If you were an entrepreneur I?d wager you?d gladly invest in a business in which people would wait silently for 30 minutes to buy $3.95 worth of merchandise from bored counter clerks who wander absently away from their desks leaving but one colleague to deal with a line of 25-30 frustrated customers. This is an operation which has a store in every town or village in America yet complains in a rather whining tone that it is losing its core business to upstarts with brightly painted vehicles and smiling operatives in matching brown short / shirt outfits.

Of course we?re talking about the US Postal Service.

I needed to send a package of receipts and other paper-work to my accountant across town – a distance of six miles. Unfortunately the package weighed more than a pound and since that nasty Unabomber business a few years back this meant that I couldn?t put the stamps on the package at home – I had to go to the Post Office.

So I parked my car in the ?20 minutes parking – Post Office customers only? parking lot and joined the end of the line. A mere 30 minutes later I was able to purchase my stamps and leave. The line behind me had now extended to over 30 people.

Irony #1: There?s a notice in the USPS parking lot that warns you that if you spend more than 20 minutes in the aforementioned parking spots you?ll get your car towed. Have you ever spent LESS than 20 minutes in a Post Office? This must surely be the next profit centre for the USPS – they could rightly tow the car of every customer who visits their establishment. Turn a $5-00 profit on every towing and the USPS would be on top of the Fortune 500 in no time.

Irony #2: Lance Armstrong, Mr. USPS himself, recently rode the 2,500 miles of the Tour De France at an average speed of 24 miles an hour. Now if, instead of standing in line for 30 minutes to get stamps, I?d given Lance my package (which would easily have fitted in the back of his USPS cycling jersey) he could have ridden to my accountant?s office AND BACK in the same 30 minutes! Now I know why the USPS is sponsoring a cycling team…

Irony #3: When I emerged back into the sunlight blinking and weary I was relieved to find that the USPS parking operatives were thankfully as slow as their desk-bound counterparts and were still trying to find a tow truck to remove my car. Then it hit me. If I?d just split the package into TWO envelopes, which would have each weighed less than a pound, I could have mailed the package from my home!

But then I?d need stamps for that wouldn?t I?

Dear Web,

Perhaps you can answer a question that?s been troubling me for some time.

Whilst cable-surfing in the last few days I?ve seen ads for a new movie with Tim Roth in it called ?The Musketeer.? If you?ve not seen the trailer you still know what it looks like: dashing French swordsmen wearing long boots, capes, pointed beards and floppy hats engaged in much swashbuckling. This particular flic seems to be about one of the three famous French swordsmen. But here?s the problem.

If they?re known as the Three Musketeers how come they?re famous for their swordsmenship and not their prowess with muskets?

Anybody know the answer? And while we?re talking about conundrums – how is it that seeds, when planted, know which way to grow? It?s not like each seed has ?this way up? written on it.

This morning, as I took a cab from my hotel to the airport in Paris, I passed along the Avenue de la Grand Armee and suddenly remembered that a number of years ago I would walk along that street every morning with my guitar in hand to go busking on the Metro. The reasons for my residency in Paris are too convoluted to discuss here but let?s just say I?d travelled across the briny because of a gas platform in the North Sea, Zola?s L?Assomoir and a long forgotten Hall & Oates album!

I was sleeping on the floor of a tiny bathroom of a friend of a friend who worked in a hotel close to the Place de la Porte Maillot. He would return from duty at 3am with a variety of eager girls who would use the bathroom as I pretended to doze in my sleeping bag before leaving their underwear behind and indulging in noisy sex with my host in the small room next door. It was a less than perfect arrangement to be sure but I was grateful for this stranger?s generosity which enabled me to prolong my time in Paris as I searched for work.

Each day I would find a pitch in the tunnels of the Metro and would sing Buffy St. Marie?s Universal Soldier and Randy Newman?s Mr. President as the passengers hurried by, the centimes trickled into my guitar case, and I kept an eye out for the police. My daily living expenses amounted to 15 Francs and I?d found a Vietnamese Restaurant on the left bank where I could eat a three course meal and get a glass of wine for 6 Francs. Today, as my cab sped smoothly towards the airport, I realized that my hotel bill for last night alone would have kept me strumming in Paris back then for over four months! It was one of many signals I?ve been receiving about how things can change and the relative price of what we value in our lives.

