"I wish to apply for the position of part-time shop assistant. This cover letter is in response to the questions on your website.

I recently returned to Wales after almost 20 years in the US. Before that I lived in Swansea from ’79 to ‘81 and then Cardiff from ’81 to ’91. The schools I have gone to here are Whitestone Primary, Oystermouth Junior Comprehensive and Cardiff High. While in the US I had a career as a medical interpreter (Spanish/English), for the last 10 years.

On December 15, 2010 I was in a little town in Mexico, with a cold I couldn’t seem to shake off. I was on a solo, single-speed bike tour, towing a trailer. I thought I had ridden my bike to the limit of agony before. I reached new limits, nearly rode to death, literally.

I went to a clinic where I learned my blood level was dangerously low. And that I might die. I decided I couldn’t die there, so far from my mother. I couldn’t do that to her. Within 30 hours I was with her again. At Llandough Hospital A&E. The effort it took to get back to Cardiff - physical, logistical, emotional was more than I could have imagined.

After overcoming that hurdle plus the ensuing diagnosis and gruesome treatment, it’s hard to imagine that I ever had problems before, or ever will again. This experience has given me a whole new appreciation for each day that I’m still here. “Living each day as if it were your last” doesn’t sound like a worn-out cliché anymore. Funny that.

My CV is completely about medical interpreting but while I was getting a start in the field I chose in ’99, I still worked for Quality Bicycle Products, QBP, or simply Q to its friends. I loved it there, and worked really hard. And rode hard on our midnight chaingang to get home. I tried doing both jobs but sadly stopped working at Q after getting a full-time interpreting job. I sometimes racked up 50 miles commuting in a day, and if you know the extreme weather conditions in Minnesota you know that’s not easy. Learning to adapt to those conditions was a difficult, often painful, process after doing most my riding in Wales and the California coast. I learned to ride on black ice covered in deep snow with other traffic sliding all around, in my thirties. A long way from the coastal desert of Peru, where I first learned to ride a bike.

This job is perfect for me because I am passionate about cycling. I have experience touring, racing and salvaging junk bikes, for fun, to give to friends. I love bikes as a mode of transportation and a delight for the senses. For the health benefits, immersion in nature and the adrenalin. I stare at bikes. Also, I have been a mentor for www.bolderoptions.org/ and have volunteered at amateur and professional bike races.

I get fired up about social justice, universal human rights and environmental protection. Having lived and worked on three continents and in two worlds, namely First and Third World, it would be a shame if I didn’t. I get excited about the Belgian Spring Classics and Swansea City’s promotion to the Premier League."

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I do feel amzingly better. Musing on cancer yesterday, while waiting to be seen by the doctor...

i would never have wished for it, but now i'm grateful i got cancer. odd, i know. it brings a whole new appreciation for life, and the boundless opportunities that are always there for You, me and everybody. there's the physical stimuli of the senses, which i took for granted, and now seem wondrous. and a previously unimaginable awareness of Spirit.



i found out yesterday that my haemoglobin (Hgb) is now up to 16.6 g/dL!! (normal is 13.8 to 18.0). hoorah!

having been as low as 5, i hope i never forget what it felt like to tow a trailer on my bike in the altitude of the Mexican mountains with such a low Hgb. what is pain?

rather than take any personal pride it feels me with wonder at indomitable universal Spirit