Ahhh, what a relief.
Blue skies ahead, easy flying hops, temperatures getting warmer and the shorts dying to get out of the trunk and back into our legs.

Talking of legs, the From Greenland to England title of our new EPIC Podcast episode is quite self explanatory about the legs we will remember today.

We were on our way to mainland Europe, not without first spending very british days. Especially at the Wick airport, in Scotland, where we met the best handling services of the entire trip. We will just say this: there's was freshly baked cake waiting for us! And that's just one of the surprises; others involve free fuel and a trip to the Mercedes Benz F1 factory!

So here it is, to be seen and heard...

... or just to be heard, in case you're tired of our faces:

Listen to "EPIC Podcast Episode 11 Audio" on Spreaker.

Enjoy and leave us a comment on Youtube letting us know what you'd like to hear about in future episodes.

See you next PodDay,
Ruben & Mischa

Let's set the scenario: we were for the first time in our lives in Greenland and we found it to be 'as expected' - remote.
The most remote region we've been in our entire EPIC trip.
Very harsh, very windy, very freezing (and also beautiful, don't get us wrong, we loved it).

At some point the GPS was telling us we would take almost 8 hours to reach our destination.
It was going to be the longest leg of out journey (and indeed it was).

We didn't have enough fuel to get there.
Visibility was very low.
We had to make decisions, and we had to make them fast.

And that's what this Flying Around Greenland episode of our EPIC Podcast will remember.
Get ready for survival mode.

So here it is, to be seen and heard...

... or just to be heard, in case you're tired of our faces:

Listen to "EPIC Podcast Episode 10 | Flying around Greenland" on Spreaker.

Enjoy and leave us a comment on Youtube letting us know what you'd like to hear about in future episodes.

See you next PodDay,
Ruben & Mischa

If you have been following us with some degree of attention you probably have already heard the nickname "sledge dog" attributed to one of our crew members. But where did it come from? you may have wondered. Well, it all started in Greenland, where we met those beautiful creatures and, as Mischa puts it sometime during this episode 9 of our EPIC Podcast, "they stink so bad"!
Could this be the reason for the nickname??

That's something we can find out during our new episode - named The Hop to Greenland. That and much more, obviously, as we remember the day we had, for the first time in our journey, to turn around and go back to the starting point due to bad weather. All we were seeing for hours straight was snow and ice and clouds, but finally, like castaways at drift for weeks, we celebrated the sight of dry land like never before!

So here it is, to be seen and heard...

... or just to be heard, in case you're tired of our faces:

Listen to "EPIC - The Podcast" on Spreaker.

Enjoy and leave us a comment on Youtube letting us know what you'd like to hear about in future episodes.

See you next PodDay,
Ruben & Mischa

This one we will have to admit it: yes, what we're saying is nice and all, but today your eyes will feast way more than your ears. Our EPIC Podcast episode 8 is coming to you from inside an Ice Cave you have to see to believe. What a magical place. So, since we are in a Bristish Columbia natural underground chamber, it just makes even more sense to name this episode Northern Canada Polar Bears.

Yes, we've seen them on our way from Cuba to Greenland. Majestic creatures. But the big furry whites were not the only ones who caught our attention from the sky. Those days going north, the thermometer going down faster each day, we were flying left and right to avoid incoming storms, to outrun blizzards... and for some moments it all faded away and it was all good as we saw polar bears running around, and then some sharks, and then stingrays and even... the Statue of Liberty as we went by Manhattan!

It seems like a made-up tale but we have it all on camera and, better yet, quite vivid inside our minds.

So here it is, to be seen and heard...

... or just to be heard, in case you're tired of our faces:

Listen to "EPIC - The Podcast" on Spreaker.

Enjoy and leave us a comment on Youtube letting us know what you'd like to hear about in future episodes.

See you next PodDay,
Ruben & Mischa

Here's lucky number seven! Today in our EPIC Podcast we will go back into the Caribbeans, going our way up to Cuba from Colombia - so that's why episode 7 is quite simply named Flying through Cuba.

So, Caribbeans we said, and immediately you all started imagining amazing beaches, beautiful sun, pristine sea water. The assumption is correct, but from a helicopter pilot point-of-view, the "water everywhere" scenario is not relaxing at all; quite the contrary.

It was the first time we faced such long and consecutive oversea streches.
It was nerve-wrecking at first, but it paved the way for the remaining of a round-the-world trip that would place us one third of the time over different oceans.

At one point we've got so comfortable doing those "water legs" that we just wanted to go as low as possible and check out the little islands scattered everywhere and the dolphins jumping in the waves. So low that one time we've received the following Tower Control alert: "If you crash I'm not responsible". Want to find out where we've been delivered that cozy warning? Press play!

