I’ve been sitting on this train for ten minutes and its almost as if to my left its still the same cresting and rolling wave I’ve been following since I boarded. I left Ernie at the single isolated platform of the aptly named Surf station. I saw him waving vaguely at an invisible me somewhere behind the heavily tinted glass.

This wide open land and the act of saying goodbye – albeit it only for a couple of short months – has put me in a strange state of mind. Sad, almost, but determined to succeed in the plan that has just over the last week, from the home-base of Ernie’s RV, become reality.

Yesterday Ernie and I went for a ride together on our new bicycle, a semi recumbent tandem that allows Ernie to sit, reclining up front with a 180 degree view uninterrupted by handlebars. Thanks to the coasting mechanism between us, he can put in only as much effort as he wants to. We cycled 22 miles to the ocean and back along the agricultural valley that forms a gentle east to west corridor from Lompoc to the coast. Ernie was bundled up in jeans, braces and a thick plaid shirt – he feels the cold what with the blood thinners he has to take, and he gets short of breath quickly. Thats what Lymphocytic Leukemia does. Through a slow proliferation of white blood cells, it crowds out the red cells, very, very slowly suffocating you.

But 74 year old Ernie has one more dream. And he can achieve it – I’m sure of it – with a little help. Maybe not quite how he had in minds many years ago, but hopefully he’ll discover a country he has not yet had the opportunity to explore by bicycle.

Ernie has a bracelet. I read it with a mix of amusement and concern. It reads:

Ernest Greenwald. Lompoc California. If my heart stops please do not resuscitate me. If I died on my bike I died happy.

Ernie’s last wife had died after a long painful period of battling illness. His life had stopped after that, as if it had had the battery taken out. Six months after that day I rolled through Lompoc on my way south on Achilles the tandem – that was two years ago. Ernie pulled himself together enough to join me for a day’s pedaling to Santa Barbara and in doing so helped me see a valuable side to my journey – an adventure that others could, in some small way benefit from. I liked that. It made everything seem a little more worthwhile.

“I cannot begin to describe the pleasure and pain I’ve been feeling today” he’d said, hobbling off the bike after a hot shadeless 60 miles. He seemed to have turned a corner, and the stoop in his walk had lessened. He was smiling.

He’d made the mistake of telling me that day that forty years previously, he’d always planned on cycling across his own country. If he hadn’t said that I may not have seen him again. I wouldn’t have sourced a suitable bike for the job and I certainly wouldn’t been quietly chiding Ernie for his funny habits while sitting in his RV. We set off from the west coast at the end of June this year, accompanied by a film camera, Ernie’s RV for him to sleep in and his two small dogs from whom he will not be parted.

He bought his bracelet before I whispered the idea of our journey in his ear, so I can be sure I didn’t coerce him into wearing this statement. I don’t think our journey will kill him, in fact I’m sure of it. But Ernie is that kind of guy. He agonizes over the blue prints and the statistics of every eventuality. Jesus, everything in this man’s life follows a thorough monitoring. He’s drilled a hole in the top of his small kettle in order to put a temperature gauge in it, not satisfied with the bubbling of boiling water as an indicator. He has three clocks in his tiny RV. One digital one is hung next to the traditional  clock on the end wall next to the small but perfectly formed bathroom. Another clock, he told me, is hidden out of sight, because he said, taking on an air of extreme accuracy, ‘with only two clocks you cannot tell which one is wrong’. In every way this man is a self professed nerd.

At the age of fifteen he scrounged relays and circuitry from old pinball machines to construct an electronic tick tack toe board that never lost even if the human opponent played the first move. He was discounted from winning a regional science competition due to the fact that ‘he must have had considerable adult help’. He didn’t mind though. Its not in his nature to worry over ‘fair’ and ‘unfair’. Having now lived with Ernie for a few short days, I know he wouldn’t have needed help, his intelligence is so immense that it overflows into the social aptitude part of his brain, clogging it up occasionally, leaving him unable to compute simple humour or body language. Doctors call it Asperges disease, but like a friend of mine once said to me, we have so many labels these days they don’t mean much anymore. I prefer to call Ernie a proud sufferer of ‘Nerdiness’.

