Paying The Bills (July 17th)

As mentioned yesterday, a small freelance project has come along and since it has a somewhat tight deadline (don’t they always?) I thought I’d best tackle it now while I know what sort of access I’ll have to the essentials (i.e. power and WiFi). As such, today I’ll be living in luxury at the Willy Wallace Hostel in Stirling. Yes, “Willy Wallace” would be the same William Wallace as portrayed by Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

The relocation from Witches Craig Caravan Park and the Willy Wallace Hostel would be generously described as minimal. As in about 5 km. That’s about as minimal as it gets on a cycling tour. And as an added bonus, there was no rain while I was packing up so I won’t have to worry about drying out my gear while at the hostel.

The 5 km ride to the hostel only took about 20 minutes – and it was a very leisurely 20 minutes. I knew check-in wasn’t until around 2:00 PM but I was hopeful if I arrived early that I could hang out in the common area and get to work. Those hopes were met.

I unloaded all my gear and set up my “office” where I essentially stayed for the remainder of the day. As offices go, it was pretty good and the time went VERY quickly. It never ceases to amaze me how fast time can go while editing or searching the internet for various stock footage clips and such – the latter being a process that inevitably takes MUCH longer than you’d think. That said, I managed to get a first draft of the video sent off to the client by late afternoon (local time, so it was late morning back in North America).

With work taken care of for the time being, I headed out to get some fresh air, exercise, and groceries. Upon my return I was surprised (but happy) to see that there was already client feedback waiting for me. Things were moving along nicely. Fortunately, the changes requested were relatively straightforward and I was able to finish things off before the end of the day.

With the freelance project complete, I turned my focus to finally getting my blog at least somewhat up to date. Unfortunately, by this time it was close to midnight and, well … by my count I’m about eight days behind and clearly that wasn’t going to be resolved tonight. The solution? Well, I’m going to stay an extra day in Stirling and desperately try to get caught up on those updates. Hopefully you’ll be reading this particular update somewhat close to July 18th. Plus, I’m not entirely convinced there won’t be more changes to the video I just “finished” so it’s probably best if I stick around for that as well.

Today’s insignificant totals:
Distance travelled: 5.37 km
Ride time: 24:23
Average speed: 13.21 km/h
Maximum speed: 33.01 km/h