For instance…this morning I ate a hearty breakfast in the warm sun outside a cafe on the Avenue Kleber while I read about thousands of forgotten soldiers starving and freezing to death in Antony Beevor?s fine Stalingrad. I have just read the chapter in which the besieged and desperate General Paulus frustrated by Hitler?s intransigence dispatches a highly decorated tank commander to tell the self appointed military genius the truth about what was happening to his glorious army in the frozen wastes west of the Volga. The young captain eventually realized that Adolf, cosseted in his world of warmth and sycophancy, ?had lost touch with reality…he lived in a fantasy world of maps and flags.? The oddly mustachioed leader?s only concession to his beleaguered troops was an order that champagne be no longer served at his dining table!

A few days ago I ate a delightful lunch in the peaceful town square in Gergy. As I munched on my quiche I studied the war monument and read the names of those from the town who had died in the last two great wars. A fellow rider, whose mother was the youngest survivor to escape from Auschwitz, quietly pointed out a separate carved monument with a list of names upon it and the ominous legend: ?In memory of those who died, victims of Nazi barbarity.? The soldiers who?d died in WW2 were listed on the main monument so one could only conclude that this was a reminder of some unknown civilian atrocity.

What does it all mean? Perhaps it?s just a simple sign that we must be grateful for what we have and remember that all things are relative.

A post script…One day I met Randy Newman. As I shook his hand I told him that by playing his song over and over again on the Metro all those years ago I had managed to pay my rent and buy my evening dinner every day for a couple of months: I wanted to convey my long overdue thanks. He frowned, withdrew his hand from my grasp and turned away without saying a word. Perhaps when being thankful you only have to think about it…not everyone wants to deal with it!

I went to see Pearl Harbor last night to see what all the fuss was about.

They say making movies is like going to war and there is certainly a tremendous irony in the fact that a film of one of the most emotive, damaging and brutal events in 20th century American history probably required about the same amount of man hours and had more planning than the original event itself. And the reason we make war movies and then go and see them is that they are the height of drama – we are fascinated by the extremes of the human condition: the harsh, cold violence of bodies being ripped apart in the pursuit of justice and glory intercut with the warm, soft inter-twining of emotions and flesh in the pursuit of happiness and redemption.

But for all this Pearl Harbor disappoints…and then lingers. I think it disappoints for two reasons. Firstly the story is not very good. It?s OK but it?s hardly got the focus and the majestic sweep of a David Lean epic has it? The actual attack at Pearl Harbor was over in an hour or so, consequently every film-maker who has approached the subject attaches it to some other tale to give it a human aspect (Tora! Tora! Tora! would be the exception). In Michael Bay?s movie the story rambles so far and wide that there are scenes in England and China – the characters are forced to do voice overs while they write soppy love letters to each other half a world away. I?ve written enough of these letters in my life to know that even for the two people involved the letters are a shallow and frustrating substitute for real human contact. To boot the love triangle was reported in such detail in pre-release that there were no surprises for the audience in ANY of the plot points until after the last Zero was making its way back to Yamamoto?s fleet which happens about 2 hours after the movie?s started! That?s a tough call for a film-maker to overcome, and let?s face it if you go to see a movie called Pearl Harbor it?s no shock when the Japs start wrecking a lot of American hardware.

