GALFROMDOWNUNDER UPOVER

I used to maintain a LiveJournal blog called gfdu just for my book and work kudos, but being a Customer Evangelist means there's no distinction between work and home life. That journal was also a repository for some very interesting shots and story from my readers who visited some of the people mentioned in my book - including the guy in the front cover! Take a look

Galfromdownunder in Hawaii 2006 PHOTO GALLERY AND MOVIE CLIPS The Gal's Hilo Photo Gallery First week in Hilo (5 Mb Quicktime movie) Biking Hilo's Old Scenic Highway (8 Mb Quicktime movie) Sorry to rain on your mental image of Hawaii ... Gray skies. Rain every ten minutes. I'm wearing a pair of long johns. A-ROH-HA! (as my Shanghainese father would say). I hallucinate that I never got on a plane at all, that I'm still in 34 degree Eugene, Oregon, about to put on five layers of hi-tech thermals to go check the mail. No wait ... the windows here are wide open. All eight of them. I'm mincing around in a floaty islandy dress I splurged on just yesterday (30% off – how could I refuse).There's a cacophonous bleating of small, rubbery critters - coqui frogs, I'm told - coming from the bowels of the jungle outside my window. I'm scratching a moonscape raised welts on my arms and legs despite the fly screens and my chemical warfare repellent. I am on Hilo, on t

During my 10-day silent and gruelling  Vipassana  course my brain was doing so much unfettered plotting and scheming that I hatched a game plan for 2006 (2007, 2008 ...). See below. Are you an empty nester? Do you have a spare room or sofa where the Galfromdownunder , Bike Friday scribe and Customer Evangelist could lodge, experience your town, get to know you, do her travel slideshows and book readings - and *PAY* you something for the privilege? I have been trying to come up with ways to experience more of the USA and meet more of the wonderful Bike Friday community without bankrupting myself or Bike Friday, and I suddenly hit on this idea: telecommute my way around America! Most of my work is now done online - in fact, I am probably writing this from my bedroom or holed up in a cyber cafe in Botswana. Many BF customers and friends have invited me to stay with them over the past 4 years - I've enjoyed every moment of these stays. I've even been able to reciproc

For some reason, I am not into costume parties. The only time I jones'd to dress up was as a pillbox-hatted Singapore Airlines stewardess complete with drinks tray at my local rave club*  ... except I never found the uniform on eBay. So I can't quite explain how my Lego-lovin' friend Steve Ransom talked me into attending a StarWars costume party. I should have known better - it was set for 1pm on a Sunday afternoon in a friend's loungeroom. What kind of crazy stuff ever happens at 1pm on a Sunday afternoon in any friend's loungeroom? Can you believe I did this?  So here I am, at a Star Wars party in Eugene, Oregon. Amazing what you can do with a pair of Planet Bike bike tail lights, a bit of electrical tape, a piece of dark mesh and a flasher's trenchcoat... I arrive and the first sign that something is amiss is Steve is in non-costume. Wait, he brought his Hasbro light saber. I only made it halfway across the living room floor - my knees were killi

Thanks to Rich Lopez for sending me this interesting anecdote from a writing school... +++ Remember the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"? Here's a prime example offered by an English professor from the University of Phoenix: "Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. As homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short story. You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and send another copy to me. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story and send it back, also sending another copy to me. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back-and-forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking outside of the e-mails and anything you wish to say must be written in th

You non-cyclists won't get this. Skip it. I just had to vent. The hilarious video by MC Spandex aka Robin Moore, "Performance" displays a very good use for flakey floor pumps.  I can't believe it. I get home last night late after trying to fix the flats on both my Crusoe and the showroom Pro Petite. What should have taken me just a few minutes (even if I was not using the Jim Langley leverless tire removal technique) took over an hour, and I still left with deflated tires. Why? Frigging floor pumps. And as if by divine cosmic resonance, the first YAK! item of the day is all about ... floor pumps! I don't know who is responsible for designing floorpumps, but if I get a hold of him (it's gotta be a him, women would not put up with a gadget that poops out just by looking at it) I shall insert the long tube somewhere narrow and I will not even remove the valve first. And I'll continue inserting it until the entire pump has disappeared into

The monster truck. One of the first things I encountered in America. Apart from cinnamon buns. "Don't leave your head back here. Just go up there and live your dreams." Douglas pushed me forward into the queue. "Go orn, git." A few years ago I would have taken these words, uttered by a lover, as proof that any seeds of a relationship we might have been sewing had now reached their use-by date. But as I stood beside my companion of the past five months, studying his averted eyes, matted hair and stroking his heavy, sun-beaten hands, I took his words as they came. He was, after all, a veteren of more than four years living in survival mode on a remote strip of beach on a Panamanian island, fighting off the indians, living his dream. He pushed me towards the shuffling migration line. I hung onto him like he was a dead man walking toward the electric chair, and all the while his eyes looking behind us self-consciously. "Y' just go do your thin