Author Archives: Steven Shoppman

What is a cultural neighborhood?- It’s short notice, but you can find out today.

In Denver, there is a cool email service called “This Week in Denver.”  It gives updates on the latest and greatest events Denver has to offer each week. The great thing about the service is that most of the events are something unusual that might be completely off the radar.  They definitely do a good […]

Harness the Sun in a Bottle

Everyday new NGOs and non-profits are started with elaborate goals to change the world.  Their lofty goals often fulfill western ideas of what the 3rd world needs. The Isang Litrong Liwanag (A Liter of Light) project set out to create something that is simply useful–light in the homes of those who cannot afford it. Instead […]

New Video – Niono and the Entourage

Just after editing this video, I found out that I had malaria.  Since many strains of malaria, including the one that I contracted come on somewhat slow, you just start to feel more and more weird and look worse and worse over time.  I realize now that I never actually wrote anything to go along […]

New Video – Diving the cold waters of Ushuaia!

It seems that in the midst of the last year this video slipped through and never made it online for all of you to see.  Lately I have been working to get all of our video organized for a new project in the works.  So stay tuned, we will be posting more often in the […]

Thank you everyone for voting!

The voting ended for the Reader’s Choice Adventurer of the Year Award. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to vote for us. Unfortunately we did not win, however, since the issue that featured us as Adventurers of the Year was the last issue of National Geographic Adventure in print, the prize of being featured in a future issue is no longer to be awarded.

Some people are really doing some good stuff.

With all the organizations and people we met and talked with around the world, often it felt like people were just wasting time and money with silly ideas for aid. Often these ideas provide little to no real lasting help to people in the world in need. This story is genius.

Come Celebrate with Us

Come celebrate with us at Division West in Cherry Creek on Friday December 11th. Since we were just named one of the 2009 Adventurers of the Year by National Geographic Magazine, we thought it was only prudent to have a rockin party at this sweet shop.

A note about voting

Most importantly for those of your voting, you need to vote a 10 for us and a 1 for all of the other adventurers. This has seemed to be the trend for all of the other adventurers and why the highest score is below a 7. So if you want your vote for us to count, please make sure to give us the 10 and 1 to the rest, kind of like a set of pins, the one standing is your vote.

How to obtain visas

How do I get started on obtaining visas for my adventure?

The first step and often one of the most up to date places to start searching for more information is on the Department of State Travel website. Here you can find travel advisories, which are often a little misleading in terms of the level of safety in the country. The US government often tells of the worst case scenarios in the places you might travel, so do not let them scare you with the advisories and warnings.

Can we get some validation please?…Thanks National Geographic

When we first came up for the idea for this adventure, often we would hear from people, “That sounds like one heck of a vacation.”

“How lucky you two are to be able to do something like this,” many would say. Breaking the stigma that we were going on some easy road trip vacation to exotic places proved to be near impossible. We knew, and every day with more and more research, we were absolutely positive that an adventure of a lifetime preceded us. Still, rarely would we find someone willing to listen to our pleading that this was a true expedition that would go far beyond