The First Three Days

Picture 1: The day before my journey began someone on Twitter asked me if I was going to have a big send off or not. I replied to say that I could see no way in which watching a 38 year old man cycle uphill could be turned into a 'big send off'. It didn't stop these four lovely souls coming out to wave me off on day 1.

Picture 2: James and Richard: my two Human Sat Navs for Day 1, shortly before setting off from Lizard Point in the wind and drizzle.

Picture 3: We were joined by their friends, Tom and Pete.

Picture 4: But Tom and Pete peeled off before the end so at the finishing line - Grampound Village Hall - it was just me Richard and James once more.

Picture 5: Grampound Village Hall became the starting line for Day 2 with my Human Sat Nav, Ivan...

Picture 6: Who took me all the way through Liskeard and out to Upton Cross and the magnificent Sterts Theatre - the finishing line for Day 2.

Picture 7: Day 3 and my Human Sat Nav was Richard. This is us about to set off from Liskeard...

Picture 8: This was the hardest day's riding so far with Richard guiding me to Tavistock and up on to ...Dartmoor. It's quite a climb...

Picture 9: A curious Dartmoor resident...

Picture 10: And here we are at the finishing line for Day 3; The Northcott Theatre, Exeter. I think someone's having a laugh by trying to arrange shows in the highest venues in every town...

Hello Ardlui... is anyone there?

Hmm... I'm getting a wee bit worried about one of the gigs on the tour.


I know I'm going to be exhausted but I want to try and perform a show every night because in some ways I think it's easier to maintain momentum that way. A night off can be like letting the elastic out of the system and it gets harder to wind yourself up to top gear the next day.

Organising the shows has been a far more complicated affair than normal. With a normal tour you go wherever theatres want you. You play when they're available... which is why on most tours you see people going from Southampton to Glasgow to Portsmouth to Newcastle or whatever. If that's when the theatre is available, you fit it in. But with the cycling tour that obviously isn't possible. Every venue has to be within range of the last and the minute one gig was firmed up in the diary all of the others had to fall into place. The only sensible date for a gig in Preston was the day after the Manchester gig and so on. There have been one or two venues along the way who've bent over backwards to accommodate the peculiar circumstances - and I'm hugely grateful to them for that.

In the long stretch after Exeter travelling out east to Lowestoft then north as far as Lancaster the country is well populated and there are so many good sized towns dotted around the place that if we couldn't find a venue available on a given day we were able to look elsewhere and take a slightly different route instead.

But after Glasgow there really isn't that much versatility available. The route takes me out to Ardnamurchan - the most westerly point of the mainland - and then back across the country heading north and east and it's not exactly overflowing with people or towns which is why some of the venues are a little more improvised. I'm not complaining about that, I really like the fact that doing a tour in this unconventional way has led me to play in such a wide variety of venues. There can't be many tours that take in halls ranging from 30 to 2000 seats.

One of the trickiest to arrange has been Ardlui. There isn't really another town in range that day and they don't have a community centre or village hall or similar. In fact we were told they were trying to raise the money to build one. So we suggested that if we could find a makeshift venue for the evening we'd donate the money raised to the fund. I thought we'd found a solution - and we probably have - but the trail seems to have gone a little cold.

While the local paper seems to have confirmed that the show is welcome at the Ardlui Hotel, we're finding it rather difficult to actually speak to anyone from the hotel itself. I reckon it's just us fussy London media types panicking unnecessarily but I'm told that a lot of phone messages have been left and e-mails sent without reply and it's really difficult to trust that the show is definitely happening without actually speaking to someone to confirm it. Fingers crossed.

And if you're in Ardlui, could you tap on the window as you pass by and let them know we're coming.

Re: Cycling...

Since announcing the tour I've been inundated with questions and advice. All of which is lovely... but I'm really not very well equipped to deal with much, if any of it.

A lot of people don't seem to believe me when I say that there's no real plan in place. It was an idea for a bike ride. Then I added in the idea of doing a gig every night. Then the gigs were booked. Then we announced the tour. But that's it. That's all I know. I haven't mapped out any particular routes. I don't know the ins and outs of how I'm going to get from A to B (to C to D to...) I don't know where I'm staying, what bike I'm going to use, whether or not anyone will be accompanying me, whether or not there'll be a support vehicle coming along as well or... well, or anything really. I genuinely don't. I just know that I'm doing it.