But underneath that carapace of binary and logic there are a deep set of emotions. He thinks about the past, about his shortfalls, about his children and about the days he let slip buy with ‘undue care and attention’. And looking carefully I think I recognize something like sadness.

Now I’ve been on this train heading south for one hour and still things are the same. On one side is the deep blue, broken with the darker shadows of waves growing in from the ocean. The other side is a vivid green, folding with the less regular shadows of tight valleys and empty cattle grazing hills. The Californian coastline here is an empty, organized wilderness.

The next time I’ll see this place will be in June, maybe on my birthday. But then I’ll be heading north ready to cycle east with Ernie, over the rockies and into the searing heat of the desert sun. And on, to the sea. One more goal completed. One more dream lived for Ernie. Hopefully.

Its never too late to live the dream.

On the wide valley floor the snow makes the fields look vast and the fences lead to distant but regular homesteads. The open fields are backed by the mountains, folded with evergreens shading the snowy folds of the steep valleys. This is the country surrounding Logan, Utah. I’m here surfing a not insignificant wave of kindness and praise after introducing Take A Seat at the Banff Mountain Film Festival world Tour. I continue to make my past my present.

As Paul my host drives us along the pale, straight road, the  horizon is far away and the the icy blue of the winter sky further still. The stained and weathered wood of the tottering dutch barns and the dry brown of hay is in stark contrast to the snow. The old farms whisper something linking this boundless land to something older than the drab diners or gas stations that dot the ribbon of road.

This land is addictive. The vastness is unsettling yet embracing all at once. It makes me think of travel, the all American road trip movie crossing desert states backed by steel stringed riffs and a sleepy, tuneful voice. The attraction is a simple one. Not simple as in easy to identify, but simple like a swath of unblemished color. I like it but it scares me. It makes me want to wander.

Is this the clutter of a writer or a lazy fraud?

A dirty plate, half a desiccated chili and flecks of yellow rice on board

A letter left unsent, one dice, a baby’s hat, a biro, delicately gnawed

Three light bulbs yet to blow, a bull dog clip, some frayed and useless chord

The mess of someone trying to be inspired?

Props left to rot and grow before they are retired?

Perhaps Evidence of tens of tardy tasks forgot

But the sophisticated backdrop of a writer? Definitely not.

Its been a while. Some things have changed, others haven’t – that’s the way things tend to go. I am beginning to actually feel like my more than two year journey has come to an end. Its been a year and a month since I landed back here, and left the world of two seat bicycle travel behind. For now.

I suppose looking back on it, for those two years of physical and emotional adventures I was looking forward to a grand finale, an ending that was perfect, that put the icing on the cake allowing me to sit there surveying the tranquil bay of the Beagle channel feeling that yes, I had done it, and I could be proud, and I had satisfied a hunger for adventure, enlightenment or whatever else might have been nagging at me underneath the thrill seeking, bravado-filled carapace.

But as I’ve said before, getting to the end was different. I was exhausted, physically yes, but mentally half dead in so many ways. For two years the embrace and subsequent pulling away from the physical and psychological comfort of friends had gently scratched away at my heart, scarring it each time and slowly but surely building up a tiny, perhaps single celled layer of numb indifference. With each meeting I became fractionally less sensitive to that profound feeling of friendship, love and most importantly perhaps, pain.  Once the ability to experience pain dwindles, one is left as a mad man, able to behave indifferently to heart wrenching moments, or internally at least be unaffected by other people’s  emotions. Those scars are slowly dissappearing, but what now?

It has been a year since my journey ended, but only months since I stopped dragging myself away, keeping myself in a permanent state of flux by default. An earthquake doesn’t just stop after all. Like a shout in a valley, the echo or aftershock comes back to haunt you until there is stillness once more some time after the event. I feel like now, I can see that stillness, but its difficult to know exactly how to cope with it. Throwing myself into situations in the same way as those I approached while riding would not work, would be unsustainable in this stable environment. Anyone that has travelled alone will surely recognise the intensity, for example, of falling for someone when you know that in days or weeks you will be kissing them goodbye. I still try and convince myself of the romantic notion that its no different, ones life and soul should go into any encounter like this no matter whether the end is in sight or not. But in reality, I don’t think it works, one needs – at least this is what grown ups keep hinting – to look a little beyond the honeymoon period of anything, and consider the future. And I suppose they’re right. I washed kegs in a brewery in McMinnville, Oregon on my journey, all be it only for a day or two. I loved it, and as a result put my back into it….but I doubt I would have done for more than a week. This, I suppose goes for many things. Stability and projecting down the same path changes everything.