Secondly the film fails to achieve a human perspective and I think the prime example of this fault is the much discussed bomb-POV shot seen in the trailer where we watch the Japanese bomb fall from a great height and hurtle downwards towards the doomed Arizona. Supposedly Michael had the idea for the shot in a dream and it?s certainly a cool gag…but it?s also a product of the smart bomb generation. Those futzed images from the Gulf war that we saw of a bomb?s view as it hurtled towards Saddam?s installations and then went to black as the bomb and camera exploded were truly frightening, but mostly because they were anonymous and you never saw a real person – those few seconds of footage were the end result of the most expensive computer game you can buy: not a $200 Playstation but a half billion dollar jet and a million dollar bomb. But the thing which must have made Pearl Harbor (the event) so horrifying was the perspective of the guy standing on deck looking upwards at 500 pounds of perfectly engineered high explosive hurtling towards his head first thing on a Sunday morning. In short I want the sailor’s perspective not the bomb’s.

And here?s the thing I really don?t understand, and yes I am British so maybe there?s a detail I?m missing here, Pearl Harbor was an astonishingly bold and successful attack on the American fleet which, if I?m not mistaken, is a Naval unit. Now Michael Bay has made much in the press of how he wanted to tell the story of Pearl Harbor really like it was for the people who were there, so why is most of the story about a couple of ARMY flyers? (If they were members of the USAF I apologize, they do make reference to being Army pilots in the film, but my point still sticks). When is someone going to tell this story from the perspective of the hapless matelots about to take a dive, a sort of Das Boot on Battleship Row? And no, I don?t think Cuba Gooding?s short moment was that story.

And while we?re talking details here…am I the only person who has an issue with two FIGHTER pilots being sent on the Dolittle raid as pilots of twin engined BOMBERS? This is rather like asking Lance Armstrong to race across town on a Harley to deliver an urgent message because he?s the only guy who?s won a bike race that we know of.

Interestingly the night before seeing Pearl Harbor I watched an A&E documentary on Iwo Jima. The footage was poorly shot (I guess it?s difficult holding the camera steady when 20,000 Japanese people are shooting at you), the film was in black and white, the music was sparing, the voice-over was from a subdued former marine (Gene Hackman) and some weary and emotional old geezers who actually spent time in the foxholes of that ugly little island, but it could not have been (literally) more gut wrenching. Listening to a man describe how he watched his best friend try to hold his intestines from slithering all over the beach as he stumbled across the lava ash to his death is very disturbing. And this is what war is really about – the biting horror of continuous personal tragedy. We don?t need the detail but watching Kate Beckinsale trying to get her shit together seen through blur tar lenses as brutalized men stagger into the hospital at 60 frames per second does a disservice to her acting, the horror of the men who survived and died and us viewers who may only ever see war through the eyes of a film director. Michael, please don?t approach a scene of this magnitude with the slow motion soft focus approach that we use for soap commercials – it makes it tougher for us other video / commercials guys to get taken seriously as directors!

I?m disappointed at the end of the day for Michael, for Disney and for all of us. The much vaunted $130 million budget could have made 10 really great smaller movies or another Lion King movie and some spare change over for good deeds. If you want to see the truth about Pearl Harbor watch Tora! Tora! Tora! – though it too is overlong – it?s historically much more accurate, there’s genuine tension in the build up, there are some flying, crashing scenes that are REAL, truly awesome and better than anything in Bay?s movie, the Japanese admirals get to walk AND talk and Yamamoto?s ?sleeping giant? speech is delivered with true regret and poignancy. If however you want romance and human intrigue with your sinking battleships rent From Here To Eternity.

And death? It doesn?t need to be in your face and blood spatteringly graphic to be truly upsetting and frightening and terribly resonant. Rent Roger Spottiswode?s Under Fire and watch the way in which one of the lead characters is dispatched in an ugly, little incident seen through Nick Nolte?s eyes. This, I think, is how war feels: wasteful, unnecessary, uncontrollable, tawdry and usually pointless.

After a frantic two week spin through the Caribbean and Southern Atlantic I found myself one Sunday evening at 7pm kneeling on the floor of a wine and general foods store in the downtown section of Rio.

My prone position was not because I was looking for a hidden bottle of claret on a lower shelf, though a nice glass of wine would not have gone amiss at that moment, but because we were trying to open a packet of Doritos for the commercial we were working on. When you?re shooting a commercial you use extra-sexy camera-friendly product bags to entice you, the customer, to purchase said product. Camera-friendly these items may be but user-friendly they?re not. We just couldn?t get the bag to open properly and the situation had become so tense that here I was on the floor holding my monitor so that our actors could hold the bags in the perfect position for our shot – God forbid the bags would open right and it would be out of focus or off camera!