I can tell you that I've rejected the idea of a documentary. I'm very proud of America Unchained but one of the results of making the doc is that people assume that the events only happened in order to make a film. People don't realise they're doing it, but as innocent - and perhaps natural - as the thought is, it stirs a smidgen of cynicism into proceedings that doesn't deserve to be there. I think a fair few people who might well have enjoyed the book have decided that, having seen the film, they know the whole story... it's just that stuff I did in order to make a film isn't it? It isn't. It wasn't a "job" I took on... it meant more to me than that... it's just I allowed a film to be made about it.

I don't want people to be as cynical about this bike ride. It's something I want to do for myself. It's not a show about cycling... I'm just cycling to some shows. And I'm pretty confident I'd sell tickets for the show without the cycling. But if I was to make a doc about it... well then somehow, something beautiful would be stripped from it. I've learnt that it's impossible to convince an audience it would be happening anyway... if it's on telly it must have been done for the express purpose of getting on telly, right? Wrong. But seeing as that's how people feel, I've decided to turn down the opportunity to make a doc. Less people will hear about it. Those that do will know less of the details. But they'll know more of the spirit of it. Because it just is.

Loads of people have been in touch to recommend a route or to ask if they can accompany me. The answer to all of this is... I can't plan that far ahead. I'm not going to make an appointment to meet and ride with a stranger months in advance because I have no idea what I'm going to feel like when it's happening. Maybe I'll want to be by myself. Maybe I'll be craving a companion or two. If you ask me the day before a particular leg, I'll know how I feel about it. If you ask me before that... well the answer is always going to be, I don't know.

I can't pretend that I'm not scared of the physical challenge. It's a hell of a thing. It seems far more scary for having made it public. I genuinely hadn't appreciated how much harder I've made it by adding in the gigs. Riding from the southernmost point of the mainland to the northernmost, via the easternmost and westernmost points is one thing. If it was just that - just the journey - then it wouldn't have mattered if I took 6 weeks instead of 4. If I got tired and took a day off. Or just decided to call it a day 20 miles shy of that day's target it wouldn't have mattered. But when there's an audience waiting for you at the other end there's no choice. You have to complete the journey. It has to happen to a timetable. I have to get there every day. And when I get there, there's a mental challenge waiting for me, stretching out the day even further.

I've been cycling in my day to day business, getting myself in and out of town, but that's just pootling. It doesn't compete in terms of distances. So on Thursday afternoon I decided to go for a proper training ride. I headed off into the Lea Valley and just kept going.

I love London when the sun is shining. I love seeing crowds of people using the parks. I don't remember seeing that in my hometown of Stafford. The only people I remember seeing in the park were teenagers drinking cider and the occasional dog walking gran. Maybe it's because most people there have gardens - and most people with dogs will head for the wide open spaces of Cannock Chase. Maybe people use parks in London because they have less options. It doesn't matter. Whether it's because of the relative rarity of London gardens, or for some other reason entirely, there's still something really refreshing and energising about seeing public space so well used by the public.

Anyway, I rode out to somewhere near Broxbourne in Hertfordshire. Out past the pages of the A-Z, under the M25 and beyond. It was beautiful out there and it was agorgeous day for it. I'd have kept going but I had my eye on the clock so I turned round and came home. It turned out I ended up with a 36 mile round trip. I feel fine after. And momentarily, I feel just that little bit more confident about the tour.

You can do it Duffy Moon.

From L to B and back again

Having announced this tour (which is really a long bike ride with gigs added in) I've been inundated with questions. The easy questions have been about why I'm playing where I am... answer: because it's a big bike ride with a gig every night, but the others haven't been so easy.

Amongst the oft asked Qs are things like, "Are you planning on filming the show?" and "Have you got any plans to perform it after the tour?" The answer to these is no. But then people go away convinced that I'm not going to perform the show again and certain that the show won't be filmed. Every answer makes things seem so definite when the truth is that I'm a disorganised old thing who hasn't made any plans at all. I haven't thought about such things yet... the tour is a long way off. I probably will perform the show again... after all, it's not a show about the journey so there's no reason why not. But that's not the same as having plans which implies I have some secret dates in my diary that I'm not revealing. I haven't.

