I’m on the road again this week. I’m back up to the lovely Stirling to deliver a soft skills workshop. Should be fun and intense, because that’s how I like it.

In the meantime, here’s a question for you: “What’s important about science today?” Check out this video and find out what folks had to say. This is part of an educational project by Time Jones (www.communicatescience.com) The participants were asked to draw their results using the Surrealists’ technique of ‘Exquisite Corpse’.

(via graphic facilitation)

Hi Folks. I know I’ve been silent on the blog posts (sometimes FB and Tweeter and Tumblr are just easier to up date). But hey-ho here I am now…

I was slightly groggy this morning. I’m not sure if it was because I didn’t get to bed until 1 a.m. or because I woke up at my usual time of 5.30 a.m. but then fell back to sleep until 6.30 a.m.. I suspect it’s because I fell back to sleep. It was a restless hour of sleep.

I started work on a new imagine last night. It’s one of a lady eating an ice cream. I want to try this new style out that is light line art, sparse background with splashes of colour in various places usually the eyes, the mouth and hands. I like the minimalist feel to it.

I did an audio note this morning, which made me remember my audio boos. I haven’t been there for a while, so I was thinking since I am laying off of the writing, that I might start those up again. You can hook up with me there or just catch my latest Boo in the sidebar on the right.

I am was wondering about the persona Clay. I was thinking about this because of Daniel’s blog. He’s kind of gone for the full disclosure blog, whereas I am aware that I blog in character – a close enough character to the “in the flesh” Clay, but nevertheless a virtual version of Clay that stops short of the full disclosure of my mind’s content.

I suppose I blog less frequently then some folks because I try to second guess what people will find interesting. I suppose really I should just blog about whatever I find of interest and hold true to what it says on the tine – a blog about “my thoughts on what I’ve been seeing, hearing, and reading about.” In short, really just need to report on what I’ve experienced that day or week.

Today I had the opportunity to do some work analysing DISC profiles, while DISC is not my favourite behavioural style profile, it works well enough to begin a conversation around personal insight. I come out as a High-I type, followed closely by S-type.

Apart form that, another night in the Stirling Highland with the hypnotic carpet. I like the Highland because it has a decent gym and it’s right in Stirling proper – easy access to good food and some sights. I’ve started introducing cardio back into my work-out routine, seeing how it is now Spring, I have to get ready for running on the roads and mountain-biking. Time to ease back off of the weights.

I don’t know if you caught this article about the death of the phone and how nobody uses the phone (for calling) anymore or rarely. Although the article doesn’t talk about this, I’ve also read that email is on it’s way out being replaced by Twitter, FB private message and it’s ilk. I’m not sure that I’d go that far and dismiss email, but I certainly don’t talk that much on my phone anymore. In the past 6 or 7 years I’ve never used up my talk minutes on my mobile. I do however, frequently go over my texting limit. How about you? Do you use the phone a lot for talking? What’s your weapon of choice when it comes to day to day communication needs.

That’s it for me tonight folks. I hope you had a fab day today.
Thanks for reading,
Clay

Passing the time in Stirling.

The trip south was OK. It was like a reunion of who’s who in the UK training industry. I ran into people I haven’t seen for several years. I can’t say that the meeting itself was exciting, it wasn’t. But it was great to catch up with old folks and make new contacts. I think this is going to be another good year for my training business.

“Easy things nobody wants, but what is forbidden is tempting.” – Ovid.

Ain’t that the truth. The quickest way to whip up somebody’s desire for something is to tell them they can’t have it, that it’s forbidden to them. Think Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit. They sacrificed paradise for the sake of a tree they were forbidden to eat from. I’ll have to remember to ask God why s/he put the tree in the Garden in the first place knowing man’s wicked ways and his weakness for the forbidden.

The holidays are officially winding down now. I say officially because we’ve just spent two and half hours traveling back from Bristol, a trip that normally only takes us about an hour and a half. The M5 was shut from junction 11 to 9. Early reports say the motorway was shut after a man’s body was found on the carriageway near junction 10 just north of Cheltenham. No other details have surfaced yet. It meant we had to take the long way home, but hey, we made it home safely, so no complaints from me.

All in all, we had a great Christmas and New Year break, the in-laws have gone back from whence they came, and we’re back at home settling down to some sense of normalcy. Granted, I have to put up with the kids for another couple of days before they go back to school. But that’s cool, I can cope.

What’s the safety zone for continuing to talk about new year’s resolutions? I usually start thinking about what I want to do with the new year in the last two weeks of December. My theory is if I work it out in December, I can hit January running full speed. Not much is going on in the last couple of weeks in December anyway because most people are too busy thinking about Christmas and racking up hundreds if not thousands of pounds of debt buying gifts for their loved ones and friends. I’m lucky that Ruth is frugal and I waste money all year long thus saving me the need to rack it all up at the end of the year. You don’t notice it as much if you spread it out over the year.

