Hello everyone! This blog entry sees me well if a little sunburnt, sore knee-ed, aching shouldered and weak fingered in a town in northern Holland called Alkmaar. It's a beautiful place full of ice cream eating locals and tourists alike, lots of canals running around, a lovely red light district (one street) which I just walked down to get to the internet cafe - I saw the funniest thing: one of the (scantily clad) girls was presumably having a break, and in a public telephone box making a call (maybe to her mum?!). I should have got a picture of that.... Well my trip has been fairly tough so far, thanks to an unseasonal northeasterly wind. Yup that's precisely the direction I've been trying to head in. On the plus side there's hardly been a cloudy ... read more

This blog entry sees me having successfully completed the first stage of my cycling trip, with nothing worse to tell than a mild case of sunburn. Everything got off to a typically smooth start as I was forced to backtrack a mile along the front at Dundee having encountered improvement works on the esplanade. Dad was there to re-wave me off in the opposite direction 10 minutes into my tour with precisely no miles under my belt! Crossing the Tay bridge I stopped for a brief panorama shot and a goodbye to the city for, if all goes well, at least the next 2 months. It was a cold start to the trip, and even though the sun finally broke through the cloud the fleece never came off the whole day. Well I raced on through ... read more

Well I've been back in the UK a full month now. And what have I achieved... er... well almost precisely nothing! Has it been good? Well the weather has at least. Was I overjoyed to see my old workmates? Er... no comment (they may be reading). Has anything changed at all? No, not one bit. Today I had a meeting (topic - rain modelling) and a free lunch at Chutney's, one of the finer Indian establishments in Oxford (complementing yesterday's free lunch at a thai restaurant very nicely). In the afternoon rather than rushing back to work, I went for a walk along the river and took some photos - imagining that this was somehow a far-flung land on my trip (when of course it's a perrogative to take a million photos of absolutely just about ... read more

The Second Bit We headed out to Whittier from Anchorage the following day, but not before another night out in Humpy's with our Swiss friends from Denali. We ended up failing to get into a karaoke bar, probably for the best really, and the poor girls got a parking ticket for their campervan. The first bit of the evening had been fun though! And who knows maybe Richie will be meeting them later in their trip... watch this space! ;) Right unlike Richie I'll try not to get distracted by all things Swiss (they do make good cheese though). Whittier is a weird place, originally a US Navy base for WWII it hasn't really expanded (not that their's much room to expand) beyond the original one building where apparently all residents of the town live. The ... read more

Miami, art deco city, fun nightlife, beach, beautiful people! That's what I'd heard, so I was looking forward to my one night there. Well, thanks Mr. Immigration men for completely taking it away from me for no apparent reason. 2 hours I had to wait in their fr*cking office for what? For a 5 minute chat about some departure form they probably lost the last time I was in the states. Well it might have been interesting for any sociologists among us - an interesting if not quite representative cross section of society, i.e. lots of blacks, hispanics, the odd russian, and a few dodgy backpacker types - but not for me. There was a big pile of passports which people kept on being added to on top, and being processed from from the top. Great, ... read more