4:30AM, December 28th, 2009. I’d just missed a train, which had been leaving as I’d got to the steps on the corner of Broadway and West 79th Street. I stood, shivering, in the 79th Street subway station, waiting for a “One” train to take me to Penn Station on 34th Street. I was wearing my thermal undershirt, jeans, long sleeved shirt, leather jacket, scarf and beanie. I’d left my jumper in my suitcase with my wife Kerryn. I hadn't wanted to deal with the jumper's bulkiness. I was paying for it with the air temperature. Fortunately, no snow had fallen since the previous weekend, when there’d been a snow blizzard – some had called it a “Snowpocalyse”. Weather commentators had been calling it the coldest winter in 20 years. We’d been in midair at the time, travelling from Australia via Japan. Luckily, the runways had been cleared by the time we got to New York. I was on my way back to JFK airport, to catch a plane to Colombia in South America. A few days ago my friends Lucas and A...
Chris Dowding wrote a draft Famous Five book, at 10 years old. He was unadventurous, and received poor marks for writing during school in the 1980s. Despite this, he published a book in 2007 (a Few Drops short of a Pint). He has experienced a demanding career as a Structural Engineer and divorce from his faithful but forceful wife of 13 years. Since then, he has trekked the Andes and the Himalayas. His love of a good story seems to compel him to keep moving his feet, and his words, forwards...