Anyway, if you haven’t made your resolutions or goals for 2011 yet, here are my last words on the subject. All you slackers out there will like this. According to a study conducted for the Department for Work and Pensions, one in six of us is going to live to see our 100th birthday or more. The problem with this, as you can imagine, is that there is simply not going to be enough space for us all. It’ll be like that episode of Star Trek where some alien race captures Kirk and tries to make him mate with their princess, a beautiful blonde of course. It turns out that their planet is suffering from overpopulation because they’ve found a way to eradicate disease and such like, meaning that people simply lived extra long lives, so much so that there wasn’t enough space to even move around anymore. So they wanted Kirk to mate with this princess and give her his germs so that they could all start dying again.

The moral of the story is that if we listen to Jamie Oliver and his ilk and keep getting healthier by all this green, yogurt, granola, broccoli eating living, we’re likely to be begging for population relief in the future. So in defence of the future of our society, I encourage you NOT to make any resolutions about getting fit, quitting smoking, eating more vegetables, and drinking less alcohol. If ever you needed a reason to live hard, eat grease burgers, and lead pies, and drink alcohol like a fish drinks water, this is it – you are helping to secure the future from over population. Any excuse will do eh?

OK, that said, it’s time for me to go do my civic duty and drink shots of Jack Daniels for the rest of the evening.

It’s the New Year, day 1, and I feel worst for wear. I guess drinking a bottle of Glenfiddich with your mate on New Year’s Eve has that effect.

Anyway, it was a good night with good company in the quiet of my mate’s house. We talked a lot of shit about politics, music, and old times. We’re both in our forties, married with multiple kids, mortgages, jobs – the usual stuff of domesticated primates.

Back in the day I would’ve been scouring the neighbourhood looking for a party to crash with evil on my mind – itching to get drunk and get laid. Mostly I just got drunk and passed out. It took me a few years to realise that whiskey and sex have an inverse relationship. The more whiskey you drink, the less likely your chances of getting laid. The whiskey lowered inhibitions but also broke the vital communications link between brain and penis. As I said, I usually just passed out.

I once woke up on New Year’s Day and thought I was dead. I was on the 151 Bacardi Rum back in those days. I was at a house party with my wild-ass army buddies. We were young. We were dumb. And yes, we were full of the white milky stuff. Lots of it. I drank a half of bottle of rum lightly coloured with coke. It didn’t take long before the rum hit me like a hammer and I went from legless to unconscious before the clock struck 12. When I opened my eyes again I was in complete darkness. And I mean there was absolutely no light. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that kind of dark before, but let me tell you, it’s unnerving, especially when you can’t form a coherent thought or remember how you ended up in the dark. The only conclusion that I could come up with was that I was dead. Panic set in. Holy shit, so that’s it, I thought. Eternal darkness. At least I wasn’t burning in Hell.

It took another 20 minutes before my senses started to return. I realised I was lying on a bed. I worked out that I could move. I stumbled around in the dark until I bumped into a wall. I groped the wall until I found a door. Suddenly I was back in the land of the living. I vowed never to drink that much alcohol ever again. That was 20 years ago. Ooops! Looks like I did it again.

Oh well…

It’s a New Year. Time for new things, new adventures, new goals. But first I need to find a greasy spoon joint to clear up this hangover. I have a taste for steak. A bloody piece of meat is always good for bringing me back to my senses. The blood awakens the natural man in me. It’s a primal thing, you understand.

I’m in Bristol, so a greasy spoon joint is not hard to find. At the next round about, I see just the place. I screech into the carpark, hungry and full of hate.

It’s not long before I’m seated and my waitress, Gemma, mid-thirties, short black hair, cute smile, hands me a menu and takes my drink order.

She returns with my pint of diet coke. She must have sensed my desperation. Instead asking for my order, she recommends the rack of ribs. There’s something savage about eating a rack of ribs. You have to hold them in your hands and tear into them viciously, like a lion into a gazelle.

Hunger satisfied, I turn my attention to figuring out what I loosely want to do in 2011. This is what I came up with:

Read more history and politics
Stay current on world affairs
Blog daily (which equates to write daily)
Build my social network (on and off line)
Write more essays
Write another book
More adventure
More travel
Create content
Create useful products to sell
Make documentary short films focused on telling people’s story
Stay fit

I know I’ll have to sit down with these and figure out the details, but at least this gives me a direction of travel.

I signal to Gemma that I’m ready for the cheque. While we’re waiting for the card machine to give the ok, I ask Gemma what her goals are for the new year.

“I want to fall in love, run a 5K, find a job I enjoy and see new places.”

Sounds like a plan to me.

Many months have pasted since my last trip to the hills.  My work schedule hasn’t been that permissible this year.  It’s kind of a hard sell to the wife to be away all week only to come home unpack your suitcase and then pack your rucksack and head back out the door.  That doesn’t tend to go down well.  But as it happens, the project I’ve been working on has come to an end, so I now have some time to relax and enjoy the outdoors.

