http://www.sierracycling.com would be a good place to start.

I also feel that the Moog needs some representation here:

The thread is incomplete without this!

Does anyone know if this was Jean Michelle Jarre before he was famous?

Do I win with this offering?

Howard Jones, Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock and Thomas Dolby all jamming together

Chapaking, I know there are now 29 bikes, but what is that, a 129 bike! The bike looks huge!!!

You’re right, some of us do own bikes but are more often than not not actually on the bike 😳

[/url]
Photo by Slugwash[/url] by simon ralli[/url], on Flickr

This is a really interesting question Kev and I was wondering this myself.

I have of course written the book The Shaman and Snow White: Ayahuasca, San Pedro, Shamanic States of Consciousness and Certificate 18 Healing which is about this very subject and based on my masters degree research.

Obviously I had no funding, and my book was more an exploration of the subject, as opposed to a scientific study with medical evidence, but I do have a friend who herself was a alcoholic, and who has now undergone training to be a counsellor and who also runs a healing centre in the Amazon for drug addicts.

I also have another friend who is going down this healing route after many years of both adusing substances and having been abused.

Would Amy have been saved? Maybe, but the thing with using natural plant hallucinogens is that it is quite possibly one of the most demanding experiences that you can, well, experience, and your motivation to heal yourself has to be sky high. It is also not a miracle cure solution, and treatments will often last for a few months, so it is not a solution for people of modest means, or who do not have the support mechanisms in place for this.

There is no definitive medical evidence to say it works, but there is extensive testimony from Stanislav Grof who pioneered the use of LSD therapy, and I have gone down this route myself, to solve many deep routed issues in my own life.

You also need to be fairly strong physically I would guess, to deal with all the vomiting and other forms of purging that come out of your.

So who knows, but maybe we will become a slightly more enlightened society in the future in order to at least make scientific and medical studies of these natural plant medicines legal.

If anyone is interested you can read an in-depth review of my book here[/url].

I published my book via the self-publishing site http://www.lulu.com. They have various chat forums where you can get a lot of help from other writers. I am sure there are plenty of other forums where you can get inspiration and ideas from too.

Does the HDM go into a USB on the computer? I may need to buy a cable too!

For some people part of the ritual of having a tattoo is the pain you go through when it is being drawn, like some kind of modern day initiation. After saying that, mine didn’t seem to hurt too much at all, but it may depend on the part of your body. Mine is on my upper arm.

I was always more a Club biscuit man myself, back in the 70s. I veritable range of flavours, and you could nibble the end piece of chocolate off.

There’s a chance that I’ll be in the NovDec issue 🙂

Maslow and many other writers and researchers have written about “peak experience” and “flow”. For me it does not come close to ego dissolution, but yes, an awesome experience to have.

It’s the difference between seeing bankers as a criminal class, or seeing them as legitimate business owners who always are given taxpayer’s money when they funk up.

Some people see debt as a form of slavery, and see no reason why bankers should be given bailouts when in fact they should be in prison. There has been fraud in the US for example that would take your breath away if you understood it and it was reported honestly.

I feel that the Icelandic people have the right idea, whereas many other nations do not rise up against the banking class and say enough is enough.

Good on you Iceland!

After saying that, have a read of the posters from this Irish protest – many people there seem to know the score too:

Top thread 😀

[/url]
IMG_1724[/url] by simon ralli[/url], on Flickr

Well my work is based on the use of hallucinogens in healing contexts. So rather than being a burden, it is a case of quite the opposite. But their illegal status means that there is a dearth of high quality medical research on the matter right now, although this is slowly changing.

Well this is quite a nuanced debate. I have as many people know written a masters degree dissertation on Amazonian hallucinogens, and also now published my book on South American hallucinogens:

http://simonralli.wordpress.com/my-book-the-shaman-and-snow-white/

In my book I especially write about the dangers when experimenting without the structure and guidance of a shamanic apprenticeship, something I have undertaken, and which was pretty much the most demanding and at times hellish things I have ever done. (There are also many dangers from fake shamanic teachers, and I also write about this).

But I would definitely do it all again, and feel that in criminalising everything, we have thrown the baby out with the bath water, and have lost one of the greatest tools available for the scientific study of consciousness. My book is just one attempt which seeks to redress the balance while always attempting to be as responsible as possible and not glamourising the experience.

Many people see marijuana as a sacred plant, and although I am sympathetic to making it legal, you just have to look at youtube to see how many people do not treat these teacher plants with respect, and have not ability to use them responsibly. We are still teenagers in this respect compared to many indigenous cultures.

Well the great thing about teaching English is that no-one knows if you are right or wrong 😀

On a different note, it can be very good fun, and it is great to see progress in your students when they have struggled with certain key points for many years.

To be honest, no one in Brazil has asked to see my qualifications. However, although in theory I could be working as a teacher with no qualifications, I really do feel that I benefitted a lot. The on-line course will help you re-aquaint yourself with maybe long forgotten grammar.

You do need this, but I try and teach without referring to too many grammatical rules. I just try and introduce situations, and build on what students already know.

