My gap (half) year!

This is where I'll be going, all planned out (minus the twelve days I have to explore northeastern cambodia). Hopefully, I can annotate it with places I go- provided I have access to paint. Click to get the right sized version, then click on the photo again for moar detail.

24/08: I hope to update the map soon in a format that doesn't require a microscope to see

30/08: The family are travelling too. Here is their own (far inferior, if I do say so myself, ha ha ha) blog:
http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/munsiebeesley/1/tpod.html
I'll add their route to my map

24/08: Halifax, that useful bank, insist I can only open a proper account (Ie, one I might use abroad) when I'm 18. How excellent!- considering i leave on the third of September, and this particular bank's idea of 'seven working days', I should have a working account just as I reach Cambodia...

29/08: We have bought enough anti-malrial drugs to construct a small outhouse.This outhouse will of course be used to hide the elephant in the room, that a company is profiting from our sincere desire not to spend weeks vomiting ourselves to death. Glaxosmithkline, you can shove your drug monopoly right where the sun don't shine....come to think of it, that'll kill your profits stone dead as well. insult to injury, eh?

30/08: Doubly teched-up with portable solar panels, and super-cheap phone(s).
31/08: I'm taking an internet course in teaching English as a foreign language for when I reach Cambodia.I might have finished by now, had my five year old brother not been determined to learn to play rollercoaster tycoon. Immediately. He can't click with any accuracy... or read.... Mind you, neither will the children I'm supposed to be teaching if he doesn't give up soon.
01/08: Have now been invited to all sorts of nice events that I spent most of summer sat inside, hoping to be invited to. Unfortunately, the Atlantic ocean and most of mainland America are now stand between me and a night at the Acca. Depending on your opinion, that's either good fortune or just a slightly longer trek home.
02/09: living with friends, as my parents have set off traveling before me. I can now enjoy a three day demo of what student life might have been be like if I'd gone to uni. Minus the awful drunks, poor hygiene and fighting over fridge space of course. Actually, this is probably nothing like student life. Hell, we even have carpets.
I'm not looking forward to traveling on the tube tomorrow. I'd rather be stuck with those Chilean miners than go back on the London underground. The nearest thing I can compare it to is being given birth to by an enormous version of Microsoft Windows that's a first time mother- It's hot, sweaty, exhausting, and getting anywhere useful boils down to random guesswork. Guess wrong, and you waste ten more minites trying to rectify your mistake.
03/09: It turns out that reflections in windows and actual people behind windows are hard to tell apart at this particular travelodge. I just had a horrifying moment when I saw what appeared to be a sinister hooded man smoking a cigarette right behind me, staring directly at me. What's worse, is when I turned round to look, he'd vanished. I'm glad I bought that padlock now.

04/09: Arrived in Phoenix sometime around 7. I began to regret wearing my coat to save on hand-luggage space, as the local temperature was 42 degrees. at seven in the evening. After one hellish coach journey, we reached flagstaff.
Flagstaff is a lovely place, especially compared to the dustbowl I assumed I'd be living in. It's right by Highway 66 and near the Grand Canyon park. Stunning hills and beautiful pine forests are the best kind of thing to see on your first morning out- Along with a balmy thirty degrees to accompany your morning tea.
05/09: The trees are significantly less gorgeous now that I know what's hiding in them- Black bears, vicious squirrels, spiders whose bite can rot your flesh, rattlesnakes (with nice quiet rattles), venomous diamondback snakes, mountain lions (they can jump 18 feet in one go), scorpions, black widows, poison ivy, and rabies. I have to admit, there was a certain horrified look on my face when I first read this list. This was replaced with horror when I read the price of anti-venom, and the time it takes the helicopter to arrive. I will be going to wupatki tomorrow, as my first project doing fencing. Even more excitingly though, I hit the grand canyon in a week!
A proper explore of flagstaff made me feel like I was in every heartwarming American film ever made. No not sick, but an odd sense of familiarity. Here's the colonial style house with wooden porch. just next to it is the fire hydrant, followed by a cop car and newspaper stand. American flags draped everywhere, and huge SUVs. When I walked into the University, I was honestly expecting to wander into a scene from 'Animal house', or 'She's the man'.

until thickapedia works, this gives a nice overveiw of Flagstaff:
http://www.flagstaff.az.gov/

07/09/10: I'm sat in my tent, camped on what was once a Lava field, but is now reduced to pellets of black volcanic rock the size of gravel. It's sometime around 10pm, and the crickets are chirping in the pine trees. All sorts of beasties are lurking outside of my tent- lions and bears are unlikely, but snakes scorpions or hungry squirrels are an ever-present threat. Despite all this, Wupatki is pretty tranquil at night,with neither hide nor hair of anything deadly. It's great for stargazing, if you don't mind a bit of cold. In fact, our supervisor John is sleeping outside as I write. John is the man on whom every 'grizzled old prospector' character seen in films is based on- a total outdoors type, and as hardy as the rocks he chooses to sleep on. I wouldn't be surprised to see him return to camp with a dead bear in tow, trying to roast it on the fire.

Today, twelve of us set out to wupaki in the van. We came from all over- from Finland ,Sweden, Scotland, Korea, Luxembourg, and Germany. Not forgetting (Chorley and Bolton). Safe to say, a good mix of nationalities. The Wupatki ruins are the remains of an ancient pueblo dwelling- the pueblo people built entire settlements in one building, instead of having individual streets. Apparently, Sunset Crater, the nearby volcano erupted about 1,000 years ago, meaning the pueblo could farm much more easily and resulting in Wupatki growing enormously in population. One thing the volcano has done is mean I get a damnably comfortable bed- volcano pebbles plus a sleeping mat act a bit like a huge beanbag.
Fencing is not particularly difficult, aside from hauling in materials on a 'casholder'. This is a glorified backpack with a metal frame, which we use to carry barbed wire, etc. Sixty pounds or so of wire might not sound so bad, but half a mile of rocky desert later, and it feels like the entire population of Wupatki's on your back. And forget going as the crow flies- we followed a trail designed to avoid disturbing places that might have pueblo remains. This meant a little zigzagging; not what you really want to do at the end of a day's work. Mind you, we weren't exactly doing shifts down the coalmine, just replacing barbed wire. This was to keep cows from disturbing Wupatki: not that we actually saw a cow all week. We did see a long snake, which was given a wide berth. A rattler was also heard from the bush, which we sensibly poked just to make sure.
08/09/10:
Bugger and bollocks. It's sometime after midnight, and I'm in the van. It's howling a gale outside, and I don't care what the supervisor says, there ARE bears outside, and they're coming for my vulnerable young flesh. We'd had a pleasant day in the desert, with plenty of wind. I even got to try out the drill for putting holes into the rock. Unfortunately, on return to camp, the wind had wreaked havoc on our tents. Less than half of them were actually there, as the rest had been blown into the trees. My tent had less been blown away, and more been blown up, as both overhead poles had snapped, and the fabric ripped. Despite fixing it up with wood, gaffer tape, and Hebden Spirit, sleeping in it was like the tent-shaking scene in Blair Witch. So I retreated to the van, handily located right by where all the food had been cooked (which would therefore be the most attractive to bears). All I can say is i am incredibly Greatful to own a copy of Peter Kay's Autobiography, which has been getting me trough most of the night.

The following day was what might be the most manly day ever- I spent it drilling holes through solid rock with a guy who works on an oil rig, and a man on whom all the 'grizzled prospector' stereotypes in the world seem to have been based on. Since the fence goes up and over ridges. it needed some strong posts to keep the tension.