I spent the day out in the peak district with a couple of mates.  We decided we’d do a 12 mile hike to take in some of the various scenery the peak district has to offer, from dales to Jurassic Park style river valleys.  We couldn’t have asked for a better day – blue sky, sun, very warm with a cooling breeze.  And because we left early, we had the trails to ourselves for most of the day.

Now I am back home.  My muscles ache and my bones are tired.  I have missed the outdoors and the hills and mountains specifically.  I feel inspired to do more hiking and get back into my outdoor routine.

I’m back in the UK after a week of pure R&R in Spain.  We literally did nothing except hang out by the pool, hang out by the beach, eat, read, play PSP, and sleep.

OK, one day we did go on a little trip to find the famous salt lake whose mud supposedly contains powerful healing powers.  I personally didn’t partake in covering myself in mud, but the rest of the crew did.

My holiday reading list included the second half of John Updike’s Couples, Jay McInerney’s, Bright Lights, Big City and also his new short story collection, The Last Bachelor.

I found Updike’s Couples to be a fascinating exploration of the interpersonal dynamics of marital relationships, infidelity and the conditions that lead couples to stray into the tumultuous world of adultery, wife swapping, and boredom within a committed relationship like marriage.  I love his description of adultery as “a way of giving yourself adventures…of getting out in the world and seeking knowledge.”

I found McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City an easy and fascinating read in the second person.  Like Updike, McInerney’s favorite subjects are sex and adultery.  McInerney aslo adds in a lot of drugs and dying of cancer in his subject matter.  Bright Lights, Big City paints a portrait of living in New York City in the 80’s, full of cocaine and all night parties and trying to get laid.  The Last Bachelor covers much the same territory only this time it’s post 9/11 New York City and somewhere in Tennessee of all places.  The fact that McInerney lives in both New York City and Tennessee probably give a clue as to why.  I like McInerney’s writing style and look forward to catching up and reading more of his work.

And now we are settling back into life as normal – laundry, dishes, housework, getting ready for work, and work proper.

It’s funny the many roles we play in a day.  My train mate (stranger sitting across from me) is a female business woman.  From her notes, I’ve gathered that she is a manager of some sort for HSBC.  She is preparing for a team meeting.  In the space of an hour, she played many roles.

When we first sat down, she brought her loose notes, and her notebook, and her laptop.  Intense and focused, she poured over her notes, made more notes.

Time passed.

She pulled out her blackberry.  I thought she was making a business call, instead she called her daughter to make sure she was ready for school.  Soft voice, mum’s voice… ‘I love you’ at the end.  Phone down, back into business manager role plugging away on the laptop inputting her notes.  In the midst of this transcription, she pulls out her nail file and moves into girly mode and starts doing her nails.  Then back to business manager.

Notes finally finished, she pulls put her iPod and relaxes to some tunes and does the soduku from the morning Metro.

Even her look suggests a women of a thousand guises.  She is wearing a black suit jacket, but underneath is a pink terry cloth top with a white t-shirt that shows just above the rim of the pink shirt.  She is has a small silver cross hanging neatly against her cleavage.  Her hair, short and spikey.  She sports a hard won tan and face that looks as worn a leather glove, not ugly, just haggard.  She is wearing opened toed shoes, pink painted toenails.

I reach my stop, which turns out is also her stop.  We get off.  She has three bags – a laptop bag, her handbag, and some large overgrown back that looks like may contain presentation gear.  Another role, that of the traveler or perhaps the wandering saleswoman…

I wonder how many other roles she will have to play before the end of her day.  Which leaves me to wonder, how many roles do I play in a single day?   And when, if ever, do I get to be just me, no roles, no masks, no walls or barriers?

I’ve been slow to post these past couple of weeks, mainly because I’ve been out wandering and enjoying a little time off of work.  Over the weekend, I was out wandering the Derbyshire Moors with my good friend Ed, of Nak-ed-ape.  As usual, we past the walking time putting the world to right and philosophizing about this and that.  One of the questions posed was why do I like spending so much time outdoors in the hills and woodlands?  My short answer was because the outdoors, especially the mountains, are my spiritual home.  Going to the mountains for me is like going to church.  It is my place of worship.  I am guaranteed to be more centered and grounded after a day’s walk in the hills.

This particular trip, we did a 7 hour hike starting from the Moorland Centre in Edale, north up the waterfall, then northwest to Kinder Scout (there is meant to be a trail through the moorland here, but inevitably you loose the trail and end up picking your way through the trenches and mud sinks until you find firm dry land).

At Kinder Scout, we turned South and followed the Pennine Way back into Edale (I think at some point in the not to distant future, I will walk the entire Pennine Way which is 289 miles going from Edale to north going through Yorkshire Dales, up into Northumberland, across the Cheviots, and right up into the Scottish Borders).  Then today we did a 12 mile cycle around the reservoir trilogy of Ladybower, Derwent, and Howden reservoirs.  And now I am totally knackered!

