Up Up and Away

A couple of years ago, my good friend Christine decided to give me a Hot air baloon ride as a birthday gift. I thought this was a great idea since I have always loved flying in all forms and I had never been on a baloon ride before, So all seemed well and good.
Bookings were made, indemnity forms were signed, and directions to take-off fields were obrtained etc.
Unfortunately however when the appointed day arrived, a check-up phone call the evening before resulted in the flight being canceled due to probable bad weather - and it was true, the weather didnt look great. So, we did other things that day and set about rebooking the baloon flight for another date.
However, apparently the balloning is quite popular since we were unable to make another booking for a couple of months. So we did that and waited patiently for the date to arrive.

But we were foiled again and on the appointed day, again the weather was not the best and the flight was canceled... Back to make another booking...

But the season had ended and we could not make another booking that year... We had no choice but to make a booking for early in the next season - about seven months away...
The Winter passed and Spring commenced but fate was not ready to play along yet, and my Job ended suddenly! So, then my plans all changed and I was off to climb mountains in Pakistan.
Christine and I planned around this and made a booking for after I returned from mountaineering but before I went away on my motorbike tour...

This time, things were looking great we had a good spell of fine weather, and hopes were high...

BUT, Just a few days before the flight there was a very unfortunate incident with another ballon flight where the fully loaded baloon was about to take off and some how it caught fire!
Most of the people managed to jump clear of the baloon but two did not and they were carried high into the air in the basket as the unloaded and flaming baloon shot into the sky before colapsing and crashing back to earth - tragically, both the remaining occupants perished!

This very sad incident was of course all over the local news media and the balooning company decided to close down all flights for a couple of weeks out of respect for those affected...

So then I was off on my year long odysey riding to Ecuador and back. Again Christine and I planned around this and a booking was made for when I returned in August (a very good time of year in Vancouver).
Again the fatefull day approached and the weather looked great but the phone call the evening before said the flight was cancelled due to "upper level wind sheer" which means that just because it looks OK doesnt mean it is... Foiled again!!!

So yet another booking was made and again it was the last for the season, so we didnt really have much hope ... but what can ya do?

But lo! The weather was fine and the phone call was made and the flight was still on...

So last weekend on Sunday morning at 7am in the early light Christine and I found our selves with big wooly coats standing in long wet grass in a field next to a large cane basket and a pile of fabric being rolled out....
:)))

Surprise Surprise!

On the twists and turns of life there are many surprises, and I had quite a big one today...

I was headed into the city centre after work to meet a friend for dinner. I was riding my little yellow SV650 motorcycle through end of day city traffic and all of a sudden some guy in a car decides to do a U-turn right in front of me!

I was moving at full speed and there were no other cars near me - I had pulled away from traffic just before because someone was turning left from the left lane (two lanes of traffic each way) and someone was parallel parking from the right lane, so I could get through on the bike but other cars could not.
Anyway, the guy in front just didn't see me and decided to use the same break in traffic as an opportunity to execute a quick U-turn (completely ilegal in that location by the way). He turned quickly and was right across both lanes before I could do anything. - I slammed on the brakes and locked up the front wheel but still had just about full speed when the bike and I piled straight into the side pillar of his car! There was no time for me to do anything but know that I was going to hit hard.; So thats exactly what I did!    :(

The bike stopped very suddenly and I didn't.
First thing that I felt was a very hard impact in my groin on the tank; Then the face of my helmet hit the roof line of the car followed closely by my right shoulder. Fortunately (and that is a huge understatement!) my weight was high enough and I had got some rotation on my body so that it was a "glancing blow" and I basically moved over the top of the car and not into it!
Over the top I went (more or less on my back in a tucked position) and then came down some meters clear of the car on the other side. I clipped my right ankle hard on the car as I went over and I landed hard on my left shoulder on the road...

