The Bridge Marathon
I did it!
I was really stoked with my time, 4:26!
It was hard work, especially the last 8 km or so where my legs seized up and didn't want to work, so I ended up in a walk-one-lamppost-run-two pattern. But I've received over $700 in sponsorship which is awesome, and it is all going to a great cause.
Unlike the Taupo cycle challenge, this is something that I might consider doing again one day.
Nepal trip
We have had a few major setbacks. You will remember that the original plan was to go to Nepal and visit some of the work GFA is doing there, and go trekking. Then after the earthquake GFA Nepal wrote to say they could no longer host us, so the we were given the option of visiting GFA work in India, which we accepted. A couple of days before the marathon we received an email saying that GFA could not host us in either country due to increased persecution.
That left us with two options: go anyway, postpone by a year (and hope that the situation with GFA would change), or cancel the entire thing. We weighed up the pros and cons of each and have decided to go ahead this year, and contact some other Christian mission organisations in Nepal regarding volunteering with them. There were several reasons; the main ones being (a) there is no certainty that GFA can host us next year anyway, (b) the trek prices have already been increased by $400 each, so we don't want to risk it being even more expensive next year, (c) thanks to training for the marathon, we are probably at our peak physical fitness, (d) we were really, really looking forward to the trip, and (e) sorting out the insurance looked like being a major headache. We also figured that helping another mission organisation will still give us an idea of the kind of work GFA does over there.
I have just paid the balance for the trek tonight. We are looking into other missions in Nepal. So watch this space :)
These are the kinds of vistas we are looking forward to: (click to see full picture)
Other trips
Melbourne last week was rather brutal - I was pretty exhausted from the marathon and could hardly walk for 2-3 days afterwards (thankfully, after 5 days was pretty much back to normal). Combine that with a severe case of sleep deprivation due to having to attend the first experiment for 24 hours and it's not a pretty picture. The second and third were not so bad - the second was simpler and the third had 5 people involved, so I was able to get a few hours' sleep during the night. I think the beamline scientist thought he was doing me a favour by scheduling three experiments back to back... I'm not sure it really worked. Or maybe I'm just getting old and need more time to recover!
I fly to the US on Sunday for a week at Berkeley (preparation and running of 48 hrs of experiments there). I'll also be giving a seminar at Stanford.
I haven't started thinking about the Europe trip yet!
Then Nepal, see above.
Finally, we received notification last week that we have been scheduled for more beamtime in Melbourne in early December. It's the week after the user meeting, so I'll just stay for the weekend. I'm hoping to have a summer student this year and to take them along - inspire the next generation and all that (with my ulterior motive being getting them to do a lot of monkey work that I don't want to do, analysing data)...
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