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No adventures planned and life is still hand to mouth, but I did get my bike back on the road this week (I expect that running costs will limit the use this year). After the Touratech period and the loss of the house with a garage, the bike was kindly stored by a guy I’d bought in to Touratech UK to run the Travel side. After Nick’s decision to fire me (legally can’t say any more about this) and the guy I brought in getting a version of my job, it became impractical to store the bike in his dad’s garage, so it’s been outside at a pub over Christmas. I must admit that it looks very shabby now. Rust on the fixings and the frame are the main issues. So I’ve treated them with rust remover and Hammerite paint. The bike is still outside until I find somewhere more permanent to stay, so I may be fighting a losing battle, but I can’t and don’t want to afford a new one.

Who knows, with the cost of fuel being so high, plus the imminent insurance and tax, the bike may have to go, so that’ll be something else Karen can have taken from me and as you know the bike is just the physical representation of my desires and dreams to explore and discover, to sample cultures and to escape my current situation, so that’s another stab. And for what?

Hope you all find happiness this Christmas period.

Well that’s been and is still, time spent following the Chinese curse of, “May you live in interesting times”.

The Travel Event?

Went without any major hitches, everyone, with one exception, seemed to have a great time. Brought in money and hit costs, so as you can expect, to be fired the week after, came as a bit of a surprise.

Seems that the Boss, who had decided not to do any of the work he’d scheduled himself for, preferring instead to appear on a daytime TV programme, where he was shown suitably impressive houses by the BBC, that he could then turn down, thereby elevating his, “look at how far I’ve come” status, felt left out of his major event of the year (he told this to the guy I’d bought in to run Touratech Tours in the UK and who now has the General Manager’s job there, and he told me), well you should have been around and done some of the work then shouldn’t you…you can’t have it both ways, either you are a part because you play a part, or you just act like a spare part, because that’s what you are, a lazy, useless, lying… you get the picture?…

So I’m fired because of the fragile ego of one of the most inept managers and indeed, unpleasant people, I’ve ever encountered.

The ride ‘to overcome ignorance which creates fear’ that I’d done…well this guy brought a new level to the word ignorance. To fart at an employee regularly, as a sign of being of an elevated managerial status, well I’d just not expect that. There’s more, lots more, but as I’m now taking legal advice, perhaps it would be prudent not to say more at this time.

On the legal advice thing, Karen has been in touch, with a very generous offer. She’ll pay for the divorce, so long as I don’t make any claims. Well doesn’t that just seem like the bargain of a lifetime. I lose my love, my job, my home, my friends, my hopes and aspirations, my trust and belief in people…in exchange for displacement, loneliness, bitterness, dark endless nights where the dreams are so depressing that I’d rather not sleep…and I’m offered a freebie divorce.

I’m still no clearer about what happened from the moment on Oct 6th 2008 when I set off with plans and a loving wife’s support, until the 13th Nov 2008 when all I’m worth is a text message telling me, “I’m not missing you as much as I think I should be”.

Since that message, it’s as if I’ve just become some sort of inconvenient stain that needs to be eradicated. The attitude that’s been taken is one of someone cancelling a subscription, very business like, cold and totally devoid of emotion. Almost as if they are scared that being emotional would reveal to themselves what a calculating, cold and utterly unpleasant action they have taken. Perhaps they wouldn’t like themselves then and that would be very contrary to the lifestyle they have opted for and how they’d want to be perceived by those around them. It’d be interesting to see in the future, if such an instant switch one way were to be reversed in a similar manner, only at that point there’d be no one waiting, only stark realisation and the bare evidence of what you’d become. Time will tell.

Even by the time I’d managed to get back from Colombia to Seattle, the house and home I shared, appeared to have been sanitised of my ever having existed.

So, thanks for the offer, but I don’t really think that anyone should be treated with such disdain, not by an ignorant, egomaniacal manager, and especially not by a devoted Wife.

Can’t work out which is the worst, but I’ll certainly be seeking remuneration from both.

Oh, and I have got a job again. It pays less than I’d get by not working at all, but I have an interview soon, so perhaps these folks who have decided to turn me off completely and as quickly as a light switch, might just have found out that it’s only a dimmer and you can only turn it down for a while.

Shine on and I hope that anything I can do to illuminate your actions will result in a brighter, fairer world.

Well keeping in touch with my friends back in Seattle popped up something interesting today.

It appears that whilst my “Wife” is capable of dispatching me, her “husband” out of the USA at a whim, by text message and then not proceeding with the divorce, due to being “busy”, that she isn’t too busy to according to the recommended add a friend post from Facebook and subsequent posting, to be “In a relationship with Gerry Williamson”…well until he goes out of fashion on a whim around about her next panic birthday and ageing dilema I guess.

Good luck to you Gerry, you may get a couple of years but I’m guessing when 49 or 50 comes along you’ll be dropped without a thought…just watch how often the wardrobe changes Sir.

There’s more, but you’ll pick up the signals once it’s too late.

Ah Facebook, helps you keep in touch with those you cared about!

Self absorption seems to be a by-product of the situation I found myself in over the last year and a bit. Inward looking, self analysis, navel gazing, finding oneself, narcissism, self pity, whatever you may wish to call it…

What is lacking is any new aim to create a distraction. Something else to think about.

I’ve now got something where I can unleash a bit of creativity again. Where I can have valued ideas and put them into practise.

I’ve got it…a little late, well very late actually and last minute panic ensues, but that just adds to the challenge.