Chow

We are off on a little mini break – some sweet time with the misuses minus the kids. We like exploring different parts of the country from time to time, so I suggested we check out Canterbury, partly because it gave me an excuse to reread Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and also because I wanted to visit a few other places that have been etched in my memory since studying military history at West Point. One of those being battlefield at Hastings.

I’ve been living in and out of hotels since January this year, so Friday night I had to drive home from Essex, unpack my bags, do my laundry, and repack for our 5 day mini break. I know I am a last minute kind of guy and this was about as last minute as you can get! All good though, we weren’t under any time pressures really i.e. no planes, buses, or trains to catch. Our last couple of trips together have been ‘let’s make it up as we go along’ trips. So this was no different in that respect. We had a general destination of Canterbury. The rest we would make up.

We set off at a reasonable time on Saturday morning. We thought the roads would be packed full of cars considering it is a Bank Holiday weekend. But actually, the motorways were fairly clear. We made good time down to Folkestone, which was going to serve as our base of operations for the trip. We would have stayed in Cantebury, but all the hotels and B&B’s were booked. Instead, Ruth found a spartan little B&B in Folkestone called the Rob Roy run by an old couple named Sue and Alan. It’s about a mile away from the town center on the A260. Not the most picturesque place, but we didn’t plan on spending much time there anyway, apart from sleeping.

We picked up a bunch of leaflets from the tourist information center as soon as we arrived in town. I hadn’t realized how much there is to see around the Kent Downs. We decided to spend the rest of Saturday kicking around Folkestone. Now I don’t know if it’s just me, but it seems that in the area of Folkestone where we are staying, all the locals look like they got a bit of sea-dog in them. A fall out from being a harbor town I guess.

We set out to explore Folkestone by bike. A quick flick through the leaflets and we found a place that looked interesting – The Lower Leas Coastal Park. We could take in some sea and woodlands. Apparently, landslips in 1784 created the park’s basic formation and then in 1829 some enterprising nobleman decided he could make some cash, so he built a toll road to provide an “easy” route between the harbor and and the town of Sandgate. The park has evolved since then as a place for people to come and relax underneath the shade of pines, holm oaks and sycamore trees, or to lie out on the pebbled beach.

We cycled at a leisurely pace through the park stopping at several landmarks like the Leas Lift, which is the second oldest water powered lift in Britain, and the Zig Zag Path, which was built in 1921 as a new attraction and to provide work for the unemployed.

Beneath the Zig Zag Path is an amphitheater. I don’t know if it used for shows or anything, but it provided a nice grassy area to lie down on and take in some sun. We cycled through the park and onto Sandgate before turning around and finding a route back to Folkestone. It was nice to be next to the sea, rolling along watching people and ducking from seagulls.

In the evening, after we recovered from our ride, we found a nice all you can eat Chinese buffet called Kalala. The service was quick, the staff friendly, and the food was delicious, what more could you ask for from a buffet. After dinner, we were both pretty beat, so we headed back to the B&B to call it a day, play a few games and then hit the rack. End of day one.

He walked up to the roof of the hotel to get some fresh air and watch the night sky turn to dawn.  The time between dusk and dawn is meant to be a time of magic.  At the precise moment when it is neither night nor day, the gods can be summoned.  He has never seen a god before, maybe today will be his lucky day, but he doubts it.  The gods abandoned man a long time ago when we decided we no longer had a use for them apart from killing each other in the name of one god or another.

The cars in the distant stream by like shooting stars.  He moves closer to the edge and looks down. Edges make him feel uneasy.  He always feels compelled to jump.  He struggles for reasons why he shouldn’t.  Lately he has found it harder and harder to find a reason that’s worth a damn.

He hasn’t said good bye to his wife.

He steps back from the edge.  Maybe tomorrow he won’t be so lucky.

Poor human hearts pounding everywhere, lying in their beds, walking their dogs, worrying about their future, dwelling on how their life took a wrong turn as they ride the bus to work in the morning.  I’m lying here in my hotel bed.  No other guest are stirring at this hour.  The dull roar of distant traffic reminds me that the poor human heart pounds 24 hours a day.

My past is a distant memory.  Who I was before no longer matters.  I resist thoughts of the future; they only bring anxiety born of uncertainty.  My crystal ball is full of thunder clouds, the clouds of unknowing.  Not being able to see the distant shores makes me seasick. I ground myself in the present with Jack’s words.  On my nightstand is last night’s entertainment, the Portable Playstation, Burnout Dominator crashing into cars to earn points, a fantasy of the human heart pounding of road rage.  Dark Resurrection, a hero’s quest to claim an unknown prize.  The prize doesn’t matter, what matters is the adventure along the way.  I long to feel my human heart pounding with the anticipation of unknown trails, dangerous trails, where the capacity of one’s own wit and resourcefulness determines life over death.  Adrenaline becomes my addiction, instead of cheap whores and booze.  An addiction that prowls like a hungry wolf on a cold desolate winter day looking for his next kill to keep him from Death’s steel jaws, the circle of life, the pounding of human hearts beating to different tunes on their iPods.

