16-17 Jan 2016

December has been an excited month at Lex Adventures jam-packed with events and it’s not over yet.

New Equipment
One of the things I am most excited about is the native-indian 500ml aluminum mug I found at KR Market. At Rs70 you can’t beat this price for a key piece of your personal camping cook set. No more “2 campers 1 cup”! We also have the 300ml Quechua aluminum cup with rounded lip and folding handles for Rs310. Join us on a trek to see them in action side-by-side and then take one home with you.

Lex’s special Traveler’s Oil is now available in 50ml bottles for Rs100. Great as a massage oil for all those post-trek aches, body odor and fungus fighter during the trek, general insect repellent and most importantly a highly effective mosquito repellent. This all-natural mixture of essential oils is something I have kept with me for years and now I am sharing it with you.

Where Lex comes from a traditional way of floating down a river is on an inner tube from a big tractor. And now we have 3 of them to enhance our water sporting fun. As well as 2 new life jackets.

Slacklining is a great way to build balance and confidence no matter what kind of trail life throws at you. Now you can come slacklining with us.

Facebook

Most of our advertising effort has gone into the unknowable labyrinth facebook’s social network, and not without success. We now have over 400 page likes, 10 reviews, and our picture of garbage cleanup has gone viral with 20,000 views and climbing. Check it out: https://www.facebook.com/LexAdventures/photos/a.522845347896852.1073741829.522340897947297/534580986723288/

Upcoming events

Treasure Hunt Trek 5 is coming up on December 26th and 27th https://www.facebook.com/events/838288799621883/

Carina’s birthday party is on December 27th in HRS layout with an Electro Swing theme, karaoke, cake, drinks, and games. Only 10 invites available through Lex Adventures. Email Lex for more details and an invite Lex@LexAdventures.com

New Years Eve – We are doing something! We don’t know what yet, but we have secured a venue at a private estate outside Bangalore. Probably a BBQ with games, rappelling, slacklining climbing, and a midnight toast. This will hopefully be the site of future large-scale environmental rehabilitation projects. Again, email Lex if you want to be involved. Lex@LexAdventures.com

Under25 Summit, Lex will be speaking at World Trade Center, Bangalore on Sunday January 10th http://under25summit.com/

HELP!
How can you help? We need contacts, team members, and word-of-mouth.

We are trying to set up a monthly slacklining + spotfixing event in Bangalore, preferably at Lalbagh, but we need a personal contact to set us up with getting permission. Do you know someone who works at a high-traffic venue that could be used for slacklining and is in need of cleaning up? Let us know.

We are looking for a video editor and a web editor. We have no money to offer them but if they can do minimally decent work on a minimally decent schedule we will worship the ground they walk on and they will join all our events for free. We can even customize our events to fit their desires and schedules. Anything they want. Except money, we don’t have any either 😦

Reddit manager. We want one. People keep suggesting I post my events in Reddit groups but I know nothing about Reddit and I am already swamped. Someone who knows the intricacies of Reddit Bangalore, can keep in contact with me via IM, and basically just copy stuff from our facebook page and publish it to Reddit.

Like, comment, share, tell your friends http://www.facebook.com/LexAdventures

our fourth Treasure Hunt Trek is on for 12-13 December 2015
https://web.facebook.com/events/563142317183714/
-or- http://www.meetup.com/Expeditions/events/227035333/
Price of THT is going up to Rs1200 (and will continue to go up as we develop it and add more sports, so join early and join again later!) From now on it will also include a small piece of trekking equipment or supplies as a gift to participants and an additional cash prize for the winning team (Rs50*number of participants).

A good friend invited Lex to join the admin team at http://www.meetup.com/Expeditions to help them offer more quality events around Karnataka, get more reviews, expand their membership from  ~2,900 to +10,000, and then put pressure on event hosts to increase quality and transparency (or GTFO). If you have any questions about getting your adventure sport or nature events listed there don’t hesitate to contact me.

We sell gear! Usually used gear. Our price is usually the same price as buying it new at the store plus Rs11 handling fee (because after we sell it we just have to go buy a new one). With us you get a chance to try it out first on a real trek, compare it to a number of different solutions (we maintain a diverse set of gear), talk with peers and experts about the pros, cons, and value, and then make a purchasing decision. Supporting us in this way helps us lower our risks (gear wearing out, getting damaged or lost is by far our biggest expense, funny how things get taken care of better when people own it themselves) and support our educational and environmental efforts all while building up your ability to show up for any trek and have a great time. Let us know what you are interested in. We have nearly everything, and go shopping for new gear all the time. Want to buy it new? We totally understand. We will still offer all our participants the chance to learn about gear and even offer advice on good places to buy it. Selling gear is not our main business and we don’t want it to be! Trekking should be more about knowledge and fitness than gear.

We are happy to welcome Joshi and Nihal to the team as volunteer guides. Their enthusiasm, helpfulness, and thirst for knowledge has us excited to work with them!

You can sign up for it here: http://eepurl.com/bF_fqL It should be the easiest and most reliable way to stay informed about upcoming events with about 1 email per week.

There’s a link to it on the about page and the sidebar of http://www.LexAdventures.com but it doesn’t seem possible to actually embed it on the site. Integrating the newsletter with the facebook seems to be totally broken from both ends (I assume facebook is to blame). I’ll have to take a stab at it again some other time, for the time being I will just have to include the link with all my update. All social links to google+ appear to be broken again and previously cross-posted items have disappeared. And now I’ve wasted an entire day fighting, mostly in circles, with web technology in general instead of actually posting the upcoming event details. I think it’s time to cook dinner…

If there is a competent web developer in Bangalore who wants to trade services with me I will worship the ground you walk on. You will go on on my treks for free and use all the nicest gear. I’ll make sure you get all the photographs you want (of yourself? of the nature? whatever floats your boat). You get a climbing gym membership. I’ll train you for climbing, trekking, camping, swimming, sailing, hitch hiking, travelling, crafting, cooking, etc etc. I’ll give you foot massages and serve you coffee while you code. There has got to be a web dev somewhere in Bangalore who wishes he could get out in nature more and live a life of adventure and excitement. This is your chance. I am desperate. Contact me.

You can sign up now, but you’ll just get test emails while I go through all the options and test some of the targeting tools. If you’d don’t mind a bit of spam please sign up ASAP so I can test on you (trying to make it so I can email people based on their location). Once I am sure it is at least minimally functional the signup form should get embedded everywhere and only real emails will and go out. But first, sleep.

http://eepurl.com/bF_fqL

Rained the whole way home from the Treasure-hunt Endurance Trek (TET), and front tire went flat, but I got Carina home safely. She says bike touring is fun 🙂 Next TET is scheduled for 28-29 November and we are switching the start time to 7am. Reply here if you are interested. Smaller events during the week may happen also…

Social Linkage from http://www.LexAdventures.com should now be working. Email list hopefully also coming today for the people who wanted to receive updates in a way more directed and reliable than a social network.

If you are reading this in facebook or google+ land then the social link from http://www.LexAdventures.com has been created successfully. The treks, trip curating, and team development are going great, and we are getting a lot of interest, but marketing in India continues to be difficult, so we will be skipping next weekends trek to work on our web presence, networking, and marketing strategy.

If you are reading this then http://www.LexAdventures.com and http://www.LexAdventures.in are live with a basic blog infrastructure. Website improvements will start rolling out in the next few weeks. In the meantime head over to http://www.facebook.com/flasher702 to see what Lex been up to or check out http://www.facebook.com/onetribeindia to see what events our friends at 1 Tribe are hosting next.