I came to a stop in the middle of the road and was pretty well intact but had a VERY strong pain in my groin!!!
I immediately got myself up and started cursing at the pain and hobbled to the side of the road.
I sat down and then people started to help out. They were all very nice, thoughtful and helpful, including the guy who did the U-turn. Ambulance and fire truck arrived quickly and I was checked over but nothing serious appeared to have been damaged - Well if you don't count my reproductive abilities! :))) so they didnt need me to go to the hospital.

So then the other driver and I swapped details for the insurance and someone volunteered their name and number to me as a witness. And another bike rider who had also seen the accident helped me move my bike to a safe location to park it (which I had not even seen till now)...
It still rolls but its not very pretty any more!
The front forks are very badly bent and the radiator is "had it". The fairings are crunched too but the big surprise is that there is a sizeable dent in the fuel tank (Right on the nose of the tank with the tight curves where it should be really hard to dent!) that can only have come from my groin!!! Yep, I really did hit it hard....

I then made my way back home thanks to the friend I was going to meet, coming out to get me and take me home. We decided that home delivery pizza was the best idea and then watched a DVD for the evening.
After that, my neighbor arrived home and I went out to the street to talk to him. He has a really nice big low loader vehicle trailer and I was hoping he could help me get my bike home. He was very happy to help out and we did it imediately. So, by 2am I had the bike safely back in my garage and was tucked into bed (with a couple of pain killer tablets rappidly disolving inside :)

So that was my surprise for the day... Haven't digested it all yet but I'm sure that I am very very lucky not to have been killed or seriously injured.
Note: This is the first time I have ever had a motorbike accident that involved another vehicle and I have been riding for twenty years.
I was wearing all my gear and I'm sure the helmet, gloves, boots and hard armor in the jacket really helped but it seems to me that that is the minor aspect. The major aspect is the "providence"... It seems life has something important for me to do yet before I leave - probably just important for me and not the world but apparently very important...

The bike is probably a write-off and I'm fine with that - though, a year ago I would have expected to feel more loss but the current version of me does not (just gratefulness). It was one of the few things that I was intending to keep even when I leave Vancouver for a few years. I was just about finished building the storage container in my back yard which was specifically built mostly for the bike!... Not sure what significance I will find in that yet...
Like I said, I have not digested it all yet :)

I'll be very stiff and sore tomorrow and don't think I'll go into work but I should be OK after that. I guess tomorrow I'll fill in insurance papers and take it easy.


A big surprise, but a very good day :))))))

Back to the Grind!

Time for another update.

I have found myself some paying work... Well, actually, it more or less found me!

I have of course dropped in to say hello to my assorted friends over the past couple of months that I have been back here in Vancouver. And Ive been telling them about my "plan" to do some work here for a while but then to do something else (though not really sure what).
Well, one of those friends at my old employment mentioned this to some people in one of the engineering groups that was very hard pressed for people at the moment. One of the managers in that group then phoned me up and asked me if I was interested in a contract position for a couple of months (till about the end of November) doing some testing for them...

Now, a year ago, I probably would not have been interested in a contract position, and probably even less interested in working for that company again; But now, after my year of wanderings and reflections, I find that it doesnt bother me at all, and that the short term aspect of the position is exactly what I want. The pay is not nearly what I used to earn but thats also a good thing I think since it is enough for me to pay the bills and save some for later but its not enough to make me want to continue to do the job for more than a few months. Likewise, the responsibility of the position is minimal (other than the quality of my own work of course) and again, that seems to be just what I want at the moment.

