Adventurer crosses sands that conquered a king

The Times Online ^ | Jan 28, 2006 | Martin Penner

[Tyche]

Sometimes their is a thin line from being a bada$$ and pushing yourself to the limits and just plain dumb.

Anyway, Who Dares Wins

[CurlyDave]

Not to detract from his feat, which is remarkable, and well beyond anything I could do, but he had a GPS so he took the shortest & best route.

I bet those boys back in 523 B.C. wandered around for a while before they gave up & died.

[Tyche]

No doubt. Walking in a mall sucks. Walking, lost in a desert as you slowly die, sucks too.

[AntiGuv]

[spetznaz]

Yep ....GPS definitely made a ton of difference. However, this man is still bad@$$. It requires intense condition to even THINK of attempting what this hombre did.

I shudder to think of the last moments those guys back in 523BC had before they succumbed to the desert.

[spetznaz]

intense condition = intense conditioning

[ckilmer]

intense condition = intense conditioning == air conditioning

[son of caesar]

agree with you, there is nothing anyone can say that can take anything away from this mans accomplishment. people familiar with a dessert environment know what i mean. this dude is tough.

[Jack Hammer]

Agree - this dude is definitely tough as an old boot. He is also as crazy as a s**thouse rat.

[MillerCreek]

Signor Miglietti, who covered between 50 and 56 miles a day, kept up his energy with dates, condensed milk and Parmesan cheese.

The power of high fat content and potassium and water wins the day, yet again.

[MillerCreek]

'Course, your activity level has to need all that high fat and potassium and water for it to win the day!

[RexFamilia]

Wop-ping

Wop = guappo(handsome and/or intelligent.) Sicilian derivative from spanish guapo
Italians emigrated to US legally not W/O Papers.

Freepers are now enlightened as to the real meaning of WOP

[Revelation 911]

Wop-ping

mayonaisse couldnt do it bump

[Westlander]

Did he run across Moses out there ?

[SunkenCiv]

This is a Old Time topic, it is just now being added to the catalog and pinged.

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[Ciexyz]

From the title, I thought this thread might have been about Alexander the Great.

[JerseyHighlander]

Five days, 23 hours later, with blistered feet and severe stomach cramps, he arrived at Siwa.

Signor Miglietti, who covered between 50 and 56 miles a day, kept up his energy with dates, condensed milk and Parmesan cheese.

I'm just saying, put 2 and 2 together.

[eleni121]

Except that Alexander the Great was never conquered by "sands."

[eleni121]

But the Siwa reference is absolutely connected to Alexander's exploits. The oasis at Siwa was home to the world renowned Oracle of the god Amun (Ammon) described in Herodotus' Histories.

At the beginning of his campaigns Alexander took a side trip there and legend (Herodotus) says was saved by a rare thunderstorm.

[Ciexyz]

I'm reading an informative book about Alexander's techniques of strategy applied to modern situations: "Alexander the Great's Art of Strategy" by Partha Bose, Penguin Books, copyright 2003. Here's a snippet from p. 125-126:

Two years after the incident at Gordium, Alexander would head south into the Saharan desert in today's Egypt and Libya in search of the oracle of Zeus-Ammon at Siwah. Greeks and Egyptians both venerated the temple of Zeus-Ammon, and Siwah, an oasis surrounded by the Libyan Desert, was believed to be the abode of the Egyptian gods....

....it was an arduous, two-hundred-mile journey from the vast tract of sand where Alexander would soon found Alexandria-in-Egypt through the inhospitable desert. By day four of their eight-day journey they had run out of water, only to be saved by a sudden rainstorm. They lost their way, only to be saved by the flight of two crows that had been spotted. When they reached Siwah...Alexander...was taken directly to visit with the oracle. The high priest...is alleged to have greeted him as the "son of Zeus-Ammon." Historians have again debated whether the priest said "my son," or "son of Zeus-Ammon," or "son of God," or if it was just a slip in translation. We shall never know. Suffice it to say, Alexander used it to full effect, and from that day on Macedonian spinmeisters stressed his divine roots.