Calling All Cartophiles

I have to admit to having a bit of a thing for maps and charts; I find them utterly fascinating and can lose myself in them in just the same way that I can stare for hours at a fire or the ocean, and I don't think that I'm alone in this.  

Close your eyes, stick a pin in, and make a plan to go there.

Maps have been with us for thousands of years, allowing us to locate ourselves and place ourselves egotistically at the centre of our own personal universe, however big or small.  They allow us to travel without moving anything more than our eyes, faster than the speed of light, shrinking geography to a manageable scale and making every single one of us an explorer.  

Maps and charts transcend languages and, I would imagine, predate human speech - how else do you think homo sapiens who'd not yet figured out how to organise their grunts into primitive language were able to direct each other to food sources and co-ordinate hunts?  I'd like to think that they grabbed a stick and used it to draw directions in the dirt - the original mud map.  At some point our artistic interpretations of the landscape around us took to the skies and showed our world as the gods saw it.  We looked up to map the constellations, and we did our best to look down, taking an educated guess at what lay over the unknown horizon and beneath the sea.  Where there were blank spaces yet to be explored, cartographers used their imaginations and either made something up or drew a monster.

Both my grandfather and my great-grandfather on my mother's side worked at the Ordnance Survey. Somewhere there is a wonderful photograph of my grandfather in North Africa during WWII surveying as part of his role as a map maker for the Royal Engineers.  Perhaps my appreciation of cartography is partly down to genetic memory?

Maps take many forms and information can be presented in many different ways, the most obvious being the two flavours that world maps come in: political or geographical, one being subject to the short term nature of humanity and the lines that we draw in the sand and the other showing what is physically present but only in a narrowly defined scientific category such as vegetation or elevation.  No map can show everything and therefore no map is perfect, and in fact most of the information that we are shown is presented over a flawed template because it is so difficult to present the surface of a sphere undistorted on a flat surface.  Gerardus Mercator produced the best attempt to date in 1569 and that still forms the basis for our view of a flat world map 445 years later, but there's no getting around the fact that Greenland just isn't that big.  If a map is conveying information where location is one of the key considerations, then how it is presented is down to the cartographer.  When Harry Beck sat down at his drafting table in 1931 to produce a new map of the London Underground he took inspiration from an electronic circuit board and spaced each station more or less equally, showing how stations related to each other across the entire network rather than laying them out geographically.  It's an iconic design that has been printed more than any other map in history and is absolutely fit for purpose, but you couldn't use it to navigate yourself overland from Hammersmith to Upminster very easily.  All the same, I don't understand why I've never seen anybody waiting for the tube with Harry's famous coloured lines tattooed on their forearm.  

Other maps show such information as GDP per capita, weather patterns, military spending by country, place names sized in relation to population and how many people are currently online.  The list of what we can convey using a map goes on and on, and there are many different ways in which we can do it.

I have no idea how I manage to get any work done with this lot stuck up in front of my face above my desk.  W.Graham Arader III (the most famous, wealthy and contentious map collector/dealer in the world) probably doesn't have anything to worry about, but I am pretty fond of some of my maps and charts and the day dreams that they trigger.  Current favourites include the "Anti-Piracy Planning Chart" and "Time Zones of Antarctica" map.  

I recently picked up a second hand book called "The War Atlas", a volume of "carto-journalism" produced as part of a series illustrating inequality by a socialist publishing house.  The spread shown above shows the post Cold-War distribution of nuclear weapons (c.1982) looking down on the North Pole.  It is equal parts fascinating and terrifying.

Maps do an awful lot of things and one of the things that they do incredibly well is arouse curiosity where they are meant to sate it.  They tell us enough about a place to pique our interest but never transport us there physically.  They are the ultimate cause of itchy feet, and for that I love them.

My oldest friend gave me this beautiful three dimensional relief nautical chart for my birthday last year.  He said that he'd tried to find one for somewhere that I'd visited on a surf trip but then, as my birthday drew near, he panicked and "just bought the coolest looking one that they had" and in doing so inadvertently added another destination to my "must visit" list.

Judith Schalansky's Atlas of Remote Islands is one of those books that I dearly wished I had written.  I think that I would probably have written a slightly different subtitle if I had been the author though:  

"Fifty Islands I have not visited but intend to".

 The stuff that dreams are made of/dual purpose bedside lighting and inspiration.

 If you want to see an incredible collection of maps then check out "40 maps that will help you make sense of the world" over on Twisted Sifter.  They are incredible and many of them are very thought provoking.  

And, if you're looking for some bedtime reading in old-fashioned paper and ink form then "On The Map" by Simon Garfield will tell you everything you ever thought you wanted to know and then some about cartography in it's many guises.  That, and an Atlas.

Adventure-mobile

Most of us, most of the time, go looking for waves on four wheels.  Whilst I'd certainly love to arrive at a remote surf spot by boat, bike or boots more often, the reality is that more often than not I find myself throwing my surfboards in or on a car and driving.  I almost always wish that I was going in a Land Rover.  Big but not really big enough to easily transport surfboards inside, expensive and thirsty for fuel,  they're probably not the most practical option but the day-dreamer in me loves the idea of driving along miles of deserted beach scanning the waves for a perfect set-up, fording rivers and settling down to sleep in a roof tent at the end of the day.

