Small Steps

So here I am, nearly seven months on from my last post, and I cannot decide whether time has moved fast or slow. In one sense, I am exactly where I was in the wake of this strange year, yet in a literal sense, I am somewhere far away - and somewhere I never would have thought I'd be. A good friend of mine passed on some very pertinent advice to me recently. I have always been one to find the deepest of meanings within the simplest of phrases, but the relevance of these words to the situation in which I have found myself gave me a little more comfort...

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Thank You

"Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy."  - Anne Frank There are many parts of me that are strong. I've proven to have a lot of will when I've needed it, presumably because there have been times in my life when I have had no choice but to be strong. But there are some parts of me that are not; some parts that are somewhat fragile. And I guess that's all part of being human. We can fight out way through the roughest of storms without an ounce of self-doubt, and yet fall to our knees at something so small, so insignificant...

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The Silver Lining

Optimism is a difficult notion to convoke in the midst of adversity, and even more difficult to maintain, when there is little more than a glimmer of light trickling through the faraway exit of the dark, dreary tunnel that is your world. Time is just as capable of harm as it is healing, when days turn to weeks, and all you can do is sit, wait, and watch your progress dwindle away with the minutes. And for six weeks, that is what I did. After...

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Ups and Downs

I could lie and say that - very much like my dining experiences here in the land of supersized portions - my plate has been piled a foot high with all sorts of American adventures, and has left little room for my otherwise frequent blog updates. But the simple truth is, I have been slack. In fact, I have been left with a lot more time to play with than I would have liked, due to a few unexpected, and unwelcome, hurdles along my way. Only two weeks...

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Living the American Dream

I like to live by the philosophy that things will always fall into place. Whether this is a genuine belief, or simply my way of justifying my organisation deficiency, I am unsure. Whatever the case, my first few days in Kutztown, USA have reinforced it. We arrived in our new hometown after a somewhat flurried few days of travel; it's never easy when you have your weight in luggage to drag along with you wherever you go. This included an overnight...

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24

Twenty hours spent doing one thing, irrespective of how enjoyable it would usually be, will in most cases become somewhat tedious toward the end. Even twenty hours of sunbathing on the coast of Tahiti would have a certain degree of monotony once the halfway mark was reached. So when I suggested twenty hours of solid bike riding as a fundraising idea for our U.S. campaign, I struggle to understand why we were so enthusiastic about it. We had no doubt...

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They Come In Threes

It was with an unsettling familiarity that I was thrown to the road in a brutal stack up after only seven kilometres of the Te Awamutu Tour on Saturday morning, and as I lay there with shredded hands and loose shards of stone embedded in the side of my head, I was hardly surprised at this continuation of misfortune. It was defeating at first, having to pull myself off the road to see the battered condition of my body, a broken bike and even more fluro paint scraped from the ends of my prized Sidi Wires. But in my adrenaline-fuelled state,...

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