Adventurers Club Of Los Angeles

IN A HALL ABOVE A LINCOLN HEIGHTS PHARMACY ON A RECENT thursday night, a small ship's bell was rung, and the membership rose from their folding chairs to toast in silence "our adventurers, absent and departed." On the whole, they were an abdominous lot, about 30 men, mostly on the sundown side of 60, many banded at the wrists with thick watches of multiple functions. The heads of water buffalo, bighorn sheep, exotic antelope and various predator cats peered dazedly down on them from the walls.

In the last 22 months, Ralph B. White's meticulously logged schedule shows trips to the mountains of Nepal, the Australian outback, the China-Mongolia border, a Rwandan volcano, Iceland, Benin and the waters off Zanzibar. Ask White's buddies at the Adventurers' Club of Los Angeles and they'll tell you this itinerary could threaten the health of any other thrill-seeker. But White's stamina is not an issue. He died, at age 66, on Feb. 4, 2008. It's his ashes that have been traveling since then, borne to the ends of the earth and the depths of the sea by his fiancee and fellow Adventurers.

Wave VIDMAR, A 39-YEAR-OLD ADVERSITY JUNKIE with a pale, resolute brow and a blond ponytail, wants to spend 60 days slogging through arctic wasteland with only polar bears, killer whales and frostbite for company. Since March he's been choking down burgers and pies to store calories, cycling and swimming, sitting in freezers, dickering with Russian helicopter companies and dragging tractor tires up and down the Berkeley hills near his Fremont home.

Wave VIDMAR, A 39-YEAR-OLD ADVERSITY JUNKIE with a pale, resolute brow and a blond ponytail, wants to spend 60 days slogging through arctic wasteland with only polar bears, killer whales and frostbite for company. Since March he's been choking down burgers and pies to store calories, cycling and swimming, sitting in freezers, dickering with Russian helicopter companies and dragging tractor tires up and down the Berkeley hills near his Fremont home.

At a glance, it could be a weekly meeting of Elks, Rotarians or Kiwanians, but take another look. They aren't trying to sell each other cars or life insurance. There are a few beer bellies but no slouchers. Several are elderly, except in the eyes, which are focused on far horizons. Think you've been there? Done everything? Have you flown with Jim Wilson and the Flying Tigers, or on the Berlin airlift when the Cold War was hot? Have you driven a Russian jeep through Mongolia with Pierre Odier?

In the last 22 months, Ralph B. White's meticulously logged schedule shows trips to the mountains of Nepal, the Australian outback, the China-Mongolia border, a Rwandan volcano, Iceland, Benin and the waters off Zanzibar. Ask White's buddies at the Adventurers' Club of Los Angeles and they'll tell you this itinerary could threaten the health of any other thrill-seeker. But White's stamina is not an issue. He died, at age 66, on Feb. 4, 2008. It's his ashes that have been traveling since then, borne to the ends of the earth and the depths of the sea by his fiancee and fellow Adventurers.

TRAVEL Presentation Meet Peter Greenberg as he launches his new guidebook series "Like a Local. " When, where, 6 p.m. Monday at Distant Lands, 20 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena. Admission, info : Free. (626) 449-3220. STATE PARKS Movie The documentary film "The First 70" showcases a journey to visit the 70 California state parks that were slated to close because of budget cuts. The closure list includes thousands of acres of parkland and half of the state's historic parks.

The Discovery Channel aired two programs this week about famous sunken ships, and that got me thinking about Al Enderle. To many Orange Countians, his is the family name behind the Enderle Center retail outlet in Tustin, but that makes him sound a lot more boring than he really is. This guy has searched for buried treasure. You could call him a retired adventurer.

Ralph Bradshaw White, who documented the 1985 discovery of the sunken Titanic, then returned to the bottom of the ocean more than 30 times to film and recover artifacts from the ill-fated vessel, died Feb. 4 at Glendale Adventist Medical Center. He was 66. White died from complications of an aortic aneurysm, said his daughter, Krista Few of Yokosuka, Japan. The public received an up-close look at the wreckage site through images White captured.

For nearly two years, a Tustin shopping center developer has been preparing to search for lost treasure--70 tons of silver bullion said to have been buried since 1879 in the muck of an Owens Valley lake. Some state officials doubt there is any bullion in the lake, but next month, if the State Lands Commission approves the venture as expected, Maurice A.

IN A HALL ABOVE A LINCOLN HEIGHTS PHARMACY ON A RECENT thursday night, a small ship's bell was rung, and the membership rose from their folding chairs to toast in silence "our adventurers, absent and departed." On the whole, they were an abdominous lot, about 30 men, mostly on the sundown side of 60, many banded at the wrists with thick watches of multiple functions. The heads of water buffalo, bighorn sheep, exotic antelope and various predator cats peered dazedly down on them from the walls.

At a glance, it could be a weekly meeting of Elks, Rotarians or Kiwanians, but take another look. They aren't trying to sell each other cars or life insurance. There are a few beer bellies but no slouchers. Several are elderly, except in the eyes, which are focused on far horizons. Think you've been there? Done everything? Have you flown with Jim Wilson and the Flying Tigers, or on the Berlin airlift when the Cold War was hot? Have you driven a Russian jeep through Mongolia with Pierre Odier?

They've done it all. So naturally members of the venerable Adventurers' Club of Los Angeles figured they'd heard it all. But that was before Donald Spaulding stood beneath a pair of mounted water buffalo heads at the club's Lincoln Heights headquarters to tell how he intends to pedal nonstop across the Pacific Ocean. The 55-year-old shuttle bus driver hopes to shove off for Australia this summer in a 24-foot boat powered by a propeller connected to a bicycle's chain-and-sprocket assembly.

If you're hunting for signs of travelers lost in uncharted space, what better place to look than the land of flying saucers? That's where anthropologist Jerry Freeman of Pearblossom found himself when he set off to follow the trail of the Lost '49ers--the wagon train that ended up in the desert instead of the gold fields when it made a wrong turn about 150 years ago.