Thursday, January 21, 2010

Great Adventurers Of My Youth



This seems to be "Calvin remembers his childhood" all night because I keep finding things that take me back. When i was maybe eight my father loved to tell me stories about great adventures. None at the time was more spectacular from his childhood than the adventures of Thor Heyerdahl and his five man crew. I even remember a set of National Geographic Issues that followed this adventure. In the spring we would build our own 'Kon-Tikis' for sailing down the drains to the river.

"In 1947 Thor Heyerdahl and a crew of five others sailed 4300 miles, from Peru to the Pacific islands, in a raft they had constructed from balsa wood. Many people thought it was a suicide mission, but on August 7, 1947 after 101 days in the open ocean the Kon-Tiki (the name given to the raft) crashed onto a reef on the Raroia island. The men had successfully rafted 8000 kms or 1/5th of the way around the earths circumference.?




http://atlasobscura.com/places/kon-tiki-museum

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Thor kicked more ass than anyone. He was a great adventurer.

TS Hendrik said...

That is pretty killer stuff.

Cal's Canadian Cave of Coolness said...

Thor started it all for me. I still have those old National Geographoic issues.

DrGoat said...

The spirit of Tiki. One that helps me get through it all.