Man to Circumnavigate the Globe in Rowboat.

Sports/Entertainment Editors & High-Tech Writers

THURSDAY ISLAND, Queensland, Australia--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Sept. 27, 2000

Mick Bird, the First Man to Try to

Circumnavigate the Globe by Oar Power, Is

Ready to Shove Off From Cairns (Thursday

Island), Australia, on the Next Leg of His

Journey

Mick Bird, the 43-year-old husband, father, musician and adventurer, has begun the next leg of his rowboat journey around the world from a cape north of Cairns, Australia.

Bird is on the fourth leg of a record-setting journey that began in August 1997 in his specially designed rowboat, "Reach." Bound for South Africa, this leg will be the longest and most complicated phase of the trip.

Web watchers can access daily reports from Bird at his Web site, www.naau.com. His rowboat is equipped with several advanced wireless communications technologies. Bird will be able to send and receive e-mail, make two-way phone calls and transmit still pictures and video, all while rowing an average of 10 hours a day.

As part of his special interest in education, Bird will use e-mail to communicate directly with students at more than 32,000 schools around the world. Viewers will also be able to follow his adventures on his personal Web site, www.naau.com, and at www.tuneinsports.com, a primary sponsor.

tuneinsports.com manages both sites for Bird. In addition, Bird has also dedicated his journey to the education and awareness of the devastating illness called Tuberous Sclerosis (www.ntsa.org), a genetic illness that causes multiple seizures, autism, tumor growth throughout the body and mental retardation in one in every 2,500 people worldwide.

"When Mick first approached us about sponsoring his record-breaking voyage, we jumped at the opportunity. We saw it as the perfect event for tuneinsports.com to sponsor. It not only provided us with a very high profile and unique experience, it also afforded us the opportunity to showcase wireless technology and the Internet in a way that has never been done before," said Frank Westall, chief executive officer of tuneinsports.com.

"To document this trip utilizing traditional methods would have made it financially prohibitive and logistically near impossible. Mick is braver than Lindbergh and, if possible, he is even more reluctant in his heroic role."

The first leg was from Fort Bragg, Calif., to Hilo, Hawaii. In Hilo, Bird was met by his wife, Stacia, his twin daughters and his mother, Patsy, a native of Molokai, Hawaii. In 1998, Bird set out from Hawaii for the Marshall Islands. The third leg had Bird following a route that took him through the Solomon Islands, across the equator and finally to Cairns.

This fourth leg, from Cairns (Thursday Island) to South Africa, will take more than six months. Bird will row approximately 8,000 miles, muscling through about 9,000 strokes (or 10 hours) a day with his oars.

Unlike his initial trip across the Pacific, there will be no opportunities to stop along the way. Bird will carry nine months' worth of provisions and will supplement his water supply with a desalinator kit.

Bird will have traversed almost two-thirds of the way around the world by the time he reaches South Africa. His fifth leg, set to begin in the first quarter of 2001, will take him across the Atlantic Ocean. Bird is expected to complete his final phase in early 2002 when he rows across the Eastern Pacific back to Hawaii.

Bird has had his share of experiences, both gratifying and horrifying, on his journey thus far. He has been stalked by sharks, greeted by island royalty in the Marshall Islands and rescued by aboriginals in the Solomon Islands.

He was almost run over by a huge oil tanker that never knew he was there and was saluted by U.S. Navy jets operating from an aircraft carrier while he was in the mid-Pacific.

www.tuneinsports.com (a TCGI company) has the exclusive rights to Internet distribution and will distribute content from Bird's journey to various sites across the Web.

tuneinsports.com is a sports information online resource. It provides team sports' schedules, community sports news and tools, sports entertainment features, news, community forums and e-commerce, including the sale of tickets to sporting events.

TCGI (Technology Capital Group Inc.) is based in Louisville, Ky. It is a management company that owns Internet companies and several software companies. Included in its Internet portfolio are several entertainment sites, including Mark Hamill's new site, www.fragcity.com. Other sites are www.tuneinnetwork.com, www.electriczone.com and www.icqgreetings.com.