I do not think you need to spend thousands on the month long residential courses, but yes, I would recommend at least some form of qualification.

Also with i-to-i they have an alert and on-line service to help you find jobs. Actually moving to another country though, well you may spend more money than you had budgeted for, but that is a different issue.

I am currently an English teacher in Brazil.

I did both the on-line TEFL course, but before I did, I also did their 2 day classroom course. The people who ran the course are called i-to-i:

http://www.i-to-i.com/tefl-course/

I know you only want to do the online course, but I found the 2 day workshop a massive help, and gave me a lot of confidence and ideas on how to run classes.

Right now, we have a lot of fun. I teach adult students in their offices. They have intermediate or pre intermediate level English, and there is a massive demand for good quality native speakers of English. As well as the language, you have a huge amount of cultural knowledge that can be put to good use too.

I do not often use text books to teach. I select one language point per lesson, then use newspaper articles to illustrate the language, and then we practice speaking the points.

For example, this morning we read one story about police asking a drunk driver to drive to a police station, another story about the lottery winners, and another story about a mother in law sending an email to her future daughter in law that went viral. With adults you can have a lot of fun to really help the students relax, and use interesting stories to engage them. (We were doing the past tenses with “had”)

So yeah, i-to-i are very good, the on-line course was excellent, but I would do the 120 hour course and not just the 60 hour one. It will be a lot better after having done their weekend though, and is not too expensive. As an unemployed person in Scotland, I also had a £200 voucher to contribute to the cost of the course.

Dave

That is a really excellent video. Very well put together and I really enjoyed watching it. It must be amazing to really start a ride so high up, what an experience it must have been. Unbelievable.

Don’t know if these photos help but…

Mabie unplugged:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonralli/sets/72157624841022240/

More off piste Mabie
http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonralli/sets/72157626131423395/

And in this now notorious video

A few off-piste Dalbeattie pics lurking in here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonralli/sets/72157622336609883/

I have re-edited my post as I do not think it too clear. I feel in a gentle way that it is slightly ironic to be told by a member of a secret society that they in fact know every secret. How do you know? It is a secret society and therefore every single member knows every secret? 🙂

There is quite an interesting discussion to be had I feel in terms of indigenous initiatory experiences, which are designed to pass the initiate first through a “liminal” state of consciousness, often terrifying, in order to enable them to reach a greatly expanded state of consciousness and thus world view, and the initiations of both secret and not-so secret groups such as the Freemasons, Skulls and Bones, and army, university and other societies. I guess you could also throw in the initiations of occult magical groups as well, which are maybe a third form of initiation.

I see these initiations as different. In some instances the initiation is more ritual, in order to instil in the initiate a sense of brotherhood, secrecy and elitism. In other instances, especially the indigenous, the experience takes one into such different realms of consciousness and being, that there is simply no point in trying to use language which is such an inadequate form of communication in trying to articulate that which is perhaps luminous, or far beyond words, duality, and time and space.

There are many degrees of Freemasonary, and I am sure, secret groups within it too. Who knows ay?

But yeah, I guess I thought it would be good to point out the many different forms of initiation, from drunken student tomfoolery, to ritual, to the sacred.

I guess therefore some things are secret for different reasons, i) as people would not approve if these secrets were known, ii) because these secrets are “noble” and should not be made known to non-initiates who may not know how to handle the secrets, and iii) because there is no point in a non-initiate “knowing” as they simply can’t know in the same way that the initiate can.

Here are a couple of fab loops

Apparently there are potentially worse revelations than this if The Telegraph and Guardian are to be believed. Terrible really. It will be interesting to see if there is any effect on sales, but good to see some major companies making public statements.

Brilliant photos. I’m missing those lovely trails!

For rapidly learning the basics of Spanish, Michel Thomas is your friend. But you will need to combine that with something like Hugo Spanish in 3 Months. Spanish is not too bad to learn as a language, and you will improve rapidly once you are there. Make sure you get the advanced course as well with Michel Thomas.

I say to learn from Bruce – be like water my new-found newbie friends 😀

David

Hi – that’s great – thanks for letting me know. The track I like has ambient drums and a very nice voice running through it – right up my street.

Very nice video too by the way!

Cheers

Simon

Guys Brazil v Australia has quite literally just started so can you keep me posted while I watch the footie?

Well I know this thread is useless without pics, so for anyone wanting to know about the Brazilian rides : )

http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/cotidiano/887926-ciclistas-iniciam-pedalada-pelada-na-avenida-paulista-em-sp.shtml

Note how they say that the Brazilians even braved a cold night of 22 degrees 🙂

Well you have to feel sorry for the seats full stop ay?

It’s like a crazy video game with many levels with many different potential death traps along the way.

Can you imagine if he gets identified by friends, colleagues and his Mum!

That was a great video there and Dalbeattie looks really lush on the video.

So much to do in the area including a whole day’s worth of visiting megalithic stone circles and the like, and plenty of amazing tiny B roads for road riding too in the middle of nowhere.