Last week was quite a week for walk preparations. New sponsors have come on board: the excellent Maurice Gowen at MSR has kindly donated tents, Thermarest mattresses and water equipment to the cause, Deb Lazenby has helped Thorlos socks become our official sock sponsors by donating six pairs of their finest hiking socks for us to wear and on Friday morning I attended a fantastic meeting with Michael and Thomas at Fairpoint – a Danish company who are able to provide us with invaluable GPS equipment manufactured by Garmin. This last donation is especially needed – for those of you who don’t know already we have to go to the desert in the winter of 2006/7 in order to bury water. If we don’t do this it’s impossible to get across Utah – too many long stretches with nothing to drink. The GPS equipment will enable us to bury water caches every ten miles or so and therefore not die of thirst alone in the desert. When we return later in 2007 the water will (hopefully) still be there and we stay alive. It’s that easy.

The website keeps drawing visitors – we now have over 100 messages in the Guestbook (no one is allowed to ask where the first 26 are. Sjoerd, here’s a tip, aim for another message when the number gets to 126 😉 and it appears that people Dave and I are not immediately familiar with are finding their way to the site. Many thanks all new visitors! Oh, and thanks to those of you who have pledged some money to the British Heart Foundation – if anyone else is in the mood to donate to a worthy cause, please click here in the knowledge that the BHF’s webpages are secure…

Other developments this week…Despite three months in the gym I wasn’t really in top form in the first game of my team’s football season. It’s never easy when playing on pitches that resemble WWI trenches but I had for some reason imagined that my time in the gym would have me returning as a Frank Lampard figure, or at least someone with  the odd moment of skill like Gordon Durie. Sadly, this was not to be, and instead I resembled nothing but a player from the Danish 7-a-side Workers’ League, which I guess was more appropriate. We lost 3-2. Can you ask for money back from a gym?

Finally, news of our going away thing. I can’t believe we haven’t put this on the site yet but here goes. Over to Dave’s email:

“fellow travellers, a date for your diaries

if you can squeeze your way past the a&r hordes and the lines of hysterically moist teenage girls, you can once again witness the awesome experience of the crucks live show.

ladies and gentlemen this is an event that will live long in the annals of music history. as you may now be aware, cruck #2, hotfoot Toolan, will be shortly leaving the band for an 18-month-long sabbatical brought on by the unceasing pressures of writing, touring and recording cruck music. this gig will be your last chance to cruckify for the foreseeable future; this will be hotfoot’s last weekend in brighton for quite some time.

complimenting the crucks, and featuring a line-up that’s countrier than rutland, will be the majestic dials

http://www.thedials.co.uk/index.jsp

due to the delays in the construction of the new wembley stadium, the hastily rearranged venue is the upstairs of the hobgoblin. the music will start at 9.30, friday the 12th of may.

we will unburden you of £5 worth of your materialistic shackles on the door in the name of the heart foundation (and to buy the crucks the gold lame and burberry rhinestone suits they so richly deserve.)

history demands your presence.”

And so say all of us unconcerned at the use of 100% lower case. Hopefully see some of you there (nb. for those who don’t know Brighton that well, the Hobgoblin pub is at 31 York Place, opposite the Sainsburys on beautiful London Road)

All for now. More exciting sponsorship news next week I hope. Dave, it’s your turn to do a journal entry now, speak to your people…

Stuart                               Have a comment? Please sign the guestbook