a scruffy ruffian
Mark send me these pictures of a temple in Cambodia: 1 | 2
I put the Public Gallery up again as I like to see what people are up to. Or if you can’t be bothered to sign up for that you can use this little upload script. Put your name in the file name so I know who uploaded what!
I have just been playing Virtual Drug Dealer. It is really fun. The most I have made is $390 million.
Summer is so good. The last few days have just been amazing. Even though about half of the jumps are still wet, its still so much fun. This jump is a lot of fun, and quite a few of the new lips are working good.
Rob is always good for providing Food, especially Muffins, and also good for catching kids riding the trails when its too wet.
Nigel has very kindly fixed my bike. It’s still a heap of junk but at least now it doesn’t make horrible snapping noises when I pedal. New back wheel anyone? It’s been good to have someone at the trails to ride with this year, after a lonely 2006, and you can always rely on Nigel being at the woods.
Finally, I do like a good pie.
Red bull got cancelled. You can watch some of the practice runs here.
That event must cost a lot of money to put on and I don’t really understand what Red Bull get out of it. Ok so the would have been a lot of pictures and videos of it in magazines and on TV, linking Red Bull with BMX, but it seems like a very expensive way of getting their name associated with BMX.
I think they should buy some land somewhere and employ a couple of people to build some really smooth trails that are open to the public. If they are good trails then people from all over the country will visit them, and the pictures will still get in magazines and videos. It shouldn’t be too much of a problem if there are lots of visitors as there will be people who are paid to look after the jumps. This would probably be a lot cheaper than the empire of dirt and should give them more publicity
Trails were fun last night. One side of the wood is dry and the other is wet.
A lip I changed – not as good as the one before it.
Pete went higher than I anticipated.
Me and Mark went out at lunchtime and took some pictures.
Do you think this would be any good to climb? I would ask Tim but he can’t look at this website, or any topclasshost sites as his IP has been blocked. A couple of car pictures I took for Liam: 1 | 2.
I found a picture of orange trails from above. Not there any more.
I want to build a treehouse.
These things that scare me about this country:
Yesterday a woman was shot dead in Sevenoaks by armed police. Apparently (according to the mirror?!) she was living in sheltered housing for people with mental and physical disabilities and was waving around a ball bearing gun. The thing that really scares me about this is not the event itself, but the media reaction to it.
When Jean Charles de Menezes was shot the press went mad about it and it was all over the papers for about a week. This time the media doesn’t seem to be paying any interest at all. Its hard to find any mention of it on the BBC News website. I don’t understand why, but to me it feels like they have been told to keep quiet about it becasue the police don’t want all the fuss they had last time. If that’s the case then that is media censorship and that is scary.
In any case the BBC has already started censoring its new articles. Yesterday this article was titled, “Man shot dead by police officer” but they have gone back and ammended it.
Changing the news is like trying to change history and its a very manipulative way of controlling people. It is a process that Big Brother uses in 1984 to maintain his dicatorship.
The other scary thing is this clamp down on “curb crawling”. Apparently if you are caught curb crawling you will face a ?1000 fine and you may be “outed” (i hate that word) in the press. Whilst I don’t want to advokate that kind of behaviour, isn’t this a kind of pre-emptive punishment. These people haven’t actaully done anything wrong YET. This seems like the first stage along the road of punishing people for crimes they may commit in the future and I don’t like it.
Everyday i drive to work along the Tour de France route. There are police signs up and emergency roadworks.
It’s been very quiet at the trails recently. Could be something to do with all that rain? Some lines have been running well anyway.
No updates for ages, sorry I have been busy sorting out about 600 pictures. They are all done and in my new gallery thing:
Shark Holiday part 1
Shark Holiday part 2
Shark sequences
Rebekah has also written about every day. Start at day one and work your way through.
Saturday was our last day in South Africa, and we made the most of it. We were really glad we were able to go for an extra trip with Chris and Monique to see some more sharks. As we were staying in Cape Town it meant a transfer early on Saturday morning – leaving at 5:50am so we could get to Simon’s Town for a 6:45am start. Unfortunately some of the other people who were meant to be getting the same transport had thought they had cancelled so we sat outside their accommodation for about 15 minutes and so were a bit late.
There were two boats going out on Saturday – one was for diving, and the other was Chris and Monique’s. We decided we would rather go on Chris and Monique’s boat again and not dive as the water is a bit cold for me and I liked that better. It was interesting being able to see the cage and the shark – makes the cage look quite small! This is the same kind of cage we went in but not on this boat.
We saw lots of sharks again – Bob came back which Chris and Monique were excited about as they have seen him every year for 5 years. A couple of days later he breached on the decoy but we were back in England by then. There were three breaches near the other boat on Saturday but we only managed to see the splash!
We also saw a young great white – maybe 3 years old and about 2 metres long. She was very fiesty and we had to be a bit careful of her as she would be quite likely to throw herself against the boat and hurt herself. She was quite a brown colour. Young sharks have different shaped teeth to mature great whites – they are more grasping and are thinner so they are better for catching fish. When the shark is bigger its teeth are better for catching fish and seals. I think in total on our holiday we saw about 30 different great whites.
Too soon the trip was over and we were heading back to Cape Town with some chips from the fish and chip shop in Simon’s Town. We were glad that we were able to use our room at the guesthouse for the day – normally check out is 10am but as it was quiet we were able to stay until 8pm when we left to go to the airport.
We got a last walk along the seafront in the afternoon though, and then went and had dinner in a restaurent in a railway carriage. It described itself as “traditional African cuisine” although in a city with a long history of colonisation by English and Dutch people I’m not totally sure what that means.
Ben tried ox tongue and he did not like it. I don’t think I’ve hardly ever seen him not eat something but he really didn’t enjoy ox tongue; he said it was a bit like eating your own tongue. It looked a lot like lots of bits of tongue with all the taste buds showing. I had guinea fowl which was ok.
Our flight was at 11.30pm but we had to be there 3 hours earlier. We got to the airport and then had the longest smoothie in the world, trying to keep it going until we had to leave. By the time we boarded Ben was so tired he went to sleep even before we took off. I had some brandy to help with that. The flight back was ok but there were some very noisy old people behind us who kept shouting at each other and then they poked Ben. They also coughed a lot and very productively which made quite a breeze.
It was about 12.30pm when we got to England where it was drizzly. I am very happy that I had the chance to go and see the great white sharks in South Africa. It was even better than I had expected.
End of Day 8
scruffian 