So, a year on, what do I have to show for life post-journey. Its easy to say ‘nothing’, because in comparison with the very physical progress that can be plotted on a map, static activities are hard to quantify. I’ve travelled, albeit by air - been all over doing a bit of interesting work here or adventurous baby sitting there but more significantly I have brought the dream of turning my journey into a documentary to fruition, and I’m writing a book for which I have a publisher.  Despite being penniless some would say that’s a considerable achievement, and long may this progress continue. But why, some days, do I completely disagree? I suppose it could just be that bi-polarity that we all have, mood swings, chemical changes within our brains perhaps. Or is it something else? Is this not the path I should be taking? A lot of people that know me would be surprised to here this slightly insecure babble coming from me – I am driven, I am strong, I am sure of myself…..am I heck……

Thinking more pragmatically for a second, its reasonable to suggest this insecurity comes in part from lack of strucutre, lack of routine. Sure, I can impose a ‘from 9-12 writing in cafe’ routine, but I’m still completely and utterly master of my own destiny, free to still be clearing up the dog crap that i’ve just trodden round the house at 9.12, or deciding to, errr, write my blog (Its actually 10.36 at the moment).  The physical act of walking albeit begrugingly into an office and surrounding yourself with people is in some ways a good grounding influence. Thats maybe why I work better in cafes, because of the people. Sitting in my house alone day after day after day can get lonely to a stifling and destructive degree. At least for me.

But anyway, the purpose of this was to look back and try and look forward. Someone asked me recently if I still feel that I live by the words of a poem I wrote down on my travels, by Robert Frost

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep…….

Promises to myself to keep, sure. A promise to succeed. But how does one quantify that? By family or children? by friends? Love? Contentedness? Or perhaps, like the often deeply troubled pioneers of exploration, by daring do? I don’t know, who does? But now I feel a little more stayed in my life – not geographically but mentally – I need to decide in which direction I have miles to go before I sleep. and, If I cannot, I risk living the curse of Gypsy blood, as Robert Service put it…..

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they’re always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: “Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!”
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

Saying things like this sounds self pitying, self interested and fatalistic. Its not, I appreciate there are many people out there that would love a life like mine, and I love it too, just sometimes it needs thinkin’ through a little, and this is where I do my thinkin’ sometimes, that’s all.

Following one’s dreams was, I suppose never meant to be easy! There are certain sacrifices one makes, money in my case being one of them. To allow myself time to follow leads, grow lists of contacts and chase the media industry, I have avoided stable nine’til’five employment, scared my dreams would disappear in a haze of post work TV watching lethargy.

While a long bicycle journey prepares you well for a fairly frugal lifestyle, there are things that, back in day to day living, one has to make a conscious effort to avoid. Impulse buying of bargain rack DVDs, two for one offers on unnecessary cake at the supermarket and organic food have all long ago fallen by the wayside. Another thing that’s gone is the gym. It was cheap my gym, in an old warehouse a few minutes walk away with macho slogans spray painted on the walls like “Life’s to short to be weak”, and while I didn’t entirely agree with the average member there (who’s necks have disappeared under two fat triangular muscles!), it did help me maintain a strength that through years of climbing and exercise I have come to know as normal.

