nz.beimers.com

about the team: kevin and aimee beimers

No team can survive unless each member can depend fully upon the others, and no team is fully tested until it's spent a great deal of time doing so. As our names suggest, we're a husband and wife team, and we challenge any of you to ride a bike around Australia with only your spouse for company. If every couple had to do that before a marriage was proven sound, the cake decorators would be out of business.

This year, we're finishing our circumnavigation of Australia by tandem recumbent tricycle. That expedition involved us fighting forty-degree weather for six months in the outback, outrunning a cyclone down the west coast, laying face down in mud while trying to avoid being struck by lightning, and who would have thought that our first bout with frostbite in our lives would occur in Australia? We've been through it all, seen it all and we're still laughing and in love.

"...we've been through it all, seen it all, and we're still together."

The year before this saw us drive to what seemed like every small town in the United States on a 200-day journey in search of tacky American roadside attractions. While not nearly as strenuous as the Australian expedition, it still involved a great deal of teamwork and dedication to see it through.

We've been a team for nearly nine years, working together from the beginning of our relationship during university running a cybercafe and a website design studio. Once we had our degrees in Computer Science, we moved on to New York City to further our design and management careers. Every step of the way, we tackled our adventures together with great spirit and a love of life. We plan to do the same in New Zealand.

kevin ...as told by aimee
Kevin's 26 years old. He's one of those guys who excels at everything - whether it's working out an elaborate alegbraic equation to figure out the best way to animate a wombat, or building a water filter out of rubbish. If there's something that needs to be done, Kev will do it with creativity and give it 110%.

He's the talent behind the style of beimers.com, creating all of the graphics and doing about 2/3 of the writing. Kev's also the strength that keeps us going at the end of the day. Whereas I'll easily give in to the temptation of stopping early, sleeping late or having a leisurely lunch, Kev keeps pushing for more. If it weren't for him, we'd have run out of food on our Nullarbor crossing.

Kevin was a columnist for Australian Cyclist for the duration of the Australian expedition and he's recently had an article purchased by WellBeing magazine.

Prior to becoming an adventurer, Kevin worked as a graphic artist and animator in New York City for three years. During that time, he produced six original concepts for flash animations that can be viewed at flash.beimers.com.

In his off-time, Kev's happiest with a bowl of gummies and a movie with lots of explosions.

aimee ...as told by kevin
Aimee always used to be asked, "If Kevin does the graphics and the writing, what do you do?" She used to hate that, almost as much as when she's accused of not pedalling on the back seat of the tandem.

The fact is, the act of you being here and reading the site means that she's done her job and done it well. She has one of those multi-processor brains that allows her to have seven or eight windows open at once, and somehow manages to get everything done that needs to be done, while minimizing the amount we have to pay the internet cafe. I don't know how she does it. I'll bet she'd be good at Sim City.

She's a mere 27 years old, and she's already been a producer of scifi.com, a VP of web development at an internet startup, and a director of project management at a major Manhattan advertising firm. She makes a mean chicken curry, is a sucker for salt and vinegar chips, and giggles when she sees horses. If you asked her what she'd want most of all if she were stranded on a desert island, I'd bet you dollars to donuts she'd say Chapstick.

And somehow, through all of this, she keeps tabs on me. I like to think that she's the Sharon to my Ozzy, but she's the real star of the show.

base camp
The base camp for beimers.com is located in Thunder Bay, Ontario and is operated by Ingrid Lingman. Ingrid gets to take care of the nitty gritty work, such as ensuring that our server is up and running, our promotional items are sent out, and the bills are paid on time.

Ingrid also takes care of the beimers.com Giftshop, where you can buy official expedition t-shirts. Her office is slowly being buried in an ever-increasing pile of newspaper and magazine clippings.