Stepping out of the Loop

This is probably my last post for a little while, as on Friday I am flying off to South Africa for a few weeks to be best man at my best mate Tristan's wedding before heading off on safari with some serious legends, can't wait.

So try to cope without my chat, I know it'll be tough. Those of you who see me on a regular basis will also have to do without seeing how my mo develops. Last year I grew a handle bar moustache that rivalled Merv himself, and this year I'm going again - although purely for my own amusement this year!

The picture on the left is the mo as it looked this morning, after hitting the Trim Trail, in the rain, for an hour and a half. Fabulous, I am sure you'll agree.

It was a good session, following on from Wednesday when Kiwi put me through my paces after I arrived a little late. I can see Tom is slowly pushing us harder as time goes on - it frightens me to think what we'll be doing come March!

I said in a post a little while back I was trying to exercise five times a week, well, I almost managed it in week one, but with the Trim Trail taking off it's harder to get to the gym - and I'd rather exercise with the guys. I'm still doing Tuesday mornings before work, and with the Trail happening Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays, there's not a lot of time to get to the gym!

This week we had another Team Hillary curry at Kathmandu Valley which was once again brilliant, and there's a few things coming up in Movember that I will hope to hear about when I'm back from SA.

The expedition itself is going from strength to strength, Kirt & Wes had a good meeting with Nokia recently and it looks as though they will be helping us in some capacity as well, which is great news. We're also actively hunting for a title sponsor now, let's see how that comes along.

In other news I finally booked my flights to Kathmandu at Christmas. I'll be going out with Kirt, and rather randomly discovered that Charlie BN will be out there for a couple of days at the same time, which is a real bonus.

We've got some good meetings set up and hopefully will have everything in place for when we return in April, we'll meeting guys from the Government, Cricket Association, Tourist Board and Emergency Rescue so it should be a busy week - but I have little doubt we'll find a few hours to get lashed!

We've also had a few people pull out of the expedition recently, which is a great shame. There are various reasons behind all of them but hopefully we'll find replacements of equal stature to step in - keep your eyes on the main blog for info on that.

The biggest loss from my point of view was that of Charlie Brewer, purely because he's a good mate and a top bloke. If you read this Boozer, you'll be sorely missed(for those who don't know him - he's the idiot in the pirates outfit below).

So for now folks, have a good month and I'll most likely see you in December. Until then, sleep tight.