Big Update

Wow ok so it's been a while! I have not been near a computer for a couple of weeks now for long enough to write an update so this will count for a lot of stuff.

Let's see... My last few days in Madrid were good ones. A day or two after my last post I managed to meet up with the entire Madrid Parkour community to train. There is such a good scene here - about thirty traceurs attended the session of all abilities, including some who had been training for around eight years, which is brilliant especially in terms of teaching the new guys. So I spent most of the day with them keeping it fairly subdued actually because I didn't want to risk any sort of injury that would mean I had to stop. Great day.

I met up with a smaller group again one evening before leaving Madrid and did some filming of them on my diary camera. Again had a really good session.

Other than parkour I spent the last few days speaking with someone who has inspired me greatly, especially with my ongoing script writing. It was brilliant to try out the story so far on somebody who has never heard it before. It's strange but I feel like I've always known this person even though we only met four days before we left.

So that concludes my time in Madrid, about two weeks in total, after which I felt just about ready to move on again.

We left our hostel at around 6am to head for the airport. From the airport we caught a flight to Moscow. From Moscow we had one connecting flight, the second taking us to deep Siberia.

Siberia is cold.

Upon arrival we began our second challenge for the BBC production. As ever i'm not going to go into lots of detail but essentially once the challenge was over for all of us we returned to the small town and stayed with a fantastic lady who fed us well in a warm house. I loved the community in this town. It was as if the fact that they were so disconnected had stopped them dwelling on any problems. They seemed to just make the most of things.

I've decided I don't like the phrase 'make the most of' for two reasons. Firstly it suggests that you don't normally make the most of something and secondly, and more importantly, I've found that it makes me worry too much that i might not be 'making the most' of a given situation. It seems to make me feel like I have no time in my life, which is something I hate. Therefore I have decided to make exactly what I make of any further situation, and nothing more or less.

Anyway I can't really tell you much more about Siberia due to the fact that it would spoil the production somewhat so I will move on.

We stayed in Siberia for around two weeks at which point our epic 48hours of travelling began. So here we go...

We left our small Siberian town at around 6pm and got our first connecting flight to Yakutsk on a small two-propeller aeroplane, which had a few dents but was basically ok. Arriving at about 1am we stayed in a hotel overnight and I got a bit ill from drinking a glass of milk - I didn't know that milk in Russia is generally not pasteurised. Anyway at around four in the morning we left the hotel and returned to the airport to get the second flight back to Moscow. We hung about in Moscow airport for a good few hours before getting our third flight back to Heathrow, London. This was VERY strange. I had pretty much geared myself up for returning to London only at the end of the four months, so seeing the Thames as we flew in at about 11pm felt like a dream. Stayed in another hotel near Heathrow and got up again at around 4am, back to the airport and caught a flight to Housten (America) that took around nine hours. This was actually the best bit of the journey because we had in-flight entertainment! Wheyy! So from Housten we ran through passport control and security and missed our second flight out to Mexico. Luckily there was another flight one and a half hours later that we did manage to get, having filled our spare time with eating pizza. This flight was about three hours long and dropped us in Mexico, which is my current location. I am writing this from the hotel we are staying in now for two nights before travelling out to the shoot location for the third challenge.

So that's basically the update.

Thoughts wise I've been pretty down the last couple of weeks for a number of reasons, mostly that someone who's support I valued massively is unable to speak to me now. Even though I have been with the other guys and crew I have not felt this alone in ages. I've basically just been wanting to come home - another reason stopping off in London was really difficult. However, there is literally nothing I can do about this from Siberia, Mexico or anywhere else so I'm just having to deal with it.

Hopefully things will feel better soon.