Soulcruzer

I parked the car in the first parking space I could find. I think better on foot, plus I didn’t want to end up parked in the back of someone’s trunk. I randomly walked down a side street. There happened to be a hotel on this very block, but to my dismay, it was closed until March 2005. My prospects weren’t looking good. Determined or desperate, depending on your point of view, I continued on probably much like a man stranded in the desert looking for water.

And then finally, like an oasis, I saw a hotel. And the lights were on! I rubbed my eyes a couple of times to make sure it wasn’t a weird reflection of sunlight. No, there were definitely lights on.

There was an older gentleman sitting behind the reception desk. I asked him if he had any rooms available.

Si.

And the cost?

28 Euros.

Joy.

The man introduced himself as Antonio. As I later found out, he is one of the proprietors of the hotel.

Antonio was quite please to see from my passport that I was from New Jersey. My being there sparked an old memory of an adventure he had 20 years ago while visiting a friend in New York. The short version of his story is that his rental car broke down in New York, but the service man the company sent to retrieve the car was a man from New Jersey. The guy was only meant to collect the car, leaving Antonio to travel to Manhattan to get another car. Antonio convinced the man to drive him to Manhattan. The man was happy to do so even though it was against company policy and he could get in trouble for doing it.

The oddity for Antonio was that this man, even though he lived so close to Manhattan, had never actually been there. Even stranger than that, the man thought that Mallorca was an island in the Pacific Ocean. The connection…the spark for Antonio was this fellow was black, like me, and about the age I am now…so it was like I had stepped back out of time to say hi to an old friend.

Antonio didn’t ask me to pay upfront or put a down payment or credit card imprint. It turns out later that this is a sign of trust and friendship.

I thanked Antonio and retired to my room.

I came to Mallorca to do research for a new place to run the Ascent Experience. As I was alone on this trip, I would also have time to mull over the question of purpose. Pete had opened the door to this inner journey earlier in the week. And now Mallorca, alone, I would have time to contemplate the reality of my own purpose.

The last time I visited Mallorca, the place was swamped with sun worshippers, mostly from England it seemed. The English are always desperate for some sun as they get little of it on their own island. This time though there were very little tourist. The whole of Mallorca is a virtual a ghost town this time of year as I discovered upon my arrival and subsequent 5 hour drive around the island searching for a place to stay. Nearly every hotel, beach resort, and guest house is closed for the winter. My original intent had been to stay in the northwest of the island in the mountains so I could be close the hiking trails. I drove to Soller first. I ditched the car and struck out on foot to find a suitable place to stay. The only two places accepting guest were the Grand Hotel way to posh for my liking and a small guest house. I asked the land lady, in broken Spanish, how much per night? Her first quote was 120 Euros. She must have seen the distraught look in my eyes and dropped the price to 95 Euros, then to 70 Euros. I was not prepared to spend that kind of money on a research trip that was meant to be a low cost Spartan endeavour. I made my apologies and left.

By this point, I thought I’d try some of the other surrounding mountain villages. 2 hours later I was back in Soller with no place to stay. I remembered from my previous stay on the island that there were a gazillion places to stay near Portous Nouns, Palmanova, Cala Major and that whole strip of beach towns. So back south I drove only to be find all those towns devoid of life and places to stay. The golf resort had its flags flying, but I knew they would no doubt probably be charging twice as much as my lady in the north.

It was late in the afternoon and the sun was beginning to set. By this point, I had resigned myself to sleeping in the car. Finally I thought, head to Palma. Surely there would be a place to stay there. I decided to head back to the airport. There are usually tones of places to stay near airports. On a whim, I took the exit just after the airport into the town of Ca’n Pastilla. It was here I found a sanctuary.

The research is going well. Yesterday was a bit of miss because it rained like mad and the mountains were covered in thick cloud…not good for navigating especially on unknown terrain. Anyway the day didn’t go to waste as I drove to most of the trail heads we would be using plus I stopped at the Monastery in Lluc. A nice treat that was. I manage to find a 1:50,000 scale hiker’s map which is better than the road map i was using.

Today was fantastic. The weather played nice and I was able to get up Puig Massanella which is the 2nd highest peak on the Island at 1352m. The highest peak tops in at 1453m but has a military radar dish on the top and hence is off limits…the whole area aroung Puig Major is an off limits military base. Any way the views from Massenella were outstanding. You can literally see all the way around the island.

It took me the better part of 5 hours to ascend and descend. I had to race down the mountain as the sun was fastly saying good bye, and the last thing I wanted to be doing was descending in the dark. The whole summit of Massanella is full of boulders and ankle breaking rocks both large and small, so i didn’t quite relish trying to find my way down under those conditions. Anyway, I made it down with about 40 minutes to spare.

