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I trace a line in the sand, my footsteps upon time.

Fade in.

My Life – The early years

1968 -1976
born Beth Israel Hospital, play time, newark nj, almost lose my eye, eat sand, father away on a ship, man shot in front of me bleeding stripped to his underwear, orgies, broken plates, dead bird caused by my hand, big park, Pablo, monkey man, lemon cream cookie thief, books = friends, army men, gigi, dog down incinerator, fight = survival, grandmother dies of cancer, riots, murder, death, move home, move home,sex, move home, move home, live with grandfather, bats, grandfather hit in the head with a can of beans, eat racoon, southern fried chicken, scared in the dark, Sunday paper, cornflakes, baby sister, moth balls, dad comes, dad goes, dad comes back again.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

“I have people in Washington who will jerk you up by your pants and shoot you full of angel dust and slam you onto the Bush campaign bus with nails painted pink and your mouth blazing fiery red lipstick and your fly open and the tips sliced off of your thumbs.” Hunter S. Thompson, Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie Trapped Like a Rat in Mr Bill’s Neighborhood

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I just happened to be rereading sections of this particular book tonight looking for inspiration to jumpstart my writing juices.

Day 2 of the course. The energy is still flat and now I’m beginning to question if it’s the people or is it me. Ha! I’m reminded of the old poker quote: “If you haven’t spotted the sucker after 10 minutes of playing, the sucker’s probably you.

The subject of the course is NLP. The first time around I did this course, I was over the moon with excitment. This time nothing. Is that because I’ve somehow changed? Hmmm.

peace,
C

I felt a bit odd today like I was here but not here. I did manage to open an online trading account which I’ve been threatening to do for a couple of weeks now, and I’ve also started tracking the FTSE 100 again for future options trading. I spent the day in Milton Keynes training. The group lacked energy. Perhaps it was because of the heavy cloud cover in combination with being a Monday. The morning dragged on but did pick up a little in the afternoon. I’m with the same group for the next 3 days so hopefully things will pick up.

I had a pretty chilled out weekend. I slept off a few beers from my nite out on Friday with the old gang from HSBC. Saturday I spent clearing the massive piles of accumlated junk from my room/office that had significance at the time I collected, but some how has diminished in importance over time.

We watch I, Robot…not one of Will Smith’s best films, but okay…mindless entertainment anyway. After that I watched the classic Joe’s Apartment followed by bits of Urban Legend before finally capping off the night at 2am.

I spent most of today editing my newsletter that’s been long over due. I managed to finish it and post it. And now I’m dipping in the well but seem to be coming up dry…so i’ll call it quits for the night.

My last installment on the Mallorca trip…

There were two hightlights from the trip. One was the absolutely terrific view from the Puig Massenella. The other was meeting Margherita or Marga as her friends and family call her.

Margherita is Antonio’s daughter. He wanted me to meet her and so introduced us after I had returned from my excursion into the hills. She speaks pretty good English and has lived in San Francisco. Plus she has an American Fiancée.

Margherita and I spent hours talking in the evening. She minds the desk at night. We talked about a great many things from capitalism to religion to tennis. I came to Mallorca seeking an answer to the question of purpose. The Universe spoke to me through Margherita. She said we should live to live not live to work. One of the things she found difficult about living in America is that everyone from her experience seemed to live to work and seemed overly concerned about what people did for work or what university they attended. She says she felt like a nobody in the presence of this system. Back in Mallorca she can live to live people don’t general ask or want to know what you do for work or what school you went to. She says it’s of such little concern that she doesn’t even know what some of her best friends do for work. Imagine that!

I set out on day two to explore some of the possible mountain trails we might use for our program. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t really conducive to mountain navigation at least not for exploring new ground. The rain, the low cloud cover and fog would make for some challenging navigation. I don’t particularly mind hiking in rain and low visibility, but on this occasion I decided to forgo the challenge and instead drove around the various narrow mountain roads that wind their way through Mallorca’s northwest corner.

Antonio had suggested I take the mountain pass to Soller and stop a little house at the crest of the hill to buy some special manzanas grow native to the island. He said I would not be disappointed by their taste…and I wasn’t. The succulent juices that flowed from these little apples set my taste buds alight with pure joy. I continued on, as per Antonio’s recommendations, to Puig Major, which is the highest peak on the island but is not assessable to the general public. I couldn’t really appreciate the puig because it was hidden by clouds.

I visited Holy ground at the Monastery in Lluc. I bought a hiker’s map, which I was surprised to find in a monastery, from the gift shop as well as pewter crucifixion. A man can never have to many charms. My next stop was Sa Calobra.

The drive into Sa Calobra was magnificent. If you recall the scene in Jurassic Park where the helicopter is descending into the park carry Laura and crew, that was what it was like descending into Sa Calobra. You feel like you’re driving to the center of the Earth. I didn’t go into the village itself. Instead I stopped at the edge of a cliff and admired the town from above.

When I set out this particular morning I had intended to visit the places that would likely appear on our itinerary and I also wanted to find an answer to a question that had been dogging me since I got on the plane. The personal development gurus like Anthony Robbins and Richard Bandler and Co maintain that we are where we are today based on the choices we made in the past. If that is so, I wanted to know where are the choices I’m making now going to lead me?

It’s hard to tell which of the choices are significant and which are trivial. Or all our choices significant no matter how small or insignificant they may seem. Reflecting back, I can see that many of the choices I made, at the time seemed completely insignificant, and some were monumental, yet all of them had have lead me to point where I am standing right now. Here are some of the choices I faced…

Choice: Enlist or go to West Point
Choice: West Point or the University of Tampa
Choice: History or English
Choice: Get my mail straight after lunch or later (I met a girl who would come to have significant impact on my life as a result of this choice)
Choice: Speak to this girl or don’t
Choice: Pursue her or don’t
Choice: Sleep with her or not
Choice: Park the car before formation or after (had I parked it after I might never have got suspended from West Point for a year and thus not have met the girl I would eventual marry)
Choice: Infantry or Military Intelligence
Choice: Germany or Korea
Choice: Stay with Missy or go back to W.P.
Choice: Call Ruth or don’t
Choice: Ask her to marry me or don’t
Choice: LOM or not
Choice: Go to Bosnia or not
Choice: Stay at Fort Benning or go to Fort Drum
Choice: Stay in the army or get out
Choice: Stay with Merrill Lynch or jump ship to GE
Choice: Stay with GE or jump ship back to Merrill
Choice: Sneak into Deb’s email or not
Choice: Join MLHSBC or stay with Merrill
Choice: Stay with HSBC or take voluntary redundancy

And how many other choices have I made that have led me here to this place, at this time? How do I tell the mundane choice from the significant choice or are there no ordinary choices.

“A butterfly flaps its wings in New York and it rains in San Francisco?”

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.