Travelling by flying car to Timbuktu – the ultimate adventure?
By Dave Parrack
Ah, adventure, the stuff dreams are made of. Unfortunately for most of us, the greatest adventure we face is getting to work and back every day, or our two weeks in some foreign clime being eaten by the local wildlife. But one man is determined to break out of that routine and is setting off to Timbuktu in his flying car. Not a word of a lie.
If you’re unsure where Timbuktu is, well, you’re not alone. The place has had a reputation for being in the middle of nowhere for generations. In reality, it’s a city in Mali, West Africa, but it’s still a hell of a place to travel to.
Which is why a British man (read loony) is traveling there by flying car, taking a route from London, through Europe, and then on into the heart of Africa. Neil Laughton and his co-pilot, Gilo Cardozo, will travel most of the way on roads as normal people would. But the rest of the time? Well, they’ll be up in the air looking down on us mere mortals from what has been dubbed a Skycar.
According to BBC News, Cardozo invented the Skycar after dreaming of piloting a flying car since he was a young child. Now, at the rip old age of 29, he is set to achieve his lifelong ambition by setting out on this adventure with Laughton.
Laughton is an ex-SAS man who has spend recent years living the life of an old-style adventurer. He has played remote and extreme golf courses, scaled the highest mountains on all of the seven continents, skied to the North Pole, and motorcycled across the Sahara desert. Nice work if you can get it.
“But what is the Skycar?” I hear you yelling. It is in fact nothing more than a dune buggy with a propulsion fan on the back moving it forwards and a large fabric wing keeping it airborne. That is at least the layman’s explanation. But the secret to the Skycar’s success is the Rotron rotary engine that can supercharge the craft to 34,000 feet if necessary.
The Skycar containing the intrepid pair will set off for Timbuktu today, January 14, 2009. And footage of them traversing the Straits of Gibraltar and the Pyrenees mountain range is sure to be a hit on YouTube. Am I jealous? Kind of, but then my journey to work is always great – I work from home.
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