Eventually we figured we?d done it and delightedly I called a wrap, uncoiled myself and walked outside to where our crew and equipment had spilled across the street. During our internment at the foot of the Pepsi machine tables and chairs had been placed in the road and excitement hung in the air.

Then the drums started – a happy, frantic, frenzied rhythm rattled across the street as five drummers emerged from a store across the way, marched into the road and set the scene. That they were setting the scene was in no doubt – repeatedly they looked over their shoulders to see, one assumed, if the rest of the contingent was ready.

It?s warm in Rio in April and just as well because when the ?contingent? appeared the most substantial piece of clothing they wore were the feathers attached to the back of their heads! Their outfits, in different colours, were identical and presumably supplied by some company that specializes in producing quarter-sized, guilt and sequined edged bras and bikini bottoms so insubstantial they would have trouble doubling as a ribbon for that last tiny stocking-filler on Christmas Eve. The ?contingent?, like all good contingents do, came in a variety of shapes and sizes and two members in particular caught my eye. The first was a smiling, happy, enormous girl with thighs as thick as the trees in the rain forest. The two pieces of ribbon she wore were ridiculously small and I have to say I felt she was mammarialy challenged though she possessed an impressive barrel chest like the ones I?d seen proudly sported by Brazilian truck drivers. Perhaps ?post-op? is an unkind term but this was certainly not a girl to take home to Mum – this was someone you?d want at your side in a bar fight! My eye was quickly diverted to a beautiful girl at her side in white bits of guilt encrusted stringy things. She was slim and willowy, gently curvaceous, her mouth was – well just what young women?s mouths should be like – and those heels pushed her legs up wonderful and taught. She turned her back towards us and the white stringy bit that split her back-side in two left nothing to the imagination. And when she started wobbling her butt – well this is not the place to describe such details!

The girls shimmied left and right, the drummers drummed and I found I had a beer in my hand and I was whooping and hollering with delight just like everyone else on the crew. The job was done – it was at last time to relax. The drum beat changed – something was about to happen. What I had not anticipated was that something was about to happen to me!

I?d like to think that behind my back the discussion had gone something along the lines of: ?Nigel?s been working hard, let?s get one of those cute, virtually naked girls to dance with him.? At this point however some joker must have chimed in: ?Even better let?s get the 200 pound chick in the blue thong who?s been bench pressing Chevvys all week to shake her booty at him in public!?

And so the girl who re-defined the word Amazonian dragged me in front of the crowd and proceeded to dance with me – or rather dance at me. She shook a manly hip. I shook a manly hip. I started to worry that she was doing a better job of it than me. And then she ran towards me and just as she took off I realised my fate – I was supposed to catch her! Bulbs flashed, my puny biceps strained and the crew collapsed in hysterics as I staggered around the street with the only Brazilian girl I have ever hugged, her massive legs wrapped tightly around my waist.

The next morning I took a relaxing bike ride along Copacabana and Ipanema beaches and round the lagoon to watch the flying fish. There was much mirth pool-side on my return – I had completed a comprehensive cycling tour of Rio with glitter from my eager dancing partner still attached to my neck where her arms had nestled as we gallumped up and down the street the night before.

And the sexy girl in white? She danced with Chris, my AD. Story of my life!

Here we are staying at the Copacabana Palace Hotel for the second time in two weeks and I hadn?t had the time to even cross the road and visit this famous patch of sand which Barry Manilow eulogized about so eloquently. Out of deference to one of the greatest living American singer-songwriter / sweater wearers I felt that we had to stop working for a moment and a stroll was in order.

