Poets Day US

I wanted to write this post a few weeks ago after the passing of Gene Wilder but I couldn’t quite get it done – hopefully I can now since I have been to alot of Nowhere Specials since then. You might recall the line ‘Nowhere special, I always wanted to go there’ at the end of Blazing Saddles just before Sheriff Bart and the Waco Kid rode off into the sunset (and then a limousine). It was one of those throw away lines that were all through one of the greatest movies ever and was the perfect way for it to end. Webster (the kid from the show not the wordy book thing) defines Nowhere Special as not anywhere distinguished, which really doesn’t help at all as there are a tonne (metric) of places that are not anywhere distinguished, possibly more than there are places anywhere distinguished, actually most definitely more. So essentially wanting to go nowhere special means you want to go anywhere apart from New Zealand, some parts of Europe, The Valley of the Gods in Utah, Machu Piccu an...

I really hope Mum doesn’t read this blog, not that it is going to be particularly crass or have any more use of foul language than usual. I just hope she get’s confused using the Bing search engine trying to find out what Tinder is. She will probably end up wondering why I am now a dry flammable piece of material and how that has anything to do with my need to “quit smoking and lose some damn weight, fatty” as she likes to put it. Mum is a great motivator, seriously awesome at it, she motivated me to move 8,453 miles away she is that good :) In all honesty I have not joined Tinder, I tried the traditional dating route, well traditional for this smart phone generation, following people on the Book of Faces and SnapChat. It didn’t work that well for me, as quite frankly it seemed a bit, well, stalkery. I am more used to getting rejected in person in a bar than in digitized 1s and 0s. Technology has denied us quite a few of the more satisfying things in life, like slamming down a ph...

It is a day after the race here in Austin and I thought whilst I still have some memories of the event I would put pen to paper – or in this case digital renderings of the alphabet in random order on a screen. I came, I saw and it kicked my ass however I did finish, which was the goal so there is celebration in that fact. I will probably, maybe write something about this whole trip to nowhere special once I return to base camp Raleigh but to some a recap of this event, which was the reason for the whole trip in the first place, might be of interest. The whole thing started with a conversation with my brother about doing a triathlon again one day and the fact that he might like to do one with me. I have been riding a mountain bike pretty consistently lately and had been trying to get in the pool a bit in the summer as I knew swimming was good for my back and that if I swam in the ocean the Japanese would take me for scientific research. All I needed to do was to be able to run a...