Day 25 Part One – Weyburn for breakfast. I awoke this morning to discover that my target of raising £5,000 had been achieved! What a belter of a start to a day on the road, and thank you all so much for making this amazing achievement possible. But I don’t want to give you that! I can’t say “That’s it, job done” Can we press on and see where this will all lead? Yes, of course we can.

To get things off to a flyer, here’s a proposal:

There are over two months left of my trip, and I’ve been doing some calculations. Every day, 360,000 new babies are born into the world. If just 0.1% of these (possibly a conservative guess) were to be born into a life where they might at some point need the help of a charity like SOS, that would still be 360 babies a day. Since I started my JustGiving page back in April, over 27,000 babies would have been born into lives of difficulty. 

I promised my pupils at Beechwood Park School that I would send them a musical message from my trip across Canada, so here it is: The Rocky Mountains version of a Uke Club favourite, The Beechwood Blues, recorded by me on a freezing cold evening at Kicking Horse Campground around the campfire a couple of weeks ago (with the traditional Uke Club sign-off at the end)

Here’s the offer – if anyone wants to watch the video then there is a virtual “Honesty Box” pay-per-view charge, with a special Friends-of-the-Blog discount, of £1.99 or $2.49, payable to SOS Children’s Villages (click on any JustGiving link on the blog). If you’d like unlimited views (and who wouldn’t?) there’s a once-only payment of £4.99 or $8.49, again payable to SOS. Non-FOTB will have to cough up a startling amount more than that (available on application) so why not just sign up now? If you’re not yet a FOTB, then click “follow” now to enjoy these extraordinary benefits. 

I’m prepared to endure the mild embarrassment of posting this (as well as the bemused and pitiful looks of my fellow campers as I jumped about playing the uke, trying to keep myself  warm on that cold evening) but only if you will make it worth my while! This unrepeatable offer will be available for a limited time only. There’s no charge for pupils at Beechwood, unless their mums and dads watch too of course. 

Update – the wifi in the Subway I’m in won’t connect to YouTube. If the link doesn’t work, be patient, make a donation anyway, and I’ll fix it as soon as the open road leads me to more wifi. The kind lady in Subway, Betty, also just came over and gave me a handmade (waterproof) flag for my bike! Amazingly thoughtful and another memorable moment in the great Province of Saskatchewan.

Following this, I’ve got some more thrilling schemes to keep everything ticking over at SOS Children’s villages – you’ve been warned!

See you later today for a proper “Part Two” blog entry from wherever it is I’m going to end up.

Update No.2! Now up and working. And here’s Betty and Jane from earlier in Stoughton!

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