It is Greg Michaels' lifelong passion for exploration and quests that has brought the ideas behind EarthCubed to life.

The June 2008 issue of Outside Magazine details Greg's life of exploration through the lens of his worldwide adventures in seeking 'confluences'. 'Confluences' are seemingly random locations at the intersection of whole number latitude and longitude, and the world quest for these is tracked by the Degree Confluence Project http://www.confluence.org. The story follows him to the highest confluence in the western hemisphere, in Bolivia's altiplano region.

It was back in his university years that Greg expressed his interest in exploration. But this was not exploration of traditional frontierlands, this was 'the final frontier'. It was a time of the Mir spacestation, the first detailed photos of moons and planets, and the fall of the Soviet Union. Greg studied geology, astronomy and the Russian language in which he soon became fluent. He was hired as the aide to the Project Scientist on NASA's Magellan mission to Venus. He became the first human to explore most of Venus, albeit with only his eyes looking at detailed radar mosaics! He was the first to classify and catalogue a type of Venusian volcano called a tick or scalloped margin dome.

The great promise of Russian/American cooperation in space and manned missions to Mars failed to materialize, and the Russian space program nearly went bankrupt. As a graduate student of Geology at Arizona State University Greg continued to work with NASA on Mars mission research. Space was the real frontier of exploration, and the Earth had been entirely explored, but the life of an astronaut lost its appeal, and he was longing to get out of the lab and seek adventure and exploration elsewhere.

In 1997 Greg saw that technology, the internet and a new way of thinking about adventure expanded the potential for adventure around the world. In graduate school, he was fascinated with the possibilities for off-the-beaten-path travel by choosing random latitudes and longitudes.

He also became interested in the emerging possibility of traveling to interesting remote locations, extreme environments or other adventures and sending information back by satellite to the internet so that people could follow along or interact. In 1999, in an attempt at a low tech precursor of this idea, Greg bought a digital camera, cell phone, laptop, and GPS and traveled overland from Germany to Hong Kong mostly in a Russian jeep called a Niva. He sent web pages with photos through his cell phone to a near-real-time, updatable travel blog. This may not sound groundbreaking, but it was fairly unheard of at the time.

In 2000 Greg moved to Taiwan to study Mandarin, in which he became fluent, and to write earth science journalism. In 2001 he discovered the Degree Confluence Project http://www.confluence.org responsible for the quest for confluence points. The confluence project was a natural for Greg's approach to getting off the beaten path. From that time to the present, Greg would have adventures seeking these points in jungles, rivers, deep snow and deserts including the forbidden waters of North Korea, high Tibetan mountains (world's highest points), and across minefields in Bosnia, just to name a few.

From 2002-2005 Greg lead tours for The Imaginative Traveller in China and Japan in order to gain experience in the adventure tour industry in preparation for EarthCubed. His travels around the world have brought him to 50 countries, and he has lived for extended periods in China, Russia, Taiwan, Japan and Germany. After NASA and graduate school, his work as a geophysicist brought him to Azerbaijan, Brazil, Alaska, Canada and India. With his extensive travel in China and the former Soviet Union, he has become knowledgeable and experienced in these and nearby regions, including Central Asia. As has always been his wish, he wants to share the great spirit of travel, quests and adventure and take you with him…