The UK Touratech Travel Event for June.

I know, a weekend where we need speakers, marquee, advertising, sponsors and all that goes into something like this, planning starting April, is a bit…ridiculous actually, but those are the circumstances I now have to work with.

It shouldn’t be achievable at such short notice.

No doubt it will create more pressure than it should have if it had been started when it must surely be in the future and will be if I get my way…but, and here’s the perverse nature of such a dilemma…it’s got me fired up. It’s got me in to a mind set of, ‘I’ll show you”.

Considering the alternative that I set out at the start of this post, I must say it’s a bright spot to aim for.

I’ll make this a spectacular event, something that will raise the bench mark and leave folks with a desire for more. Bring it on.

Three Teas…well I have a talk to give at Horizons Unlimited’s first Ireland gathering at the end of May. Another rekindling perhaps…from the embers.

And the revamped website for this blog, with all the videos and pictures…nearly there, nearly there…

Thought it was about time I added something fresh and a bit more upbeat to this blog as it’s all been a bit of a downer since Nov 2008.

I suppose the one positive to come out of this is that I’m still around. Turning 50 last week could have been a milestone to use as a point from which to kick on, alternatively it could have been a point at which to draw a line under life and just fade away. As it is, it has none of the drama of either and I’ve just acquiesced to the day to day mundanity that is the current situation I find myself in.

At some point in time I will be able to shed more light on the unsatisfactory aspects of the here and now, but not yet. I need to run ahead, to distance myself from the past and to get ahead of the present. Usually the anticipation of the future is enough of a drive, a motivator. Anticipation, such a sweet sensation. Not so now, the future isn’t a hope for better, just a release from the now and the then.

Three teas? I no longer see this as a viable entity for further pursuit, well not for now anyway.
It should have been the key. It should have added the value, made a change, been a positive. It’s now part of what I want to run from…to remove it from my sleeping moments where I have no barriers to keep it away, where there’s nothing fresh to replenish the unwelcomed subconscious.

So what’s the positive?

Well I haven’t given up, even though I’ve wanted to. Out of spite, cowardice, logic,lethargy, fear, bloody mindedness or whatever else, I am still here, desperately looking for what’s next.

I have a plan.

In a taxi on the way to Panama City airport 12 months ago. My bike had already flown with Girag air cargo, to Bogota, so I was on my way, blissfully unaware that the text message I was about to receive from Karen, would not only change this trip, but my whole life and my outlook on life too.

After a very uncomfortable 11 months of being beholden to my friends and without any real independence, I’m about to have somewhere of my own. To be in a position where I can actually begin to think about being me again and to contemplate what life is and that there is a future, rather than just a killing time.

My new job will see me moving around quite a bit and will of course finally enable me to have some income. 11 months, even when the roof over your head is paid for, still eats into your reserves, especially when there’s nothing, not a penny coming in.

And with an income starting, I won’t have to resort to suing Karen, although it would still be an option considering what has, or rather, what has not, happened.

So bagging up my bits and bobs, spending what little I have left on getting appliances and household stuff (American things don’t work and Karen has almost all of them anyway) and heading for the hills.

The new site should be ready early in the new year. Only trouble is, I’ll be remote, so broadband may not be as readily available, still there will be somewhere I can exchange my money for access I’m sure. I’ll just have to find it.

Liverpool Mac shop has been my link to the outside world. My only contact with people, apart from the odd ride out with the GSers and of course Rob and Gill, my saviours from a life on the street (not wishing to seem melodramatic here, but given the total lack of support from the Government bodies and I mean none at all, I would have been on the streets without their help. I can see how easily folk can fall through gaps in what professes to be a civilised society, full of caring and charitable institutions with initiatives here, there and everywhere, yet none would have prevented me from being destitute).

It was good to be able to treat Rob and Gill to dinner last night. Scant return on all of their hospitality, but heart felt thanks, none the less.

11 very traumatic and pressurised months and the friendship has held up…that’s the only good thing to have come out of this. That and a realisation that I need to harden up and never put myself in a position where I am so beholden to someone else’s whim and fancy, that they can cause anything like this to happen again.

Trust has taken on an unsavoury edge. Not one I like to have to implement, but one I’ve learned I must put in place.

Well this isn’t one to celebrate either. One year ago I started out on the Three Teas Trip.

Still haven’t really got to grips with what happened, or why and certainly haven’t returned to any status that you’d call normal, or desirable?

Perhaps it’s just a trip that hasn’t finished yet, so there’s no way to sum it up…yet.

In between sending out over 1250 job applications since returning, trying to prove to the Government that I am indeed British, constantly explaining what the hell I’m doing in the UK and “no it doesn’t seem to make any sense does it”, and “no there isn’t a shorter version” and “I’m sure it’s not something you’ve encountered before but can you help” and “what do you mean, it’s too complicated for you, you are the citizens advice bureau, you are supposed to have access to experts” and, “if I had any money I wouldn’t be asking if you did a no win no fee service, so why do you keep saying 200 pound an hour and ooh isn’t it complicated, so that’ll take quite some time”, and, “well after two years your no claims bonus has gone, so it’s full price”, in between doing that stuff on a very regular basis, well daily actually, I have spent a few hours at the Apple Mac store.

They have helped me to work on a new version of this site. It’s not quite finished, but it is the only thing where I seem to be making an progress in my life. So bear with me for a short while and there will be something more dynamic and functional to look at.

In the meanwhile, I’ll get back to wading in the crud that I seem to be unable to crawl free from.