Tag Archives: adventure

Abby Sunderland, Adrift

Koh Chang Lighthouse

Beacon of Hope

From CNN:

Los Angeles, California (CNN) — A 16-year-old California girl who is attempting to sail solo around the world triggered a distress signal during rough seas in the Indian Ocean on Thursday, her family said.
Abby Sunderland’s family began scrambling to organize a search-and-rescue effort for her after they learned her emergency beacon was detected just an hour after they last spoke to her, according to Jeff Casher, an engineer on her support team.
Sunderland’s small sailboat was adrift in the middle of the Indian Ocean about 2,000 miles east of Madagascar, 2,000 miles west of Australia and 500 miles north of the French Antarctic Islands, Casher said Thursday afternoon.

Guardian Story
LA Times Story on YouTube

When I first saw news of Abby Sunderland’s ambitions to sail around the world solo my heart was filled with admiration. The idea anyone, much less a 16 year old girl, would embark on such a voyage for the sake of pure accomplishment and adventure is awe inspiring.

This morning the world wakes to news of her disappearance – and awareness of her long ambition and recent struggle is spreading. Mixed among the commentary on the situation you’ll find words of encouragement, derision and disgust. Many people seem only able to view the situation as a tragedy or mistake – failure or negligence.

But the real story here – whatever the outcome – is one of risks and dreams. A person chasing a dream always risks something – at a minimum the dream may never been attained. In the worst case the pursuit may result in pain or death. But that’s what makes it worth the doing. No meaningful goal is ever attained without risk and maybe even suffering.

All that’s needed from us – the witnesses – is a measured amount of compassion for another human being in dire straits and awe at the ambition and drive displayed in pursuit of a dream.

Best of luck to Abby. And best wishes to her family.

UPDATE: She’s been found alive.

Grimm Episode 7 – “Devil Hairs”

Just like clockwork we released the latest episode of Grimm. And like a broken clock, I neglected to mark the occasion in my usual fashion – with a blog post. Oops. Truth is, I took a much needed break from the computer, Internet, and work in general. This weekend was Mid-Autumn festival in China. A time to eat moon cakes while celebrating abundance and togetherness. It also gave us at Spicy Horse a solid 3~4 day weekend. Yay.

Anyway, back to “this week’s” episode (by which of course I mean last week’s episode), “The Devil and His 3 Golden Hairs“. A harrowing tale which Grimm transforms into a filthy mountain of vomit, starvation, Satan plucking, and King bashing. Best of all, there’s NO WEDDING in this tale!

That’s a funny thing we noticed as we began designing episodes to fit around well-known fairy tales: Almost all contain a wedding. It’s as if getting married was the penultimate moment in a person’s life way-back-when. After achieving marry-dom, it was all over. No more adventure, no more goal, just pop out some children, wait for them to run off on fairy tale adventures ending in marriage, and die. Non too appealing. Grimm never really thought so either.

Almost from the start we got bored with the concept of “weddings in fairy tales”. So we did the only thing we knew how, got surreal. So don’t be surprised to discover some odd goings-on at the various weddings you encounter in Grimm episodes. Invading pirates, ghostly strippers emerging from cakes, and so forth.

Anyway, be sure to check out “The Devil and his 3 Golden Hairs” over on GameTap this week. And prepare yourself for the mid-season finale on Thursday, September 18th – “Beauty and the Beast”. This is one truly gigantic, beautiful, awesome, and funny episode. You won’t want to miss it.

After this week’s episode we’ll take a short break, then be back before you know it with 8 all new episodes!