nuts about bikes in Jamaica Plain

New England Chapter of The Explorers Club - Zaac Chaves - May 24th

Dear New England explorers, friends, and guests,

Your presence and that of your guests is being requested at our upcoming New England Chapter of The Explorers Club Meeting on Tuesday the 24th of May at the Doubletree Guest Suites hotel on Soldier´s Field Road in Boston.

Our presentation will feature Zaac Chaves, who made--among many other far-ranging journeys--a 2009 bicycle visit to the Rupert River, far away from human population centers and inaccessible to many Americans to an area he found to be one of the most remarkable wild places on the planet. He will show selected photos of his 5000km bicycle journey over some of the most mysterious and remote roads, including a 666km dead-end dirt road known as the Trans Taiga Highway. This was the second known bicycle journey on this road, rode on a vegan diet, with most of his food having been been scavenged.

For Zaac´s bicycle journey to America’s most north-eastern frontier, where roads and power lines end at hydro-electric development projects (the north-eastern United States annually spends $940 million with Hydro-Québec), he took an unpaid two-month vacation, enough time to bicycle to the little-known Caniapiscau mega-dam at the end of one of the world’s longest dirt roads, bringing with him food, clothing, camping equipment, tools, with a camera and flashlight his only electronics, on a bicycle that then weighed over 200 pounds.

He journeyed to a place about which many of those few who know anything about it declare absolutely no desire to go there, ever. Zaac found out why, although for him, personally, it was experienced quite differently, from the incredible quantities of wild strawberries, to the hordes of biting black flies--with blade-like mouths so sharp that one can’t feel it pierce the skin, leaving an infected bite that often drips blood--, mosquitoes, wild mushrooms.

What Zaac did not have included insect repellant, an odometer and a clock. His close attention went to hunger, fatigue, the sun’s position, and the sights, sounds, and feelings all around him, riding through heavy rains and rainbows.

Please join us for what promises to be a most interesting and enlightening presentation!

This New England Chapter of The Explorers Club TUESDAY, MAY 24th 2011 event for members, guests, and friends will be held at the Doubletree Guest Suites Hotel, overlooking the Charles River and adjacent to the Harvard Business School near the Cambridge/Allston on/off ramp to the Mass Pike, 400 Soldiers Field Road, Boston, Telephone (617) 783-0090.

You may park in the hotel garage (PLEASE NOTE THAT THERE IS USUALLY NO PARKING CHARGE FOR EXPLORERS CLUB MEMBERS AND GUESTS), getting your parking ticket activated on your way out at the front desk.

The Social Hour begins at 7:00 p.m. in the hotel's well-appointed (cash) bar and

lounge above the second floor, and the presentations begin just after 8 p.m. The

pith helmet is passed around for a $10 truly voluntary donation per person

requested to help defray the cost of room rental, which is payable at the event.

All guests, friends, family, and interested parties are welcome.

If you let us know ahead of time that you intend to come, that would be helpful;

but regardless, do come, whether or not you let us know. Dress as you wish.

For any further information, or if you want to let us know that you are coming,

please call me at (781) 968-5174 or (978) 774-5000 extension 516, or email to

a href="mailto:greg_deyermenjian@yahoo.com">greg_deyermenjian@yahoo.com> or a href="mailto:paititi@alumni.clarku.edu">paititi@alumni.clarku.edu> or

a href="mailto:paytiti@gmail.com">paytiti@gmail.com>.

Information is also available at our Chapter website, at