Nina (producer), Chris (AD), Daniel (DP), Eric (exec producer) and I picked a sand-side refreshment booth and ordered some chilled libations. Within moments the first of many hawkers visited us with their wares – though as it turned out these ones were quite unique: two girls with painted faces and hairy legs who were part of a musical theatre group raising money for their troupe to visit kids with Aids and provide entertainment – they had even printed up cards in the usual languages (French, German, Spanish, English etc.) to tell people what they were up to.

Being film-makers, i.e. self-involved skinflints, we shrugged our shoulders as if we didn?t speak any of the above languages (and let?s face it with 2 Yanks, 2 Brits and an Aussie, 3 nationalities with dreadful reputations for grasping foreign tongues, we weren?t telling too much of a fib) and Nina pretended we only spoke Japanese. Strangely this cunning subterfuge was remarkable for its complete lack of success and soon we were each being handed cards full of useful information about our star signs…in Portuguese!

I am an Aries. The bad news is I am supposedly Impulsivo, Imprudente, Agressivo and Extrovertido: not looking too good is it? But luckily I am also Instintivo, Intuitivo, Sincero and Voluntarioso. But I am also Batalhador. This worried me a lot and I had to finish my drink and return to my room pronto (not an English word but I understand what it means) to look up Batalhador in my pocket sized Langenscheidt?s Universal Dictionary – Portuguese (attractively priced at $7.95 from Borders and in a travel-friendly yellow plastic cover). As I scurried along the beach I wondered what it could mean. ?Batal? obviously referred to some kind of war-like activity involving the lopping off of limbs and other extremities with sharp cutlasses that flashed in the rain with Mel Gibson nearby in a kilt…he had a painted face and hairy legs too just like the girls from the theatre group, I was starting to see a pattern developing. ?Hador? had me stumped. As I climbed into the lift (elevator in American – you see my grasp of languages isn?t THAT bad) I decided a Hador was some kind of hat or protective head gear. I therefore concluded that subtly hidden amongst the list of revealing Arian personality traits was a suggestion that I should be wandering the streets wearing a crash helmet.

My luck was out. I?d saved cash on the purchase of the dictionary and my luggage was lighter for its compactness but Batalhador was nowhere to be found. Then I had a breakthrough. I?d studied Latin at school (I got the lowest grade possible) and lived in Germany as a child and as a teen and so I knew that some foreign languages like to combine shorter words to make bigger more complex ones. We even do it in English: quarterpounder, asswipe, buttmunch, dickhead etc. Perhaps Batalhador was compounded from more than one word?

I?d struck gold. I soon discovered that a ?Batel? is a skiff – which as we all know is some form of small sailing vessel often mentioned in Hornblower books. OK so I was looking for ?Batal? but they didn?t have that either. ?Hador? is likewise absent…but ?dor? means grief!

I?d figured it out: the card held a possible warning about my future: I will come to grief in some kind of boating accident involving a skiff!

If any of you out there speak Portuguese perhaps you could confirm this for me. I don?t have any boating trips planned for the near future but I?d like to know if I should stay clear of the water.

Oh yes, and another thing. If an Aries falls in love with a Balanca (which my dictionary reliably informs me is a scales, balance, swing or rock) I should apparently expect ?uniao ideal, inclusive sexualmente!? Now call me overly optimistic but this has to mean ?a perfect union with sex included.? If you could confirm this or even better provide me with the phone numbers of any attractive single Balancas (Portuguese, Brazilian or otherwise) you might know, I would be most grateful.

P.S. I gave the girls 2 rials.

Cycling in Puerto Rico is a whole different deal than anywhere else in the States.
If people are oblivious to the concept in Los Angeles, there is no word to describe the pathological nonchalance that Puerto Ricans have for something so conventional as a Bike Path! People sit on it, barbecue beside it, dry off over it, fly kites above it and ride suicidally six abreast across it. But the path that stretches East from San Juan is a true gem: it winds faithfully along the shore behind the silver beaches then climbs a headland, passing through dense foliage filled with lizards along the way, leaps over rivers and eventually guides you through a forest all the while keeping you off the road which is peopled by frantic families hunting for an elusive parking spot close to the waves. Much of the forest section is beautifully constructed from freshly hewn timber and takes you gliding a few feet above the forest floor; uniquely designed signs warn you of trees, encased in fencing like islands, on the road ahead.