I close my eyes.  I’m on an empty beach watching her stand with her feet in the sea.  Her peach colored Spanish dress pulled above her ankles, she is dancing with the waves.  I feel lonely in this empty bed of fluffy white blankets and pillows listening to my poor human heart pounding.

Driving down the motorway at 5.30 in the morning, I can’t help but think we are little more than sophisticated ants.  The central government plays the role of the queen ant.  We play the role of the workers, warriors, and consorts.  No one asks if you want to belong to the system.  You are born into it, and you either learn and accept the rules or you perish.  It is as simple as that.  Of course they dress it up, give it some clothes, and tell you that you have choices and that you’re opinion matters, but the reality is you don’t and it doesn’t.  Get in line and do your part for the system like everybody else.

I am sitting in a greasy roadside diner.  The smell of cooked fat sits heavy in the air.  I know that when I leave here, the smell of grease will have crept into every fiber of my clothes.  People will think that I work in a kitchen. I try to convince myself that sitting close to the door might help keep the smell off of me.  But I doubt it will really. If food is hot topic for men, sex is an even bigger topic.  There is a piece of research out that suggests that the biggest regret in life men have is not having had enough sex.  They did a survey of old men who statistically didn’t have a lot of time left.  70% of the old men surveyed said that they regret not having had more sex.  They said they didn’t want more kids, mind you, just more sex.

She was the ugly one.  The guys never wanted the ugly one.

She sat and watched her beautiful blond-haired blue-eyed bombshell of a friend garner all the boys’ attention.  They had no idea what they were missing, leaving her to sit and stir her vodka lime and soda on her own.  Books aren’t the only things that shouldn’t be judged by their cover.

She wished at least one of the boys would like her.  She would do all those nasty things most boys only fantasized about in lad mags.  She would let them shave her bare and paint her tits blue.  She would even let them watch Blondie over there go down on her.  That’s right, she knew Blondie’s secret and they didn’t.  With Blondie, they had no chance, but with her, they could have everything.

But she was the ugly one and the ugly one never gets any attention.

views from my hotel:

I some times I get disoriented from all the traveling up and down the country I do.  Especially when I work with multiple clients on projects that require different skill sets.  Because I submerge myself into my work roles completely, when I have a quiet moment and nobody is around that I can orient myself on, I sometimes have a momentary lapse of reason and forget where I am and what I am doing.  I had one of those moments yesterday on the way to get a coffee, and I had one this morning when my alarm went off at 4a.m. in my hotel room.  Because the room was very dark and my head was clouded with sleep, I couldn’t remember where I was.  I had to work hard to try to remember the day of the week and who I am working for today.  At first I got it wrong.  I imagined it was Thursday and I was somewhere else.  It took a few moments for clarity to return.

“The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember or pretend you remember.” – Harold Pinter

–

I spent the day in Glastonbury yesterday. I went to visit an old friend and take in some of the sacred sites.

I said goodbye forever to an old friend this weekend.  We’ve been through a lot together.  I once saved him from being eaten by crocodiles and he once saved me from losing and eye during a mountain bike accident.  After all the miles we’ve traveled together and the many adventures, he finally met his end.  And it was a humble little bee that did him in.

When you turn 40, you look for something to do.  My 40th came and went without much fanfare.  I did however commit myself to change a few things or more accurately to re-remember some things I had forgotten, like to stay in top physical fitness, to not play silly games (only intense ones will do), to not neglect the nourishment of my spirit and my soul.  All this was weighing on my mind as I threw my camping gear, hiking gear, and mountain bike into the Frontera and headed to the Dark Peaks for a solo weekend retreat.

More than one person has patted me on the back this past week and told me that life begins at 40.  To my thinking, that means a rebirth.  I fantasized about some ways I could recreate this rebirth symbolically.  The Christians use a baptism of water to symbolized being reborn into Christ.  The U.S. Army uses a baptism of fire to turn young boys into men.  I chose the way of the traveler.  “When you travel, you experience, in a very practical way, the act of rebirth,” wrote Paulo Coelho in the Pilgrimage, a book about his journey on the Road to Santiago.  “You confront completely new situations, the day passes more slowly, and on most journeys, you don’t even understand the language the people speak.  You are like a child just out of the womb.”  I certainly had had plenty of childlike experience on my recent road journey across Europe.  And now I wanted a bit of time to myself to digest some of the lessons I’d learned on the road.

I took along some classic tunes to keep me company on the drive to the Dark Peaks – Credence Clear Water Revival, George Thorogood and The Destroyers, and SuperTramp.

