Sad news

Dear Sir/Madam,

I regret to inform you that this will be the last blog post at hapworkingtheworld.com. It is with a heavy heart I tell you that Hap suffers from a rare problem or disease if you will. It is a disease that has come about in the new generation of technology and social networking users. It has come to our attention that Hap is what is known as a blogaholic. Hap has all the symptoms, he always carries his camera with him in case of a photo opportunity for his blog, at times he lays awake at night thinking about the “next post”, and he can’t even have an unexpected bowel movement in an awkward situation without telling the world about it. So it is in Hap’s best interest and his African Expedition that we will temporarily be pulling the life support unit from hapworkingtheworld.com. I hope you take this news well and support Hap in his time of need.

Yours sincerely

Dr Joe Blogs

Blogaholics anonymus’s Chairman.

Haha, that was all a bit dramatic, traumatic…………………..ummmm automatic (ummm no?). So the end aye? Or is the end merely the beginning?

 A good analogy is that of my first pet mice, Rangi and Sangi. One morning as an eager playful caring 7 year old I bounced out of bed to my mouse cage that I had just spent the day before cleaning. Chubby Sangi was running on his wheel trying to lose his mousy love handles and Rangi was sleeping in his cubby hole. I picked little sleeping Rangi (my favourite but don’t tell Sangi) up out of his bed of fresh crispy shredded paper only to notice that he was missing his tail and his insides were outside his furry little body! Yep, my detective work pointed to Sangi, he murdered his cage mate in cold blood.

But with the death (or murder) of something comes the birth of something else (very ying and yang of me). Dad helped me bury Rangi in the vegie garden, and I changed Sangi’s name to Lightening and Dad bought me a new mouse who I called Thunder. Now I think of it, this is a crap analogy because Lightening (originally Sangi) the cold hearted barstard ended up eating Thunder! 

The reason I am temporarily pulling the plug on the hapworkingtheworld life support systems is not because I’m a raging blogaholic (debatable), but because if I don’t do this I will never get around to creating my Africa expedition blog. The creation of the Africa expedition blog is the first major building block of my expedition, without it no one will take me seriously, well except you guys that followed me through my quest to get to Antarctica and know how determined, or maybe obsessive I am.

As I have written in previous blogs, Africa is consuming my thoughts, so the quicker I can get the blog up and blogging the quicker I can start sharing with you my thoughts. And I hope that you all jump onboard, it would be a shame to lose you guys that have come so far with me, and I truly believe that without your comments and support I wonder if I would have made it to Antarctica. It was super humbling when I had hit rock bottom in Paraguay after years of Antarctica rejection to have all the supportive comments and emails from you guys, you’re all awesome. Ok, I best stopping sprinkling ecstasy on my weet-bixs, I’m getting all emotional. (below is not me cycling, I have never written a touring bike in my life, although that is going to change very quickly. All these Africa photos were taken by Adventurer, Author, Speaker Alastair Humphreys who has kindly let me use them, go check out his inspirational website http://www.alastairhumphreys.com/, cheers Al).

But I will let you all know the new blog site address which I will have completed next month. You can come along for the ride and be a part of my Africa expedition, right from the idea generation, to my journeys completion on my 30th birthday next year, the 11/11/11 (Yep I’m turning thirty on the 11 of November, in the year 2011 and what makes is even weirder is that I was born in the 11th hour at 11:08am – yeah 3 minutes away from the 11th minute – good one mum! – you know I love ya). Oh, and in true hapworkingtheworld form I will also blog about any unexpected bowel movements in awkward situations that happen in Tassie or Melbourne before I leave for Africa.

Sorry, I think that ectasy is kicking in again, but it is a little crazy for me here writing my last hapworkingtheworld post. To think how far this has all come. I don’t know if you know how my blog came about. The only reason I started blogging was because while I was in NZ trying to sort out US immigration issues after being deported from the States I fell 5 metres from a rope swing in rugged mountainous bush, fracturing my spine that left me stranded in debt, not able to work, Mandy my girlfriend in the States finishing off her masters degree and her last year of teaching, not able to do anything physical, only wait and start the 3 month rehabilitation process. So I borrowed $5000 off my sister to kerb my credit card interest (before being deported I had just spent 6 awesome weeks backpacking with Mandy through Colombia thinking I was going back to a well paid construction job in the States) and bought this laptop. It’s the one I’m typing on now, although it has seen 2 new batteries and 4 new laptop chargers – bloody third world electricity supplies!

I started this blog to fill in my time while I lay flat on my bed recuperating from my accident. I started it to document my travels since I left New Zealand on my journey on April 7th 2003. And I started it so from February 2008 when I launched it, I would be able to stop writing in my tattered travel journal and start keeping an online journal, so not only do I have a record of my travels that can’t have beer spilt on it, or be forgotten on a bus, but my friends and family and can also keep up-to-date with my travels if they wanted to instead of getting one of my famous 2,000 word novel-like bulk emails that was unable to be read with only one cup of coffee and was riddled with punctuation mistakes for example this sentence you just read has 121 words in it!

So to think now that I have posted 214 blog posts, had over 60,000 people come and pay a visit to my blog with the biggest day seeing 1,907 hits (must have been a bloody boring day in the world), it’s rather……………….uummmmm I don’t really know how it feels, I suppose it’s hard not to feel proud, yep proud.

But like herpies, hapworkingtheworld.com isn’t going anywhere, it’s for life. If you type in www.hapworkingtheworld.com you will always come back here. Who knows maybe I come back to blogging here after Africa, maybe I’ll write a hapworkinghteworld book, who knows.

Don’t start crying just yet, there will be one last post following this informing you of the launch of my Africa expedition blog. I look forward to seeing you there and completing my working the world journey with you.

Nuthin but love Hap