That?s the good news. The bad is that the planking makes your bike shudder and shake as you ride – I wished I?d accepted the offer of the bike with the sprung front forks. Also there is no exit road when, as happened to me, a bunch of racing riders, six abreast, turned a corner and found a terrified Englishman in a blue Italia biking shirt coming towards them. My right sleeve brushed the heavy wooden railing, and I felt a breath of cold steel as a pedal missed my left ankle bone by a millimetre or two.

Presently a mini-roundabout appeared ahead with no exits – I was at the end of the bike path. I stopped and bought some Gatorade from an enterprising man who had backed his battered Toyota station wagon up to the railing and was selling drinks from an aging cooler. Having started work in my hotel room at 6am I marvelled at how lucky I was to have grabbed this brief respite and looked over the azure waves as they lapped ashore.

All too soon I had to turn for home – I needed to pack and make it to the airport in time to fly to Rio – my first visit to Brazil and a chance to finally visit the city where my father was born.

Last week the President announced that he was revoking America?s involvement in an international agreement whereby the USA, along with other western nations, would agree to limit industrial pollution. He reasoned that following the terms of the treaty would effect the US economy. Well okay he?s right. It costs money to make factories cleaner, machines more efficient, industry less wasteful…but we live in the richest country in the world. Shouldn?t we be prepared to spend that money? Bush is espousing a short term gain at the expense of a long term problem.

I am fond of quoting a statistic for which I have long forgotten the exact numbers but it goes something like this: The USA contains but 2% of the world?s population yet uses nearly 50% of the world?s non-renewable resources! Look at it this way. You and 99 of your best friends set off on a journey with backpacks and you have to carry everything you need with you: food, socks, batteries, condoms etc. One day you suddenly realise that two of the people on the trip are using up half of the supplies you have – sooner or later you?re going to have to start rationing food, clean clothes, sex and use of the Discman because of the greed of these two people. You sit down and talk it out and everyone agrees this is not cool. But then one of the greedy ones, a guy called George, says he?s welching on the agreement because it doesn?t suit him. Doesn?t that strike you as completely unfair?

Some say we have much to learn from the way Native Americans regarded the earth. (Of course we?d have much more to learn from them if we hadn?t killed most of them off and sent the remainder into barren and useless parts of the country). One of their sayings is: We don?t inherit the earth from our parents, we have it on loan from our children. I don?t have kids but I watch with awe the love and compassion with which my friends dote over their little ones as they lift them into their gas guzzling SUV’s to take them to the mall to buy some Evian. Yet that very journey inevitably makes the life of that child irrevocably more difficult.

I am a hypocrite. I have two cars and neither one does more than 20 mpg. I looked at the EV1 before I bought my last car but you can?t buy it – only lease it. Toyota has a hybrid on the market which does over 70 mpg but there?s a waiting list and it is the UGLIEST car I have ever seen! I need to practice what I preach.

Yesterday morning?s paper has a beautiful picture of B15A…the official code number for an iceberg which has just broken off Antarctica. This B15A is the size of Rhode Island! It contains enough frozen fresh water to supply the USA for three years…that?s a lot of Evian baby. The big question is: is this another sign of Global Warming or is this part of a huge weather cycle that has been going on far longer than the human race has been keeping records? We could wait decades before we really know the answer to that one. But it doesn?t take a scientist to figure out that something must be happening to the world.

It is LESS THAN 200 YEARS since Lewis and Clarke first walked across the USA. I believe they lit their first rather smoky fire in Fort Clatsop in 1806. So, when you jump into that comfy seat and fly at 36,000 feet coast to coast through the ozone as you watch Bagger Vance and drink imported, bottled Alpine Water in your disposable plastic glass and get terminally bored by Matt Damon?s golfing histrionics, you decide to look out the window and what do you see? Roads, towns, cities, factories churning smoke and steam that create their own micro weather systems, vapour trails from jets going the other way. Wherever you look there?s something man created and it?s all been done in the last 195 years…most likely in the last 100 years! That?s incredible really. It?s a lot of work, a lot of passion and determination and dreaming and scheming…and a lot of damage too.

