The grand return
- Brando Yelavich - wildboy adventures
- Jun 5, 2018
- 2 min read
After completing the crossing of Greenland, we had a few hours to wait for our pick up. I packed up all my gear except for my sleeping bag, I literally crawled inside it and fell straight to sleep. I dreamed about a blank canvas ready to be painted. My paint was made from the blood of all the creatures I had taken the lives of during my first life changing expedition around the coast of New Zealand. In this dream I painted a tribute to them all as a way of honouring them...I woke to the dull thud of big chopper approaching from the north. It was a mad rush to get the sleeping bag back inside and ready for our departing journey. The chopper came in for one wind check before touching down 3 metres in front of the team. My mind was full of emotion as we loaded our gear in, we had done it! 30 days on an ice cap in honour of Fridtjof Nansen, an opportunity to discover a side of myself I never knew and reconnect with the side I do! As the helicopter gently lifted off the snow I was filled with a sadness that this adventure was over, yet a happiness that the whole team had overcome all the challenges that we faced. I’ll say it again, we freeking did it!
We flew to Taslack, a small coastal fishing village on the west coast. Here we had our first proper meal in a month, it was oven roasted ham with rice and vegetables! Oh my goodness it was delicious, I ate mine with a can of sparkling apple juice. As you can imagine after the last 22 hour day we were all tired. I slipped off to bed excited to have a look around the town in the morning. The next day me and Keith ate breakfast then went down into the town to see what we could find! Fish being dried on racks, seal fat in big bins and what looked like the remains of a cut up minky whale were all around the small frozen harbour. The houses were painted all different colors and the people were so friendly. We headed back from the village and began our journey home from Greenland. A chopper flight to the airport then a plane that took us to Iceland. Here we enjoyed a couple of local beers with the team in celebration of our success! Bridget and Keith left the team and went off to their own final destinations. Hollie Nigel and I flew from Iceland to London to Singapore. I finally touched down in New Zealand at 10:47am with a hard thud. I’m officially home!
Since the domain isn’t connected, I can’t see what “The Grand Return” was supposed to say — just the Wix setup steps. If this was an older travel/story post, it’s a shame because those are the ones people try to come back to years later. It also makes me think about how hard it is to keep personal sites maintained, kind of like organizing a summer palette guide where everything needs periodic updates to stay useful.
Right now this is just the Wix “connect your domain” screen, so there’s nothing from the actual post to read. It’s wild how often old links end up like this when someone lets a subscription lapse or moves hosts. I’ve even had it happen with random tool bookmarks like check this out — one day it’s there, next day it’s a placeholder.
Seems like the domain got disconnected and the page is just the default Wix instructions now. If the post is archived somewhere else, it’d be nice to have a pointer, because right now it’s basically a dead link. I ran into something similar when browsing this site and a few listings had moved without redirects — easy to miss until someone mentions it.
All I’m seeing is the “connect this domain to Wix” notice, so I can’t tell what the original post was even about. It’s kind of like when you click for a specific tool and end up on a generic landing page — reminds me of stumbling onto CaesarCipher when I was actually trying to compare scoring adjustments. Hope the real article gets restored.
Looks like the page is basically a Wix placeholder right now, which is a bummer if you were expecting the actual “Grand Return” post. When sites go like this it turns into that same kind of “nothing to do but wait” feeling I get after zoning out with BlockBlast for a few minutes. Hope they reconnect the domain and the old posts come back.