So here it is, to be seen and heard...

... or just to be heard, in case you're tired of our faces:

Listen to "EPIC The Podcast Episode 7 | Flying through Cuba" on Spreaker.

Enjoy and leave us a comment on Youtube letting us know what you'd like to hear about in future episodes.

See you next PodDay,
Ruben & Mischa

Here we are, sitting by the fire at the beautiful but freezing Whistler, remembering the cozy and colourful South America.
Oh, how we miss your warm sun and, most of all, wearing shorts!

So here it is, episode 6 of our EPIC Podcast. This time we will go down our memory lane all the way to El Salvador, where we met unforgettable people whose commitment to us was unbelievable. And that's why we will call this one the Friends in El Salvador episode.

But, let us tell you, we now know they were friends... but back then, we were surprised by a shady message saying "we are in the hotel room next to yours". Imagine arriving a foreign country and out of the blue receiving such a... what? greeting? warning? threat?? Of course it all had a perfectly logic explanation and we had a great time with these and other friends we made during our stay in El Salvador.

Maybe we will get to meet them again in the next EPIC Tour, in which we will fly from Whistler to... press play to find out!

So here it is, to be seen and heard...

... or just to be heard, in case you're tired of our faces:

Listen to "EPIC - Round-the-World Helicopter Tour #6 - Friends in El Salvador" on Spreaker.

Enjoy and leave us a comment on Youtube letting us know what you'd like to hear about in future episodes.

See you next PodDay,
Ruben & Mischa

Welcome to episode 5 of our EPIC Podcast, the one that shall be named Wire Encounter.

The name has an easy explanation: after the scary close encounter the day before, again we were faced with a near-death experience. This time the culprit was a sudden cable line.
If it doesn't seem as dramatic as a mid-air helicopter collision, simply understand that wires are the number 1 helicopter killers. And we were a split second away to hit one head-on. Took us a week to fade that image away from our memory...

But, don't get us wrong, the good and happy times by far exceeded the scary ones. We're recalling lots of them in this Mexican podcast episode, but we can't resist introducing a very funny one right now (well, not so funny to Diogo, perhaps).
Without spoiling the fun, we'll just say that Diogo's bowel movements didn't care about our prohibition to land in a remote mexican beach without permission.
When a helicopter's gotta go, a helicopter's gotta go!

So here it is, to be seen and heard...

... or just to be heard, in case you're tired of our faces:

Listen to "EPIC podcast episode 5 Wire Encounter" on Spreaker.

Please enjoy and comment. Also let us know what you'd like to hear about in future episodes.

See you next PodDay,
Ruben & Mischa

You were expecting a weeks-long-waiting-time until this one, weren't you?
Well, surprise, surprise! Here's episode number 4 of our EPIC Podcast!

This one takes us back inside the helicopter. Not literally, we're having this conversation by the fire with our hands in our warming pockets. What we mean is that we are from now on bringing back memories of real situations we had to deal with while up there.

The first one we are sharing will be a real surprise even for the most loyal of our followers, as we didn't ever mentioned it publicly before or shown any footage of it. This will be the first time. Why is that? Because we didn't exactly knew how to deal with it when it happened.

To tell it quite simply, what happened was that we were almost hit in the air by another helicopter.

It was so real, so stressful, so meaningful, that despite being able to just barely avoid that hit, we still got hit in a different way: we understood there and then, just a few days off, that no matter how much planning we had behind us, anything could happen in a split of a second.

So here it is, to be seen and heard...

... or just to be heard, in case you're tired of our faces:

Listen to "EPIC PODCAST EPISODE 4 NEAR MISS" on Spreaker.

Please enjoy and comment. Also let us know what you'd like to hear about in future episodes.

See you next PodDay,
Ruben & Mischa

The third episode of our EPIC Podcast is in!
This one shall be named the Mountain Top episode, a pretty much
self explanatory title (come to think of it, it should be named Breakfast at the Mountain).

This one was recorded from a beautiful British Columbia peak, but also a very windy one (sorry for the bad audio). Of course, we didn't exactly got there on foot; we flew there on our loyal R66. Don't be mistaken though, it's still quite physically demanding, specially if you're flying day-to-day round the planet inside this tiny helicopter.

So how did we scatheless made it through the stressful legs and the lack of sleep during our EPIC journey? Listen to our latest episode to find out.
One clue: it had nothing to do with medicinal drugs.

So here it is, to be seen and heard...

... or just to be heard, in case you're tired of our faces:

Listen to "EPIC PODCAST EPISODE 3 MOUNTAIN TOP SMOOTHY" on Spreaker.