Ever heard of the butterfly effect? Supposedly a scientist sat at his computer and tried to figure out what would alter the climate in the Atlantic and the Pacific. He was fiddling around with some figures that pertained to a small part of the rainforest in South America somewhere. He spilled some coffee on his computer (whether it was a single latte or a double decaf is not recorded) and accidentally changed the computer model by the tiniest fraction as he cleaned the sticky brown-ness from his keyboard. The result was astonishing. As if a butterfly had decided on a whim to fly East instead of West the weather on both oceans was changed.

And here?s the point to all this. That butterfly could be a recycled empty coke can, one car-pool ride, one re-chargeable battery, one less chunk of ice in your soda. It doesn?t matter if our name is George or Georgette, anyone of us could make the decision that could save the world.

It?s 5.40 am and I?m cycling east on Olympic when I spot my first fellow rider. We?re making our way to the start of the seventh LA Bike Tour – a massive ride with 10,000 cyclists following the course of the LA Marathon which starts in a few hours time.

I?ve cycled through the Canadian Rockies, over the Southern Alps in New Zealand, up to the Golden Triangle in Thailand and across Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula but nothing gives you the same boost, thrill and joi-de-vivre as zipping through the streets of your home town at dawn while the city wakes up and waves and hollers at you in its pajamas!

By accident, rather than clever planning, I?m crossing the street in front of the start as the 6am countdown commences – no pushing through the hordes this morning in the pre-dawn glow, no listening to Randy Newman?s ?I Love LA? being played over and over and over. I wait by the side of the street to let the first guys go past and then slip quietly into the pack (or Peloton as French speakers and cyclists call it) as we head west along Exposition.

All kinds of cycling humanity are here: monocycles, hybrids, street racers, mountain bikes, tandems, recumbents, backward tandem recumbents (!), and a host of bikes that have been sitting in the garage for too long and need some serious work – rusty chains, wobbly wheels, loose cotter pins, unchangeable gears, and incorrectly adjusted saddles are in abundance god bless ?em all . There?s usually a guy on a Penny Farthing too (massive front wheel, tiny rear wheel – the world’s first bicycle) but I missed him this year.

As we turn North on Crenshaw the road widens and the fun really starts. There?s a twinkle in everyone?s eye as we bust a red-light going north on the wrong side of the road and watch the cops smile at us! But the real thrill is watching all the good people who come out to watch the spectacle: the Mommas on their way to church, the Gangstas and their girls, the old men in jackets, the tracksuited powerbroker on his cell phone, the kiddies on their plastic tricycles. Some of them say nothing, bemused as the endless train of lycra passes, others wave and smile, bang toy drums, shout greetings and wave home-made signs of encouragement. I saw the same family twice on the course with a sign saying ?Go George III Go!?

We move north through the ?Hood, slide along the side of Koreatown and are soon passing the elegant homes of Hancock Park. Here?s another joy of the ride – getting to see LA in all it?s varying colour and diversity. You see stuff from a bicycle you never see from a car. By the time we reach Hollywood Blvd., I go past the Thailand Centre, which I must have passed a hundred times and notice for the first time the elaborate shrine outside which I?m sure has been there for years. Half a mile later I see a sign for Barnsdall Art Gardens (what is that? I?ll have to check it out) and right next to it a signpost to let me know I?m entering Little Armenia – who knew such a place existed? Behind the Armenian sign is a taco stand of seemingly Ecuadorian origins and a huge sound system is blasting out a bizarre and wonderful hybrid of Madness (first album ska period) and an acid influenced Mariachi band while a lone DJ raps in distorted Spanish over the top! In this respect this year?s ride is a disappointment – bands and DJ?s usually line the route from beginning to end but the DJ at Hollywood and Vermont is our lone musical accompaniment this year.