Developed in 1947 by the Rover car company in an attempt to skirt post-war materials rationing and make up for the drop in sales of it's luxury cars, the Land Rover was designed to be a light agricultural and utility vehicle, something of a cross between a light truck and a tractor.  Intended only for a short production run of two or three years until the luxury car market had recovered, Land Rover developed into its own successful brand and in 1992 Land Rover claimed that 70% of vehicles produced were still in use.  The original Series I was designed to minimise the need for materials that were still rationed following WWII (such as steel), and to use simple production techniques and tooling; the bodywork was handmade from an aluminium/magnesium alloy (called Birmabright) which is still used today due to it's light weight and resistance to corrosion, and flat panels and constant radius curves were used to make it simpler to cut and form by hand around simple jigs.  The chassis was welded from box-section steel for ease, and the first vehicles off the production line were all offered in a single colour option of military green because the only paint that the company could get hold of was army surplus.

Perhaps it's because of their iconic design and the fact that each successive model has remained true to their original utilitarian function that Land Rovers are still so desirable.  It's certainly not for their top speed or road tax band.  But having seen one of these boxes on four-wheels as the workhorse carrying so many epic overland expeditions (on the search for surf or not) across deserts, over mountains and through jungles, it would be difficult to put any other vehicle at the top of your dream kit-list when planning a trip that you want to title an expedition.

Set Sail For Adventure

"A ship is safe in harbour, but that's not what ships are for."

William G.T. Shedd

It's that time of year when resolutions are made and plans for the year ahead start bubbling away.  Whether your plans are set close to home or further afield, just make sure that you get out there and enjoy yourself.  The world is best enjoyed first hand rather than through a screen after all.  Wishing you all a very happy, fulfilling, productive and adventurous 2014, I hope to see you out there.

Humble Pie For One

I would say that I am a pretty patient person, at least with most things besides computers.  

I've been waiting for the perfect combination of quite specific conditions for a couple of summers now with the hope of taking the boat that I built, an outrigger sailing canoe, on a short overnight expedition to surf, spearfish and camp onboard. I won't go into the details of my plan, but because of my planned route and the nature of my trip I had to wait for the stars to align with favourable winds, tides, swell and weather all falling over a 48 hour period.  Last summer I took the boat on a maiden voyage along a short stretch of my route; this spring I tested the boat's abilities to launch through surf and return again, using the experience to make some minor modifications; then this July the weather was perfect however I had work commitments.  I scoured the weather forecasts daily.  I started to become impatient.  In mid-August there was a day that looked do-able; not ideal, but I thought that I could give it a shot.

My alarm was set early and I got up in the dark.  I'd set the boat up on the beach just above the high tide line the evening before, so I arrived early and loaded it whilst the local small-boat fishermen prepared their boats and reversed them into the water.  I launched twice, and I returned twice.  I never did make it to the beach where I had planned on surfing, or to the small cove where I had intended to moor up and sleep under a boom tent on the hiking boards strapped across the outrigger arms.  I spent hours at sea out in the bay battling against the wind, swell and the power of a big spring tide.  I couldn't sail upwind so had to drop the sail and paddle, but for a solid hour I made no progress against the elements.  I measured my progress against the flow of the pushing tide by triangulating my position with a lobster-pot buoy and the westernmost point of a small bay.  If I paused my paddling the wind pushed the bow around so that I was broadside on to the large swells so I had to pull relentlessly.  Continuing to my intended camp spot would have been foolhardy so I turned around, put the mast back up, raised sail and then slipped.  One leg went overboard into the water and I landed heavily on the gunnel.  With the sail up and a following wind it took me less than ten minutes to retrace my course which had taken over three hours in the other direction.  

Back on the beach one of the fishermen, Lloyd, told me that I did the right thing coming back - he didn't think it a good day to be out in a little boat like mine without a motor.  The next day the bruise under my leg came out, a proper deep one the size of a dinner plate, and I ached from the hours of paddling.  I felt pretty humbled by the entire experience.  What must it've been like for the early Polynesians who explored the Pacific Ocean on boats not dissimilar to mine, or for modern day fishermen who still use these boats across the Pacific and Indian Oceans to scrape a living?  The Ocean is massive…my small boat was like a grain of rice in a swimming pool out in the bay, and yet only ever a mile or so from safe harbour. 

And now the seasons have started to turn.  Perhaps next summer...

The Explorers Club

 Oh, now here is a club that I wish I could get in to.  The Explorers Club was founded in New York City in May 1904 by a group of men active in exploration, at the request of Henry Collins Walsh.  It's aims were to "unite explorers in the bonds of good fellowship and to promote the work of exploration by every means in it's power".  It is an international multidisciplinary professional society whose members are committed to the scientific exploration of land, sea, air and space.  But membership is hard to come by.  For instance, amongst the accomplishments of it's members past and present are titles such as "first to the North Pole", "first to the South Pole", "first to the summit of Everest", "first to the deepest point in the ocean" and "first to the surface of the moon".  A daunting set of hats to hang one's own up alongside, I think you'll agree.