I've also been bombarded with advice and offers of help from people which is really lovely and touching. People with local knowledge are suggesting routes I should take and recommending places to stop along the way and so on and quite a few people have offered me places to stay. Quite a few more have asked if they can accompany me on one of the day's cycling. It's really been quite overwhelming and I'm very grateful for all of it... but I'm left feeling all the more disorganised because I simply can't keep track of it all. Right now, my priority is getting the show together and I haven't stopped to think about the logistics of the ride.

I'm worried that if I encourage people to accompany me I'll have a duty of care towards them. Am I responsible for their safety on the road if they're doing a journey they wouldn't have done but for me? I'm happy to take responsibility for myself but being responsible for other people fills me with dread. I don't want to be a tour guide.

And I can't decide whether staying with strangers would be more or less relaxing than B&Bs, hotels and the like. It appeals to the hippie minstrel side of me that is part of the reason for touring in this fashion in the first place but I have no idea what I'm going to do.

The end of August is just too far away for me to contemplate these details and the fab e-mails offering route-advice that I won't need til then have already been swept off the front page of my inbox to places where I'll struggle to find them. It's the kind of advice that my head doesn't cope well with at long range but loves when I can act on it with some immediacy.

I'm not really very au fait with the mobile internet. I've never craved a phone that has that kind of facility because the idea of being followed by my e-mails when I leave the house fills me with dread. But for this journey it might be a useful tool. If I was getting advice about routes the night before I needed them it'd be fantastic. On the day I'd know if I fancied company. After a night in a bland hotel I'd know if I fancied a change. At six months notice these things seem impossible to even begin thinking about. In the moment they should - I hope - make complete sense.

Incidentally, somewhere at the back of my mind, when I thought about doing this was the fact that I had previously done the London to Brighton bike ride for the British Heart Foundation. It's a roughly 60 mile bike ride and having done one it gives me confidence that I can do more. Whether or not I can do 33 of them in a row I've yet to find out. And the London to Brighton event creates artificially friendly conditions. There are nice, helpful marshalls lining the route, keeping you and the traffic apart and you're surrounded by tens of thousands of other cyclists who are going the same way. That won't be the case when I start my ride. The reality of what I've taken on is starting to hit me - and having announced it, it feels ten times more real than it was. Oh well, it's too late now.

But it occurred to me that I had no good reason not to sign up for the ride this year. And as a training exercise I think I'm going to try and cycle home the next day. I'm going to have to get used to intercity cycling between now and the tour so I might as well. If you want to sponsor me, (officially for the first ride and secretly for the next day's return journey) then please visit www.justgiving.com/dgorman

Book Tour

I used to have a 'news page' on the site... it progressively became more and more bloggy until I eventually conceded that it was a blog after all and moved it all over here instead.

But as it's become more of a blog it means that when I post something more newsy I feel like I'm being remiss... like I should find something else to spice it up.

But there isn't anything really... just some news. But it is good news.

The book - America Unchained - is published at the start of April and so I'll be out and about doing some book readings . Hurrah for things like that. The dates and details have just been finalised and I've just added them to the live dates page of my site so if you want to know the finer details I suggest you skidaddle that way... but the broad brushstrokes are as follows:

• March
• 29th - Cambridge
• 31st - Basingstoke
• April
• 1st - Nottingham
• 2nd - East London
• 3rd - Leeds
• 4th - Hove
• 5th - Central London
  
• 27th - Galway
• 28th - Manchester
• 29th - Cardiff
• 30th - Edinburgh
• May
• 1st - Glasgow
• 2nd - Dundee
• 8th - Fowey (Cornwall)

I hope you can come along...

[Typically... as soon as this was put online, and about five minutes after I'd e-mailed my mailing list, my publishers got in touch to say there was another one they wanted me to do... so I've just edited this list to add the Central London reading on April 5]

3 to go...

