The price of fame...
Well, not exactly fame, but I'm working on it. A busy week for media activity here in sunny California. Over the last 7 days I've been on the front pages of at least 3 local newspapers (The Almanac, Palo Alto Daily News, and San Jose Mercury News), been filmed sweating it out at boot camp and on my boat by NBC 11 (due to screen tomorrow at 10.50am PST) and have been booked for two more radio shows and a TV chat show. I cancelled my exploratory meeting with a PR agent, as it seems I already have more publicity going on than I can handle. Funny how there was nothing for ages, and then it suddenly starts to snowball. As I've said before, progress is not linear...
The most fun media happening was Saturday night's photo shoot for the New York Times Magazine (Play section, due to appear in June unless something much more important comes along).
On the face of it, doing a photo shoot in the pitch dark, on a boat in howling storm (pouring rain and winds of up to 20 knots) may not sound like the most fun way to spend a Saturday night, but the photographer and his 3 assistants were such great guys that the time passed quickly. Jason was a demanding boss - one poor assistant was crammed into my cabin with one flash head, another desperately trying to comply with Jason's demands for "More light on the [effing] water!" while a third held an umbrella over Jason and his cameras, trying to protect them from the hostile elements - authentic, at least.
The results justified the means - when Jason showed me the pictures on his laptop, he had indeed delivered on his promise of a "rock star photo". (And they say the camera never lies?)
It then required two whole hours in a nice warm pub to emerge from my hypothermic state... purely medicinal, of course.
[photo: I do have photos from Saturday night, taken by Eric, but don't want to steal Jason's thunder, so here is a pic of me in sunnier times at the KKMI boatyard]
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A friend sent me this...
1. go to http://www.google.com
2. click on "maps"
3. click on "get directions"
4. type "New York" in the first box (the "from" box)
5. type "London" in the second box (the "to" box)
(hit get directions)
6. scroll down to step #23
... so then I tried "San Francisco" to "Hawaii" but it deadpanned back the message "We could not calculate driving directions between San Francisco, CA and Hawaii."
Too bad - guess I'll have to row then...
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To all those trying to browse my site this weekend, you will probably find that many of the links are not working. This is because my webmaster is moving my site from one server to another to improve future performance. Order should be fully restored by Sunday evening. If you find any broken links after then, please let me know using the contact form.
Apologies for any inconvenience, and thank you for your patience!
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This week is turning into a blur. Just like the springtime buds on trees suddenly bursting into leaf, many of the possibilities that I've been developing over the last 9 or 10 months are opening up. Irons in fires and fingers in pies are bearing fruit and coming home to roost, and all other manner of mixed metaphors.
In short, I'm feeling quite punch drunk from all the rapid developments that have taken place in the last few days - it is hard to keep up with all the good news flying my way. I have to keep reminding myself to take a deep breath and stay calm.
I am dying to tell you about all of them right now, but I feel I should ration them out and break the stories one at a time, so I can do justice to each. So have patience and all will be revealed in due course.
It is an interesting thing that I have noticed since starting to organize expeditions - that I can work and work and work and nothing much seems to happen. Then in the space of a week or so EVERYTHING happens. I have to keep reminding myself of this when the going seems tough - that progress is not linear, but if I just keep doing the right things, with the right attitude, then all will come right in the end.
Keep watching over the course of the next couple of weeks as we finalize the paperwork on a number of deals, and I will tell all.
[image: progress is not always linear...]
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