Bienvenue à votre nouvelle vie!

Welcome to your new life!

Combination bedroom, bathroom, desk and pseudo kitchenette.

View from bedroom window. I paid extra for this.

Pictures from a stroll along the river into town, about 45mins.

At first, Nantes town itself felt like a ghost town. The grey overcast sky carefully dropped a little rain on the already cold stone and concrete architecture. The few incisions of faded colour from shop signs; a Chinese restaurant, asian supermarket and French baker.

Somehow Jonny Cash’s ‘Hurt’ seems to make a suitable soundtrack, but I decide to flick the ipod onto a bit of INXS. The adventure has begun.

Saying G'day to Jules Verne

Perhaps it would kind of tie things together if I said I am studying Industrial Design and have just arrived in France for a semester of exchange studies in the picturesque town of Nantes.

Nantes appealed to me because it is a smallish town (~300k), an opportunity to learn one of the most widely spoken languages in the world and the course of study here looked pretty good. It's also the home of Jules Verne, although he doesn't live here any more.

J'arrive a Charles De Gaulle airport, apres je vais a Nantes en TGV.

(http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/screenshots/full/flashback_08.png)

Un cafe au lait s'il vous plait.

5-step reflection

1.

2009: Petroleum Drilling Engineer/ Night Well-Site Manager. Started with lunchtime. A plate of food in front of me and, if I remember correctly, a young middle-aged French-born American with a fondness for cheese sitting across the white-plastic veneered chipboard galley table.

I imagine, being 00:00hrs on the 1st January, that I would have treated myself to a shot of percolated coffee drizzled over a couple of scoops of vanilla ice-cream. Topped-up with milk, in a tall waxed-paper take-away cup. One with the blue and red triangle motif on the side. Actually I wouldn't call it a motif; it's more of a 'splash' of triangles, like they were just thrown on. But they weren't, cos they were printed on.

2.

6 months later, June 2009: Unemployed, embarking on a career change, after a quick motorbike trip around Western Australia and Northern Territory. I was sitting on my swag in the sandy bed of one of the world's oldest rivers. Watching flames of the fire lick the chill out of the air. The white veil of moonlight descended quickly down the western face of the gorge. The somewhat eerie howls of a pack of dingoes washed over our ears. Louis and I decided to call it a night and jump into the swags before we got mauled and eaten. We had a few hundred kilometers tough riding the next day and, with all the slow-going deep sand, we weren't sure we had enough fuel to get us to Kings Canyon.

3.

A year later, May 30th 2010: Finishing 1st year Bachelor Industrial Design in Melbourne. I've had a grand total of 8 hours sleep in the last five days and my body is trying to shut down. I've been encountering microsleep on an increasingly regular basis. I decide to take a 20 minute powernap every 4 hours. Robbing me of sleep is the need to assemble a portfolio of the semester's work to meet the encroaching deadline, including research and development work, a couple of A0 technical drawings, presentation boards, a 5 minute speech and a 1:10 scale white-model. It took me 12 hours alone to sew four lycra awning sections onto the wire/copper frame. You could say I bit off more than I could chew. But I chewed it.

4.

8 months later, February 8th 2011 (2 years after lunch with the French-born American): Our herd got off the plane and busily marched through, down, in and around the cavernous maze of escalators, travelators, underground monorail and terminal halls that give space to Incheon Airport, Korea. The polished stone veneer brings the place to light, but not to life. Apart from our herd there was no one else around. It reminded me of a scene from Brazil.

(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWexi7snkejAsJg3_BMUkg6hEliELsgwkcV-QECTqb0NhQPhLvp32VgvqNGPTKjTEa69afBd9OOH1VryjiR4LP8huqekUMjrOW49b_ia4b3cgtuW3H-HOVSNFJlY8wUPO8F9poyxbs5wcO/s1600/brazil01.jpg)

5.

12 hours later, February 9th 2011: It's 0630hrs and I've got a thirst that could drain the Pacific. The only thing in the mini-bar other than Korean beer was Korean Pocari Sweat. I’m not sure if a Pocari is an animal or a humanoid. Anyway not sure why you'd need that here though - it's minus 2 degrees outside. Not only can you see your breath, it'll slap you in the face and tell you to go back inside.

Maybe this guy is a Pocari. I seem to remember him being much cooler than this.

(http://f00.inventorspot.com/images/August%205th%20-%20Olympic%20Mascots6.jpg)

I had spent the previous day stretching my legs and enjoying the primo service on Korean Air. Nice to sit next to a lovely young Korean bloke, who was studying in Melbourne. He also busks at Caulfield station.

Disappointed, but not bothered, that instead of stopping-over in Seoul (which is about an hour from Incheon airport) we were transferred to Hyatt Incheon for the night. The hotel itself is great, very new, but it is a droplet of glistening water, resting on a dead leaf.

The view from my Hyatt Incheon room.

‘Cromagnon Man’ by Nam June, Paik 1994 (depicting the cultural progress of man, although I didn’t see a depiction of a Star Destroyer anywhere) 241x198x51cm. Hyatt Incheon Foyer.

