Wednesday 5th September: The Countdown continues...3...

Weather forecast for the weekend?

SATURDAY: Partly Cloudy 68/55F  10% Chance of rain

SUNDAY: Partly Cludy 69/55F  0% Chance of rain

Still sounding good for the weekend but worringly, it's just gone really overcast here now and we've had a shower, which wasn't predicted by either The Weather Channel or Rain Alarm! Let's hope they are a bit more accurate for the weekend!

Last laundry ahead of the weekend just done.  Time to start laying my kit out and making sure nothing gets left behind.

Right, got time to tell you a bit about our week at Butlins recently. This is the third year in a row we've been to Butlins in Skegness. Ailsa is 10 and Steven is 12 and very smart.  Academically he scores above his age, up to 15 in some subjects. But another aspect of his autism spectrum disorder is that he is socially and emotionally much more immature and often behaves like a child much younger than his age. So the nature of Butlins is pretty much ideal for them and...Steven absolutely LOVES it! Which in a way, is yet another contradiction of his condition. He is extremely sensory, with very accute hearing, sense of smell and reaction to light. He is often clumsy and shows little apptitude (or desire) to do any kind of physical exercise so Butlins would, on paper and in reality, look like it would be sensory overload for him and yet...no.

The crowds and volume of voices and the entertainment in the huge Skyline Pavillion don't seem to phase him at all. He loves the biggest, fastest, scariest rollercoasters and never show signs of feeling dizzy from them and perhaps the most at odds with his day to day mannerisms, he walks around the high ropes course like he's walking down the street! You wouldn't get me up there, that's for sure! But this is also one of the potential pitfalls of the condition. No sense of danger. The fact that he could fall, and the possible consequences aren't even a consideration for Steven, in the same way that, when he crosses a road, the consequence of what would happen if a car hit him doesn't even register. And of course, for many people on the autism spectrum, just walking down the street can be a collosal challenge, with all the sights, sounds and distractions around them. I shared a video about this on The Long Push Facebook page about this. This is a real eye opener. Give it a viewing...

Did we have any meltdowns this year? Yes, of course we had a couple, one which was very difficult, but shortly after he was on the high ropes in the pouring rain and after he got off it was like it hadn't happened. Welcome to the upside down world of the autism spectrum! And the reason behind The Long Push, to raise awareness of the issues families on the spectrum have to manage on a daily basis. But guess what? We'll be back there next year.

OK, back to today. I found out this afternoon that one of our local free papers that took a photo of me at the Parkside Court fundraiser a couple of weeks ago, put the story online and not in the actual paper! Thanks for that guys! So next to no one will have seen that then! Cheers! And...they want £9 to buy the 6 x 8 photograph!! Struth! Here's hoping the Southport Visiter article goes in tomorrow and is a good one.

Now it's 10.50pm and I vcan hera Moto GP on the TV in the other room. I feel I could do with the distraction tonight, so I'll sign off now and resume tomorrow with a full route plan for the weekend and hopefully, I'll get a few miles in on the board tomorrow too and then leave it at that until Saturday.

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