Just three more days and four more shows and the googlewhack adventure will finally come to rest. How strange to have been saying those words over and over again for so long and to so many people. Odd. The Seattle run is proving to be a fine send off for the show. While the size of the audience can vary greatly they always seem to be up for it and the show is really rattling along which is great because I'd hate for it to end on a damp squib.

There's a very nice review in The Stranger today. It'll make you proud to be British. If indeed you are British. If you're not, it'll make you wish you were. It's here.

Seattle is nice

I'm really enjoying Seattle. The second show was probably one of the best so far on this tour and really seemed to rattle along. There's a good review of the first show in the Seattle Times this morning too so it feels like we've hit the ground running.

I always like it when reviewers understand that it isn't really a show about computers and this reviewer definitely gets that. I know that the poster-quote they'll use will be, "a brilliant, humanistic tale of procrastinating, enabling, and side-splitting storytelling", but the most exciting part for me was the news that "Gorman is not inherently geeky". You see; I'm not a geek. It's official; it's in the Seattle Times. So there.

The whole review is on the reviews page.

Seattle starts

I was very happy with the first show here in Seattle. When I performed in Green Bay following a short break I was disappointed by myself for allowing the show to get a bit too loose and unfocussed so I was determined not to make the same mistake here and spent a good part of yesterday - when I wasn't doing press - trying to ensure that I was thinking about the show and not taking it for granted. It was time well spent and although I went slightly awry when discussing creationism the show was soon back on track and everything else was as tight as it should be. A nice crowd and a good show.

Ta ta LA

I used to detest Los Angeles... it seemed like a soulless place; shiny on the outside but with nothing much to offer but every time I come here I find I like it more than the last and it's just occurred to me that I think I actually like it. I can't think why.

Still, I'll be glad to be heading to Seattle tomorrow, as much as anything because this is supposed to be a tour and it doesn't feel like one when I'm basically sitting on my thumbs, taking photographs, balancing rocks and taking photographs of rocks I've balanced. (Not all at the same time you understand; you can't do the others if you're sitting on your thumbs.)

This will be the final two weeks of the tour and - in all probability - the final two weeks of this show, not just for now, but for good. It's been the dominant part of my working life for a goodly while now and it's strange seeing the end of the rollercoaster ride in sight.

Giving thanks

Happy Thanksgiving - if you're that way inclined. This is my third Thanksgiving and it's always an odd experience. The final episode of Genius went out this evening. That's been odd too; being overseas while the series has been broadcast... although I don't know why it seems odd... it's not as though, if I'd been in the UK, I'd have cycled over to the BBC each Thursday to press the play button on the tape recorder. (Yes, I'm sure that's what they use.)

Ta ta Green Bay

The run in Green Bay was all too short. I was expecting it to be freezing cold and inhospitable and - because I know about the Green Bay Packers being a huge NFL team I was expecting it to be a big city too. Instead we had unseasonably pleasant weather and it was a nice small friendly town that manages to sell out a 70,000 seat stadium every game even though the population is only just over 100,000.

The theatre was an amazingly attractive building and everything about the organisation from the management to the technical staff were really good at their jobs. Which meant I was particularly disappointed with myself for giving a bad performance on the opening night. It's the first time in a long time that I've been unhappy with myself onstage and I really didn't think I did the job well enough.

The next two shows were great though and in spite of my concerns the first show received a good review in the Green Bay Press Gazette so I shouldn't complain.

I've now flown to LA and like everyone in LA, I'm here to "take some meetings." Really. It sounds much more impressive than it is.

Too early

I had a very early start yesterday as I was promoting the Green Bay shows on a breakfast TV show at 5.30am. After that I had a bunch of radio shows to visit and another TV show to do. I especially enjoyed the last one (WAPL?) as I was sitting in with the hosts for a whole hour instead of the usual in-and-out 5 minutes.

Setting up the technical side of the show went smoothly and the theatre is probably the most beautiful I've worked in for some time.

Technology

Thanks to everyone who e-mailed me offering me copies of Genius but I've managed to make my computer work properly with the BBC player and so I've now heard the second episode. Richard Madeley was every bit as funny as I remember him.