Please enjoy and comment. Also let us know what you'd like to hear about in future episodes.

See you next PodDay,
Ruben & Mischa

Here we are for the second episode of our EPIC Podcast.
Again we are apparently talking to each other, but in reality we're talking to You!

We will call this one the Let's Do It episode.
Join us in a conversation about how we went from a casual meeting at a vegan barbecue to partners in a round-the-world helicopter trip.
And just two years passed between those events.

It's all about the planning! Starting on the right foot is paramount, even when you're preparing for something that will have your feet crammed inside a tiny helicopter cockpit for hundreds of hours.

So here it is, to be seen and heard...

... or just to be heard, in case you're tired of our faces:

Listen to "EPIC Round-the-World Helicopter Tour #2" on Spreaker.

Enjoy and comment and let us know what you'd like to hear about.

See you next PodDay,
Ruben & Mischa

We are back.
Not in the sense that we're back home. That's old news.

What we mean is that we are back in business!

There's much to be said about our round-the-world journey so join us at our weekly
EPIC Podcast as we bring to life the accounts that have never been told before.

Here's the first one, to be seen and heard...

... or just to be heard, in case you're tired of our faces:

Listen to "EPIC - The Podcast" on Spreaker.

Same time next Friday!

WE MADE IT!!!

And to begin with, there are two things we can say without a doubt:

1. The planet isn't flat!
2. The best place to fly a helicopter is... British Columbia!

But now that we've made it, please bear a Oscar winning kind of speech:

So we want to thank all of you following from day one. Please know that your comments and feedback were all very important and gave us strength to keep going. It was very important to feel we were not doing this just for ourselves.

And also the people who actually came to meet us in person, sometimes after hours of driving. You're amazing and made us feel very special.

And all our conferences' attendees. We deeply appreciate your presence and curiosity, it really made it worthwhile. We hope we could inspire you a little bit.

And of course everybody who helped us at the airports and hotels, always so kind.
Well, almost all of them... :)

End of speech.

Ah right, we almost forgot... we've established 2 new world records!!!!

Fastest Antipode RTW on a Helicopter - 97 days
&
Longest RTW on a Helicopter - 60.165 kms

OH YEAH!!!

Thank you all, enjoy the last day vlog and know this:
EPIC has just started. Stay tuned to be challenged.

We are so close to getting back home. If everything goes according to our plans in the final leg, the EPIC journey will take 97 days and go through more than 60 thousand kilometers (37,000 miles). Overall we took longer than planned but still we will be fast enough to break the Fastest Antipode RTW on Heli and also the Longest RTW on Heli World Records! Oh Yeah!!

Of course, three months later, we know better than anyone that bad surprises happen when we least expect them, but still, we are very optimistic. And why is that? Because we are now flying over our own backyard, so we can't help to feel that everything will be smooth.

And we feel this way despite of just going through one of the longest and most challenging days of the entire trip, due to a few moments of severe turbulence and poor visibility.
But we've made it to Juneau just as planned. Mission accomplished.

Next stop: Home.

PS: We saw a couple of moose :)

What a feeling... we are back in the United States!
Not exactly our home country - we live in Canada, as you know - but it's almost the same thing, it's like getting back to our reality, to familiar ground.

In the rearview mirror we now see Russia. What an experience that was.
The amount of red tape, the constant questioning, the unfriendliness... we've also met some helpful chaps, of course, some were helpful "for a small fee", others were genuinely kind. Overall, it was quite unique.

We're glad we've been there, there were amazing scenarios, we even saw grizzly bears running around in the wild... but man, this crossing was strenuous. Maybe sooner than later we will look back with a nostalgic feeling, but for now, we're happy to get out!

And you know what?? Just one more leg to go! Unbelievable.

Remember how in the beggining of our journey our bubble was always covered up in bugs?
Well, in this leg throughout Syberia we were faced with a different version of that same annoyance: bugs in the bubble, but this time on the inside!
Alive. Biting and buzzing.

But "How did that happen?" you ask.
Well, because we've spent two hours waiting for fuel in a remote Syberian airport that was swarming in mosquitoes!

And why were we there so long? Because we were in the center of the most intense, bad-vibed moments we had in the entire trip. A tough negotiation, to say the least.
Basically they were saying we needed to pay for the fuel, we were saying we payed in advance (which we did), they didn't care, we didn't have enough rubles to cover it, they we're not accepting dollars, people were phoning each other, the conversation was heating up, and the clock was ticking very fast...

And just minutes before that situation we were guessing the odds of making it to our day's final destination: Ruben guessed 95% of happening, Mischa said 99%.
Good gamblers we are not.