The Notting Hill Carnival

Now I’m sure for all those people who have not been to London, the words Notting Hill automatically take you to the film starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts…am I right? Well, you’re not too far off, the travel book shop where Hugh and Julia meet, actually exists; it is just off Portobello Road in Notting Hill, a quaint little book store, that has been there for years and years, and now, because of Hollywood, it is an icon;. (Though the door is now blue, not red, like in the movie).
Now we have the context, Europe’s biggest street carnival, the Notting Hill Carnival, was on this long weekend. Matt and I went along for the experience - after all, how often is Europe's biggest street carnival within walking distance from home?
It was absolutely huge! Roads were closed - even up as far as Bayswater - for the estimated two million ….yup, two million people who turned up to the Notting Hill Carnival to eat, drink and be merry (and to see the parade)! It was a fun experience, and fantastic to be totally in with the locals! The costumes were amazing with more feathers, glitter and charm, than people.
Photos coming.
I named the Carnival the “Welcome home Matthew Carnival” and just pretended that everyone was around to welcome him home… ☺

check out some photos here!

Matthew's Home!

Matthew’s home!!

Yay!!
Yay!!
Yay!!
A month is a really long time so I/we are really glad that he is home safe and sound! Praise God! His month away training, was an amazing experience; I’m sure you’ve seen what he was up to in Colorado. ☺ While he worked hard all week, he also played hard at weekends! Have a look at previous blogs if you haven’t seen the adventures!

Matt goes away again on Tuesday for three more days of training, to Barcelona...This time though, I am going to tag along!

Better get cracking on the Spanish!

Home Time

Tonight is home time. I'll jump on a plane (hopefully) bound for London and be in Jo's arms before lunch on Saturday... can't wait. :)

My First Professional Film...done!

I arrived home last night from my trip to Bournemouth to shoot my first professional short film. Bournemouth is two hours south of London and right on the coastline. I stayed in a little hotel called the Oceanview Hotel, which is exactly what it was.... my single suite room overlooked the ocean!! Ah!! Water!!! It was so fantastic to see the ocean again, the only water I've seen since coming to London has come from the sky!
The film shoot was an invaluable experience. We shot over two days and so the schedule was quite tight, with limited time for rehearsal; so we had to be on the ball and in to character very quickly. With only three actors, including me, there were about 15 crew on various jobs from cinematography to continuity. I think the most challenging time was shooting a scene when my character Karen, was sobbing in a toilet cubicle, which required a toilet, me, and about 8 of the crew in the female toilets with me, doing their various jobs.
The crew will now edit the film over the next few days and I should have a copy by the end of next week!
It was an amazing experience, I met some inspiring people and can't wait to do the next film!

By the way... the film is called "Office".

The Bag is Here!!

Raena's bag finally arrived home, yay!!!!
She now is looking more like Raena and less like me!
:')

Rare Air & Fat Tires

If last weekend wasn't enough sun and exercise, this weekend Diego, Vincent, Linda - other (relatively) new hires - and I climbed a couple of 14ers on Saturday, and then I turned up at Winter Park for a day full of riding on Sunday.
Winter Park is a ski resort by winter and a moutain bike / hiking resort during the summer. The park converts one of the chairlifts into a mountian bike & rider lift which shuttles you from the car park to 10700ft in 11 minutes.
It's fantastic. Absolutely Fantastic. The best rolling singletrack and sustained, fast technical descents I've ever ridden. The most beautiful setting: Pine corridors opening out into Rocky Mtn valleys.
The first run took me over two hours - thanks largely to a little over-ambition and not fully considering the name of the trail I was riding: Top Roof of the Rockies... I did get to climb up another 500ft or so and it did make the downhill last a lot longer...
The subsequent trips were quicker but it still took between 45mins - 1.5 hours to ride down the mountain. It was glorious. Rather than type you to jealousy, here's some links:

Updated photos - New photos are at the back, so just skip to them if you don't like re-runs.
Winter Park - check out the section on Mountain Biking
Web Cam's from Winter Park - not the most informative, but cool nonetheless.
Trail Guide (small/large)

Look for the the Zephyr Express: Taking that to the top, my favourite descent was CHEYENNE (Blue) till the FREERIDE SKILLS PARK where I picked up THE DOWNHILL (Black) - riding it all the way till it hit LONG TRAIL (Blue) and following that down to the FREERIDE SKILLS PARK which was a medium level terrain park. Soooo much fun.

I'm trying to figure out how to post videos to the blog. Stay tuned.

Mike & Joy!

Mike and Joy Guthrie have been on a trip of a lifetime; one of their stops was London, where we had a chance to catch up. I met them at Oxford Circus and Mike and Joy couldn't believe how busy it was on a Sunday at 10am, sirens and traffic jams....gotta love London Town.
We visited All Souls Church for their morning service, where John Stott was the practicing minister before he retired. He preaches occasionally, is still writing books, and attends church every Sunday. Luckily, John Stott was rostered on to preach today; however some bad news hit the congregation that John had had a fall that morning and fractured his hip. The congregation sighed with a mixture of disappointment and concern. Though, John's concern was for the congregation; he was apparently ordering the Ambulance staff around to ensure his semon notes were put in the minister's hands for the congregation to hear. Bless him.
After church I took Mike and Joy back along Oxford Street, (braving the famous red buses), passed Hyde Park and to our little studio.
Giving them a tour of our studio took all of 30 seconds because it is so huge!! :) so we went down to my new favourite caffe called Carluccio's which has beautiful, fresh Italian, scrumptious food!
It was a beautiful day with Mike and Joy, I was incredibly blessed by them and by their encouragement to me and to Matt. Bless you both.
I think their next stop is Ireland (wow!) to visit some old friends.
Have a ball Mike&Joy!
Thank you for your love and care!

