26 July - Almondsbury
Time for a journal entry, a) before the month ends, b) before I am put into the archives of your memory complete with mothballs.
I managed to put my powerpoint together in time for my first talk on 9 July. The week leading up to the evening I was up 'til anything from 1am-3am, to 5.15am the night before/morning of the talk (it was broad daylight when I went to bed; quite weird). I had planned to give a 45 minute talk; it lasted a couple of hours (we did have a 1/2 hour break midway). On return home at 10.30pm, I then did a massive delete of the powerpoint pics by 2/3 in time for a 35-minute talk the following morning at a nearby church's breakfast meeting.
Two days later, on Monday, found me cycling to Peterborough (160 miles) arriving on Wednesday afternoon to give a presentation to staff at the Head Office of The Leprosy Mission. Subsequently, I have been invited, as one of three speakers, to the national supporters' conference in London in October. TLM also organises fund-raising events which take in visits to their centres in Asia, one of which could be a cycling trip in Thailand the end of next year; maybe I shall be the group leader. If anyone is interested in the possibility of such a trip, why not contact TLM to express an interest? [it would be fully supported, so no carrying all your own baggage on your bike, just a water bottle :-) ].
En route, I stayed with friends near Stratford-upon-Avon who run Redhill Christian Centre, who have invited me to lead a day seminar in their 2011 summer programme.
One of the three passengers on the trans-Pacific freighter stayed with me recently. And now Krista and I are due to meet up with the third passenger, Elliot, in London for a grand and welcome reunion. I am also meeting up with a couple of other cycling contacts: Hallam (from the RGS Explore weekend 6 months before my trip) and Tom (The Hungry Cyclist whom I met in Jerusalem).
I love being home, although it is, at times, still strange. At least I still have flexibiity of my hours. The testing time will be my return to work on 16 August; it will be interesting to see how everything goes.
The occasional media opportunity still comes along: BBC Radio Bristol called last Tuesday, with 15 minutes' notice, to interview me as part of discussions why twice as many men as women cycle. I am also appearing on Radio Bristol's Saturday Surgery, as a dinner party guest, on 7 August between 9 and10am. So, if you want to find out who my 4 dinner guests would be, what food and drink I would serve them, which 3 music tracks would be playing in the background and where the dinner party would take place, then you'll need to tune into Radio Bristol at 9am on the 7th (or catch it afterwards, thanks to the wonders of modern technology - particularly useful if you are in a 7-hour backwards timezone).