Mushypea

Beat pedals in to Sydney this month. Photo courtesy of Beat Heim

It’s great meeting a hero, someone you’ve followed and been inspired by for years.  Swiss born Beat Heim visited Sydney two weeks ago on the last part of his Asian Odyssey bicycle trip, a two year long, 50000 km epic that started in Mongolia in 2008.

Beat and I have been in touch over the years swapping advice on cycle trip ideas, equipment, maps and border crossings in far flung places.  This month we finally got to catch up in person.  Beat dumped his gear at our place for five days and we got to chew the fat about all things long distance mountain biking, photography on the road and how to bend a steel frame back to shape after a truck has run it over.  We even managed to get in a quick ride up in the Blue Mountains.

I’ve just the finished a short interview with Beat and mailed it off to Australian Mountain Bike magazine this morning.  Here is a little taster, the front spread – photo courtesy of Beat Heim taken in the middle of Australia somewhere off the beaten track.

Mont24 Movie Festival

Thanks to some great feedback on the full length Gulf2Gulf DVD, I thought I’d enter a shortened version in to the Mont24 film festival to see how she goes.  It’s the first time I’ve entered a film competition so I’m sure it will be a great learning curve for me.  I’m not sure when I’ll get to hear if the G2G has made it through the selection panel but wish me luck!