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Jeffrey Cushing
Dedicated to adventure in many forms, in the mid 80s Jeff dropped out of college for the first time and over the course of nine months, crossed the Sahara desert. As part of this quest, he ventured...view moreDedicated to adventure in many forms, in the mid 80s Jeff dropped out of college for the first time and over the course of nine months, crossed the Sahara desert. As part of this quest, he ventured far out into the desert to an ancient oasis named Siwa, where Alexander the Great had been proclaimed descendant of the sun god Rah 24 centuries earlier. He then ventured through the volatile Darfur region in the west of the Sudan, in the course of which he was interrogated by Sudanese Military Intelligence and was accused of being an Israeli spy. On this trip, he visited six of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Exhausted and broke, he finally ended up in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, with toxic hepatitis and giardia. He stumbled home a gaunt 135 lbs.
Later, he earned the highest level of full certification for a snowboard instructor from the Professional Ski Instructors of America (PSIA). He put his talents to good use in places like Aspen and Snowmass, Colorado, Chamonix and Argentierre in the French Alps, and finally in the Remarkables of New Zealand. In the late 80s, he rode a dirt bike across Guatemala to visit then difficult-to-access Tikal, skirting heavily-armed Guatemalan army patrols during the height days of that country's grisly civil war that claimed the lives of over 200,000 Maya Indians.
Jeff has pursued his devotion to travel through many forms including, of course, that standard of modern travel, the trans-continental flight; as well as ships; boats; cars; trucks and autobuses, some stuffed with chickens and mountains of bags; donkey carts; tractor trailers (both riding on the back axle and scrunching low to avoid jarring shock in the back of a tin trailers without suspension); fire engines; military convoys; motorcycles; bicycles; donkeys, camels, and horses; trains, inside and out, as well as on top of; buses filled with soldiers; and in a sinking rowboat in a storm off the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. Jeff speaks French and Spanish passably well, and at one time was conversant in Swedish too.
Jeff has climbed 35 of Colorado's 54 fourteeners. In addition, he has hiked in locales as diverse and exotic as well as the foothills of Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey, the great volcano outside of Mexico City Ixtaccihuatl, the foothills of the Himalayas in India's spectacular Himachal Pradesh state, and Mauna Loa on the big island of Hawaii. Jeff also built and lived in his own tipi nea...view less