I've been in Chicago for quite a while now which is fine because Chicago is a grand place to be but odd because it wasn't a scheduled stop on the tour and I haven't been doing any work so it feels rather like the brakes have been applied. But today we fly to Green Bay to resume the tour - if only for a few days. I've bought some woolly gloves.

Ah... so you do read it

I sometimes wonder if anyone reads this page or whether I bother typing in this nonsense and adding the pictures for no reason. And then I post something that sparks a number of e-mails and I realise that there are a few people out there reading this. My last entry was one of those.

It prompted three types of e-mail. The first came from angry residents of Fort Lauderdale and Miami, telling me that the hurricane wasn't going to strike until after the shows and accusing me of using the hurricane as an excuse to cancel shows because I had a sore throat. Believe me, if I was sneaky enough to do that, I also think I'd be clever enough to not mention the sore throat in the first place. It's like saying the dog ate my homework... which incidentally, I hadn't done.

The decision to cancel the shows was made on Wednesday before I'd done the final two shows in Gainesville - so I was in full voice at the time - and the decision wasn't taken by me. On Wednesday the media were predicting that Wilma would be in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday or Sunday. The venue and the show's producers couldn't really send us there knowing that a hurricane was predicted because they would have to be responsible for us being safely evacuated had it been necessary so they decided not to send us in there.

The second type of response also came from people in that area asking me if the shows were going to be rescheduled. The answer is that I don't know... but I doubt it. If it was in the UK - I'm sure it would be, because I live there, can work there whenever and can travel to wherever in a matter of hours. My time in the US is limited, my work-visa is limited and the costs of coming back to Florida just to stage three or four shows is probably prohibitive. If it can be rearranged while I'm here then I'd love it to be... Fort Lauderdale sounds like a great place and I'm sorry not to be spending some time there.

The third type of response I got was from people telling me about the naming of hurricanes and answering my question about what happened between Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. Thanks for that.

As it happened the hurricane slowed down and lost a lot of strength - alhough it still did a lot of damage. It didn't hit the Fort Lauderdale area until Sunday night/Monday morning so the shows would have been unaffected but our travel out of the area would have been and I don't know how many people would have wanted to come and see the show when they had a weather channel to watch on the TV and then outside their window. Heigh ho.

In the meantime the tour is now on Plan B (or maybe it's C or D) and we've been put up in Chicago for a while. It's a great city but having spent the last chunk of time in Arizona and briefly Florida, the cold is definitely a shock to the system.

Meanwhile, Genius, the Radio 4 show that I recorded earlier this year, starts its run on Thursday... the guest in episode one is Paul Daniels. It feels a bit weird being out of the country while it happens although I'm not sure why. Anyway... I hope you can listen to it and I hope you enjoy it.

Listings

In the UK it would be impossible for one of my shows to be arranged between a venue and a producer without me knowing about it and agreeing to it. You'd think that would be obvious wouldn't you ... after all, it's me that actually has to do it. Unfortunately that lesson has taken my American producers some time to learn.

Before this tour started I discovered that they had sold 8 shows a week to venues. It's nice to know that the demand was there but it's also not possible for me to perform this particular show that often. If you haven't seen it, it probably sounds like I'm moaning because, surely, it's just talking right? But it isn't really. It's a really physical show, it feels like going to the gym every night, and there are several sustained rants of blood, guts and fury that tear my throat apart each night.

I spend a lot of time between shows taking medicines to help my voice recover from the damage the last show did before then repeating, and worsening, the damage that night. For this reason I've never relished doing the show twice in one day and would want to avoid it whenever possible. Sadly my American producers had sold two-show-days several times to venues without bothering to ask me if it was okay. It must be tempting as a salesman to sell as much as you can to people... especially if you're not the person who's actually going to have to do it.

Most of these situations were resolved before the tour started but there were a few places where that wasn't really an option and Gainesville was one of those. Most of the venues on this tour are taking the show for a week or two which offers some flexibility... but Gainesville had booked 3 shows in 2 days. I did a 7.30 show on Tuesday while on Wednesday there was a 7.30 and a 10pm show... which gave me a 30 minute break before starting again. Twenty minutes in I was in pain and this morning I can't really talk much. If I had a show tonight I think I'd be forced to cancel it... but I haven't, more on that later.

