You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hurl chunks

---

Being "extreme", like so many other facets of our life has been watered down and corrupted by crass commercialism. When chewing gum and fizzy drinks are marketed as "extreme" or "XTREEM" then you know that we have lost the plot. Robert Fitzroy who sailed the Beagle - a boat that was barely 90 feet long - half way round the world to map the coast of Tierra del Fuego was extreme. Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary were extreme. Ray Mears is extreme. My mate Charles is extreme. A greasy haired teenager with his trousers half way down his arse and a skateboard in a shopping precinct is not extreme, even if he has got some purple chewing gum and Blink 182 on his iPod.

I know there's been photos of our trips to the desert have featured here before, and although we are never really more than about 20 miles from a road, it is a bloody long way to walk. Depending on the size of the dunes, a half hour of driving is equivalent to a day of walking - providing you've got enough water. In the last year I personally know two people who have rolled their 4X4s in the desert, one of them was very lucky to walk away. We take the vehicles to the limit and getting stuck is something that you know is going to happen, especially in the summer when the sand is totally devoid of moisture. My back bumper is just about hanging on with nylon ties and duct tape, the front is much the same and my bonnet doesn't open and close properly any more.

I still didn't rate our desert trips as extreme until last Friday when Jon, my passenger for the day had to get out and spew his ring up, not once, but twice.

So be warned, the bar has been set pretty high. From now on, unless somebody loses their lunch we are not hitting the dunes hard enough.

---