My First Post

Well I suppose I should start by telling u a little bit about myself. I think I would best be described as a sort of romantic geek with bohemian tendancies. I have all the hobbies and interests of ur average geek "electronics, robots, sci-fi, computers etc" but I do not uphold the habits and ideosyncracies of the steriotype. Combine this with a blatant disregard but not ignorance of the rules & behaviours exhibited by general society and u have a sort of picture of me and hopefully with this in mind I hope u can begin to better understand why I do the things I do..

Now i will talk about the other one in my life

I met my special lady friend almost 2 years ago now. Of course I was a different person then with different expectations and a different direction in life. We met under rather unusual circumstances when u compare us to the average couple. To explain these circumstances now is unnecessary & might overshadow the rest of my rant so I will not. So to make a long and awkward story short I will simply say this, we met in the US on the west coast, I now live in ireland and my special girl in France.

Now my little friend is in a sense indescribable. I do not really know what she is but she makes me feel very strange and for the first time in my life i am willing to turn my world upside down for a member of the opposite sex.

Our romance did not begin the day we met rather it grew slowly in the time since around a shared love of music, the internet and a variety of special causes and events. During the course of the last two years we have been conversing, traveling and living with each other all the time expanding our relationship and exploring each other. Oh yes, just to add some colour there is something I should mentioned, we are unrepentant party animals with a penchant for booze and excess.

All that aside let talk about the bike thingy.

Ill start by saying this, I am a total bicycle terrorist. I hate cars I have never owned one I do not even have a license. I only travel in them out of necessity. If I had my way cars would only be used for long journeys. I think our urban environment would be a far more beautiful place if this were so. We would be forced to rethink many components of our everyday lives such as commuting, the megamarket, satellite towns. You think this is impossible, well I am afraid my friends it is. We have been so convinced of the necessity for cars that we have moulded our landscape to accommodate them far beyond the point of return.

But there are a still those who are willing give up the comfort of a car in favout of setting an example for the rest of society (And get fit doing so).

I am one of those people.

Anyway, some months ago I made a promise to my special lady friend. I promised that I would quit my job, compact my life and come to her in France. By bike. I did say I was sort of romantic, and it was certainly better than my first idea which was to travel somewhere were gold could be extracted from the ground. Mine the aforementioned gold with my bare hand or perhaps one of those pan things and fashion some kind of token from it expressing my love for her.

And here i find myself committed to this epic journey which started with me quitting my job last week.

My plan is to wrap things up here and be on my way as soon as possible. Now I live on an island in the north atlantic and so some sort of boat or ship will be necessary for part of the trip but I have heard great advances have been made in recent years in this sector so I am not predicting a problem. But after the boat we will have the cycling.

So yesterday i booked my ferry tickets and my journey is scheduled to commence on the ninth of August 2006. I will travel from Dublin to Wexford by car :-( and from there take the big boat to Roscoff in the north west of France and from there i hope to move sort of south. Well thats the plan.

Stay tuned.

RV