I drove into Edale and stopped at the first campsite I found, which was really just a field with fifty or so tents packed together like sardines in a can. The guy was only charging £7.50 a night so I couldn’t complain.  I found a spot to squeeze my tent into.  Erected it with no hassle, threw my sleeping bag inside and hurried up and changed into my mountain bike gear.

After a quick survey of the map, I decided to head west out of Edale to circle around through Winnats Pass, go down into Casteton and then through Hope and complet the circuit back to Edale.  It looked easy enough on the map.  But as I am often fond of saying to people, “The map is not the territory.”  And boy those little brown contour lines on the map didn’t do justice to the 2.5 mile incline I had to face.

Now I am a person who used to pride himself in being physically fit, but I must admit over the past several months I have been just ticking along with basic maintenance level fitness.  My legs, lungs, and heart had no qualms about letting me know that they were in no shape to be tackling such an uphill.  I came off the bike after about a mile and a half, my heart about to burst.  I wanted to push myself, but not kill myself in the process.  I took a few snapshots as an excuse for stopping.  The ego can be a real bastard sometimes.

I finally made it to the crest of the hill and the downhill ride into Castleton made the climb worth the effort.  The ride from Castleton to Hope was pleasant.  This part of the Peaks is busy on a normal weekend, but being a Bank Holiday weekend, there were tones of people everywhere.  I was feeling good, renewed, glad to be out on my bike doing my thing.  And then it happened.

I was on the back stretch coming into Edale on the east-side.  A humble little bee flew underneath my sunglasses.  In my attempt to keep from crashing whilst dislodging the little vermin without getting stung, I broke my favorite pair of shades. The shades that had traveled with me through jungles, mountains,and various countries around the world, were finished.  One of the arms snapped off.  Now that is my cool rendition of the accident.

What it probably looked like to somebody passing by was some big bloke on a mountain bike frantically thrashing himself in the face while trying not to crash.  And so sadly the day ended with the demise of my old friend, the sunglasses that have been with me through thick and thin.  I think I’ll add them to my own archive of Clay artifacts for some future generation to find.  Maybe when I become a famous explorer, they will sell for a ton of money on eBay.

Back at the campsite, I shed my bike and put on some dry clothes.  I am amazed at the varied types of people who come out to camp in a field.  Some are young, some are old, others are funny shaped, overweight, skinny, underdressed, overdressed, groupies, families, and forty year old geezers with no mates.

I wander over to the Rambler Inn for a pint.  The barmaid is young and dark haired.  She is foreign and amusing.  We get into a discussion about whether I can have cheese on the hamburger I ordered.  The menu doesn’t include an option for a cheeseburger.  Finally one of the other girls goes to kitchen to ask the chef if I can have a burger with cheese on it.  After several minutes, she comes back and says it’s OK.

“When you are moving toward and objective,” writes Coelho, “it is very important to pay attention to the road.  It is the road that teaches us the best way to get there, and the road enriches us as we walk its length.”

As I nurse my pint of Foster’s, I wonder about the metaphorical road that lies before me as my life begins anew.  The words of Joseph Campbell and Henry David Thoreau echo in my mind.  “Follow your bliss.”  “Follow your genius.”

My thoughts are interrupted by the barmaid.  She wants to know if I want another pint.  I decline.  I want to get up early the next day to go for a hike in the hills.  Just as I leave the pub for my tent, it starts to rain.  Typical.  I read a statistic that claims that it rains one day in three in England.  This week, the statistic is right.  I go to ground in my tent, read some more of The Pilgrimage and fall asleep to the loud cackling of laughs from my neighbors.  There are about 10 of them, a mix of family and friends it appears.

It rains through the night.  Periodically I wake up to the sounds of the rain pelting the flysheet.  I feel around in the dark for any signs of leaks.  It’s  a new tent that hasn’t been field tested yet.  Thankfully there are no leaks.  I drift back to sleep.  It’s after midnight and my neighbors are still laughing away.

The morning comes.  The rain has stopped.  I pack my tent and my gear.  I eat some dry Frosted Flakes and chase them with a can of Redbull.  Mary Lou Retton didn”t know what she was talking about, this is a breakfast of champions.

My plan is to follow Grinds Brook which takes me in a northwest direction, climb up the waterfall and then turn north for a bit before turning and walking north east for a few clicks, turn south toward The Nab and then cut across Heardman’s Plantation to get back to the Frontera.

The beauty of an early start is that there is no one else around.  I have the hills to myself, which is a perfect time for a Chautauqua.

“Follow your genius closely enough,” writes Thoreau, “and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.”

As I meander up the trail, I think about my future prospects.  I have focused the first half of my life on career and family, living up to other people’s expectations.  And that was fine.  Life is a learning process and some times you have to experience what you don’t want in order to gain clarity of what you do want.  I’ve plunged and plodded along many different paths searching for the usual culprits: acceptance, esteem, security, fortune.  I looked for these things external to myself, which of course is a fool’s errand. The only path worthy of pursuit is the path that leads to self-actualization.  The only way to that path is through the exploration of one’s inner landscape. At this point, I have to speak out against all the new age pyschobable, flowers in your hair tripe that’s batted around these days in the name of a panacea for life.  I am not afraid to admit that I have at one time or another been seduced by these new age follies. I can even be accused of leading others down that path.