So, I'm all of a sudden back in the daily work routine of a "normal" person.
The down side of that is that at the moment I find this quite a challenge. I of course expected that it would be a bit difficult at first but thats not really what Im talking about.
The challenge is that I just dont feel any connection to the work or the role or the career or the people there any more... It just feels dead to me.
I have no problem doing the work and I hold myself to high standards of quality but its no longer the life for me! (at least for the present anyway)

I look around at the other people there and its clear that most of them are there simply because it pays them well and thats enough... its a job. Those people have other things in their lives that they live for and its usually their families but it aint the job! - I find that I am now one of these people but I dont have a family and Im now far less attached to the idea of having "stuff" and of living out my days in this expensive city and building myself another version of the same "Rut" that I left over a year ago...
Years ago when I first took a job with this company, I did feel some alignment with its goals and I had career aspirations and I wanted to make a difference and do some good and be a part of creating something successfull.... but thats all been gradually worn away over the years and I had lost sight of those lofty ideals in the daily struggles of life in the highTech industry.
But now I see my past in a different light... and I WILL NOT let it happen to me again :)



So, yes, I have a job and it is good that I have it and I am earning some money.
But, NO, it is absolutely not a job that will last beyond a few months.
And I am very happy with that :)

Whats been going on??

Ive been back in Vancouver for about seven weeks now and Ive posted almost nothing....
Whats been going on in my world??

Well, a bunch of stuff.
The plan in my mind as I rode back from Guatemala was to retain ownership of my house but to "dispose of" as much of my accumulated stuff as possible. I had more or less decided that the life I had been leading before my trip was not what I wanted and that if I didn't take definitive action and "Do something"; I was just going to fall back into the same old rut I had built for myself.... and before I knew it, another decade would have passed and Id have missed my chance to change...
So, I was intending to make some big changes, but I didn't want to "raise" my entire past... I wanted to step away from the old life and into a new life in a more or less orderly fashion :).... Another factor involved here is that I was not entirely sure what that "new life" would look like... but I knew I had to make some big changes so I may as well get started on them!

So, I put together something of a plan with a couple of options and milestones along the way:
1) I did not want to be burdened by my oppressive mortgage any more!
2) I wanted to do more motorbike "Adventure Touring" though not necessarily immediately.
3) I wanted to keep ownership of my house in Vancouver (Its a good investment, I like living in it and I may want to resume "the life that I had" in a year or three if "the new life" does not lead onward to somewhere different.
4) I wanted to go try living in a very simple way for a while... The loose plan here was to go live in San Pedro Guatemala with the friends I had made (Marie and Indy and others...)

So that was the rough plan, but how to get all the pieces into place was not straight forward.
For a start, I have accumulated quite a pile of "stuff" over the last decade or more in Vancouver. That stuff cost me thousands of dollars to store for a year, and I also left quite a bit of it in my house/garage which made it significantly harder to rent out!
So, the answer to that was to "get rid of the stuff!" - Should be possible but it was going to take me a few months to achieve it - if I am not going to just throw it out that is... (three or four at minimum).
Then there was the mortgage problem... I had been paying it off at a rapid rate while I was working, but that meant that the payments while traveling were painfully high... That had to change! Once I got back to Vancouver I looked into this challenge... The mortgage is at the end of a five year term this December and then I can easily renegotiate all the details. After some mathematical gymnastics, I have determined that I can rearrange this so that at current interest rates the rental income from the house will cover the mortgage and all other maintenance expenses - Just!
Its not actually that pretty - Long term low rate mortgage means I end up paying about one and a half times the principal of the loan in interest... But if it lets me be free of the burden of paying myself then thats good enough (at least for a couple of years or so).
Another twist here is that I'm sure interest rates will go up in the next few years, but how much??
So what I really needed to do was to pay down another lump sum of some tens of thousands of dollars off the mortgage..... This means work!

