Back to work

My last day of holiday before returning to work :-(

It's been a good break, but time flies far too fast when you're having fun. I've managed to squeeze in lots of reading, a fair bit of geocaching, too little riding (it's been rather wet in Pretoria!) and a couple of movies (including The Bee Movie last night - very funny and worth watching). The second National Treasure movie was also excellent (although I still need to see the first!).

It's been a rather tense couple of weeks, with two very sick children (friends' new-born daughter Claire, who needed open-heart surgery to repair cross-connected arteries, and Conor, an eight-year-old member of Theo's congregation, who has a life-threatening lung condition), both of whom seem to be on the road to recovery (although there is still some way to go in determining whether and how Conor's condition can be treated). In both cases, there has been a remarkable answer to the many prayers for the children and their families.

One great discovery has been the music of John Waller (his first CD, The Blessing, is produced by the same group who manage Casting Crowns, one of my all-time favourite bands). His lyrics have a great spiritual depth ("theological" was the word that came to mind when I first listened to the CD), and the songs are great musically too.

And, since I labelled this post "movies, books, music" as I started to write, I must mention the book of the moment: The Shack, by William Young, which my sister gave me for Christmas. When someone like Eugene Peterson compares a book to The Pilgrim's Progress, you know it must be something special, and it is. It portrays a beautiful picture of God's love, mercy and acceptance of us, in the midst of the most difficult of circumstances, and wrestles with some difficult spiritual questions in a refreshing and wonderful way. Thoroughly recommended!

Anyway, I need to get ready to head for the airport and start the long trek back home. More ramblings later!

Geocaching

My blog would not be complete without some discussion of geocaching. Crudely put, geocaching is the sport of high-tech treasure hunting. The geocaching website lists the coordinates of caches hidden at spots all over the world. You enter the coords into a GPS (Global Positioning System - satellite navigation) receiver and go off to find the hidden treasure. The treasure works on a trust-based exchange system: you can take some treasure from the cache, and replace it with some of your own treasure (usually small knick-knacks or children's toys). Or, as someone else described it: "Yep, I use multibillion-dollar satellite technology to find Tupperware hidden in the woods"!

Today is a good day from a geocaching perspective, as I had my first FTF (First To Find), i.e. I was the first person (together with Cabey) to find a brand new cache that had just been hidden. Theo (Cabey's dad) discovered that a new cache had been hidden near to where they stay in Pretoria (and where I am on holiday at the moment) and sent Cabey and I off before breakfast to get the FTF!

The subject of geocaching is not totally off the topic of this blog, as it is a great way of exploring new areas (and discovering things about well-known places that you never knew!). As such, I hope to do quite a bit of geocaching in the USA while there on sabbatical.

Another aspect of geocaching is travel bugs (or TBs). These are items that have a tracking number attached them, which are then moved from cache to cache by geocachers. As part of my sabbatical trip I hope to retrieve a TB that I released into the wild in an Eastern Cape cache in November 2007. This "Proudly South African" TB's mission is to meet me in the USA during my sabbatical.

You can find out more at the website: www.geocaching.com; follow my geocaching exploits as Alien3Inc; or watch my TB's progress.

Around Africa on my bike...

No, not me! I have just finished reading the most amazing book, Around Africa on My Bicycle, by Riaan Manser. He's a fairly average South African who gets a bee in his bonnet and sets off alone to cycle around Africa in a year - no support team, no company, very little funding. Well over two years later, he finally gets back to Cape Town after some hair-raising and inspiring adventures. Along the way he makes some powerful observations about life and Africa.

One of the comments in the foreword by Jean-Jaques Cornish puts it very well: "... we can never tire of illustrations of the triumph of the human spirit — particularly by a compatriot who makes us very, very proud South Africans".

This is one of the most gripping and inspiring books I have read, and is highly recommended (even for non-cyclists — the cycling aspect is somewhat incidental to the story).

The book is available from Kalahari.net:
Around Africa on My Bicycle

Getting going...

Well, I guess I had to join the bloggerati at some stage!

You can blame my good friend Theo for my adding to the volume of digital pollution on the Internet. However, in his defence, it was a very good suggestion! One of the primary purposes of this blog is going to be to document my sabbatical leave during 2008/2009, and allow my family and friends to keep up with my wanderings and wonderings. A blog seems like a very useful way of doing exactly that!

Today is an auspicious day to start this blog as the South African Fulbright selection committee is meeting to consider my application for funding for my visit to the USA. Fingers crossed!


Stay tuned for more ramblings, wanderings and wonderings! ;-)