Now, instead, if I can’t get out climbing, I wonder down to the small park at the bottom of my hill, to the children’s climbing frame. There’s not a whole lot there, but the supporting bar of the swing set and the rubberised tarmac isn’t a bad gym substitute. OF course, I run the risk of getting labelled as a deviant if there are kids around. If they hadn’t been ripped off months ago by bored teenagers, two signs would stand at the entrance to the play areas stating clearly that people like me – adults unaccompanied by children – are not permitted to enter. As a result of this ‘pedos versus parents’ culture we seemed to have manufactured for ourselves, I feel awkward if I see a mother and small child approaching the swings, and I retreat to a safe distance and turn my back, so that its clear I am not there to offer minors toffees or take pictures. The tricky thing is though, not only do I enjoy watching kids playing, but its very natural for children to want to engage freely with the people around them, that’s what allows them to learn. If I’m doing chin ups for instance, at least once a visit a child, perhaps a couple will come and ask what I’m doing, then try copying me again and again, laughing and staring at the strange man using their swings in a way they had thought about before. But this kind of interaction is frowned upon in general where I live. It seems that in an effort to wrap children in a protective layer, society is inadvertently alienating children from adults and vice versa.

Months ago, if I found myself cycling passed a school in Peru at break time or resting in a town park on a Sunday afternoon, it wouldn’t be long before my bike and I were swamped in a gaggle of excited and curious children, come to see what the funny white fella was doing there. Half the time, their parents would encourage them to go and retrieve some gossip. As a result, the kids would often land themselves on the back seat of Achilles the tandem, maybe two or three at a time, and get a lap of the park or the school playground, laughing and screaming with excitement as they sat there friends looking on open mouthed or running alongside. I would go as far as to say these children in some small way had a life enhancing experience, thanks to the fact that their parents or teachers let them off the leash, let them explore their surroundings and the people in it freely.

Leaning against the fence next to the swings at the bottom of my street things feel very different. An eleven year old boy on his BMX is busy shouting expletives at the girl playing on the slide, and calling me a loser because I don’t smoke. The father teaching his little girl to ride a bike looks over his shoulder every few minutes as if to keep a check on me. I said hello to him when I arrived. He didn’t respond. It’s ironic really, if statistics on child molesting are to be believed, that once those kids are shepherded up and taken back home, they enter the environment where they’re most at risk.

I will continue to visit the kid’s playground and share their swings with them, however many dirty looks I get. And while it’s unlikely the kids will feel unfettered enough to engage with me in the same way as those in Latin America did, I remain forever hopeful. To be curious, and to be allowed to explore as a result of curiosity is surely an essential learning experience for any child. It feels to me however, that in this fear fuelled culture, childish curiosity and the resulting interaction with their surroundings is being outlawed, choking natural and very positive development.

I don’t profess to be an authority on current affairs, in fact an ex girlfriend once labelled me pig ignorant. But, switching on the radio occasionally while stripping a pathetically small square of wallpaper in my tiny spare room, I see how, since my return to the UK I have become clueless with regards to our politics. I came back to a world where UK politics was soon to become laughable and US politics quite the opposite. It was fun wasn’t it when Bush was president, if you were able to ignore the threat of global conflict each time dear old George put his foot in it or lined up his pawns on someone else’s chess board, and concentrate on the hours of side splitting bloopers that played on TV.

Now all I hear is squabbles over expense claims, porn videos, swimming pools or light bulbs. Funny, I thought Politicians were supposed to sort out Britain, but now it seems they are ‘honourably’ wasting huge amounts of time setting up independent audits to check to see if their fellow MPs are behaving. Before the end of some monologue backed by ‘here heres’ or guffawing in Westminster has ended, I have usually switched the radio off again, preferring the sound of the dripping gutter outside the window, the smell of a good curry seeping in from next door via the gap under the skirting board.

Travelling through Latin America there are two things one never escapes from; politics, and religion, not always in that order. Whether I was pedalling through a tiny village and offered food by a kindly old woman, or through a metropolis and invited to dine with some wealthy aristocrats, I would be asked if I was religious, and politics would often be discussed (Bush was often mentioned in the context of Britain, perhaps not so much of a misunderstanding in reality!). I find both subjects interesting and thought provoking, until they’re rammed down my throat by an un-listening fanatic. “Why must I follow God?” I often heard myself saying after someone insisted I must before it’s too late. “Come and demonstrate with us” others would say in the context of some political manifestation or campaign. Often I had problems with their ethics or their logic or whatever, but that’s not the point. The point, to me, is that these people were very far from being apathetic, and if I stepped back from the situation, I liked it, I liked the passion and the determination to follow what they believed was right. Looking back in time at certain memorable events, its clear to see blind belief has not always resulted in works of good, but I still ask myself which is better; an impassioned person that is prepared to spend days travelling to a polling station to vote for someone they believe will bring good, or an apathy that leads to us saying ‘they’re all the same these politicians’, ‘it makes no difference who we vote for’? Is it because we are too comfortable, it’s been so long since we have experienced a real, profound need for change?

