"Re-examine all you have been told...Dismiss what insults your Soul." - Walt Whitman
What a week, I'm currently spending a day off the bike at a place called Sopot in east Poland, resting ready for the final push up the Baltic into Estonia and on to St Petersburg. Loads of good stories to tell from the past week, I guess a good place to start would be where I left off...
I left Lubeck early the next morning after a quick chat with a British couple who were staying at the same campsite. "ahh so your the nutter cycling to St Petersburg". I became a bit of a local celebrity, with offers of a free breakfast and as many cups of tea as I could drink.
My next port of call was a town called Rostock, a days ride along the north coast of Germany. I felt quite strong on the bike after a good days rest and this, paired with the stunning scenery, made for an enjoyable days riding.
I've also picked up a few trinkets on my way through Germany. Whenever the Germans have a house clearance all of the stuff they don't want is left out on the street for the council to collect, and its deemed quite acceptable for people to rummage through it and take whatever they want. Whenever I saw these piles of stuff on the street I was on it like a tramp on chips, and I found some pretty cool stuff. First off you'll see in a couple of the pictures I've got a black waterproof coat on, its a Jack Wolfskin coat, hardly worn, the only problem in its xl so slightly too big, but my favorite find:
A vintage Coleman 100 stove! Stuck a new gas canister in it (canisters cost about a quid) and it fired up first time, and after a week its still got gas in it, so the seals seem ok! If I can get it back in one piece i'm gonna donate it to my brother, I bought him a tent for his birthday so he can add this to his kit list, plus it will have a pretty cool story behind it.
Is it wrong that I like cooking on this little stove I found by the side of the road more than I like cooking on my £60 meths Trangia?
Anyway I got to Rostock at about 5pm, quite early for me, got the tent set up and got a brew on the go. The campsite was quite empty apart from one old guy camped opposite me, I pitched my tent and was just about to get in when I heard a friendly "Hallo!" behind me, I turned around and the old guy was standing there. He started talking to me in German, "English, English" I said. "Ah OK" he replied, "my name is George, and George look after the English!"
George is one of the most interesting people I've ever met. We spent three hours talking and drinking green tea that night. He showed me his tent, that he had just picked up for 20 euros in a flea market, and his car, which he was obviously living out of.
George was born in east Berlin when the country was divided and the east was under Soviet control, his father was a border guard on the east side and used his position to smuggle George over the border when he was a young child. George said that east Germany was better than west Germany for young children as there were more public kindergardens.
When he was a young adult he went back to visit family in east Berlin (in the latter years of the division of Germany people from the west were allowed to visit the east for 30 days a year) and has vivid memories of the Soviet influences in his country. Phrases like 'Forever in partnership with the USSR' were daubed on walls throughout the east side of the capital and Geroge remembered one time when he had come over there was a huge wall plastered in propeganda, pictures of the communist martyrs and slogans, that was floodlit at night. When he returned the next evening the lights had been turned off, he asked one of the locals what had happened and apparently a prominent member of the party had visited east Berlin and ordered the lights be switched off, citing that; "Communism needs no propeganda!"
George Had spent nearly twenty years of his life studying everything from textile design to philosophy, before deciding to study dentistry, at 35! He had become a dentist and worked all over Germany before losing his practice when his marriage broke down, he went from earning 4000 euros a month to getting the state handout of just 380. I asked George how he coped with it, he smiled and said:
Socrates and his wife walked into a shop full of precious jewelry, fine clothes and exquisite china. Socrates turned to his wife and said "look at all of these beautiful things, that I don't need!"
Spiritually rich, is how I would describe George. We chatted for an hour in the morning over breakfast and put the world to rights, I felt genuinly sorry to be leaving this guy, but I'm sure my old friend will muddle through.
I left Rostock at 9:30 that morning, hoping to make it to a place called Griefswald, the last port of call before leaving Germany for Poland. I didn't feel very good on the bike, my legs were like lead and I struggled for the first fourty miles, it always seems to happen a few days after I have a day off. Its my body trying its luck wanting another day off. 'Screw that, I wanna get to Poland' I thought so I pushed on to the campsite at Griefswald, arriving at around 8:30 pm, feeling like somebody had been pounding my quads with a sledgehammer for the past eleven hours.
I was blown away by the beauty of the place, the campsite was set back off the main drag and backed onto the beach. They say this section of coast has they whitest sand in Germany. I immediatly forgot about all of the pain I'd been through that day, and took a few pictures.