What makes this all the more frustrating is that I don't think the late show should have gone ahead at all. I looked in the local listings papers and none of them mentioned that the late show even existed. The 7.30 show was there but not the 10pm. If one paper hadn't listed it, it would look like an error on their part but when all three of the local papers haven't listed a show it seems more likely that the venue haven't sent them the correct information. And it was reflected in the ticket sales.

On Tuesday we'd sold 4 tickets for the late show on Wednesday. By Wednesday that had doubled. Woo hoo. By show time it was around 18 people. It's as if a wealthy fool had booked that late show especially for him and his friends and insisted that information about its existence shouldn't leak out into the public domain.

Amazingly, it went well... although not as well as either of the two early shows had gone. But this morning I'm in pain, I can't talk and it hurts when I swallow and I have to wonder whether or not it was worth it. Of course the audience who turned up deserved a show... but shouldn't the venue have some responsibility in this situation also? Why buy a show into your venue and then not try to sell it to the public?

This afternoon I was supposed to be flying to Fort Lauderdale for shows tonight through Sunday but as Hurricane Wilma is also thinking of heading there this weekend, the venue and the producers have decided in their wisdom that it's unwise for us to go there and the shows have been cancelled. I've never had a show cancelled because of a hurricane before. How exciting. I hope it doesn't wreak too much havoc, mind.

Incidentally, if they name these things alphabetically, how did we get so quickly from Katrina, via Rita, to Wilma wihout hearing much about hurricanes L, M, N, O, P, Q, S, T, U and V?

We're staying put in Gainesville for another day while we work out a Plan B. I'll spend today being silent and sampling the various lozenges available in the various pharmacies in the hope that one of them can work magical restorative powers for my voice.

Signs

One of the questions I hear regularly from people after the show - especially here in America - is "How many words do you actually say?" or "How can you say so much so fast?" I don't know the answer because there isn't a script - the words aren't on paper anywhere and so there's no way of counting them but I do know that it's a relatively long show and that I get through a lot of words-per-minute.

I mention this because yesterday I wasn't alone onstage as the show was being signed for the hard of hearing also. I should think this is one of the hardest shows going to sign for. Not only are there a lot of words happening very quickly but there are also several words for which there isn't a specific sign. There isn't really time for the signer to spell coelacanth and while a synonym might do for bamboozled, say, a synonym isn't quite right because it is the arcane nature of the words involved that made them googlewhacks.

The signer - a really nice woman called Patti - was great and we spoke before the show about the best way of doing it as she'd been to see the show the day before. Fortunately there's a lot of visual information in the show as well, so in the brief interludes when the pace of the show really gets going the best way of Patti following the show was to just indicate towards the screen and let it speak for itself.

I'll be sorry to leave Scottsdale. It's been the most enjoyable stop on the tour so far and the audiences have been great - especially this last Friday. It's been like being on holiday with much more to occuppy a traveller than in our previous stops.

One more show to go and then a horrible overnight flight to Florida.

Hole

I took a drive out to the Grand Canyon on Wednesday. It was a 500 mile round trip but it was definitely worth it. The show has, in one way or another, now taken me to see The Grand Canyon, The Great Wall of China and Niagara Falls which I stupidly thought were all "7 Wonders of the World" © ®

It turns out that I'm completely wrong and my naive assumption that I'd now seen 3/7 of the world's wonders is incorrect. I was wondering what else qualifies as a "Wonder of the World" © ® so I had a quick look around the internet using some search engine or another (I can't remember which) and discovered that there are several different lists. The only seven that seem to enjoy a broad agreement are the seven ancient wonders of the world ... of which only the Great Pyramid of Giza is still standing so when it comes to viewing the "7 Ancient Wonders of the World" © ® it's only possible to see 1/7th of them and I haven't even done that.

Most people seem to have the Grand Canyon on a list of Natural Wonders though I'm surprised that Niagara Falls doesn't makes it on to that list and while The Great Wall of China is obviously not a natural wonder, I'm amazed that it rarely gets a mention on any of the lists because it's definitely one of the most wondrous things I've ever seen.