I didn’t bring a decent camera with me which is unfortnate. I did however take some photos with my phone. I’ll have to wait till I get back to see how they turned out.

That’s all for now…reporting to you live from Mallorca.

Nobody told me when to run
I missed the starting gun – Pink Floyd

I’ve come to the realization that I have been fighting my purpose which is to write. And it is because I struggle against my purpose I continue to feel adrift in space and time…drifting to some end of which I do not know, but am desperate to find out. I have only to examine my past to see my purpose hounding me. There is however a block that perhaps I have erected that keeps me from doing that which I know I should. I must find a way through or around this barrier. I feel that once I can knock down the barrier the writing will flow…it will become unstoppable.

I researched a nice route in the Peak District today. We’re taking a group of recruitment consultants there in a few weeks, so I want to get a good look at the ground and walk the route. The walk starts in Wye Dale near Topley Pike and travels south west down Deep Dale and Horseshoe Dale. At the end of Horseshoe Dale, the trail heads roughly north east through Chelmoreton and on to Taddington. At Taddington, the trail cuts north towards Priestcliffe and then on to the Monsal Trail at Miller’s Dale and back to Wye Dale travelling along the River Wye towards Chee Dale. The walk is 11 miles total and took me 4 hours and 55 minutes to complete. The walk was tiresome, but not strenuous. My favourite sections were the walk through Deep Dale and Horseshoe Dale. And I also enjoyed the trail along the River Wye.

I’m off to do some research in Majorca tomorrow. We want to run an Ascent there so I’m off to recon the mountains and find a suitable trail as well as suitable accommodations. It is also my intent to explore some more of this idea of destiny…purpose…

A friend of my has generously donated the gift of immortality to me by having a star officially named after me. My star is located within the Orion constellation. The coordinates are RA5h1m57.76s D5 42’28.55″. It’s to the right of the star Bellatrix

I’m heading down to Bristol today to get a little R & R. If the weather hold, I hope to play a little golf with my friend Mike. We only see each other a few times a year, so it’ll be good to catch up. Plus I need to spend some my time practicing my golf swing.

I met up with the Duck last night. I nearly fell over in shock when he walked into the Jug and Jester wearing a corporate badge around his neck. I had to shake my head…the Duck has gone corporate. He has plugged back into the Matrix. I never suspected the Duck would bow to such a fate. But then again, every man’s gotta eat, and so now the Duck has gone respectable.

Jasmine, my faithful mountain bike of nearly 12 years, suffered some serious battle wounds in Saturday’s adventure race. But I must say she did me proud in that she held up until about 2k from the finish line (I rode across on the rim). It tooks us 5.5 hours to complete the race traveling many miles by foot, bike and kayak. Good way to spend a Saturday though….

Here’s Jasmine:

I’ve been away from the weblog business for some time now. It’s not that there isn’t anything going, on the contrary, I’ve been running around like a blue-assed fly. But my other writing demands have left me with little time to update. But fear not, I am still alive and well.

My newly formed adventure race team came in 11th in a field of 20 in our category. It was good showing considering the day of the race was the first time most of had met in person. I tell more a bit later. Got go get ready for the day ahead. Plus my battery is just about to go dead.

peace

We’re having an absolutely fantastic time in Morzine. I hadn’t realized how close Mount Blanc i would be. It’s nice to wake up and see huge and beautiful mountains out of your window.

Well that is all I have time for. Will send more later.

I’m just settling in to a relaxing weekend after a whirlwind of travel over the past week. My travels started off in Wales, running my first ever Ascent program. The event lasted until late Sunday afternoon and culminated in a climb to the top of Mount Snowdon. I couldn’t believe it was mid July, especially since we were greeted with hail stones at the summit. The event was highly successful and I look forward to running more. We have two more planned for the year, both running in September.

I came home Sunday night, unpacked and repacked and then flew to Scotland early Monday morning to do run a training event in the lovely city of Edinburgh for three days.

Back on a plane Wednesday afternoon. Flew home, unpacked and the repacked, and drove up north to Sheffield on Thursday to run a teambuilding day for the MSC. The event finished up on late Friday afteernoon, again another success. I drove home, fighting the rush hour traffic all the way. And what was becoming a familiar theme, I unpacked and repacked, eat a quick bite, and the hoped in the car to drive down to Bristol to meet back up with the family who were all converging from different points of the globe at grandma’s house.

Well, I’ll have a few days rest, a light work week, and then off to France for a long awaited holiday.

