclusive point of focus in reshaping the expedition and injecting some life back into it.  Mail2web who have housed and run the expedition website for 7 years have their own problems and cannot afford me any time to work on a new website.  I spend time looking for help as I do not have a clue how I would even begin to build a inter web thingy, it leads to nothing.  Around this time father finds me some money from supporters in the UK giving me a few months breathing space.  I decide to finally cut lose from our long standing web support and realise its time to go it along, I have little choice.  Just not sure how.  The last number of months have been devoted 24/7 to learning and building a website.  I am down to one meal a day,  this is badly effecting my running timings, I have finished the last of my vitamin supplements I can afford.  And once again face bankruptcy.   I have asked North Face for a tent as I am soon to lose my accommodation.  We have burned through our Russian contacts both official and back door and have made no progress after than more than a year. 

 With the website now up I turn back to sponsors, despite the fact that the cause issue is still not resolved to satisfaction.  I still have a 12 point todo list of work for the website. To day I add create PDF broacher to use with the marketing plan I am trying to get of the ground, to my to do list.   Local MPs from my home town of Hull are drafting a letter to the commonwealth office to see if its possible to convince the Russians to issue a humanitarian visa waver.   Here I must confess in having little or no faith in successfully avoiding a 3 month limit on the visa.  This means I must find a financial partner if I am to get back on the ground.  My son and only child, who has stopped communicating with my mother, this year is found and informs us he has no interest in talking to me.

 Some of you out there will have been schooled in marketing and business.  All this may seem simple basic and perhaps even pathetic.  I have not.  Not only, but 50% of the time I will spell marketing and business wrong because im dyslectic and only vaguely educated at all.  As such the simplest operation, like this email, which has taken the last 5 hours to put together, takes a lot of time.  I am 40 years old, nothing I write is sent to anyone without it first been filtered through father to be proof read and corrected.  I am not as capable as most of you.  I don’t have your abilities.  But im on it, and im trying.  All of the above is just half the story, and to clarify, the solutions appear to be:

 1, Develop, expand website and rebuild traffic to shape Odyssey image to enable marketing plan (time).

2, Push Odyssey to relevant company marketing departments using new website, image, message (email PDF)

3, Keep probing for and working new Russian contacts  (father)  

4, Develop cause  

5, Do it all without spending a penny

6, Keep smiling

 Other than that, I just site around in Mexico waiting for an angle.  Well I would if I believed in them, but I don’t.  like I don’t believe that things happen without you making them happen.  As for appearing ‘defeated’, I am not sure what the word means!  You may have to elaborate.   

 Here are the challenges we live for, expected and embrace!