That being said, I’ve come to realize that the true path to wisdom has to have three things:  First, it must involve love (love of self and love of others).  Second, it must have practical application in your life.  And lastly, it must be a path that is unique to you, in other words, have the courage and conviction to be an individual and not follow the herd mentality.  Others can guide you, offer advice, teach you, but in the end, you must find your own path.

I reach the point in the trail where I must turn easterly.  I pause to look back over the climb I’ve just done.  The beautiful thing about the Peak District is that on a good day you can see for miles.  Today is a good day.  To my left, I have great views of the open moors.  To my right, I have a spirit boosting view of the lush green and purple valley.

I crack on for a few more miles taking in some of the interesting rock formations along the Hartshorn Ridge.  And then I witness a good omen.  A raven, flying below me, calls out.  I follow its flight until it disappears behind a hill.  It’s almost as if it called out to me and said, “follow me.”  I follow. When I crest the hill, I see three ravens flying together.  Two split off from the one and play with each other in flight and then they fly back to rejoin the third raven, and together the three of them fly into the distance.  As I start to descend, a strong wind blows up from the valley.  The wind is so strong, it feels like I am skydiving.  I let the wind cleanse me.  I now feel light enough to fly like the ravens.

I am tempted to run down the mountain, but restrain myself and instead break into a light gait.

Speaking of being practically.  I near the bottom when I suddenly realized I forgot to pay the £5 car-park fee.  I am feeling too light in spirit to worry or care if I get a parking fine at this point.  But luckily when I reach the car-park, I see that The Man has been kind to me and I have no parking fine on my window.  I thank my luck stars, change into my city gear and head for home.

Home sweet home. I’m finally back from my 19 day road-trip around Europe. I’ve gotten so used to the rhythm of the road that it is now a bit of a shock to the system to be stationary again. I woke up this morning thinking where I am driving today? Sadly nowhere, except to town to take care of some much needed admin and logistics that have piled up in my absence. Oh, the Ordinary World where is thou release?

The Hero is suppose to return from his journey transformed and carry with him the elixir that will help changed the world. I need some time to process the journey to see if and how I may have changed as result of my 2,962 mile journey across Europe and back. And that doesn’t include the mileage spent being lost driving around in circles looking for places without names, restaurants with killer jaeger schnitzel, and the various other day trips from our nightly base-camps. Although I still have more processing to do, I can recall immediately two very distinct messages.

One I picked up from Thoreau: “There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but to so love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.”

And the other is that the broad themes of my way of life as I approach 40 tomorrow will be focused on enlightenment, adventure, and travel or E.A.T for short.

I suspect over the next week or so I will be filtering parts of the journey on to the blog along with pictures of the trip, so stay tuned. For now here is a link to the road-trip route on google maps and here are some pictures of the aftermath of a 3,000 mile journey:

OK.  Finally I have done every thing that needs to be done before I hit the dusty trail.  The plan is to hobo around Europe for 3 weeks mit packed out 4×4 and tent.  I have a very loose plan, but mainly plan to play it by ear and see what happens.  On the list of countries to visit are:

The Netherlands
Belgium
Luxembourg
Germany
Czech Republic
Hungary
Italy
Liechtenstein
Switzerland

Apart from Hungary and Germany, it’s been at least 15 years since I last visited these countries. The first time around I was a brand new wet behind the ears 2nd Lieutenant Infantry officer serving with the Black Knights (3rd of the 5th Cavalry Regiment).  My fascination with Europe was born of my love of history.  I found it extra-ordinary to be visiting countries I had only read about in my youth and in my studies as a history major at university.

This time around I am going back a little older, a little wiser.  The question I am holding in my mind as I travel this time is: how do you have an authentic spiritual experience in a society that values materialism over the soul? Kind of a heavy question for what’s meant to be a vacation.  But it’s a working vacation.  Besides as the saying goes, “If you love what you do and do what you love; you’ll never work another day in your life.”

I do hope to update the blog from time to time while I am on the road. We’ll see how I get on.

Imagine me now, standing out my back door and howling to the moon.  Howling a joyous howl of freedom, power, and connection…a primal howl of a beast roaming the plains, embracing life as one should embrace life with total abandon.

One last thing before I sign off, last night I gave a talk on mandalas for the Kent and East Sussex NLP Practice Group. I received some superb feedback from many of the attendees, which is nice high note to finish on before holiday.

I’m in Newcastle for the next couple of days. This is my first visit. I’m not quite sure what to make of the place yet. It’s been less than a day so I’ll reserve my opinion until later.

