FA 100 - Creative Acts Part Four

For my Creative act this week, I started something that will last a long time.


One of my favorite pasttimes is cycling. Long distance stuff. Last summer I rode up and down the Haida Gwaii (Formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands) with my dad. This summer I'm planning on starting at my hometown (some 300 Km away from Haida Gwaii) and riding to a place called Rose Point (The northernmost tip of the islands).

Something I have wanted to do for a while now, is bike a place called the "Nullarbor Plains". Spanning the entire south side of the continent of Australia, I hear that it's gonna be a pretty brutal ride. When my Father visited the country some twenty five years ago, driving across these plains was tantamount to suicide unless you had several gerry cans of gas. The trouble being that if you ran out, you would be stuck in harsh Australian terrain with no sign of human contact for several hundred kilometers. You would likely die trying to make your way back.

Scary stuff.

Of course, it is different now. There are several stations along the way to make things easier for truck drivers and the like to get across the plains.


Getting back to the actual act, I am thinking that I would like to write about this ride. Things I did in preparation, whatever I did to get myself into the shape to make this work, and then (once it is done) the actual ride in question. What ran through my mind? What drove me to go on a ride that is quarter of the width of Canada, with a lot fewer stops, much less Human contact, and terrain that harsh?

I have been developing some themes in my mind. Themes of whimsy, themes of improvisation, themes of rising to terrible challenges. It would take my entire life to explain them properly here and now, but I want to get these things out to the world. This peice of writing would allow me to do that. I often say jokingly that if people lived according to their whims, the world would be a much better place.

It sounds silly when I explain it like that, but that is a major part of this thing I have developed. This thing that has become my life philosophy.

My audience for this creation spans the world, or those who would care to receive my advice. I would even say it would change the way those people live their lives. These views certainly modified mine.

Work has started.

Keep an eye out for the book.