On Changing your Life

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I just sat here at work and read that whole thing, its awesome obv. I believe everything that you wrote but one detail seems kinda cheesy to me. When you go to find the kid who stole the stereo, does a cobra really come out from under his bed? Once again I'm not calling you a liar, but doesnt that seem like some sort of allegory in a fictional story?

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Yeah, it really happened. There were cobras everywhere, plus black and green mambas. Boy, those things were freaky nasty, and I'm used to snakes. We actually had a rafting customer bitten by a baby cobra that swum up through the drainage holes into the raft. We completely immobilized the limb. She kept saying that she was fine. We got her back to Kampala, they took off our splint, the blood started to flow and she got hit like someone punched her in the stomach. Then they shot her full of anti-venom.


Thanks Teddy and the rest of you for the kind words. It is nice to hear the occasional encouragement, so I know that I'm not boring you guys.



I got the midnight flight to London. The plane was jam-packed full of screaming kids, angry parents, and people panicking because they’d never flown before. But I was sweet. I felt a moment of nostalgia as the wheels left the ground. This was it. I was gone. Outta there. I nodded off to sleep as the kid next to me drooled over my arm. We flew into London in the early morning. I got my bags and took the underground into the city. A real train. Nobody was hassling me. Nobody was trying to be my friend. I was being completely ignored on a packed commuter train. I had a huge grin on my face.

But damn it was cold. It was raining. There was mist. I’d forgotten what mist looked like. I didn’t have any warm clothes for this weather. I was getting a bit of attention, which I put down to the fact that I had a tan that was as deep as any white dude can ever hope to get. Surrounded by pasty faced poms. I had relatives in London whom I’d never met. The sister of my dads second wife and her family. I had their address and phone number. I had to get the tube all the way out to New Cross Gate, which I did. I found a public phone and called her. She said to stand out the front and wait for her. A few minutes later a lady who looked just like my dad’s second wife pulled up.

“I’m Lindy. You must be Adam. Jump in.”

We took off through the traffic and she said that she had to do some shopping, was that all right? I said sure, no problem. It was amazing driving down a street with no holes in it. We pulled into a huge supermarket, Tesco’s or Safeways or something. I followed her into the store. I spent the next 20 minutes wandering around in a kind of daze. Food. Real food. Australian beer. Meat. Pork chops. Chocolate. Mustard. I picked items off the shelves and just stared at them in my hands. It was then that it really hit me that I was out of Africa.

Lindy found me and had a laugh. “My husband Steve is from South Africa,” she said. “He’ll understand what you’re going through.”

We were driving to her house when I saw a sign for a McDonalds. “Stop,” I said. “I hate their food, but I have to have a burger. Just a Big Mac.”

We pulled into the drive-through and I ordered. I held the package in my hands and opened it with care. There it was. A Big Mac. Lindy was watching me with an amused grin. I took a bite. It seemed to be the best thing that I’d ever tasted. I ate it all without a word. Now I was really back in the First World again.

They were very well off, had a lovely terrace house. She showed me to my room. I sat on the bed and stared out the window. I was in London. I had about $100 and no ticket to Italy. But I knew that if I could get out of Uganda, I sure as hell could get out of London. The rest of the family came home later. Steve was a lovely chap, a bio-chemist. He wanted to know all about my adventures in Uganda. We talked into the night, drinking from his excellent collection of wine. They had three young children that were constantly fighting and carrying on, but I didn’t care. I felt at peace. At one point Steve asked his eldest son Matthew if he wanted to go out for a drive the next day, which was Saturday. Matthew made a face and ran off.

Steve sighed. “I’ve just bought a new car and I wanted somebody to come for a spin with me.”

“I’ll come,” I said.

His face brightened up. “Really? You’re not just saying that?”

“No, no. I’ve never been to England. I’d love to have a zip around.”

The next morning he opened his garage to show me his brand new Porsche 911 Turbo S. Oh yeah. Lets go baby. We high-tailed it out of London and sped off through the countryside. It was a beautiful Spring day. He took all the back-roads he could find. Narrow lanes that drifted beneath oak canopies. The car was amazing – like driving a train on a road. It just glued itself to the tarmac. We stopped at a little pub and had a gourmet lunch. He insisted on paying, and I was grateful for it. We got back to London at a reasonably late hour. Lindy had dinner on the table, and we spent another night hitting up his reds. Since I was going to Italy we had to drink Italian wine. I can’t remember what it was, but it was sensational.

The next day I phoned a contact that I had. A pilot who worked for British Airways, Captain Paul. He’d been out to Uganda a few times and we’d struck up a friendship. He lived in Maidenhead, which was just outside London. He told me to come out. He had a few days free. I caught the train out to Maidenhead and he met me at the station.

We had a few beers and chatted about my situation. He had been trying to get my on a cargo flight out of Uganda but the contact hadn’t paid off. At one point he just came out with; “Do you want to go up for a spin?”

“In what?”

“In my plane.”

So it turns out he’s a stunt pilot in his spare time. His plane turns out to be the most powerful two seater prop plane there is; a Russian somethingorother. I get to sit in the front. Captain Paul sits in the back. We’re on this old airfield that looks like a relic from WWII. He fires it up and we catapult down the runway. We’re flying over little English villages when I suddenly realize what he’s up to. He’s getting me back for all those times I flipped, surfed and pounded him on the Nile. And that’s when we start doing tricks. Upside down, looping, diving at the ground, spinning around. It’s all I can do to clench my stomach and neck muscles and not throw up. And then I hear his voice over the two way go;

“Okay Adam, you’re now going to become one of the few people in the world who have gone backwards in an airplane.” What the feck? “What we’re going to do is to climb vertically into the sky until we reach a height of such and such. Then I’m going to turn off the engine…” WTF?? “…and we’re going to keep going up until we stall, then the plane is going to drop back down and flip forwards, where I will restart the engine and we will fly away.”

And God help me, that’s exactly what we did. The really freaky part was when the stick came alive in my hands. “Okay, Adam. You’re flying it. Do what you want.” I have to be honest, I didn’t do much. When we got back down he happily informed me that I’d pulled -2G to +8G, or something of the sort. The mechanic was impressed. “He really threw you around up there, eh?” I didn’t throw up though.

Captain Paul then did a very nice thing. He organized me a flight to Italy with BA. Told me not to worry about it, I could fix him up when I was able. I thanked him profusely and popped back to London. Another day to sort some stuff out, and then I was in Gatwick taking a flight to Italy. I was essentially arriving with no funds at all. Heading into Milan. I didn’t speak any Italian either. Jeno would be arriving a couple of weeks after me. I felt like I’d been doing this for far too long.