Their Headquarters, at 46 East 70th Street looks like the the club house for some sort of exclusive society from the start of the last century; which in essence, is exactly what it is.  The virtual tour on the club's website shows trophy rooms filled with the sort of artefacts and curiosities that should technically class the place as a museum.  Many of these Trophies are the taxidermied remains of beautiful and rare animals that these days many of us consider grotesque and unnecessary, but at the start of last century were considered necessary proof of a scientific discovery and a requirement in order to determine each new exotic discovery's place in the biological order of things.  But stuffed animals aside, who doesn't want to hang out in a place place with dark, wood panelled drawing rooms filled with wingback chairs, trinkets and curiosities, a place whose staircase is lined with portraits of famous explorers and which has a dedicated flag room.  I quite fancy the idea of turning up, ordering a drink and sitting down in between Indiana Jones and Jaques Cousteau.

The Trophy Room.

Roy Chapman Andrrews (1884-1960) personifies the typical 20th Century explorer.  He spent his entire career at the American Museum of Natural History, which he eventually became the director of, as well holding the presidency of the Explorers Club from 1931-1934.  He led five expeditions to Mongolia's Gobi desert and discovered the first ever fossil of a complete nest of dinosaur eggs.  And he wore a rad hat.

James Cameron and his Deepsea Challenger submersible, image courtesy of National Geographic.

A few weeks ago, on March 16th at their annual Explorers Club Dinner, the Explorers Medal was awarded to filmmaker James Cameron (of Titanic and Avatar fame) for his 7 mile (11km) dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.  The annual dinner is famous for it's exotic menu which this year featured delicacies such as goats eye martini, pickled bull penis and strawberries dipped in white chocolate with black maggot sprinkles.  

All of a sudden, the local pub doesn't quite cut it does it?

All images courtesy of The Explorers Club apart from James Cameron, via National Geographic.

"Sunshine Sunday" Criteria

Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia.  By Chris Burkard for Surfer Magazine.

Today is "Sunshine Sunday" in the UK, the day when travel agents and tour operators prepare for around two million Brits to look for the light at the end of the wintery tunnel and book their summer holidays.  Maybe you're planning 2013's movements today also, and looking forward to the waves yet to come?
  
Trips, projects, expeditions, adventures - call them what you will (although if we're being picky, you can't plan adventures, they're what happens when a trip or expedition goes wrong), many of us populate our daydreams with these and while away the boredom of long, lonely drives or any other mind-numbing downtime planning and scheming.
This year I'm setting myself some criteria for the projects on my to-do list.  Each trip, if at all possible, has to fall into one of the following two categories:

• An ordinary trip done in an interesting way.
• An interesting trip done in an ordinary way.

It's that simple.  If it's a trip that's close to home or the sort of thing that's common fodder then I'm going to endeavour to do it in an interesting way, and if it's more of an expedition or exploratory trip then I'll probably have to undertake it by the (most likely stock-standard) ways and means available to me.   

These days, you'll be lucky to find something, anything, that somebody else hasn't done already - but that's no reason not to do it.

The six-wheeled truck used to explore the Kamchatka Peninsula.  Photo by Chris Burkard.

Over the past few months I've taken a lot of inspiration from the trips that these images are taken from.  The January issues of Surfer magazine and Surf Europe feature a trip to the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia, a trip that was well documented through various social networking outlets by Chris Burkard and Foster Huntington who had portable solar panels with them to charge their cameras and laptops.   They scored good, fun, cold surf where nobody really expected it, exploring the region in a six-wheeled former Soviet military truck and a helicopter.  There's a great video available to view (it can't be embedded on this blog) through Surfer magazine, here.

Kamchatka campfire.  Photo by Chris Burkard.

Around the same time as the Kamchatka trip, Californian pro-surfer Dan Malloy was cycling the length of California with two friends, carrying all of their camping and surfing gear in panniers and on bike trailers.  They travelled slowly, stopping off to surf, visit friends and work stints on organic farms along the coast.  It just so happens, as luck would have it, that Dan's two companions comprised a professional photographer and a videographer.  

Slow is Fast.  Photo by Dan Malloy.

Dan Malloy running out for a surf, the Slow is Fast bicycle trip, California.  Photo by Chris Burkard.

Feeling inspired?  There are so many ways that you can go, do, and experience places and faces these days if you put your mind to it.  Maybe it'll be a staycation with a twist, a micro-adventure in your own backyard.  Or perhaps it'll be a trip which you spend more time researching, planning and preparing for than you actually spend doing it.  Either way, it'll make for a memorable one.  One that you can talk about over a drink in the pub when the days are short this time next year.  An experience that might just set the tone, or the wheels in motion, for the next.

Scott G Toepfer takes brilliant photographs of people having too much fun riding around on motorbikes.  Check out It's Better In The Wind.