200th

Amazingly this is my 200th blog.

The first was on 29 June 2009, all about a little film project I was trying to get off the ground called Bright Blue Button. In fact, it was that very project that prompted me to start a blog, in the hope that it might add some publicity to the project. I never thought I would continue much beyond the life of that film.

But, every week since, I have posted some nonsense about, well, what's rattling around in my brain I guess. Some of you have been there through the emotional journeys and the great highlights that have peppered the past three years.

Another reason for starting the blog was in some vain hope that by writing to a deadline every week my writing skills and grammar would improve. OK, so maybe I was aiming a little high, but for the majority of the time it has been an enjoyable experience.

My friend Pauline has started a new blog recently. From May 2010 to very recently she was posting the stories generated by her round the world cycle adventure, called The Bicycle Diaries. Her new blog is aptly titled The Outdoor Diaries. If it's well constructed sentences and structured stories you're looking for then Pauline's blog is the one to add to your favourites. Here's the link:

http://www.theoutdoordiaries.blogspot.com

I have just heard that the film Sleepless 'til Seattle was not chosen for the Fargo Film Festival in 2013. This is a bitter blow. It was our favourite stop on the route and featured in the film. Had it been chosen there was every chance I would have attended as it was the week of my 50th birthday. Ah well, win some lose some.

I hope in some way you've enjoyed the 200 blogs over the past few years.

It's been fun.

Merry Christmas to you all.

Dancing on ice

It's been two and a half years since I've trekked and camped in the Scottish mountains with my friend Pauline. I guess there was the small matter of a round-the-world cycle in between. So we decided to take the opportunity of a window of available time and head north, though I thought it was going to be hillwalking, not hill skating.

With a good weather forecast we left Edinburgh for Blair Atholl, and the neighbouring valley Glen Tilt, on a late train on Tuesday evening. Arriving in Blair Atholl in the dead of night we were greeted with a bit of a surprise . . . snow!

Having travelled the night before we were in a great position to get an early start to our trek into the hills and Glen Tilt on a glorious day. Not a breath of wind and unbroken blue skies. However it was slow going as all the small streams that crossed the paths were frozen and we gingerly stepped across, occasionally skating as we lost our grip. One bridge was covered with two inches of solid polished ice making it impassable. Our only choice was to detour around.

All around us a frozen mist hung in the valleys and wildlife foraged for food in the frozen landscape. Up ahead roe deer darted across the path, their large white behinds flashing by; a mountain hare in its snowy white winter coat sprinted up the hillside; a puffed up robin kept us company as we trekked along.

We camped for the night next to an old stone bridge and our tents were pitched by four o'clock. By five o'clock, as the sun was casting its fire-red glow onto nearby mountains, the temperature had dropped to minus 5. Just one hour later it had plummeted to minus 10. During the night I was wearing my full thermals, trousers, two pairs of socks, three further layers up top, my hat and buff. Added to that I was wrapped up in a winter season sleeping bag . . . and I was still cold! On the bright side it never got entirely dark due to the clear sky and a proliferation of stars, their light reflecting off the surrounding snow.

The following day we opted to scale a nearby hill, ascending through soft six-inch deep snow, with small flurries of snow gently falling. As we neared the summit we entered some hill fog. I lost sight of Pauline up ahead and resorted to following her footprints in the snow.

Two hours later we were back down and wandering out along the track towards Blair Atholl and a hot bowl of soup. Streams that had flowed the previous day were now frozen due to the very low temperatures of the previous evening, creating an ice rink across our path every 20 feet or so. For five miles we stumbled and slid ungracefully.

Mind you, at one point Pauline almost managed a full pirouette which wouldn't have been out of place on Dancing On Ice. It was a pretty good 7 out of 10.

Trailer opens doors

Following last weeks disappointment when the door was slammed shut on my attempt to enter the film Sleepless 'til Seattle into the Sundance Film Festival, this week came some better news.

I have been working away on creating a trailer for the film for some time, and by Friday last week the final cut version was posted on YouTube. To keep regular visitors to the website up to date I then created a link using a clip from the film on the home page.

Then it was the busy task of emailing all my contacts, and Gordon Millar, the good friend who takes care of all the film's social media needs, started a Twitter and Facebook push. Within just a few hours the trailer had over 100 hits. Then various contacts on Twitter started to "retweet" our message and the hits soared past 500.

As a result it caught the attention of a local newspaper, The Evening News, and they made contact to arrange an interview with myself and Pauline this Friday morning in their offices, with a view to running a story on it all.

I'll include a link to the story on the next blog.

Only just having arranged the interview, and yet another conversation was had with another journalist from The Times newspaper, who have asked that as soon as the film is accepted into its first festival they want to run a story as well.

If you too would like to see the trailer then just click on the film clapperboard on the right and follow the link on the home page.

Just goes to show, as they say, one door closes another opens.

Sundance film festival

OK, so this is going to be a short blog this week. It's been a busy one, but productive, with a roller coaster of emotions.

Most of this year has been dominated with the post production of my feature-length documentary, Sleepless 'til Seattle. By the end of August, after nine months of editing, it was finished. The first deadline was to send it off to the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, probably the most prestigious in the calendar.

Just two days ago I received notification that it had not made it into the festival. However, the competition was a little huge. They received 12,146 entries and selected just 170, which is only 1.4% of films submitted, so I shouldn't feel too hard done too.

Today another milestone in the film was reached: the trailer. It is now up online and you can watch it by linking through the website by clicking on the movie clapperboard on the right.

There are 12 more festivals to hear from, the next notification being on the 15th of December for Fargo, our favourite town along the adventure. It's a tiny small-town America film festival in comparison to Sundance, but in a lot of ways more important to Pauline and I.

Fingers crossed.

