Mon, 25 Sep 2000 00:22:40 GMT
From: simon @ millennium-ride.com
To: sponsors @ millennium-ride.com

2k/09/03
Wst Timor - where next? (II)

2k/09/01
Hot Spot Timor

2k/08/28
West Timor - where next?

2k/08/09
Smiling Indonesians

2k/07/25
India making me laugh and cry

2k/07/17
Whitewater frights

2k/07/12
Aid, kayaks & muddy ruts

2k/06/12
Nepal, the launch-pad

2k/06/02
Priceless Pakistan
+April 08+22

2k/03/28
Karachi-bound

2k/03/08
Hi from Dubai
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.
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+ more

A few updates to enhance your enjoyment of the Millennium Motorcycle Ride!

• Diary updates AND PHOTOS (including me with the Dalai Lama) to arrival in Sydney have now been placed on the website www.millennium-ride, check out those pics!
• Below is the latest press release being used here in Australia.
• A summary of sponsors so far too.

Fundraising here in Sydney is going well despite the difficulty in getting into the media. International patent lawyers FB Rice & Co (www.fbrice.com.au) must take the credit for being the first Australian Corporate Charity sponsor who came in with an Aus$800 plus a collection around their staff. We are now at just under US$1000 raised in Australia.
I feeling quite hyper at the moment, there are about 30 outstanding sponsorship faxes that I'll follow up on this week here in Sydney before departing for Melbourne on Friday. Olympics or not, the Millennium Ride aims must go on! However I was interviewed by New York's Bloomberg Radio yesterday!

Other companies and organisations to whom I express sincere thanks are:
Motorcycle Council of New South Wales in particular Chris and Ray Gilbert who are feeding me up and replacing my lost weight (now at 64kg), Bert Flood Imports, HR Hodgkinson & Co lawyers, Guy at Stanford Search Services, Galvin Marketing the Metzeler distributors, Perkins cargo, Northern Territory Government, www.motortraders.net and Motor Cycle Accessories for the new indicators thereby increasing the Honda content on the bike. Harley Davidson in Germany has been great by sending some new parts like 6 belts, 6 oil filters, clutch plates (yes its slipping and dragging), sprockets to Harley Heaven in Melbourne for me. These should all get me to North America - I'm planning that to be Alaska in August 2001. I don't know what I'd do without all these kind companies.

The bike has also gotten a new front tyre, new gaffa tape, and today we'll fit the last component on it: a fork brace specially made costing Aus$60.
Fancy riding all the way to Australia from Europe to finish off the building! No-one can accuse this ride of being orthodox eh? I was commenting the other day on how good the Overlander is though: I've thrown it down the road countless times but it's still a big bad beast raring to go!

If you've checked the tracker system on the web you'll find me somewhere in the Japan Sea! The longitude is reading OK but the latitude seems to be inverted. I've got to get it calibrated.

I did find out what the 'S11' protests in Melbourne were all about: large companies behaving badly at www.s11.org.

Lastly I feel like I'm entering a new phase of happiness. The closest way to describe it is by reference to the great music played on the radio here and even some TV ads, which extoll you to get out there and live your dreams, do anything you want (within God's laws) because all is possible.
I'm actually there doing it! Ahh life is good. Incidentally, my happiness seems to increase when I get more money for charity. So to me the universal law of proportional increase in your happiness being dependent on what you do for others seems to be proved! I'm not boasting, just being honest because our deal was that as a sponsor you'd share all this.

Cheerio, Simon