The best days are always the ones where you push yourself, take all the shit, and get the reward.
I started early the next day, determined to get to the border. Looking at the map there was a cycle route through the woods along the coast to a place called Swinoujscie in Poland. All of it was dirt track so not the most sutiable terrain for a fully loaded touring bike on slicks, but managable. German tourists looked on in horror as I spanked my 50kgs of bike and gear up some of the steeper inclines, while they were out of breath pushing their bikes.
As a came to a crossroads in the trail I stopped to look at a sign and waved a group of tourists across, an old German guy wearing a beret stopped in the middle of the trail, smiled and said someting about me having so much stuff on my bike in German. "Ich bin Englander" I said, he looked puzzled. His daughter translated my terrible German for him and his face lit up.
"English, English... I know English!"
He walked towards me and held out his hand, with three digits missing.
"I was in England for three years, in Hampshire, 1946-1949, prisoner of war!!"
So I shook hands with a real life German WW2 soldier!.
A few miles and a 14 inch pizza later I came to the Polish border.
About two kilometers after this picture was taken I stopped to ask a man for directions to the ferry over the river to Warsow, the east portion of Swinoujscie. He didn't understand English. "Deutsch" I said, he didn't understand German. Only Polska, he said. It dawned on me that I was in a country where I could not speak one word of the language.
After a lot of pointing and sign language I found my way to the ferry terminal, but this time it was around 4pm, and I was knackered and stressed. Everybody was watching me, I was drawing unwanted attention, and I was beginning to wish I hadn't bought another flag. In my mind my first mugging was just around the corner!
After crossing the water I decided to get out of the town as fast as possible, I rode out of the town in the direction that I thought would take me along the coast. I was wrong. By 5pm I was totally lost, in a country where I couldn't speak the language and hadn't been able to get a map of. Great.
Ok I thought, chill out, you've been in worse shit than this and come out smelling sweeter. I found a local shop and decided to get some food and figure out what to do. Outside the shop were half a dozen locals, drinking beer and talking, they all went quiet as I pulled up, and stared at me. I met their gaze, smiled and gave them a friendly "Hello" before dissappearing into the shop.
"If my fecking bikes still there when I get back It'll be a miracle" I thought. It took me a good ten minuites to get the girl behind the counter to get me what I wanted (hot dogs and eggs) and I felt a bit of a berk not knowing how to say thank you ,so I just smiled and gave her a thumbs up and mumbled "cheers".
When I left the shop I was relived to find my bike was still where I left it. As I was packing the food into one of my panniers the biggest guy came over from the group of locals.
"Hey man, whats up? Are you English?" he said
"Yup" I replied
By this time a few more of the locals had come over to look at the bike.
"Englishman, why have you come to Poland", he motioned around the street with his hand "Its a shithole!"
I laughed and we chatted for a while, he had worked in England, near Birmingham and wanted to know all about how the trip was going, how I ate, where I slept etc., but more importantly he gave me directions to the nearest campsite.
Half an hour later I was on this official Polish cycle track, en route to the local campsite. Very posh.
The campsite at first glance looked more like a childs amusement park, I opened the gate and immediatly a dog started barking at me. I went up to house and knocked on the door. A man-mountain answered (apparently eastern europeans come in only one size, fookin massive!) about 6ft 6" and 300 pounds. Again no English spoken but we managed to get by in German. I got a room in a converted trailer complete with electric. As his mother was making the bed Garths harder brother decided I should see 'eine kleine musee', or the small museum. This was basically a garden shed filled with junk, there were busts of Lenin, Stalin and Hitler at one end, old typewriters, some fake samurai swords, anything under the sun that looked kinda vintage.
The campsite was what I'd call 'rustic'. The mother and two sons were obviously trying to cash in on the tourist trade, and had made pretty much everything on the site from scratch. The bar was an old bit of kitchen worktop, the walls in the bathroom where painted chipboard, you get the idea. In the morning I had the traditional Polish breakfast, which looked like this:
And the price, for the room and breakfast? 40 zlotych, about £8.
After the pervious days messing about I was determined to do some decent milage, so after brekfast (served at 8 am prompt) I set off. The difference between Poland and western Europe is massive, especially in the rural areas. The quality of the roads is, quite frankly, shit, any road that is not a main route is very rough. To be honest Poland would be alot more fun on a mountain bike!