On the work front, I did not want to do what I had been doing and as I said, I wanted a change of life. However, being the sensible conservative intelligent engineer (substitute "afraid") that I am, I felt very uncomfortable about throwing away a perfectly good career with very large earning potential for a subsistence living. - I am over 40 years old and hi-tech engineering is a young persons world, and I was not solidly in the management stream so chances of me getting another job after a few years "in the wilderness" would probably be slim!!!
So; my plan to accommodate these issues was basically to accept that I was going to have to work for a year in order to get my freedom in the manner that I wanted it.
I decided Id try to get a job that was more in the "Project Manager" role than the technical engineering role since I figure that project management does not really change like the technical stuff, its always in use, its portable, and I like the job better than the technical one - Only down side is that it pays less, but these days, Im OK with that.
This plan allowed me the time to dispose of all my accumulated stuff without just throwing it out. It allowed me to transition to a new professional role that I could take up again at a later date, and it brought in a chunk of money to secure my mortgage and give me enough cash in hand to go play in the world for a year or two..... :))))


Sounds great but ironing out the wrinkles in that plan was going to take quite a bit of effort, and now that I'm here in Vancouver, that is what I have been doing...

Ive got my stuff out of storage and Ive gone through all the boxes and Ive been getting rid of it.
I have put dozens of advertisements on gear swap and Buy-N-Sell web sites and have sold thousands of dollars of my accumulated past life... I've been selling things off at really low prices just so that I get rid of them... In most cases I have no issues with doing it since the gear had not been used for years, but there were still a few things that were tough to let go (and so I grow)
As expected though, Ive found that there are some things that don't make sense to get rid of immediately (better to hold in storage for a couple of years and see if I want to come back) so for these things I decided that I would build a storage container in my back yard.
So I also got a pile of wood delivered and have started that construction job while it is still sunny (rather than doing it in the winter rainy season).
I'm definitely "on the program" and every day I'm figuring out how to get where I want to go as effectively as possible.
Trouble is though that I'm not much clearer on any details of where it is that I'm trying to get to...

I guess I'll figure it out later :))

Trip Costs

I'm not sure that anyone else will care, but Ive done some more calculating and got some estimates on what the trip actually cost.

The Original Plan:
Before I set out on the trip I had a basic plan of spending about $1000 per month for the journey. This works out to about $33 per day on average.
I also figured that I would spend about a month in USA, a month in Mexico, six weeks in Central America...

Beyond that I had no plan... Just an end goal of getting to Panama!

So, now the trip is over and while I still have the interest, Ive looked at the numbers:

The Actuals:
Number of Days Traveling 182 days (6 months)
Number of Days in Meditation 122 days (4 months)
Trip length of Sep-21-2007 to Jul-21-2008 (10 Months)
Total Trip Days 304 days

Mortgage Expenses $26100
House Expenses $4260
Rental Income $15600
Other Non Trip Expenses $1250

Special Trip Expenses $3130 (Bike Parts and shipping/flight costs)
General Trip Expenses $13200

Average Trip Cost $53 per day
Average Trip Cost - excluding "Special Trip Expenses" $43 per day

So, It looks like I "blew" my budget quite badly :)

I was not actually expecting to hold to the $33 per day for the USA portion of the trip since the USA is expensive for food, fuel, and activities (note though that I camped throughout the USA so accommodation costs were $0).
I was hoping to stick to the rough plan for Mexico and Central America of $10 per day for food, $10 per day for fuel, and $10 per day for accommodation. What I think I actually achieved is more like $12 per day for food, $20 per day for fuel, and $12 per day for accommodation.
Reasons are:
1) Fuel prices went up considerably during the trip and I also rode more Km than expected (roads are very steep and windy down in those mountains!).
2) Accommodation is cheaper South of the USA, and I did spend a couple of months sharing rooms. However, a room in a cheap hotel usually costs about $12-$15 for a very basic place (I could not have known this before I set out though, so "what can ya do"?) Also, the rooms that I shared were often more expensive (and nicer) than I would otherwise have chosen.
3) Food could have been managed for about $10 per day south of the USA, but it would have been totally "street food" and that's not much fun if you do it for ten months straight (and not that healthy either). Again I could not have known this before I set out so I don't mind the over-run.

Conclusions:
I'm glad I went and am happy with the spending choices I made. So, on the whole, it cost me about one and a half times my planned restricted budget for the trip.
My house expenses were only half covered by my rental income, and this really ate into my cash and limited my choices.
It turns out that my trip expenses were only half the size of my house expenses - that's a bit of an eye opener!


