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Saturday, 6 August 2011 - 13,868

As I mentioned at the start of the week, I've decided to take the bike with me to Texas (and beyond) in a couple weeks. So I spent the entire day today giving it the clean of a lifetime, and replaced several bits and pieces so it's all but brand-spanking-new and good to go at the other end. My flatmates love me.				I'm having the bike couriered with FedEx, and someone mentioned it'd be a good idea to take a few photos of it beforehand so if it turns up all bashed in and busted then I have some proof that I didn't send it like that.

After all that it got disassembled, bubble-wrapped up where necessary, and stuffed in a box ready for FedEx to collect it next weekend.				After buying the first bike (which got stolen) in May 2007, my final odometer reading for the UK is 13,868kms. Phew! Go me!

Sunday, 7 August 2011 - What did you do this weekend?

After I got done packing my bike away yesterday and calling it a night I had a quick check of the news, and this is what was all over it. On Thursday, a man from Tottenham in north London was shot and killed by police after it seems he opened fire on them as they moved in to arrest him for something or other. The resulting peaceful protest outside a Tottenham police station yesterday afternoon turned into this by nightfall. Down the road is a double-decker bus that had been set alight along with three police cars, buildings were set alight, shops were looted, that dude above is waving a machete around - it was fucking chaos! News article here.
Good times.		By daybreak the rioters had called it a night and gone to bed.
There's two of the three cop cars that got burnt out.		And here's what's left of that bus.

Then today I was woken by this chick yelling at something across the street, but there was nobody around! She was rambling for a good couple minutes before walking off, at which point I yelled down "Sweetheart who are you talking to? There's nobody there!" She then stopped, looked back across the road, and starting yelling at 'them' again hahaha!		Anyway, yesterday was all about packing the bike for Texas, today was all about packing everything else. And here it is - my life all stuffed into three bags, and I do mean stuffed! I hope I haven't forgotten anything or overlooked something, because there ain't much else going to fit in.		After I was done I took a few more things down to the charity clothing bin. I love the warning not to enter the bin hehe. So that was my fun weekend of packing, while others had a fun weekend of rioting and looting.

Monday, 8 August 2011 - London riots (day 3)

Welcome to England: great weather and friendly locals.

Overnight last night, further rioting and looting broke out in various parts of London. While the initial bullshit on Saturday was the result of a protest turning ugly over the shooting death of a North Londoner by police last week, what's happening now is entirely unprovoked. This is just scumbags, mostly kids, out to cause as much trouble as they can, and out to loot as much stuff as they can (and they're doing a great job on both fronts). As I write this (7:30pm), further carnage has broken out across East and South London as of about 5pm this afternoon, specifically Hackney, Peckham, and Lewisham (which are all dodgy areas at the best of times). Swarms of parked cars and another bus have been vandalised and set on fire, buildings are ablaze, everyone is throwing anything they can get their hands on at police, news crews have been attacked - it's fucking mayhem out there! News article here. Ordinarily, I'd be there with bells on as I absolutely love to witness such major happenings first-hand, but even I have to concede that would be a bad idea in this case - too many animals on the loose. And just now we've been told that the shit is starting to hit the fan in Birmingham - a large city 200km northwest of London. People are gathering in the centre of the city there and smashing up the place. I know I've said this before on several occasions but this country is disgraceful, and I'm outta here in less than 15 days!

9pm now, and it's all kicked off in Croydon, a town in South London (get that, a town within a city - should give you some idea of how massive London is). The Croydon riots started very fast, which is further proof that these little bastards are organised with a lot of this apparently being arranged via Blackberry messaging. This is a large furniture store raging out of control. Midnight now and I'm going to bed, but over the last hour or so the action has spread to Clapham, Ealing, Chalk Farm and Camden (a 30-minute walk from me), and Notting Hill (a 15-minute walk from me). So that's North, South, East, West, and Central London now involved - it's a warzone and completely unprecedented for London. Department stores and electronic stores are being heavily looted, a massive fire has broken out in Clapham and parked cars were set alight in Notting Hill, police are stretched thin right across the city, and I just heard my bike shop (that I just visited last Monday) is being looted by about a dozen youths as I write this. There is nothing to suggest that anything will kick off where I am in Maida Vale - it's too residential here with too few commercial premises to be of much interest for these fucking lowlifes.

Wednesday, 10 August 2011 - From "London riots" to "UK riots"

With 16,000 cops on the streets of London last night (compared with just 6,000 the night before), it was all pretty quiet here. Elsewhere in the country though it was a different story. Scumbags in numerous English cities saw what had been happening in London and figured they could get in on that. Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester in particular all had a pretty exciting night with rioting and looting and the same mayhem that we've had in London. The mind boggles.

Thursday, 11 August 2011 - Even the seagulls are joining in the looting

Saturday, 13 August 2011 - Man versus oven

Or more specifically, Matt versus oven. A bunch of us were around at a mate's today - food and booze and bad movies and all that. Matt thought he'd impress us all with his fine grasp of kitchen skills by taking care of dessert, and this was the result hahaha! Good job boy.				In other news, there have been no more cases of rioting in England over the last few days so all that seems to have passed (for now). Regardless, the government is bringing in this hard-ass on the left from Los Angeles for his advice on how to deal with all the scum in this country, after he dropped crime rates in LA to record lows when he became a police chief. Good luck with that!