All I really know, given my level of ignorance and tendency to get on my soap box armed with insufficient grey matter, is that coming back from a continent where people seemed to believe in things feels different to what I am experiencing now, and I miss it.

12.26am Sunday 17th May

The man sitting opposite me has just woken up, his eyes showing themselves red and watery from under heavy lids. The girl sitting next to him has her head buried in her hands and curls protected and secret against the glass pane separating the seats from the door. Through her fingers when she occasionally looks up to check the next station on the map I see tears making their way down her cheeks along the drying tracks of tears that have passed that way before them. At the other end of this half of the carriage, which has been emptying steadily as we headed west out of central London, is an Asian man, I’d say about fifty to sixty, with rich nut brown skin etched with lines of years of life. His suit was looking tired too and his tall lanky frame seemed to have folded awkwardly and perhaps irreversibly into the small blue Piccadilly line seat. This was the tube and three people sitting opposite me, all doubtless thinking thoughts a million miles away from the other. I began to wonder what these people had come from and what they had to go to – I nearly said go home to, but maybe they weren’t. What had upset the girl? Was the older man’s family at home and sleeping or was he returning to an empty bedsit? I of course had absolutely no idea.

I looked across the carriage between the two heads of the man and the woman, through my reflection in the carriage glass and out onto the platform, where the Northfields sign streaked passed ever more slowly. Before walking to the door I asked the girl to take care of herself, thinking that a stranger asking if she was ok might do more harm than good.

After a week of worrying about documentary success or the likelihood of getting a book deal, these three faces in front of me seemed to be much more important. Real, unmasked yet impossibly difficult to read. I shall probably never see them again. I hope they got home safely….

Its fairly easy to waste time sitting at home, trying to write a book. I look over my shoulder and there are some dishes to do. While doing the dishes I see an ant exploring the side board next to the cooker. I’ve named him Herman – he comes to visit regularly and up to now he hasn’t come with any of his friends, a good arrangement, a little ant friend without having an infestation is good company, if a little quiet.

If i don’t have dishes to wash there’s email to check, or just music to listen to a little more attentively. Today the music won out and i sat listening to High Hopes, the last track on the Division Bell album of Pink Floyd. That was it, I was gripped by it, writing went out of the window as i realised David Gilmore was singing about something I think about a lot, where people’s ambition goes as they get older – not everyone but a lot of us lose it, but very few of us I think, actually lose the yearning to achieve those now distant dreams.

“beyond the horizon of the place we lived when we were young
In a world of magnets and miracles
our thoughts strayed constantly and without boundary
The ringing of the division bell had begun”

I remember the division bell ringing loudly for me just before my twelfth birthday, I woke up and realised i didn’t want to get any closer to dying! A bit strong for a twelve year old, but I couldn’t help it!!

“Encumbered forever by desire and ambition
There’s a hunger still unsatisfied
Our weary eyes still stray to the horizon
Though down this road we’ve been so many times”

My eyes certainly seem to scan the horizon constantly, searching for something to quench the thirst for more adventure i can absorb myself in and convince myself is worthwhile. The thing is, the encumbrance of desire and ambition seems to get stronger, heavier each time a goal is achieved!! How does one just become content with what one has done?? I’m dying to find out….literally.

Last night I gave a talk down the road from my house. It wasn’t a big affair, no stage or mic stand or reporters, just a little talk to a yoga school about my journey. I have done a few presentations now – apparently people want to hear about what drives a man to cycle 19,000 miles on a tandem picking up strangers on the back!?

