I can't even begin to express the frustration. Days and days without acess to internet connection... and then finally when we find one, there just isn't the time, and then there's this fucking french keyboard that turns all my a's into q's and m's into commas - so a simple grammatic pause becomes a co,,q. It's like typing while wearing boxing gloves. Like typing wishing i was wearing boxing gloves, then i could punch the hell out of the computer with ,mininal damag to my hands, which are already battered from the ride...oh the ride! What beautiful glorious things i would tell you about the ride if i wasn't trapped in this spastic body of crippled text... like a mute, all the words are there bursting to come out, but the muscular contraction of tongue and lip and jaw won't let them free.

And it makes me think of Palestine, and the forced silence of a people under occupation... what stories they would tell you! And this French keyboard and this lack of time are the closest i can feel to the frustration they must feel. The isolation of truths untold. For me though it' relatively easy... when time permits i'll go and buy a querty keyboard, for Palestine it's not so simple.

I tell you how it feels... it's like that dream where you're an actor and your just about to go onto stage. First night. Lights sinking. Audience sighs into expanded expectation. And suddenly you realise you don't know your lines. You've never even seen the bloody script. And in fact you aren't an actor at all, but the bloke from down the road who came in to pick up a copy of... well that's my dream anyway. I think it hints at lack of readiness. Think there's a slight intimation of anxiety about the last minute nature of some of my preparations - i use 'preaprations' in its loosest possible sense.

Monday morning i'm sitting in the GPs surgery, waiting to have my travel vaccinations. Monday, mind, and we leave tomorrow... are you beginning to feel the fineness of the edge i'm cutting all this on? So, i'm sitting in the GPs and i'm mentally checking off the things still to do. There's the rucksack to buy, the contacts to contact, the sponsors to meet, the weblog to log... but all this is sort of do-able. So why this real sense of something missing? A thing so missing it feels like an amputation? In six days time i'm setting off on The Peace Cycle, i've raised the funds (though the cheque's still not in the bank), i've sorted out a sublet for my room (though my room's still in my room, and not in the crates i've still to buy)... are you getting the angst of it all... but still this is only angst, it doesn't explain the genuine rising panic. The Peace Cycle. I'm going on The Peace Cycle. Peace. Cycle. Of course, the clue's in the title. Peace? Well we haven't got that. The whole project is kind of contingent on us not having peace. But Cycle. The cycle is important. The cycle is the one piece of equipment that will propel us forward on this insane mission for world peace... and i haven't got one, or at least i haven't got one that's capable of going the distance.

And now i have got one. A brand new, squeaky clean, shiny bicycle - but of course that's going to bring problems of its own. I've not trained on it. In fact i haven't trained on anything. I've been too busy fund raising to have time to put in the hours of peddling, so now i'm trying to mentally prepare myself for the most painful two weeks of buttock chaffing known to humankind... oh god it's going to hurt.

But that brings me onto the point of it all. And there is a point. It's easy to get tied up in the detail of personal fears. To allow the chaffing of an unprepared arse to grow large as a baboons bottom during mating season (do baboons arses get redder when they're horny?). And make no mistake, it's going to hurt. But take a look at the front pages of the newspapers, the gutted grey slabs of buildings, turned tombstones where Beirut stood. Go further, hunt out the websites showing the wreakage of Palestine, because this is the stuff you don't see in the papers. Look at all this, because this is pain. My arse and it's chaffing is a mere scuff on the thick skin of a priveledged existence. And this is the point. This is the motivation. If all i can do is sit on my arse and watch this stuff unfold. The massacres, and the attrocities and the general low-down theivary of human life. If all i can do is bear witness to such degree of suffering, then i'll sit on my (too new) saddle, and i'll ride to Jerusalem, shouting all the way for peace. I'll apply the salve of this action to sooth the guilt of my tender western conscience, just as i'll apply the vaseline to my buttocks... and maybe on the way this insane leap of faith will find its own ways to sooth the anger, to lubricate the processes that lead to dialogue, and to smooth the path for an open road to peace.