Tuesday, 16 August 2011 - One week to go!

This time next week I'll be outta here, and on my way to Texas for the start of my eight-month trip! I'm already packed, the planning has already been done, in fact apart from one or two little things to take care of this week I'm completely good to go - damn I'm organised! Speaking of plans, Kristina and I have made a slight change to the Central America leg of the trip in that we are going to skip Honduras in favour of Guatemala, which is much more highly recommended based on various travel forums and advice from friends who have already travelled that part of the world. Groovy!

Thursday, 18 August 2011 - Move, Eat, Learn

Three mates, 44 days, 11 countries, and these three one-minute videos are the result showing what life is like around the world: Move, Eat, Learn. They recorded everything with two cameras and ended up with over a terabyte of footage which they cut, mixed and matched into a seamless blend of every notable place they visited (I recognised about half of them). Move shows them walking around, Eat shows the delectable food they ate, and Learn shows all the amazing things they did. This for me epitomises why those of us who choose to get out of our little bubble to explore and experience the world do so. The world outside of our own is the most phenomenal place that inspires and enriches, and tomorrow I quit my 9-to-5 to do exactly what these three guys have just done (though on a slightly larger scale - 250 days rather than 44 :)

Friday, 19 August 2011 - No more 9-to-5, until further notice

Today was my final day at work - lovely. The drinks were going down into the night, and my mate Param here thought he'd be a nice guy and buy everyone a round of shots - about 15 in all, but instead managed to spill pretty much the whole lot when he brought them out hahaha!

Then we thought it'd funny to help this chick into the neighbour's yard hehe.		Later on a few of us finished the night at a club in Camden Stables. Nothing out of the ordinary until this chick on stage whipped out a grinder and started doing erotic things with it. I've never seen that before - certainly a new take on firing ping pong balls out of there, and the DJ looked suitably impressed. So yeah, good times :)

Sunday, 21 August 2011 - Ode to London

London, London, London. The Tube can never be completely relied upon...		The roads are full of pot holes...		And the drivers just park wherever they please.

The weather is rubbish...		The Thames is disgusting...		And although it's illegal to leave your dog's shit on the pavement, the police horses can shit all over the show and it's perfectly legal to leave that all over the road for me to cycle through.

There's no shortage of entertainment though, and not just in terms of the obvious. The drunks...		The special-needs flats across the street...		And this van with its rear wiper had me pissing myself :)

The city is utter chaos during rush-hour, but that's my favourite time to be out on the bike.		The traffic is terrible, but again I love to be amongst that on the bike too and there's no shortage of traffic accidents to stare at for no reason.
Some of the street names make you wonder about their history...

And this bridge (Westminster Bridge) makes cock-and-balls shapes on the pavement on a sunny afternoon hehe.				London. Despite my three years of pissing and moaning about you (which comes as part of living here) you are an amazing city in so many ways both good and bad, and that's what keeps us coming. Thank you for everything, you will be missed, but I'll no doubt see you again someday.

Monday, 22 August 2011 - Goodbye UK
So this is it. Two years in Edinburgh, three years in London (including eight months living in Paris), and I'm finally out of here! I still remember quite vividly my first day in the UK. After announcing to my flatmates in Brisbane “Right, I'm off to Scotland now” the previous morning, I landed at Heathrow about 7am on August 26th, 2006 to a typically overcast and showery London day. I got the Tube into the city and ran around for a few hours before heading out to Gatwick Airport later that afternoon for the flight up to Edinburgh. I especially remember riding from Edinburgh Airport into town up the top of a double-decker bus and seeing Edinburgh Castle for the first time, and that's when it really hit me that I was really here, and a long long way from home.

It's a hard land to love, the UK. Its weather is dismal, with few exceptions its main cities are an eye-sore, and it has some serious and all-too-visible socioeconomic issues as highlighted just recently by all the riots. Having spent my whole life to this point on the other side of the planet, it took me a long time to get used to life here. Having said all that, the UK does have some amazing landscapes, some of the friendliest people on the planet (interspersed with some of the angriest), and no shortage of shit to see and do which make it a great destination. Plus I work in IT and there's a big market for that here, so I've been able to build up a pretty good career during the last five years.

My real reasons for setting up camp here in the first place had less to do with the UK than they did with Europe. Three hours or less on a plane from here or even a train for that matter and you can be in the most amazing destinations. With very few exceptions I've been to most every country in Western, Central, and Northern Europe. I was going to mention some of my favourite spots that I've discovered along the way but honestly there are just too many. I guess the more notable ones would be Paris, Bruges, Interlaken, Germany's Black Forest, and Austria, The Netherlands, Norway, and Slovenia as a whole. Luxor in Egypt is also worth a mention. Only Eastern Europe really remains for me to see here, and I hope to return someday to tick that off, as well as more of Africa and farther afield.

In short the last the five years have been some of the best of my life, and a sincere thank you to all of you who had anything to do with it. I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat, but onwards and upwards as they say and tomorrow morning I board a plane to begin yet another new chapter, and the rest of my life.

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