Designated bike routes are very often unridable and the cobbled roads in some of the villages will shake your fillings out.
I stopped at a Polish supermarket on the north coast to get some scran. While I was waiting in the queue a German chap came up to me and asked me what I was doing, we had a little chat about cycling and he shook my hand "good man, good man" he said.
As I was eating out in the carpark (camembert and crusty bread, classic) the German guy came up to me again, he'd bought me a massive bar of milk chocolate, "for energy" he said. Ledgend!
As I was riding through one of the villages at about 1pm there were a load of school kids on the streets, when they saw the flag I was met with shouts of "Hello, hello" and "Good morning!", seeing as it was after 12 it should have been "Good afternoon", but I'll let it slide.
Now one of the things on my list of things to do in Europe is to see a wild boar, I've never seen one. Its got to the point now where I'm obsessed with wild boars. I also want to try eating wild boar, cause i imagine its damn tasty. My 23rd birthday celebration is going to be me and Bayliss going to France dressed as Asterix and Obelix to try wild boar, Sam if your reading this you should come along mate! You could be Dogmatix or maybe the Druid, in which case you get to mix the cocktails ;). Anyway I found this by the side of the road:
Thats got to be a wild boar, look at the tusks, plus it had brown fur still attached to it. I actually though about strapping this too the bike and taking it home because it looks cool, but the smell and the rotting flesh still attached to it kinda put me off. Anyway I left it by the side of the road, but not before i'd taken the tusks out with the pliers in my tool kit and stashed them in my bag.
I made it to a place called Ustronie Morskie that night, camping was £2. Got a shower and hit the sack at around 9pm ready for an early start.
The next day was a bit of a blur, I left early enough but every road I went down seemed to end in either an unridable dirt road, or impassable sand dunes. At a place called Darlowko I was looking at the map when one of the locals came up to me and asked where I wanted to go, I said I wanted to get to Ustka, but wanted a secondary road, not the main road. He gave me directions too a costal track, assuring me that it would have me in Ustka in no time. Great, I thought, when I got to the start of this track it was apparent that it was being re-surfaced and it was closed.
"Screw it, I ain't turning back this time" I thought to myself, letting myself through the unlocked gate, being careful not to draw the gaze of the bloke driving the lorry loaded with hardcore.
The road was rough, but ridable. After about 2km I saw some blokes on the side of the path. "Shit, my first bollocking in Polish" I thought, although the friendly waves and smiles suggested otherwise. The three guys were surveyors working on a way to stop coastal erosion in the area, they spoke pretty good English and had plenty of questions.
"so you just sleep wherever when the sun goes down?"
"pretty much, yeah"
"ahhh, so you are a free man!"
The older one offered me a smoke but I declined, just the thought of smoking when I'm riding makes me feel sick!
I got another kilometer or so down that track before I had to turn off, I saw a bloke coming towards me on a dumper truck who didn't look like he was as happpy to see me.
Another few hours of half riding, half pushing the bike through rutted bicycle tracks got me to Jaroslawiec, where the nice lady at the campsite gave me a pitch for free because it was off season, and the toilet was broken.
I woke up in the morning feeling dog rough, I wasn't sure if I was ill of if my body was just being a pussy after 3 weeks of physical torture. I decided it was the latter, and that the cure was more cycling. I stopped at the local supermarket for some breakfast, and got the second puncture of the trip. Great. While I was fixing it though I met the bike-hacker of the week, check this guy out:
This dude had made his own number plate, with his name, and put so many reflectors on the back of his bike it looked like a christmas tree, but notice the ariels on the back rack. They're wired up to a little radio on his handlebars. Cool as.
Local roads took me to a small village called Smoldzinski Las, and arguably the stupidist decision of the whole trip. Smoldzinski Las is on the edge of Slowinski national park. On the other side of this park is a place called Leba. Leba looked like the kind of place that would have some nice campsites, maybe a bar or two for a cold beer. Ahh paradise. A signpost at Smoldzinski Las indicated it was 24km to Leba across the national park. 'Piece of piss' I thought, '15 and a bit miles, an hour and a half, tops'.
The first mile of track was ridable, after that I was met with this:
Sand dunes, the fine white sand of the Baltic is pretty to look at but when you put weight on it it just sinks, and pushing 50kgs of bike across it was damn near impossible, especially uphill.