14270ft

Hi there, I'm sitting on top of Grays Peak - one of CO's '14ers'. A '14er' is what the locals call a mountain that's higher than 14000ft. Grays Peak is 14270ft - or 4350m if you prefer.
We're about to drop down onto a saddle and up another 14er: Torreys Peak. I guess we'll have to climb up another 1000ft from the saddle to the summit of Torreys.
Can check it out at www.14ers.com if you want to.
Matthew.


--sent from my Nokia cell phone--

Another Aussie Dancer!

Last Friday, a friend from Uni, Raena arrived in London after travelling around South America (WOW!) for the last three months. It has been so lovely having her stay in our little studio while she gets settled in London; and also great for me, to have some company while Matt is away in Colorado. We've been having lots of girly chats and shopping trips in Central London, amongst walks in the park and coffees in Caffes. :)
Unfortunately, Raena's bags have stilll not arrived, they are hanging out somewhere with the other 10 000 bags that have been unaccounted for since the bomb threat of three large aircraft departing Heathrow Airport last Thursday.
The reign on security has meant that NO hand luggage is allowed on the carrier except for a few essentials such as travel documents, baby food, glasses (but no case), and all in a transparent plastic bag. Baby milk has to be tasted by mother/father before going on the aircraft and so on.
For the first few days Raena was wearing my clothes, but then, with permission from BritishAirways, our shopping trips became more ''productive" and lots more fun!
Thanks B.A!

Sunday, CO

Sunday morning we headed off to the Arkansas River, CO, for a 5hr white-water rafting trip with River Runners. This company had been recommended to us and after floating downstream next to a bunch of other rafts (it was a little crowded in places :) ) we were glad we went with these guys. The guides were knowledgable, fun and helped with the paddling (the clincher).
We signed up for the Royal Gorge ride which started with a morning of Class I and II rapids. They were okay, but not extreme enough for a raft full of X&Y Gen'ers.
We followed the old water supply pipes down the river towards town and dropped through some Class IV and V rapids. These were much better and well worth the trip. I've updated the photo page with photos from the trip. You may see the company logo flying from the 'mast'... it was a great day and a good opportunity to become better friends with the some of the other European CASSes - who have all started within a couple of months of me.
The course was about two and a half hours from Boulder which made for a very long day (we had to be there before 9am and didn't get home till about 10.30pm); we were pretty tired and sore come Monday morning.

CO

You'll be pleased to know that in addition to working hard during business hours, we've been working hard outside hours too.

Today we drove from Boulder CO ('CO' is for Colorado) out to the Rock Mountains National Park. It was a bit of a epic trip but the scenery was amazing. The mountains are absolutely covered in tall aspens and pines, and really seem to stretch on forever. They stand shoulder to shoulder rising up into the cloudy, blue sky from dark, still lakes and grassy valleys. Every now and then a deer or 20 will wander out from the trees, graze and then continue on. Crazy.
We've been really blessed with the animals we've seen here so far. In addition to almost running into a young, small and very cute brown bear while riding last week (we couldn't see his mum, but I bet she never lost sight of us), we saw a couple of elk (with ENORMOUS antlers), lots of herds of venison - excuse me: deer - loads of chipmunks, ground squirrels and other random little furry animals.

Once I can find some way to download my photos I'll post them and let you know. HERE THEY ARE (this is a growing collection of all photos taken in Colorado)

- oh and we also paused on our tour to run to the top of a 12005ft (3659m) mountain lookout. There wasn't quite as much oxygen there as there was in London 2 weeks ago - but there was just as many tourists :)

I Got the Part!!

I found out yesterday I was offered the part of 'Karen in the six short films I was telling you about! A main role! I had to think hard, and juggle up all my other offers of main parts in short films, and humbly accepted! YES!
They are sending me the script and we start shooting on 21st Aug in Bournemouth. We will shoot for two days only and then edit crazy for five days and then it's done!

Change of Scenery

First of all, apologies for the drop-out in communication - and some random reference to 'Medtronic'.

Long-story-short:
I finished up working full-time at Evans Cycles last Saturday (29th July) and commenced working with a biomed company called Medtronic this Monday (31st July).
My role with Medtronic will be in technical sales - conceptually the same role as I would have had with Franklin Products in the US/Asia - only I will be driving between operating rooms in England rather than flying between airports in Asia. :)
I will be working as a Computer Aided Surgery Specialist (CASS) and will ultimately be consulting surgeons / nurses on how best in implement computer aided surgery into their ORs (operating rooms). As you'd imagine, there's a touch of tech knowledge to catch up on - and to that end, I am at the CAS HQ in Boulder, Colorado for a month (Aug 1st - 26th). Yep, that's right.
More news on Colorado later.
Jo and I have kept the blog intentionally quiet re: the Medtronic job as there were a few things we needed to work through before accepting it.
Finally thank you for your thoughts, encouragement and prayers for me over the past few months re: ongoing work for me. They have been a huge blessing for us both. As you'd imagine, the needs change now - not least of all being apart for a month. Thanks guys.
God bless you.