Who am I?

Words are given meaning, identities, by, for and amongst those who use them... for what purpose they agree is appropriate and rational. When you take an English word and put it in a conversation in Siberia, what does it mean? Does it lose its identity?

In a more familiar way perhaps…… If a tree falls in the woods and there's no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?

(http://i.ytimg.com/vi/acGHA5ECzaw/0.jpg)

11,000m 879km/hr

I recall a scene in a frosty laboratory. My off-white, ruled, moleskine notebook bathes in a cool blue glow emitted by the retractable remote control in my back-of-headrest in-flight entertainment unit. The blue is a softly spoken foreigner in an otherwise dark world.

(http://starsmedia.ign.com/stars/image/article/842/842067/hannibal-chew-picture-001_1197966962.jpg)

Lightroom

Adobe - Genius!

The Wrap up: Gibb River Road Mountain Bike Challenge 08

Any way you want it! That's the way you need it!
-----------
What follows is the true story of a team of 5 unlikely heros who shared a common interest to put something back into Western Australian society. Ordinarily these 5 people live out their lives ordinarily, as Rosie, Alex, Stu, Sam and Carl. But together they are no ordinary 5 - with their powers combined they are The Super Action Future Power.


The Gibb River Road Mountain Bike Challenge is a charity cycling event organised by WA Police Legacy. The event runs over 5 days and involves cycling from Derby to Kunnunurra in WA's rugged Kimberley region. That's approximately 90km bitumen, 570km gravel/sand/corrugations/mountain ranges and finishing off with 50km bitumen (710km total).

Three crazy guys decided to do it solo in 2008. There were 38 teams ranging in size from solo riders up to 6 or more alternating riders per team. Using special 'super powers' the SAFP were able to calculate that 4 riders would have to ride a mere 35kms per day each in order to complete the event. This figure was entered into the SAFP Super Training Regime Calculation Worksheet (STRCW) with the following output: "No training required". In hindsight it was clear this complex calculation contained an error.

Onward Ho
------------
So the SAFP laid logistical plans to emerge from their hideouts and converge on the Kimberley, ready for the starting gun on the 12th May. Secret hideout locations: Alex & Carl (Perth), Stu (Darwin), Ro & Sam (Broome).

Alex & Carl decided driving up and back (a lazy 7000kms round trip) would be cheaper than flying. And it would've been except for the $9 pack of cards purchased at Kumarina roadhouse. The trip up was full of excitement and anticipation, largely owing to driving 1000km/day, camping on the roadside, gooey roadkill, vegemite on toast and the inspirational voice of Tony Robbins.


Caught up with a few characters in Broome, undertook some last minute fine tuning of bikes.......


..... and we were off! Pushing along at about 20km/hr... ... .... .. .




The pictures don't really do it justice. It was a 5 day bike ride
- dusty, corrugated, gravelly, water crossings, sandy - finding a good bit of road was always difficult




- nuts, water and mountain bread


- We looked bloody awesome in the S-A-F-P capes (it was worth the extra wind drag), tassels and spokey dokes


- 2 cars: Rosie drove support vehicle (thank christ for Rosie!) and we rotated riders through the Subaru in which Journey's "Anyway you want it" played on repeat for 5 days. Apparently "that's the way you need it".


Some notable notes:
- Stu: getting over excited and stacking it on the bitumen, 20 minutes into his first ride


- Sam: top speed 74km/hr on a long downhill


- Ro: taking one for the team and jumping on the bike (despite her abhoration of cycling). Being our mother for a week!
- Alex: riding off without a helmet on many occasions on an event run by the police, and upstaging the Kimberley's finest acoustic entertainer at El Questro with some spontaneous syncopation from the spoons


- Carl: going slow enough uphill to hear the spokey dokes
- the Subaru: awarded "most ambitious car on the event"
- We came in 10th place of 38 teams!! (but "it isn't a race" of course)
- Training (and milk) is for babies. Real heros drink Emu Export.

What the images don't show is the incredible organisation by Simon Rimmer and Police Legacy. They rallied, supported and fed around 240 people (riders and supporters) during the week.



So we cleaned out the cars, wiped the dust off our weary bodies, finished off the powerade, drained the transmission oil and filled the engine oil in preparation for a night at the Kimberley Moon Festival rockin to the tunes of the many great bands including Jimmy Barnes!




Remember, it was a charity event and the SAFP raised just over $2000 all of which we're giving to WA Police Legacy and Wunan Foundation.


Thanks heaps Laurie, Megs, Cat and Amanda for shelter in Broome, Kunnunurra and Port Headland. Thanks also to Glen Parker Cycles on Stirling Hwy Perth for helping us out and all of you who contributed to the $2k. If you feel like "unleashing the giant within" (thanks Tony), give it a go next year!

thegibbchallenge.net.au
policelegacywa.org.au
wunan.org.au
glenparker.com
tonyrobbins.com