“Is there a place to charge my iPhone in here?” Photo: Shutterstock
There are a lot of ways to celebrate earning a degree. Seeing as how a college diploma signifies having all the answers to life’s deepest mysteries, many young graduates opt for a summer of backpacking in a far off land. It’s the perfect path to self discovery, a lifetime of adventures, and of course, avoiding the real world for just a couple more months.
For Francesco Tomba, a 26-year old graduate with a degree in mathematics, post college life will be a little more adventurous than that. In January he’ll join a six-man crew that will row across the Atlantic Ocean. And while that sounds adventurous enough for most, Tomba’s actually taking on that challenge as a warm up for the real goal – rowing solo across the Indian Ocean. All this coming from the self described “laziest person on Earth” with little rowing experience who booked his flight before coming to terms with what he was doing, intentionally forcing himself to a point of no return. But that shouldn’t fool you about Tomba’s ability to finish the task. He spent a winter living under a rock in France, completed a cycling expedition in the Himalayas, and once spent six months swimming around an Indonesian island.
He expects this new adventure to take more than four months, starting in Australia and finishing in Tanzania, Africa. The first person to complete a solo row across the Indian Ocean was Anders Svedlund in 1971. But while previous rowers before Tomba have ended their journey in either Madagascar or Mauritius, Tomba will be the first person to make it to mainland Africa. He’ll also be multitasking in ways that weren’t possible for Svedlund on his row more than 40 years ago. Tomba’s plan for the four month expedition is to use all his alone time to catch up on some reading. “These days I don’t have any time to read and I’m really looking forward to having hours and hours of reading time. I’m going to audio book the hell out of it.”