The old adage of "Take twice the money and half of the gear" that you think you will need proves to be very true again! :)

My Other Ride

The registration/insurance on my motorbike ran out yesterday. Ive done all the work on the bike that I need to get done now (just need to change the tires for winter riding) so Im not going to reinsure it for the moment.

Instead I will reinsure my other bike that has been sitting unused in my garage for over a year. It is physically much smaller sport bike (Suzuki SV650) but it has the same engine as the bike I took on my big toure.
This bike however is all fun, and is far from practical... but to my eye it is beautiful, and fun to ride.
The riding position seems very cramped to me at the moment (after so long on the big touring bike) but Im sure I will get used to it.

Its so clean and shiny compared to my other bike that I was almost afraid to take it out on the street.... somehow I managed to overcome the fear :))

A Wing and a Prayer

Today was a good day in Vancouver.

Yesterday was a lovely warm blue sky day here in Vancouver and I really enjoyed being in the garden. Today was going to be another beautiful day, and I decided that I would ride my motorbike out along the freeway for an hour and go to one of the main local sites for paragliding – and fly my paraglider.

The ride out was fine, and it then took me about an hour to get a ride up the 4wd trail to the launch site (about 600m above the landing field). There were about a dozen other pilots there and most of them were new to me but I recognized a couple. The air was not yet warm enough and the thermals (rising pockets of air) were not yet strong enough or frequent enough to keep a paraglider up. This means that everybody stands around at the launch site and talks. This is known in the sport as “para-waiting” and can take up the better part of your life if you are not careful :)… Im sure that there are plenty of pilots who have spent more time flapping their jaws on the ground at the take-off site than actually flying! – Youd think that this behavior would create enough hot air to keep a brick aloft! - lots of talking :)

Anyway, eventually one of the pilots decides it might be worth trying to fly and he sets up and prepares to launch. The very chatty crowd has now become deathly silent and all eyes are on the intrepid pilot preparing to launch. This first pilot of the day is referred to in the sport as a “wind dummy” since they are the only way the other pilots can really tell if conditions are flyable. If the poor wind dummy has read the conditions incorrectly then there will not be enough rising air for them to stay aloft and they will “sink out” and have a very short flight before they land at the base (referred to as a “sled ride”) and have to wait for another ride to the top.

So, todays wind dummy was indeed unlucky and didn’t stay up.
But, after about another half hour, I decided that I thought conditions were better and that I could stay up. So, I decided that I would be the second wind dummy and give it a go. I managed a clean take-off under the massed eyes of all the other pilots – pheww!
And then started to fly around and try to find some lift to stay up. It was there but was light and in short bursts so I had to work quite hard to try to not loose too much height. I lost about 100m over a period of about 15 minutes before things started to get better. It then took another 15minutes to climb back up to the height of the launch field. Then once the other pilots saw that I was still up, they all started to launch as well - They often seem to have the behavior of sheep to me :)
The lift was still not strong and was very localized so we had about five pilots flying in the same small bit of airspace. I hung around for about an hour and then decided Id had enough for the day so I headed away from the lift and glided down to the landing field.
Landing was OK but a little further from the target than Id like but hey, it was a good launch, a good flight, and a safe landing – Good enough.
I packed up my wing and then wrote in my log book – and realized that its been about two years since I last flew!! – So, now Im very pleased with the good flight :)

Then it was back to the city on the freeway. But it’s the Monday afternoon of a long weekend here in Vancouver, so the freeway is very crowded and slow moving in places…. Not to worry, I just break out some of my “tropical driving techniques” and find my way forward by whatever means are available (lanes, what lanes?) and pretty soon Im back home.
A quick stop for some supplies before home, and half an hour later Ive got a steak on the BBQ and a red wine in my hand as I watch the sun setting over the bay and the mountains from my back deck…

Ahhh the life that I lead!