Any sane man would of turned back, gone round the long way, but the stupid voice in my head kicked in, "Forward is the only way!". Reasoning with myself I thought; it can't be like this all the way through the park, they will of paved part of it, what about the mums with pushchairs? It wasn't. The trail through Slowinski national park was a hardcore hiking trail, and I was about to become the dumbshit who pushed his bike along it.
By this time it was about 6pm, I kept going still with the thought of a hot meal and a beer in the back of my mind, although the liklihood of this happening was nil. Before I knew it I had lost the trail and I was pushing my bike over monsterous sand dunes.
By 8pm I was loosing light, and having visions of Bayliss making a piss-taking speech at my funeral. I pitched the tent up on the dunes, not having a clue whereabouts in the park I was, only knowing that as long as the sea was to my left and the lighthouse was behind me I'd make it to Leba. The pegs wern't long enough to get a proper grip into the sand, but the weather had been bright and sunny all day so it should be ok tonight, right?
You know sometimes life kicks you when your down? That night a storm blew in off the sea, the tent collapsed around me and by morning I was sitting in a puddle. My sleeping bag was piss wet through. I thought about calling the coastguard. "only faggots call the coastguard, stop being weak!" this was the same voice that got me into this mess and the same voice that I'm pretty sure is gonna end me one of these days.
I got up at 6am the next morning, and started pushing.
My names Ralph and I'm your walking man....
It was a very tired, very wet, physically broken man that pushed that bike into Leba at around 12am yesterday. I'd also managed to run out of water the night before, and was surviving on a 2.5 lite bottle of coke.
After a quick bit of lunch, a quiet thought of never again' and a big dose of 'man-up' I jumped back on the bike and rode to a place called Sopot, where I got a 2 star hotel room, and spent the rest of the day trying to clean the sand off just about everything I own.
Met these Polish guys yesterday touring the north coast!
Phew! That was a long one, been sat in Starbucks for nearly 6 hours. Insanely jealous of you Fred mate, California is awesome. Gutted about the promotion Bayliss but im sure if you persist you will succeed ;).
Over and out...
George was born in east Berlin when the country was divided and the east was under Soviet control, his father was a border guard on the east side and used his position to smuggle George over the border when he was a young child. George said that east Germany was better than west Germany for young children as there were more public kindergardens.
When he was a young adult he went back to visit family in east Berlin (in the latter years of the division of Germany people from the west were allowed to visit the east for 30 days a year) and has vivid memories of the Soviet influences in his country. Phrases like 'Forever in partnership with the USSR' were daubed on walls throughout the east side of the capital and Geroge remembered one time when he had come over there was a huge wall plastered in propeganda, pictures of the communist martyrs and slogans, that was floodlit at night. When he returned the next evening the lights had been turned off, he asked one of the locals what had happened and apparently a prominent member of the party had visited east Berlin and ordered the lights be switched off, citing that; "Communism needs no propeganda!"
George Had spent nearly twenty years of his life studying everything from textile design to philosophy, before deciding to study dentistry, at 35! He had become a dentist and worked all over Germany before losing his practice when his marriage broke down, he went from earning 4000 euros a month to getting the state handout of just 380. I asked George how he coped with it, he smiled and said:
Socrates and his wife walked into a shop full of precious jewelry, fine clothes and exquisite china. Socrates turned to his wife and said "look at all of these beautiful things, that I don't need!"
Spiritually rich, is how I would describe George. We chatted for an hour in the morning over breakfast and put the world to rights, I felt genuinly sorry to be leaving this guy, but I'm sure my old friend will muddle through.
I left Rostock at 9:30 that morning, hoping to make it to a place called Griefswald, the last port of call before leaving Germany for Poland. I didn't feel very good on the bike, my legs were like lead and I struggled for the first fourty miles, it always seems to happen a few days after I have a day off. Its my body trying its luck wanting another day off. 'Screw that, I wanna get to Poland' I thought so I pushed on to the campsite at Griefswald, arriving at around 8:30 pm, feeling like somebody had been pounding my quads with a sledgehammer for the past eleven hours.
I was blown away by the beauty of the place, the campsite was set back off the main drag and backed onto the beach. They say this section of coast has they whitest sand in Germany. I immediatly forgot about all of the pain I'd been through that day, and took a few pictures.
