Book baby!!!!

Turning a collection of stories into a book.

There's me telling the story of my life but who is doing the actual hard labor, putting pen to paper?

Now I'm going to give him some shit right now because one of his catchphrases is ‘Don't you know who I am?!’ (a bit cocky, ya think) and this is a perfect opportunity to say ‘nope sorry, who are you?’. His name is Heath Ryan, 1: he's Canadian, 2: he's written a bloody job lot of books, 3: he loves cycling, 4:  he only picked cycling up about 8 years ago (or so he says) 5: he has been in Australia for 25+ years and hasn't lost the accent and 6: he's done the triple crown, which not a hell of a lot of people have done. What is that you ask? I'll let his site The Dark Knight explain it.

I'm telling you a lot about him but how did we meet?

So, one of my friends, who lives in the local area and I met down at lord Somers community camp a few years ago, started talking about me doing the 4 Points Ride in 2021 and he said “I know a bloke who is an ultra rider who goes by the name The Dark Knight.”  I thought it was an odd name to go by but never judge a book by its cover, great pun to use in this blog! 

Eventually, we managed to catch up and yer my first impression was a lovely bloke who talks underwater!

We got to ride together from Seymour to Euroa, before he went away to ride in Europe, and then again from Hopetoun to Ararat, it was a lot of fun. It was both the stories as well as the riding!

What's going to be encompassed in the book?

Well, it'll be about me, it'll be about the 4 Points Ride, it'll be about the crash and what I had to go through, and there’s a lot about my feelings from personal challenges to achievements.

Will there be an audio version?

That's my plan, how we shape it and how it works is still yet to be discovered, we are just mulling the ideas over at this stage.

Funny story about the diary.

I was handing it over to Heath so he could photocopy it and get a printout he could use as both a guide and the timeline of how we rode the 4 points of Australia. 

We were sitting up the back at Little Byrd and we both agreed we should read a piece from the diary as I’d never really ever read it because it had mainly been written by Mum. Heath opens up the diary and starts to read, ‘The date is the 17th of November….’ I knew straight away it was the crash date, I gave a little chuckle thinking fucking hell of all the dates why did it have to be that one…!

Heath didn't realise the extraordinary importance of THAT date and when he did, it silenced him - no mean feat!!!!  

The 3 points of Tassie.

This'll be interesting, I mean Heath can talk underwater so…. 

It’ll actually be a lot of fun and I can’t wait for it to happen! We have sat down and mapped the route (he loves doing the mapping, so I just let him finish it) though collaborative is best, in all senses!

The dates we are thinking about are mid-March till the start of May - May is the Month for Pediatric/Childhood Stroke.

We will also have Glenn, another stroke survivor, joining us to pedal the entire 3 Points of Tasmania.

Sometimes when talking with Heath I get on a rant roll, they can be ruthless. 

In reality, these aren't all rants but can just be stories with feelings. I can assure you these aren't aimed at Heath, he just has to listen, luckily he’s a curious fellow. 

The last one he had to cop started with my early school days and evolved to CTP (Compulsory Third  Party, S.A.) and the LSS (Lifetime Support Scheme S.A.), NDIS, and Services Australia. I think we got onto that topic because later that day I had a phone consult to discuss my ongoing support from Centrelink. Over the years some of these conversations had been pretty Shit, to put it bluntly. I think this vent was heard by a higher power as I can tell you now that this one was actually a very positive experience!

Anyway, I think that's enough for now.  These blogs are getting longer and longer so I want to downsize a bit.

Early days in the planning. If you have any useful information feel free to chuck them in the comment section.

Thank you!

For now,

TQ signing off.