I am tapping this out on my Blackberry while flying from Hong Kong to Shanghai. I’ve been fortunate with a travel hiatus the last five weeks – that’s changing. Here is what the next few months look like… today flying to Shanghai then on to Beijing on Tuesday, back to HK on Wednesday. In HK four days then fly to US for six days. Arrive back Sat morning. Spend Sat/Sun/Mon in HK then fly to Australia (Sydney then Gold Coast) for the week, returning Nov 3. I am then in HK for eight days, after which I go on a whirlwind ten day trip across Asia with our CEO, starting Nov 12: HK -> Mumbai -> Bangalore -> Bangkok -> Tokyo -> Sydney -> Melbourne -> arriving back in HK on Nov 21. 

Wait there’s more… after 11 days in HK I head back out for the first week in December, return for five days, then do a quick trip to India from Dec 12 to Dec 17. That’s it for three weeks until I do a ten day trip to Orlando, Florida the middle of January 2007.

Whooosh… knowing this impending travel, and the energy required sustaining the pace, my body has been winding itself up in preparation. Not unlike the whine of a jet or helicopter engine starting up from "off" to a full blown roar of "let’s take-off!" My back tensing up has been a side effect of this wind-up. I finally had to get a massage on Saturday night. I feel better today but am still very tired.

The weekend was a little more hectic with Tess rightfully being cautious post-surgery. I’ll write later about our weekend. I have some very funny stories to re-count. Meanwhile, I will tell you that on weekends we often take the kids to Bowen Road on the four-seater Kettler trike. (The BMW of tricycles… a gorgeous piece of German engineering!) Obviously not this past weekend, but a few weeks ago we put together the video below to demonstrate this rather hilarious exercise routine.

By the way, Action Asia magazine recently ran a contest asking people to write in ten words or less how they maintain an active lifestyle. I wrote, "I run Bowen Road with four kids on a trike!" I didn’t win first prize (two round trip tickets to New Zealand) but I DID win one of the runner-up prizes: a pair of MBT shoes valued at over HK$ 2500! (US$ 310 or C$ 360.) I’ve wanted a pair of these state-of-the-art shoes for a long, long time, too. Wooohooo!

To reward those who have read this far… here’s the Bowen Road video! Please take a moment to rate the video and leave a comment. Thanks!

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