I flew to England three days after Lady Diana of Whales died and bike toured through England, Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco before I burned out on that and mailed the bike back from Gibraltar. Then I took the bus through Spain, Monaco, Italy, Slovenia, Hungary, Romania, and Turkey before flying to Nepal where I lived for six months. In Nepal I studied Thai Massage and mt biked the Annapurna circuit. I did one day on the Everest trek but was overcome by the desire to just read, so I got a hotel room and read and lifted weights in the local gym for a couple months.

Then I did a tour of Tibet before flying to Seoul Korea to teach English for six months. Then I flew to Bangkok and rode my bike to Georgetown Malaysia and took the boat to Sumatra and rode across Sumatra and took a boat to Nias and surfed for a month and a half. Then I took the bus/boat back to Georgetown and rode my bike to Kuala Lumpur and the bus to Singapore. I took the boat to Jakarta and then Bali where I stayed for three weeks. I took the boat to East Timor and flew to Darwin where I rode my bike form there to Perth threw Uluru and central Australia. Then I rode along the coastline back to Darwin and threw to Brisbane.

I spent 11 months living with my mom and then rode my bike from Austin to Mexico city. My bike was stolen from the trailhead when I came back from Climbing El Popo and so I took the bus to Belize and then lake Atitlan where I lived in San Pedro for four months studying Spanish. Then I took the bus and rode my bike down to Panama City and flew to Quito Ecuador. I Climbed Cotopaxi before I rode to Peru and took the bus to Trujillo and stayed in Huaraz for six weeks. Then I took the bus to Lima and Pico and rode to Nazca and then took the bus to Cuzco and rode to Arequipa and climbed Misti and rode to Lake Titicaca and then La Paz where I stayed climbed Potosi and rode down to Curico and up to the highest ski resort in the world. I rode out of La Paz and realized I didn't want to bike tour so I sold my bike for $15 in coins to a campesino and took the bus to Potosi and then Salar de Yunui where I met a German kid who wanted me to ride his tandem bike across the Bolivian antiplano to Chile with him and a Swiss kid. Then took the bus down to Usuiah and back up to Buenos Aires where I taught English for a couple months. Then I took the bus up to Rio for Carnival and up the Amazon to Guiana and Suriname and then took the Amazon down to Paraguay and then Santiago Chile where I married Paola, met Tony and lived for five years. There Tony and I did a few multi day, 24 hour super enduro mountain bike rides and did a couple of two week treks to the plane crash site from the movie Alive.

I came back to Boulder on February 18th with my wife Paola and her son Claudio but she got pregnant and realized I wasn't the daddy so she dumped me and moved to Parna Italy with the father of her baby girl Luciana. Now I am sitting pretty in Boulder living with my mom and working as a window washer and looking forward to the day I can take off and to the UKT with Tony. Tony is in Korea now saving up for the UKT too and is just as excited about it as I am so I am super excited about things right now.

I am very happy to have Tony as a partner on this trip with me. He didn't grow up riding bikes, skiing and climbing mountains like me so he's not as fit as me, but he's the only person I have seen push his body to the point that he can barely keep himself upright, and as soon as he recovers to the point of normal conversational ability, he talks about it like it was the coolest thing he has ever done and wants to do it again. Another thing about Tony is when he sets his mind on something he will go after it even if it kills him. I think it may come from the incoherent delirium he goes into when he's exhausted. Doing this trip on a Kayak with him will be an amazing experience for me because I will be able to push my body to the maximum along with him and not have to wait for him so much. He is also a very good conversationalist which needless to say is a big plus on large trips like this. He is the kind of person who has a comment on whatever you have to say whether he agrees with it or understands it or not. He will also be a good person to get us through the trip smoothly as he has very good communication abilities and has a completely irreproachable personality unlike myself. That's not to say he is a push over though. He is more discretionary about the people he gives his time to than me which will do me good because I have a bad habit of getting myself involved with riff raff scam artists.

Tony on Kyle - Some people say that Kyle Pounds missed his calling, and should have gone into the special forces of somebody’s Military.  He has been referred to as unstoppable, a machine, someone that just keeps going and never seems to get tired.  I imagine his seemingly untamed spirit just wasn’t meant for the discipline an army requires.  However, after saying this about Kyle, you shouldn’t think of him as “out of control,” foolhardy, or as someone who doesn’t think about safety; it's quite the contrary. Whereas some people under the stress of high endurance sports can become unfocussed or confused, Kyle doesn’t.  His mind rather, thrives on the demands of high endurance sports; focusing his entire sense of being on only one thing, the success of the excursion. But sometimes the success of an excursion means turning around, and I’ve seen Kyle make that call more than once amidst other hotshots that were all too eager to continue when conditions were unsafe.  The success of any excursion always means coming home unhurt.