Thanksgiving

In 1863 Abraham Lincoln made a proclamation stating that the last Thursday in November would be the day that Thanksgiving would be celebrated.

It wasn't until December 1941 that President Roosevelt passed a bill into law making the fourth Thursday in November as the official holiday marking Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving has its origins in a celebration during the Fall of 1621 when a feast was given to give thanks for a good harvest. A very important harvest being the first of such for the early settlers. Though the "good harvest" would technically have happened well before the end of November, it is nevertheless set in tradition, and law, now that the fourth Thursday in November is the celebratory date.

Some of my American friends have told me that it ranks as just as big a celebration with family and friends as Christmas and the 4th of July.

On my journey across the US in 2011 I witnessed and thoroughly enjoyed the 4th of July celebrations, and it is on my wish list to experience a traditional Thanksgiving one day.

It is also celebrated in Canada, on the second Monday of October, but there is no compelling narrative for its origin.

I'll end this weeks short blog by saying; I would split the word into two and reverse their order, and say that I Give Thanks for my friends all over the world that have made the experiences in my life so far a personal good harvest.

I wish all my friends across the pond a happy Thanksgiving holiday.

Skyfall

This weeks blog is written by guest blogger Pauline Symaniak, my fellow adventurer on the long cycle adventure across the USA in summer 2012.

It’s mid November, the evenings are drawing in and winter is coming to get us. But there is still so much wonder in nature as I discovered under the night sky and in the fall forests of the Cairngorms.

With a heavy pack and several days food, I jumped off the train in Aviemore and in the gathering dusk, climbed up through the ancient pines of Rothiemurchus onto open ground and the start of the Lairig Ghru, that most famous of Scottish mountain passes. Its gigantic gouge in the vast Cairngorm Plateau has for centuries linked Speyside to Deeside and the cattle trysts of Perthshire. Just where the pass steepens and squeezes between the dark, plunging cliffs of Lurcher’s Crag and the lower slopes of Braeriach, I have a favourite place to pop up my tent. And so I did, grateful in the inky night for a layer of snow that captured a smidgen of starlight from the sky above.

A bitterly cold winter wind whipped across the place. I huddled in my tent and sparked the stove into life. Meatballs served with a dollop of instant mash that had the taste and consistency of a wet snowball were followed by a warming cup of tea. In the pitch black of an icy mountain night, all there was to do was stare at the star-studded sky. But tonight there weren’t only stars up there. To the northwest, above the pointed outline of Carn Eilrig, the sky was illuminated by a pale silver, strobing light. Charged particles in the high atmosphere were getting excited and creating the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights.

That spectacle was my last view of the sky for a few days as dense cloud and rain hunkered down over the mountain tops but I snatched the tail-end of fall as I skulked around in the forests below and threw my tent up each night under big, granny pines. A few birch trees stoically held onto the last of their golden leaves while the bare branches of the others cast a beautiful purple veil over the landscape. The larch had dropped their orange needles which gathered on the trails, turning them the colour of Irn-Bru, and on the open hill mountain hares were in mid-metamorphosis, with mottled grey and white coats. Fall’s fireworks were giving way to winter’s more subtle palette.

On my last day, determined to get up a hill no matter what, I dragged myself up through knee-high heather and low-flying grouse onto the top of Creag Dhubh above Gleann Einich. I picked my way along the summit ridge as thick mist and smirr were blasted through by Arctic winds and crouched down to eat my lunch behind the Argyll Stone, a huge boulder left behind by retreating glaciers. Just when I thought a view was lost and so was I, the sun punched a hole in the snow-laden, grey-blue clouds and shafts of weak sunshine flooded Strathspey below, looking breath-taking in the browns and golds of its autumn garb.

It lasted only a moment. The clouds drew in again like curtains at the end of a play. I made the long descent and trekked through the forests to Aviemore to catch my train home. Just as I turned back to the Cairngorms for one last look, the clouds dissipated and weak winter sun cast a peachy light over the Rothiemurchus woods. A final encore from the sky and the fall!

Barack Obama and the American Dream

Since cycling across the US and coming home I have been craving and absorbing everything American. I don't mean things like McDonalds or in-feasibly large cars, but certainly some of their TV programmes, culture and politics.

So, as you can imagine, this past week has been very exciting with the US Presidential elections.

It's easy for me to say now, but all the way through the campaigns and on the day itself, I somehow knew Barack Obama would get back in for a second term. I was fascinated by how close the polls put Romney and Obama, and yet an online poll, one of many, put Obama's popularity outside of America at 82% over Romney.

Once the election had played out and the outcome was a certainty for Obama, there was a surprising reaction. It's almost as if people shrugged their shoulders and said, yep, knew that was gonna happen, thank goodness that's out of the way. When he had won in 2008 there was a palpable ripple that went around the world. The American Dream was alive and well.

However, a lot of Americans now feel the American Dream is dead, or at the very least, wilting. I noticed this during last year while crossing the northern states. Everywhere was the same, a kind of resignation that things were spiralling downwards. I was saddened by this. And worried.

Regardless of what your opinion may be of the US, it's foreign policy and it's loud culture, right now the rest of the world needs America to feel good about itself, to be confident and to believe in the American Dream. We need America to succeed, or at least believe it is possible. From this I think recovery could begin as the rest of the world are encouraged by America picking itself up and dusting itself down.

But that's just my opinion.

Closer to home I was encouraged and boosted by a recent success of a close friend of mine, and writer, Innes McQuillin.
After constantly trying, and constantly being rejected, he had persevered, then  just a couple of weeks ago had a submission accepted and broadcast by the BBC on the radio.

I've been trying for a lot longer and haven't achieved this level of recognition, but now I've witnessed this it's entirely possible, with the right conviction and determination, that dreams can come true.