Dave and Jen For Oxfam

Seven is an interesting number. No really it is. There are seven classes of plastics used in packaging applications. Windows 7, the upcoming Microsoft operating system is sometimes referred to as just “7″. There will be about seven people in the world who will like it. There are seven Earths in Islamic tradition. In Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog video game franchise, there are seven Chaos Emeralds. Pirates talked of seven seas. Seven is the only number less than 15 which cannot be represented as the sum of the squares of three integers. Seven is the number of weeks until we got to Vietnam and Cambodia.

Seven weeks. Wow. Seven wows. It is still greater than a month but less than two months. This still gives us enough time to clear the last of our fundraising target without too much stress. In theory. Talking with some friends in finance it seems that there is a growing concern over the world financial crisis and we are starting to sense that concern in the major sponsors we are speaking with. There is no denying that this has affected the overall fundraising strategy we put in place and as we push over the halfway mark we will have to add some extra efforts on reaching the target. Overall we’re still optimistic that we are on track but seven weeks is no longer two months, so things will get more tense before we get excited about the “fun” stuff.

Apart from the fundraising side of things our training sessions are going okay although there is a lot more we could be doing in that regards. We both ride to work and continue to focus on a longer training ride on the weekend so we are making “some” progress. In the coming weeks we are looking to get down to the Gold Coast and even Byron Bay more, and to go to some off-road tracks either at Nerang or The Gap. Apart from that, this one will be a bit short as we are headed off to grab some books on Cambodian and Vietnamese history!