Oh the HUBBUK was fabulous - so many amazing people who all seemed to be prepared to spend time chatting with idiot, newbie me and pass on their wealth of experience. As soon as I explained my trip they were more than happy add add places to visit and ways to get there. I’m so thankful! It reminded me so much of the web development community around Drupal that I am involved with.

The HUBBUK also gave me the chance to hear about the thing that travellers actually needed in the future form a new, improved horizonsunlimited.com and that’s largely where a lot of the plan for structured “experiences” to be logged came from. As a community, we have such a body of knowledge and it’s just a case of being able to present it all in some vaguely readable format that matters. Looks like I will have my work cut out for the next couple of months...

Oh yeah, and I somehow got carried away and entered the slow bike race. On a muddy wet field, on road tyres and a 160hp BMW S1000XR - how did that even happen???

I kind of knew I’d make an idiot of myself, I just didn’t want to drop Idris and cause any damage at the start of the trip - I just had to at least make it to the end of the course in one piece and let the experts show me how it was done.

Well, turns out I won my heat. No idea how! Then, I won my second heat - and then the semi-final. Oo eck - I was in the final!

This was kind of embarrassing, I suppose! I was on the most ridiculous bike for the job and I’d made it into the final. Maybe all that time trying to trackstand at the lights actually does have a purpose after all! 

My luck didn’t last forever, though - I came third in the end!

Oh - and by getting as far as I did, I found myself running late for the session I promised to do on protecting your laptop etc when you are travelling. Oops. Anyway, I ran back into the building and had to do the talk without any slides as they were still on my laptop up in my dorm. Hope I didn’t do too bad a job!