This talk was different though, I wasn’t delivering it to easily fired up students, or keyed in cyclists and adventurers, I was delivering it to a more or less middle aged group of women on a Friday night, last stop before weekend relaxation. As I looked around the room I wasn’t optimistic about my chances of a standing ovation, let alone all thirty of them remaining awake to accompany me on my visual journey down to the bottom of Argentina. But, in short, they did, whats more they fired question after question at me – why did you do this? What about that? I was quietly stunned at their attentiveness and the compliments they landed on my shoulders afterwards.

Riding home – not on Achilles the trusty tandem but still on two wheels, motorised ones – I was greatful to have been able to have inspired. In June 2006 setting off from Alaska alone I had no idea that I was giving myself the opportunity to do so - inspire, and every metre I travelled the more power I had, every person I met and shared my journey with the more stories I had to tell others.

Sometimes in these slightly tougher times trying to bring a book and documentary to fruition I forget the power I have stumbled upon and remember only the obstacles of the shallow and manipulative media. But it comes back when i stand in a room with people who’s eyes show a willingness to absorb the stories I tell. Then I realise again, that to inspire and to quietly let people know that they canreach higher if they want to, makes me happy. Deeper than happy, like I am a significant yet infinitesimal amount closer to achieving what I want to in this life.

I have so many happy memories of getting lost in elaborate and exciting games as a child. I was lucky, I lived in a house with a big garden, and I could spend hours traversing the long grass, huge jungled deathtraps for the toy soldiers or model cars I commanded, that forged through the undergrowth to their horrible destruction or less commonly, to the base of an allied model aeroplane fleet somewhere near the horse chestnut tree. I had a treehouse as well, thanks to my father, and spent long summer afternoons up there with a flask of ribena, spying on the neighbours, being sure to report back to my parents on their every move. Further from home, there were the sandunes on Bamburgh beach, backed by the expansive and solid castle. “Lets play cowboys and Indians” I´d blurt out as soon as the car stopped (political correctness wasn´t high on my agenda at the age of seven), before skittering off into the hummocks and dissappearing in the long sharp grass. My sister and parents would humour me for what seemed like hours, as I unsubtly dashed across open ground, and jumped down wave carved cliffs of sand once I´d been discovered and shot.

Yesterday, however I found something that would surely, for any child, have been overwhelming – the hide and seek possibilities endless and the monstorous species living within limitless. Hatun Machay is the wonderland´s name, nestled in a high valley in central Peru. A garden of giant boulders and towers covers the undulating valley floor, and a tiny community of shepherds and particularly elderly indigenous locals live in their tiny thatched Chosas within the rocky labarinth.

Over years, the volcanic rock has been bitten slowly away by the wind and rain, and once through the soaring honey comb or runneled walls that guard the perimeter, one enters a land of layered jagged theatre backdrops, the razor sharp ridgelines mimicking the gargantuan high Andes, like an architect´s model in the lobby of an office block. The head of any animal can be seen, shapes in the oceans of rock. A Rhinoceros here, a llama there, and then, rounding a corner one may discover a cave with crude carvings and paintings on the dark protected walls.

Somewhere in this lunar landscape a dog barks, indicating the presence of a resident nearby. Cow dung picked up and piled to dry under overhanging crusts of rock provides more evidence that one is near a dwelling. The people here burn the dung, the only fuel they have to cook with and keep warm.

Fairy tale castles with hundreds of sharp turrets rise up metres above your head, and in the dust of caves, arrowheads can be found, from a past that no one will ever be sure of.

I was here to climb the newly developed routes that surely mark the beginning of a flood of climbing interest in the region. But very soon after arriving, climbing took a back seat, favouring instead, to explore this land of quartzite and waterworn passages. I am only grateful that my childhood garden didn´t back onto this wilderness. I would have grown thin from ignoring calls for lunch. I would have grown distant, living only within the walls of a limitless imagination, needing no longer to commicate with my family who waited patiently for me to come in before dark. Friends invited around to play would never have returned home, preferring the caves and child size clefts of rock to hide in and explore.

I spent two days there before the rain caused the moss to swell, and the dung smoke to hang low over the conicle dry grass rooves. I am back in a busy town now, but will be sure to dream of palaces of rock, and witches, three hundred years old, living within ancient walls that once formed the depths of a volcano.