Team Bios: TESS

Tess is a Canadian. Whoop-dee-do. The great-great granddaughter of a strapping woman who chased the bears off the land of her hunting lodge with a kitchen fork, she has stalked caribou across the tundra, explored for diamonds, and slept in an igloo. If you ask her about granite, she will wax eloquent for hours (don’t ask her about granite). Also, don’t ask her about the seal hunt. She holds some controversial and oft-neglected views. Not-so-fun-fact: Tess has tuberculosis. She intends to conquer it before dominating the Coast Raid. The TB is scheduled to die on June 25, 2008. As the mother hen contingent of Team Salsa Jets, she plans to make Andy wear sunscreen.

Team Bios: JAMES

James spent the majority of his childhood living in the canopy of various Amazonian rainforests and developing a killer menacing glare that has been known to make rivers and anacondas flow in reverse (see photo). Since perfecting the glare at the tender age of four, James has grown up (but only on the outside), keeping the glare (to use for good, not evil) but leaving the Amazon (for more terrestrial endeavors). James enjoys hiking with a minimum of supplies and eating macaroni and cheese at all hours of the day and night. He will be carrying all of the food for our team in the race, as well as speaking to any jungle creatures we encounter in their native tongue.

Team Bios: DENALI

Denali is as swift as a coursing river, with all the force of a great typhoon. A tasteful hippie from Boulder, Colorado, she is glad that her parents didn't decide to call her Aconcagua, K2, Massive, or any other mountain names that might have seemed cute at the time. Denali's hobbies include making fun of Andy, scouting out new features of Princetonian architecture on which to hang her hammock, playing tag in the Library, and adventure racing (duh). Her favorite directions are west, north, south, and east, in that order. Her favorite teammates are Tess and James (tied), and Andy, in that order. Don't expect Denali to be too straightforward with the contents of this blog -- she is, after all, mysterious as the dark side of the moon.

Team Bios: ANDY

Andy Brett was born in Ohio, where he won the spelling bee in 5th grade. He is white as a ghost, and so will appreciate the long days of the Coast Raid in Quebec to work on his tan. Eager yuppie by weekday and a superhero adventure racer by weekend (see photo montage), his lifestyle is reminiscent of Batman’s. Like Batman, Andy has both the brains and the brawn—he will ensure that Team Salsa Jets survives the torturous physical slog of the Coast Raid. Unlike Batman, however, his uniform is not a form-fitting black batsuit, but a sleek pair of silver shorts, in which he performs his lightning-quick foxtrot. There is no doubt about it…Andy will be dancing along the trails and waterways of the racecourse, getting sunburned along the way.

Inaugural Post

Yesterday marked the more-or-less-official inception of our team for the "International Éco Endurance Aventure 2008," (English translation: International Eco Endurance Adventure 2008), also now known as the Coast Raid. We (myself, Denali, James, and Tess) be competing this August 21-24, as we mountain bike, canoe, kayak, trek, orienteer, climb, rappel, swim, and just plain run our way across 180 miles of some of the roughest terrain Canada has to offer on the Labrador coast.

The aim of this blog is to chronicle our adventure of preparing for, getting to, participating in, and recovering from the race in August. We are planning to have a grand old time and meet lots of crazy people along the way. We are even planning to do a little bit of training as well. In the next post we'll have biographies for each of us, and eventually we'll have each team member contributing their own thoughts and perspective on the race and our preparations from each of our far-flung outposts this summer.