I have just arrived back to my trusty computer after having a wonderful meeting with Andrew and Friedel Grant from www.travellingtwo.com. This wonderful married couple from Canada have been on the road 2.5 years on their bicycles, covering much of Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Canada, Australia, […]

The Travelling Two

Change to longboard Once I arrived in Switzerland, after just under 12,000km and 9 months on the road on my bicycle, I decided to up the ante of the journey and sample a vastly different mode of transport. The longboard. The idea had been spawned long before I actually made […]

On the change to the longboard and Fear

Speaking It has been a long hard road since I arrived back home five months ago. Time has gone at times too slowly, and at times too quickly. In any case, I am now at a stage where I am feeling comfortable about the prospect of speaking to audiences about […]

Photography and Speaking

A bit of a brain dump for you… Goals The significance of goals during my journey cannot be understated. They were both the life and the death of my journey. They served me as faithful coaches leading me to achieve what I set out to do, but at times they […]

Rumination

I really should be updating more often…what a ride it has been over the last two months. Here is a little bit more of what has been at times a painful debrief, but overall is leading me (I think) to a much healthier place than when I was on the […]

Insight

With all these internal musings that I am posting lately, I guess it’s about time to post a wee bit about where I am and what shape life is taking for me at the moment… I am now living and studying in Auckland, the biggest city in New Zealand. The […]

Coming Together

“I just want it all to go away.” This was a comment I made to my cousin Rach recently, regarding the last 2.5 years of my life. “I wish there would be key written delete on it for last 30 months.” This was a comment a fellow long distance cyclist […]

I Just Want it to all Go Away

I still feel frustration, disorientation, anxiety, inferiority… I still feel like a stranger in my own country. It’s tough. I cry sometimes these days. I cry because… I don’t know why I cry. I’m frustrated because society tells us to be strong. Like as if being scared and being unsettled […]

Reverse Culture Shock

I made the comment in a previous post that ‘I cannot for absolute certainty say that God has answered my prayers’. While this statement in and of itself is true, I will add the following. While I cannot be absolutely sure that God has answered any particular prayer, I do […]

What I’m Into

So this afternoon, I was surfing this grand World-Wide-Waste of time that is the internet, and somehow came across John Cleese’s blog. Like, really, the man himself has a blog. I thought all my Christmases had come at once, and was instantly setting myself up for a great afternoon of […]

Filtering and Worldviews

This post is probably going to be heavy going for many readers. Not quite the ‘check out this awesome high pass that I just cycled across’ post that is so easy to skim over, just checking out the photos. No, this post is another existential, metaphysical pondering post. And to […]

Religion

A big apology for the lack of access to this website over the last two weeks. I am at a loss as to why access numbers should be so high now that I have finished the exciting part of the trip! The problem with my journey is that is has […]

The Problem With My Journey

A big thanks to Heather for bringing this guy to my attention – Nick Vujicic. Born with no arms and no legs, among other things he does motivational speaking. Click on the image below to see him in action. His story of course is inspirational. It would be hard to […]

Day 905 – NEW ZEALAND: Motivational Speaking

A distinct lack of photos are being taken these days. Oh well. So I went running with the Christchurch Marathon Clinic today. Absolutely fantastic. Running has never been so perfectly agreeable. The biggest thing that I enjoy about doing physical activity with others, is the fact that your mind is […]

Day 903 – NEW ZEALAND: Running

“There is a guy I know who has a skate ramp in his garage.” This was a comment from a friend recently about me trying to find new friends. It got me to thinking that when you’re involved in the long-distance skateboarding scene, and only involved in the long distance […]

Day 902 – NEW ZEALAND: Who am I?

So yesterday I went to a counsellor to talk through some of the issues that are bothering me at the moment upon re-entry to New Zealand. Some semblance of clarity has been restored, but it’s still all very scary. Basically I realised that there are heaps of things that I […]

Day 902 – NEW ZEALAND: Priorities

I was perusing the www.skatefurther.com forum today and came across a link to www.whoisadamcolton.com‘s upcoming solo skate journey in Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile. In true world wide web surfing fashion, I ended up clicking on a link in Adam’s website about helmets. He condones helmet use in skateboarding. So […]

Day 898 – NEW ZEALAND: Wear a Helmet

And so it goes in my head. In most things these days; not just as in the case of the cartoon above. It is so easy to get ahead of myself. To not live in the moment. Or at least have a healthy balance between living in the moment and […]

Day 898 – NEW ZEALAND: The future…

A rather belated season’s greetings to everyone. It’s 2009, and everything is going to be fine. Welcome to the future. Just before Christmas I was greeted with a message when trying to access my website, telling me that I had exceeded my monthly allowance for bandwidth. A blessing and a […]

Day 896 – NEW ZEALAND: Happy Christmas…Merry New Year

Some readers may recall that way back in Uzbekistan, the un-thinkable happened. I was using a small portable hard drive to back up all my photos and videos, and on the very day that I decided I would back the drive up (all 20GB of it), it stopped working (http://14degrees.org/en/?p=199). […]

Day 890 – NEW ZEALAND: Re-discovered

An interesting talk by best selling author Rick Warren (click the link and a new window will display the video). Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Life was a massive best seller. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/rick_warren_on_a_life_of_purpose.html “Pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life, reflects on his own crisis of purpose in the wake […]

Day 883 – NEW ZEALAND: It’s not about me

Who’d have thought that a blog about a cycle journey from Japan to England would end up saturated with a fella’s musings about his struggle with God. If you came for the cycling and deserts and frozen beards, and are getting annoyed with my inward searching at present, I apologise. […]

Day 880 – NEW ZEALAND: Ground Beef

Before I unload some brain-baggage here, I’ll post some fun pictures. It was a fun weekend just been. I got to visit my Cousin Rach and Sam and flatting atmosphere in Dunedin on the way down to Invercargill for the Thomson Christmas Party. It was a long two days with […]

Day 879 – NEW ZEALAND: Mincing Faith

With baby steps I am getting closer to understanding how the whole ‘let’s publish a book!’ idea works. As an introduction, I am planning to publish a book about my travels. Much of what the book will be made up of can more or less be found on my blog. […]

Day 874 – NEW ZEALAND: Book update

I’ll try not to cry as I write this post… I feel no small amount of loss at this present time. I feel grief over what I have lost, and what I am losing. I also feel an excitement of what might be, but a loss because I know I […]

Day 873 – NEW ZEALAND: Re-entry

Did you know that www (the bit that comes before the internet sites eg 14degrees.org) actually stands for World Wide Waste of Time? Well sometimes you see something that does have the potential to change you life. How to build an igloo is one such example. Video below originally seen […]

Day 869 – NEW ZEALAND: www…