Kyle grew up in Boulder, Colorado among the nation’s biggest mountains.  He has climbed and re-climbed every 14’er in Colorado several times since he was a kid. He has worked as a mountain guide in the San Juan Mountains, and also as a river guide in Moab, Utah.  He received a degree in Education, and later traveling the world, he taught English in many countries.  He has lived in Nepal, South Korea, Argentina, and Chile. He's done long distance biking tours all over the world to include crossing Australia two times and Europe. There are too many other biking tours that he's done to list here but it all adds up to thousands of miles of experience. He also has done a great deal of kayaking in rivers and Lakes. His experiences as a teacher and as an expedition guide not to mention his aptitude for high endurance sports, are vital to the organization and planning of the UKT.  Like me, aside from the daily physical exercises we do to prepare for the rigors of the UKT, he is actively involved in crossing off a million necessary things from the UKT’s “to do” lists. He is working with others to hammer out the best kayak design for long distance touring and for handling, of course, the pounding from the open sea.  In addition to that there is tons of equipment we need, and he is meticulously assessing item after item.

I decided to put my physical exploits on the site to make myself appear sane. I'm afraid that if I don't some people may think I'm crazy for thinking we can learn to do the UKT with only a month of kayaking experience. I assure you I know what it takes physically to kayak 50 miles accross the open ocean and I hope my trips below will successfully illustrate that.

However I must say that even if I didn't know what it takes on an experiential level, I would know on a common sense level. It's just not that difficult to kayak 50 miles as long as you don't over extend yourself.

Bike tours

- Durango to San Diego 900 miles in five days.
- Across Australia twice
- Across the Bolivian Antiplano
- Austin to Mexico city
- Western Europe (eight countries)
- Boulder to halfway through Kansas
- Boulder to Telluride to Sedona and back to Telluride
- Parts of every country in Central America
- Parts of Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia
- Rode the death ride in Durango Colorado twice
- Rode the peak to peak grand loop in the Front Range.

Boat trips and other stuff

- Canoed a 300 pound two person dugout canoe 100 miles around Lake Toba, Sumatra, Indonesia in two days
- Kayaked from Key Caulker Belize to San Pedro and back on a full moon night 25 miles.
- Canoed a wooden canoe from San Pedro to ? and day. 15 miles.
- Kayaked big rivers in Colorado in the summer of 1997.
- River guide in Moab Utah in 93.
- Mountain guide in the San Juan mountains two two week trips in 92
- Hiked the Colorado trail in '96.

Tony on Tony - Of Kyle and myself I must admit I feel the least prepared to take on an excursion of this magnitude.  When I think of what I have to offer, unfortunately a litany of physical exploits just doesn’t come to mind.  Over the next year I will be in the gym, in the pool, and in the ocean training for what no doubt will be the greatest physical duress of my life.  I have already started an extremely rigorous exercise routine that roughly includes an hour in the gym, an hour in the pool, and weekend visits to Pusan South Korea for kayaking.   Unfortunately kayaking from Miami to Caracas is not just about muscle; it also requires a lot of knowledge. So in addition to exercise taking up my time I also have been pouring myself over books related to seamanship, navigation, currents, sailing journals and the like. Kyle and I both understand the UKT is not to be taken lightly, and hence we are taking every necessary measure to be as prepared as possible.

I am originally from Miami Florida, received a degree in English Literature there, and have been teaching English in various parts of the world for the last 10 years.  Kyle and I met in 2002 while we were both teaching English in Santiago Chile.    Our friendship developed quickly because we both share a sense of adventure and love for the outdoors.  We’ve done countless excursions together in the mountains around Santiago, and on two occasions we even hiked together to the airplane wreckage best known from the movie Alive.  I later went on to form a small excursion business taking tourist to that crash site.  You can check out the website here.  Kyle first proposed the UKT back in 2002, and from there it formed the better part of many conversations for years.  In the last year however, we have been taking serious steps towards converting all that talk into reality.  I suppose this is the process that we find ourselves in now....”Getting Ready” to embark on the biggest adventure of our lives.

Kyle on Tony - I met Tony six months after I got to Chile. During the four and a half years we were friends there, we went on like a dozen 18 hour long rides and two two week back packing trips looking for the plane in that movie Alive. In the first couple trips he cracked, but pretty soon he was trudging along all day. I feel very fortunate to have Tony as my partner in this UKT because of his love for trips like these. On most of our trips Tony pushed himself to the brink of collapse and beyond, and every time he talked about it like it was the coolest thing he had ever done and he wants to do it again. His excitement motivated me to want to do it again, but something would always come up and we ended not doing big rides much. I am very excited that Tony is my partner for this trip because I know that he will be just as motivated to paddle all day every day as me and we will feed off of each other and become amazing endurance athletes together.