With the joy comes a moment of sadness. I was hoping to ride with my cycling pal Kim this year but his home in Phoenix was burglarized two nights ago and he?s had to stay home and sort out the mess. I?m also reminded of the time 5 years ago when my Mother had an operation the same day as the ride and never recovered. Within 72 hours of completing the circuit I was 6,000 miles away holding her hand as her life ebbed away.

And now we?re plunging down Virgil. A TV news presenter friend of mine once told me this is one of the city?s toughest neighbourhoods but all I can see are happy people waving at me, yelping and smiling – for this morning at least the tensions have abated.

I cross Washington Blvd. for the third time and the sound of our chain sets are all I can hear as we approach the USC campus and the end of our ride. It?s just past 7.10 when I clip out of my pedals and hear the strange sound of the volunteers with the hundreds of bike tour medals strung over their arms from red ribbons clanking and cacophonous. I proudly pocket my medal and start pedalling for home.

It was a good ride, I didn?t crash, it didn?t rain and as always it?s over too soon. For the record I was rider #4905 in the very bright red, blue and white Brooklyn shirt on the yellow Ibis Spanky. Average speed 15.6 mph, maximum speed 26.7 mph. See you all next year.

My travels bring me back to Toronto where I?m shooting a video for Svala, a gorgeous slip of a girl from Iceland. Having worked all through the night in a parking lot downtown I grabbed a couple of hours sleep and have just breakfasted on a fine Maple donut from Tim Horton?s – a chain of coffee shops named after a retired Canadian sports star.

As I walked back to my hotel I pondered upon this large and mystifying country and realised I feel very much at home here. Canada has come to mean a jumble of contrary things to me.

It?s a place which has a happy red and white flag that is so ?friendly? that American backpackers sew the emblem into their luggage on International trips so that they?ll be mistaken for Canadians and be left to their own devices. The flag reminds me of the UN troops that beetled along the dusty roads in Cyprus keeping the peace between the Eoka and Enosis terrorists when I was a kid. It?s a country so harsh that crews in B.C. have learnt ways to keep their gear dry whatever the precipitation, a place where when you buy a pair of warm boots the warning tag reads : ?the less active you are, the more boot you need.? (My salesman assures me they?ll keep me warm to -40 but if I?m going extreme, ?you?ll need these other ones which are guaranteed to -70!) It?s a climate so harsh that the coffee spilt on set last night had to be blowtorched off the tarmac so that it didn?t leave a huge stain in the middle of my shot.

Canada is a place whose people have invited me into their homes over the years with an ease and warmth that stuns and shames me. I feel none of the cynicism or resentment that I have detected in my original or adopted countries. The smiles are as wide and as endless as the Northern Wastes and they appear to relish their own culture and those of others with a freshness and an energy that is invigorating.

As a child I remember vividly turning the pages of my Geography book and looking at black and white pictures of a breath-taking far away country which have little to do with the Canada I have experienced: vast log-jams on a river near a busy saw-mill; lines of strange looking long ships with bridges right at the front making their way along massive lock systems between the lakes; a Mountie on his horse in his riding breeches and peculiar hat with the Parliament building behind him. These were idealised 50?s era images of a rich and bountiful country whose men gladly and bravely threw themselves into battles with us British types to keep the world free (!) and were proud to be part of the Commonwealth and be one of the largest red bits on the map of the world in my classroom which showed an Empire as big as the world has ever seen.

Things are very different now. That Mountie is probably in his 90?s, the timber industry here is desperate to find out whether George W. and his team will slap a 20% levy on imported lumber and this morning?s paper has a story on an army that is so underpaid that many soldiers are on food stamps and have to deliver pizzas to make ends meet.

Tomorrow I will hopefully be climbing on the plane to go home. But the happy faces and hard work of Mr. Rosen, Lewis, Sully, Marc, Jordan, Ralph, Mario et al will make me feel humble and warm. There?s a Mickey D?s here just like there is in every damn place now but even the corporate might of the new empires that straddle the globe cannot diminish the joy of travelling and seeing new places and old friends.