I started early the next day, determined to get to the border. Looking at the map there was a cycle route through the woods along the coast to a place called Swinoujscie in Poland. All of it was dirt track so not the most sutiable terrain for a fully loaded touring bike on slicks, but managable. German tourists looked on in horror as I spanked my 50kgs of bike and gear up some of the steeper inclines, while they were out of breath pushing their bikes.
As a came to a crossroads in the trail I stopped to look at a sign and waved a group of tourists across, an old German guy wearing a beret stopped in the middle of the trail, smiled and said someting about me having so much stuff on my bike in German. "Ich bin Englander" I said, he looked puzzled. His daughter translated my terrible German for him and his face lit up.
"English, English... I know English!"
He walked towards me and held out his hand, with three digits missing.
"I was in England for three years, in Hampshire, 1946-1949, prisoner of war!!"
So I shook hands with a real life German WW2 soldier!.
A few miles and a 14 inch pizza later I came to the Polish border.
After a lot of pointing and sign language I found my way to the ferry terminal, but this time it was around 4pm, and I was knackered and stressed. Everybody was watching me, I was drawing unwanted attention, and I was beginning to wish I hadn't bought another flag. In my mind my first mugging was just around the corner!
After crossing the water I decided to get out of the town as fast as possible, I rode out of the town in the direction that I thought would take me along the coast. I was wrong. By 5pm I was totally lost, in a country where I couldn't speak the language and hadn't been able to get a map of. Great.
Ok I thought, chill out, you've been in worse shit than this and come out smelling sweeter. I found a local shop and decided to get some food and figure out what to do. Outside the shop were half a dozen locals, drinking beer and talking, they all went quiet as I pulled up, and stared at me. I met their gaze, smiled and gave them a friendly "Hello" before dissappearing into the shop.
"If my fecking bikes still there when I get back It'll be a miracle" I thought. It took me a good ten minuites to get the girl behind the counter to get me what I wanted (hot dogs and eggs) and I felt a bit of a berk not knowing how to say thank you ,so I just smiled and gave her a thumbs up and mumbled "cheers".
When I left the shop I was relived to find my bike was still where I left it. As I was packing the food into one of my panniers the biggest guy came over from the group of locals.
"Hey man, whats up? Are you English?" he said
"Yup" I replied
By this time a few more of the locals had come over to look at the bike.
"Englishman, why have you come to Poland", he motioned around the street with his hand "Its a shithole!"
I laughed and we chatted for a while, he had worked in England, near Birmingham and wanted to know all about how the trip was going, how I ate, where I slept etc., but more importantly he gave me directions to the nearest campsite.
The campsite at first glance looked more like a childs amusement park, I opened the gate and immediatly a dog started barking at me. I went up to house and knocked on the door. A man-mountain answered (apparently eastern europeans come in only one size, fookin massive!) about 6ft 6" and 300 pounds. Again no English spoken but we managed to get by in German. I got a room in a converted trailer complete with electric. As his mother was making the bed Garths harder brother decided I should see 'eine kleine musee', or the small museum. This was basically a garden shed filled with junk, there were busts of Lenin, Stalin and Hitler at one end, old typewriters, some fake samurai swords, anything under the sun that looked kinda vintage.
After the pervious days messing about I was determined to do some decent milage, so after brekfast (served at 8 am prompt) I set off. The difference between Poland and western Europe is massive, especially in the rural areas. The quality of the roads is, quite frankly, shit, any road that is not a main route is very rough. To be honest Poland would be alot more fun on a mountain bike!
Designated bike routes are very often unridable and the cobbled roads in some of the villages will shake your fillings out.
I stopped at a Polish supermarket on the north coast to get some scran. While I was waiting in the queue a German chap came up to me and asked me what I was doing, we had a little chat about cycling and he shook my hand "good man, good man" he said.
As I was eating out in the carpark (camembert and crusty bread, classic) the German guy came up to me again, he'd bought me a massive bar of milk chocolate, "for energy" he said. Ledgend!
As I was riding through one of the villages at about 1pm there were a load of school kids on the streets, when they saw the flag I was met with shouts of "Hello, hello" and "Good morning!", seeing as it was after 12 it should have been "Good afternoon", but I'll let it slide.
