Cleared For Takeoff!
Well folks, yesterday I went to the doctor and he gave me the all clear. He read my bloods out to me and since I split up with my wife in January my physical health has improved out of sight. My cholestrol is down from 6.2 to 4.6, my liver has improved, and so on. Even though I am a big bloke of 190cm, 126 kgs was getting hard to carry round. Doesn’t worry me now though, because I am down to 114 kgs, and intend to get down to 110 kgs by my 50th birthday on the 18th of April. How have I fine tuned my body in such short time? I don’t have any money, I don’t belong to a gym, I am eating properly. It is my red treddly MTB that I bought five years ago and the kids have been trying to borrow and buckle and wreck ever since. Yes folks myred treddly is my saviour, and it aint over yet. Since splitting with my wife I have put more of my very limited budget into my treddly than everything else combined, except for the rather huge bills that hang over my head from the separation. Why, because fundamentally investing in my bike offered the greatest return, the most options, and the most freedom given my situation.

So whats the plan? Stage one is to equip my bike with the a weapons system that gives the MTB the capability to be airlifted into Cairns, Queensland on a super cheap $145 flight from Sydney, then ride down the coast at a sustainable, enjoyable pace. During this trip I intend to conduct research into relationships of males sufferimg fro depression, their friends, family and the community. I intend to investigate perceptions of depression, how it affects relationships and their sustainabiliy, and various influences that are beyond the control of the indivdual, such as natural disasters, access to healthcare, finacial constraints, and stigmatism. I intend to make up a simple questionaire withless than ten questions thatI can ask between two and five participants a day as I travel down the coast. On top of this I intent to utilise note pad, this Nokia N8 smartphone, a Sony Handycam, and a helmet/bikemounted camera to record and deseminate information on a daily basis through this blog, facebook and and possible a short documentary. The information collected through the questionaire will be offered to a research organistion for corelation or maybe even used by me for post graduate studies if I am not over it all by then. So feel free to join me on my adventure.