Few people can express a 14year plan on the back of a beer mat. I however, excel at this. Truth be told, I was capable of producing a plan on the back of a beer mat because I had little or no resources with which to implement an extensive plan. It was not so much of a plan as a list of obvious statements.
The earliest component was perhaps the most important. A belief in oneself and one's ability to overcome just about anything placed in one's path. With such a confident starting point the terrible void of resources can be overcome. Also, one is left with a beautifully simple plan by default.
In military circles there is a popular saying “the most stringent plan, will collapse on contact with the enemy”. Meaning, for our purposes, life will throw all kinds of unpredictable curve balls at you from all directions, and just when you think you have all your angles covered, very quickly things will unravel. Be ready for it, it's not if, it's when. Also, the longer the time frame the greater the probability and range of the unexpected.
The solution is ‘flexibility’ or ‘fluidity’. These can be found in a simple plan. Any plan that is to survive the real world must be flexible, able to adapt with changing circumstances. If you have developed a plan with a facet that is reliant on a single solution, and if that solution is not met, it endangers the overall scheme. The plan is balanced on a knife edge. Keep hardened rules to a minimum. Seek the maximum number of options to solutions possible. Always thinking eggs and baskets.
My plan was largely based on my confidence in my ability to keep moving forward. It had to be: by the time I was to leave the UK and execute the plan I had less resources than I had when I began planning. I had no support of any kind and only about US$800 to my name. The expedition had no internal structure - it was just me and the verbal well wishes of family and friends.
The Odyssey was governed by two simple rules: first, I was not allowed to return home until arriving on foot, making it a continuous endeavour; second, I could not use any form of transport to advance. In theory the entire route was possible based on my ability to tackle three distinct geological gaps or lynch pins that joined the major continents involved. Those are the Darien Gap, between South Central America, the Bering Strait, between America and Asia, and finally the Channel Tunnel, between Europe and the United Kingdom.
The Odyssey was governed by two simple rules; first, I was not allowed to return home until arriving on foot making it a continues endeavor, second, I could not use any form of transport to advance.
In deliberation, and regarding funding and support, father and I were confident that if I could make it as far as the US border my fortune would change. As we believed I would need to provide the blood sweat and tears to gain the confidence of others and show that the objective was achievable. I had a simple route plan we dubbed the route corridor. This was little more than a wide swath of possible routes within a region. I chose the path of least resistance, avoided the lore of seemingly more adventurous options for the case of simplicity. There would be sufficient adventure regardless. But when all told, this was about been able to get up and move each day and having the confidence to deal with all the details as they arise by adapting on the ground. Being so flexible, and being able to deal with the unexpected, means carrying more equipment. Anticipating a heavier load, I designed a wheeled trolley, nicknamed the Beast, to help carry that weight. This would help prevent excessive wear and tear on knees and hips over long time frames.
When doing the math for an approximate 36,000mile journey on foot, time and distance prove a true challenge. Over such distances and time frames one will always arrive at a different answer each time I would review the numbers. Ultimately the answer was between 36-32,000miles over a twelve year plan. The twelve year number was dependent on the Bering Strait, the half way point. The Bering Strait was seen as the true physical challenge to the theory that a man could travel on foot from the bottom of South America, unassisted by transport, and how that played out would determine the number of years in total. It was always assumed that I could find myself repeating failed attempts before reaching Russia. This would involve one attempt a year. . There had been numerous failed attempts over many years, including the ‘Bering Strait Odyssey’ in 2005. The hope was that I could learn from these experiences, and indeed, my plan was largely based on where we believed others had gone wrong.
"Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small steps"
- Henry Ford
Before this largely unpredictable crossing or gap, the route had been broken down into stages. The whole route broke down into 8 stages in total, the first 6 being the majority of the Americas. South America was split in half into 'stage one' and 'stage two', one year being given to each stage. I arrived at the end of each stage one year 'to the day', confirming our understanding and validity of the plan. I arrived in Fairbanks Alaska on the six year make as predicted. Stage five however, was an unknown. This included the crossing of Alaska, the Bering Strait and the Arctic tundra of Russia until Yakutsk. Stage five has indeed been unpredictable. Crossing Alaska was more of a challenge than previously thought. Where as Dimitri and I made history on the Bering Strait at the first attempt, but then became bogged down in Russia with financial and legal issues combined with terrain and seasonal travel.
Once moving again the numbers and timings will settle down to a more workable plan. The prediction is an estimated five years to reach the Channel Tunnel, gap 3, and the last 21miles for home.
As for the financing of this odyssey it was going to be a very flexible game. We had rightly assumed the border of the US would be a critical junction, as funding for stage 4 and 5 would be critical. However, I had assumed wrongly that the second leap in support we could expect was the successful crossing of the Bering Strait. Just before and just after the crossing we lost our commercial funding. I lost that support over night. So while we have always supposed stage five could create delays, we had not foreseen these particular issues as the predicted delays.
While the Odyssey had prided itself on been able to get by on boot strings and sticky tape, it is lost on no one that our situation has to improve and move beyond the funding ditch. Immediate funding is necessary, at least in the short term, to get this journey back on its tracks. Another popular military analogy is "amateurs think tactics, professionals think logistics”. Hard charging the ramparts has proved successful and got me over the half way point and our most daunting challenges. However, our neglect of a solid foundation of support has come back to bite us.
"It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop"