Now one of the things on my list of things to do in Europe is to see a wild boar, I've never seen one. Its got to the point now where I'm obsessed with wild boars. I also want to try eating wild boar, cause i imagine its damn tasty. My 23rd birthday celebration is going to be me and Bayliss going to France dressed as Asterix and Obelix to try wild boar, Sam if your reading this you should come along mate! You could be Dogmatix or maybe the Druid, in which case you get to mix the cocktails ;). Anyway I found this by the side of the road:
I made it to a place called Ustronie Morskie that night, camping was £2. Got a shower and hit the sack at around 9pm ready for an early start.
The next day was a bit of a blur, I left early enough but every road I went down seemed to end in either an unridable dirt road, or impassable sand dunes. At a place called Darlowko I was looking at the map when one of the locals came up to me and asked where I wanted to go, I said I wanted to get to Ustka, but wanted a secondary road, not the main road. He gave me directions too a costal track, assuring me that it would have me in Ustka in no time. Great, I thought, when I got to the start of this track it was apparent that it was being re-surfaced and it was closed.
"Screw it, I ain't turning back this time" I thought to myself, letting myself through the unlocked gate, being careful not to draw the gaze of the bloke driving the lorry loaded with hardcore.
"so you just sleep wherever when the sun goes down?"
"pretty much, yeah"
"ahhh, so you are a free man!"
The older one offered me a smoke but I declined, just the thought of smoking when I'm riding makes me feel sick!
I got another kilometer or so down that track before I had to turn off, I saw a bloke coming towards me on a dumper truck who didn't look like he was as happpy to see me.
Another few hours of half riding, half pushing the bike through rutted bicycle tracks got me to Jaroslawiec, where the nice lady at the campsite gave me a pitch for free because it was off season, and the toilet was broken.
I woke up in the morning feeling dog rough, I wasn't sure if I was ill of if my body was just being a pussy after 3 weeks of physical torture. I decided it was the latter, and that the cure was more cycling. I stopped at the local supermarket for some breakfast, and got the second puncture of the trip. Great. While I was fixing it though I met the bike-hacker of the week, check this guy out:
Local roads took me to a small village called Smoldzinski Las, and arguably the stupidist decision of the whole trip. Smoldzinski Las is on the edge of Slowinski national park. On the other side of this park is a place called Leba. Leba looked like the kind of place that would have some nice campsites, maybe a bar or two for a cold beer. Ahh paradise. A signpost at Smoldzinski Las indicated it was 24km to Leba across the national park. 'Piece of piss' I thought, '15 and a bit miles, an hour and a half, tops'.
The first mile of track was ridable, after that I was met with this:
Any sane man would of turned back, gone round the long way, but the stupid voice in my head kicked in, "Forward is the only way!". Reasoning with myself I thought; it can't be like this all the way through the park, they will of paved part of it, what about the mums with pushchairs? It wasn't. The trail through Slowinski national park was a hardcore hiking trail, and I was about to become the dumbshit who pushed his bike along it.
By this time it was about 6pm, I kept going still with the thought of a hot meal and a beer in the back of my mind, although the liklihood of this happening was nil. Before I knew it I had lost the trail and I was pushing my bike over monsterous sand dunes.
You know sometimes life kicks you when your down? That night a storm blew in off the sea, the tent collapsed around me and by morning I was sitting in a puddle. My sleeping bag was piss wet through. I thought about calling the coastguard. "only faggots call the coastguard, stop being weak!" this was the same voice that got me into this mess and the same voice that I'm pretty sure is gonna end me one of these days.
I got up at 6am the next morning, and started pushing.
It was a very tired, very wet, physically broken man that pushed that bike into Leba at around 12am yesterday. I'd also managed to run out of water the night before, and was surviving on a 2.5 lite bottle of coke.
After a quick bit of lunch, a quiet thought of never again' and a big dose of 'man-up' I jumped back on the bike and rode to a place called Sopot, where I got a 2 star hotel room, and spent the rest of the day trying to clean the sand off just about everything I own.
I will persist until I succeed. In the Orient young bulls are tested for the fight arena in a certain manner. Each is brought to the ring and allowed to attack a picador who pricks them with a lance. The bravery of each bull is then rated with care according to the number of times he demonstrates his willingness to charge in spite of the sting of the blade. Henceforth will I recog- nize that each day I am tested by life in like manner. If I persist, if I continue to try, if I continue to charge forward, I will succeed.
Phew! That was a long one, been sat in Starbucks for nearly 6 hours. Insanely jealous of you Fred mate, California is awesome. Gutted about the promotion Bayliss but im sure if you persist you will succeed ;).
Over and out...
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