03:16 PM PDT on Tuesday, May 11, 2004

By JIM DEVER / Evening Magazine

Seattle's Erden Eruc has started something and he's not about to stop until he finishes it.

Erden has begun a journey around the world – a self-propelled hiking-biking-rowing adventure that will take him across three oceans and over the highest mountains on six continents.

It may be the single-greatest act of endurance ever attempted.

Erden Eruc

Tell him it can't be done and he will tell you about his inspiration – his hero, his friend, Goran Kropp.

"He convinced me that it wasn't crazy to think about such big huge dreams, and he had done such a trip himself," said Erden.

Kropp once bicycled from his native Sweden all the way to Mount Everest, where he climbed the world's tallest peak solo without the use of bottled oxygen before pedaling back home – an 8,000-mile roundtrip.

Erden admired the way Goran lived, then watched in horror as he died falling from a cliff in Eastern Washington.

In dedication to his friend's memory, Erden took his own longtime dream of circling the globe and put it into motion.

First Erden biked, then hiked his way to the elusive summit of Alaska's Mount McKinley.

Erden reached another goal before returning to Seattle when he stopped briefly to marry his girlfriend.

KING Extreme athlete Erden Eruc has made it a goal to circle the globe under his own power.

Now Nancy is preparing to see her new husband off on a round-the-world journey that will take a decade to complete.

"My life's gonna go by anyway, so I'd rather it go by knowing that he's doing something really important, and that when I can I'm gonna join him in different parts of the world," said Nancy.

Erden is training with Olympic-level athletes and coaches at the Pocock Rowing Center on Lake Union to prepare for long stretches of open sea he will challenge in a specially made rowboat.

He's also enlisting the support of the public and corporate sponsors to help make this a trip children can learn from – in person and over the Internet.

Soon after biking across the country to Florida, Erden will board his boat for a solo trip through the Panama Canal to South America and beyond.

What awaits his well-made plans are twists of fate, challenges of the sea, and the looming peaks of the world's highest mountains.

Erden Eruc will cover every inch of this journey under his own power. But he will not be alone. There will be an angel on his shoulder.