Waiting For Something to Happen

It was another wild and windy night, wild enough indeed to disturb my night's sleep a little, something which doesn't happen too often. I was quite late to bed too, following a catch-up on skype with Forrest in New Zealand, the first time since Christmas as he's been away partying and generally living it up on the beach. 

I told him that I'd love for us to both climb Mount Taranaki, to show him the summit which I once claimed the record for running up from the coast at New Plymouth and then back again (sea to summit to sea: a bit less than a 50 mile round trip to 2518m in just under 8 hours). He didn't know about that story and I was speculating as to what the fastest time might be now when he did a quick google and discovered that it was still mine! There's an active site and facebook page dedicated to records of ascents on the mountain and my name was there as the record holder. I have to admit that it made me very happy to find that out and see a recognition of something I'd given no thought to for years. There's no denying that it was a very nice little ego boost. I guess I really was pretty damn fit back then! For the archives, this is the page in question.

It has served as a reminder of how driven I've always been, from the youngest age, to achieve things, to push the limits, to go places that you're not supposed to go. I have no idea where the source of that lies but it goes back a very long way, as far as I can remember. And it's still there. That drive has never ever diminished. It feels like a curse at times but I wouldn't have it any other way!

I've carried that boost with me today, going into the office and getting quite a bit done too. It's so much easier concentrating on a weekend when there are no clients to interrupt. It was very quiet in Shipley on another pretty miserable day. Bizarrely, the few minutes I had my camera out coincided with the few minutes the sun broke through the heavy cloud cover. There were just a handful of people about, some youngsters just hanging, and a few pigeons hanging out too. It felt like they were waiting for something to happen. I doubt anything did.