It seems that the original "7 Wonders of the World" © ® list was compiled by Greeks way back when and they didn't know that the Great Wall of China existed (or Stonehenge for that matter) and so it didn't make it on to the list. But why, as the collective knowledge of the world grew, people didn't promote the Great Wall of China and demote The Lighthouse of Alexandria, say (I don't know, I've never seen it) or why the world didn't decide that there were now 8 Wonders of the World doesn't make much sense to me.

Anyway... as far as Natural Wonders of the World go, I've now seen my first official Wonder © ® and the Canyon is something truly remarkable to behold. I took a light aircraft flight over it and loved every minute of it... even the minutes when I was tightly gripping the seat in front of me because of the turbulence. I'd recommend it to anyone.

Back in April I wrote about how it was impossible to capture Niagara Falls in a photograph but impossible not to try over and over again to do so. It was the same with the Grand Canyon - I took hundreds of photos but none of them convey the magnitude of it properly.

Here's one attempt:

and here's a picture of me dangling my feet over the edge of the most impressive hole I've ever dangled my feet over the edge of:

My mate...

I'm continuing to enjoy my time in Scottsdale. This really is a beautiful part of the world and the most relaxed I've been on the tour. To make things even better I've had the good fortune to be joined by a couple of friends from the UK who brought a jar of Marmite. Gorgeous sunshine and the yeast extract of my dreams... what more could a man ask for? It's the best of both worlds.

Quite a backlog of e-mails had built up in the last week. As I made my way through it I learned that the episode of the retro-panel-game What's My Line? that I took part in back in August was broadcast a few days ago and, more surprisingly, that I was recently the answer to a question on The Weakest Link. How odd.

#109

I'm enjoying Scottsdale much more than I enjoyed Aurora... but then that isn't difficult. This is a truly beautiful part of the world and I took the opportunity on Monday to drive out to a town called Sedona and to visit Slide Rock Creek. I've seen this landscape before, but only in a Roadrunner cartoon. It really is spectacular. And the 150 mile drive was better than a day of mini-golf.

The city of Scottsdale also offers plenty to see and do... and here's some love from me to you.

The shows are going well here also with a great venue that really fits the show and two great audiences so far. People had warned me about discussing Creationism here as it's perceived by others as being a place where Creationism is likely to be rife. But so far, that part of the show has gone over really well and without the awkwardness that I sometimes perceived in Cleveland, say.

Maybe I've subtly adjusted how I deliver this show over the last few weeks to account for the potential to offend or maybe the people of Scottsdale are just more comfortable with the subject being discussed. Maybe they're aware that other parts of America think they're more likely to be Creationists and so enjoy the opportunity to demonstrate with a chuckle that they're not. Or maybe tonight the audience will storm out in protest and I've just been lucky so far.

I had a surprise waiting for me after the show last night in the shape of yet another Dave Gorman. He's the 109th namesake that I've now met. It seems so odd to me that so many years after I stopped looking for them they continue to come and find me. I was originally trying to find 54 (one for every card in the deck, including the jokers) and once I'd achieved that, naturally, I stopped looking. I completed a second deck's worth back in April in Toronto, and now, I guess a third deck has been started. It was a pleasure to meet him and here we are.

Fare thee well, Aurora

Relations between me and the venue turned a little sour on the final day - not that they were ever wonderful. The contract we have with the venue stipulates that publicity for the show will be posted in front of the theatre which I would have thought was an unnecessary stipulation until I visited Aurora where the fact that they were a theatre wasn't even on the front of the building.

This led to a situation where we decided to threaten to cancel the show unless they put up signs telling people that the show existed and finally, on the last day, they relented. While every other show had seen 20 paying customers fail to appear with the magic addition of signs to help people that number was cut down to one. As if by magic! Tadaaa! Oh no... it's not magic is it... it's common sense. What followed was a really enjoyable show too.

I was really sceptical about the Sunday matinees being on the schedule before the tour started but they've been consistently good shows so far so, while I don't understand why someone would want to spend their Sunday afternoon in a theatre, it seems that those who do have been great audiences.

It's a shame that things had to get so unpleasant between the venue and us - especially as the technical crew and the ushers and front of house staff were so friendly and easy to work with.

Heigh ho. We're in Scottsdale, Arizona now. It's 1am. It's hot out.