How do you get to know a city?

Hold that question because I didn’t get a chance to answer it before I got distracted with this question: how do you develop a champion mindset?

Well according to an article in Think Big, potency of desire is one. Apparently high achievers know what they want and have a deep desire to achieve it. They have a ‘do or die’ attitude toward their goals.

High achievers also have a clear vision that they will succeed no matter what. More often than not, they can even see the steps they need to take that will lead them to their success.

A third characteristic of a champion mindset is comfort with taking high risks. High achievers have the courage to take on tasks that are beyond their skill level. They the capacity to believe in their ideas without proof, and they have no doubt they can accomplish what they set their minds too.

Your mindset shapes you belief and your beliefs determine your destiny

I decided to go for an early morning walk.  I like to watch a city wake up.  Even at 5am London is alive and pulsing.  Workers are turning up to the big department stores to clean them and stock shelves.  McDonalds is serving coffee.  A call girl is on her way home after a night’s work.  I wanted to see the Marble Arch.  I would have taken a few pictures, but there was so much construction around it, the photo would have been ruined.

I can see how easy it is to be surrounded by hundreds of people and yet still feel lonely.  I am sitting outside a coffee house on Oxford Street watching all these people walk past.  The odds are I will never cross paths with any of these people again.  We have been bouncing through the sands of time and have come into each others lives for the brief-est of moments.  All these people going to and fro.

It’s the start of another glorious week. I’m feeling more centered and grounded moment to moment.

I meant to post this yesterday, but by the time I got home and had some chow, I was beat tired. The reason I was tired was because I spent the day paddling down the Wye River from Glasbury to Hay-on-Wye. Yesterday was a great example of how I like to live my life, totally open and flexible to the whims of the day, flowing just like the river.

My friend Ed has finally landed his dream job. In two weeks time, he heads off to the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire as it’s government prefers to call it, but most people know the country by the English name, the Ivory Coast. He’s going there for 2 years to work on a documentary that will focus on and tell the story of a female chimpanzee. He’ll basically be living in the rain forest with this family of chimps.

I wanted to catch up with Ed before he left on his adventure, so we decide to meet in Hay-on-Wye.

When we first conceived of the trip we had 3 options: 1) cafe and chill, 2) mountain bike, or 3) hike. I set off at 8 am as planned. It felt good to be on the road again traveling under a beautiful blue sky listening to the roar of the motorway and feeling the wind blowing on my scalp.

About a half and hour into the journey, I got a text from Ed telling me the plans had changed. We were now going to meet in Glasbury and canoe/kayak down to Hay. I had no idea how to get to Glastbury, but I didn’t care. I figured I’d make it up as I got nearer to Hay. Go with the flow.

As I knew we would, we all eventual found each other in Glasbury. The accidental parking place I stumbled upon happened to be just around the corner from a boathouse where we could rent a canoe. Ed brought his friend Cathy along so we were going to rent a 3 man canoe. But the good folks at Wye Valley Canoes recommended we rent a 2-man canoe and a kayak, which we did. It was a good call.

We couldn’t have picked a better day to amble our way down the Wye. Although we had a destination, we were in no hurry to get there.

Cathy got dibs on the Kayak first. Ed and I got the canoe. Ed is the guy who sent me Satish Kumar’s book, No Destination. So we talked about the book and why we each liked it so much. For me, Kumar’s book reawakened my spiritual quest. Over the past 8 months or so, I have allowed myself to get distracted from my quest, and as I mentioned in a previous post, the time must have been right for me to receive the gifts of Kumar’s book, which got me back in active pursuit of my spiritual destiny.

I also took away from the book a more enlightened view and awareness of my impact on the planet. I won’t go so far as to say I am a converted eco-warrior, but I do have a better appreciation for the cause. And lastly, I learned how much a person can accomplish by being strongly connected to a tribe. And by tribe, I mean any group of people who share in a common goal that encompasses the way they live and interact with the world and sets them apart from any other group. So in addition to getting back to my spiritual quest, I am also now on the make for a tribe to join. I have been a ronin for far too long.

About an hour or so into our journey down Wye we swapped places and Cathy joined me on the canoe.

I had not met Cathy prior to this trip, so we had the usual get to know each other chat to start. Cathy works as a graphic designer in London. It’s her work, but it’s not her passion or her calling. Her true calling is to be a healer which she did as a channeler in New Zealand. But the usual story happened and she got distracted by the need to make money, which is why she ended up in London.

The grind of city life has taken it’s toll on her and she wants out. She has an escape plan. From our conversation, I could tell that her plan was indeed just that…an escape plan. I have a feeling when she escapes in October, she will wander the desert for a while before she finds her self and realizes that the person she wants to be is the person she already is, but is too distracted to see.

We covered the 6 miles in what seemed like minutes. Time truly is relative especially when you are totally absorbed in the moment with interesting people doing interesting things like floating down a river on a lazy Sunday afternoon.