Name Acronym Generator
From Go-Quiz.com

My world’s on fire. I’ve been hoppin and poppin over the last few weeks. My trip to Copenhagen was outstanding depsite having to spend most of it in the rain. We arrived Thursday and had originally planned to stay in a hostel just to the north of the city. But on arrival we thought we’d try for something more in the center of the city. We payed a visit to the Information Centre to find out what was on offer in the way of cheap accomadation. We settled on the Public City Hostel located in the Vesterbro area of the city, which we later found out was the heart of the red light district.

The hostel was basic, like most hostel are, and it was relatively cheap at 300 DKK per person per night to include breakfast. We checked into the hostel late afternoon and then decided to do the obilgatory boat ride around the canal to get a feel for the layout of the city. We found an all you can eat pizza joint for dinner followed by a movie in Danish subtitles. Up until this point we were thinking Copenhagen is not as expensive as people say…and then we went into the pub and found out how the Danes make their money. A pint of lager and a Bacardi Breezer costed me £10!!!! We decided it was going to be a dry holiday.

I discovered something I’d never had a problem with before. I didn’t like the youth hostel mainly because I wanted to have my own space to kick of my shoes spread out and make the place my temporary home without having to share it with 15 – 20 other people. We decided we’d find another place to stay on the next day.

We were greeted with an unusual wake up call on Friday. The guy on duty got into an verbal altercation with some vagrant who tried to get into the hostel. A lot of yelling ensued followed by a bunch of blokes ganging up beating on the vagrant. Of the vagrant didn’t take to kindly to this and decided to show his appreciation by throwing a brick through the lobby window. It was definately time to leave.

We tried going hotel lobby to hotel lobby to see if we could get a good rate…no such luck. Then we discovered the best way to get a deal is to book the hotel through the Tourist Information Centre. The hotel was asking 849 DKK at the door, we managed to get for 650 DKK at the tourist info center…of course they took their 70 DKK booking fee.

We covered a lot of ground on Saturday visiting all of the major cultural attractions. I won’t go into the details of those, you can read about them in any good tour book. The highlight for me was the visit to Christiania, the hippie commune free city-state that governs its ownself.

Saturday we toot a train over to Sweden to spend the day in Malmoa. We found this to be a very nice quiet town. Definately worth a visit to get a taste of Sweden.

Sunday was a chilled day…mopped up the things we hadn’t seen yet, but mostly lazed around.

Monday returned back to the UK…on Tuesday found out my job was made redundant which means I’m in a redundacy situation which is good news because I want to take the money and run and get my own training and development company…something I’ve been threatening to do forever…now the time is ripe. More to follow….

I’m off to Denmark for a few days. I’ll mainly be in Copenhagen, but hope to get out to the countryside as well as make a ferry trip across to Sweden.

I suppose any of you long time readers of my weblog can tell when I’m going through period of distractions because my entries become very infrequent. I’ve been quite business travelling up and down and across the country over the last month or so, plus things are changing at work…for the better I might add. I’ve also have a couple of projects i’m busy working on that have been demanding the majority of my attention outside of my day job.

Where have been, and who are these scary men….

Time to clear the clutter…and so I spent the entire day today clearing out my garage which is or was full of stuff I’ve been carting all over the world with me and never using always hanging on to the what if. And I’m sure as Murphy’s Law would have it, I’ll will find myself needed something I’ve thrown away today, but oh well sometimes these things just have to be done. Next week…the attic!!

I’ve allowed myself to wander from the path and have fallen into some old habit, though I suppose with change there is always some evidence of back sliding. Anyway, I’ve recognised it, now it’s time to move forward again on the path.

Is there a such thing as destiny? Are our lives controlled by fate? I ask myself these questions as I wash last night’s dinner dishes and think about Tracey Emin’s mockery of art and culture and the excesses to which people with to much money will go like Charles Saatchi buying Emin’s My Bed (literally her bed strewn with vodka bottles, used condoms, and old panties) for £150, 000. How can this be when there are people dying of starvation and deprivation? What does this say about us as a so called evolved species? War is often cited as evidence of man’s inhumanity to man. I would suggest that Tracey Emin and the folks that buy her so called art is another example of man’s inhumanity to man.

We did some climbing in the Peak District at a place called Birchen’s Edge. The weather for once was our friend. I’ve been living in England for 4 plus years now, and I must say that the weather is the only thing I really don’t like about the place. Anyway, I hadn’t been climbing for a while, so I was glad when Paul called and asked if I’d be up for getting out into the hills. We climbed Trifalgar Wall, Trifalgar Crack, and Nelson’s Nemesis before the rain came in and ruined the party. I picked up a few bruises, but otherwise had a great day on the crags.

Trumpet sounds
Sounds of fury
Men they march
Judge and Jury

Hard things are put in our way, not to stop us, but to call out our courage and strength.