It's weird, you know. Less than three weeks to go before we set off on a journey that could take years.

The amount of things there are to do is astounding. I've got to somehow move out of my flat, store my possessions I don't want to throw away at my parents, and get rid of the rest. I'd like to think that I'm going to take my clothes to a charity shop, but the realist in me is imagining abandoning them all and running away giggling (the realist in me has all kinds of issues).

Our passports are currently in the safe hands of the Russian Embassy, and then they're going to the Chinese Embassy before we get them back - hopefully before we set off or there's going to be real problems.

It's a hassle. The whole thing. Every day, some new irritation shows it's head. Take my credit card company for example - it turns out that me saying "I'm leaving the country for a few years so I thought we'd just call it quits" isn't quite good enough for them. In fact they've become quite negative.

And there's other hassles, many of them best kept off this site.

The important thing though is the clock in San Dimas.

As everyone will know, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure was a complex and multi-layered allegory on the principles of time travel, the socio-economic importance of Air Guitar and an insightful look into 80s life.

OK, so it may not have been those things, but it's still great. Now, when our heroes are about to embark on their adventure (personally, I felt they put too much pressure on themselves by calling it an excellent adventure - I mean, if they'd called it an average adventure then they would be even more pleased when it turned out well. An excellent adventure has a lot to achieve to earn it's moniker. But I digress), Rufus, their time-travelling chum, tells them that no matter where they go and what they do, the clock in San Dimas is still running.

It should be pointed out now that my metaphors involving lines from films are world famous. And usually pretty poor.

Anyway, that's exactly like this. We've got all this stuff going on, all these tiresome/annoying/frustrating things to do, to sort out, to arrange, to pack/sell/abandon/buy, and it's enough to piss anyone off. But no matter how bad it gets, nothing's going to change the fact that in two and a half weeks we're going to be gone.

Every day we manage to side step a landmine, have an argument with a loved one or International Financier or perform an extremely mundane task in return for a pittance, brings us one more day closer to our goal. Like the train at the end of the Matrix, it is as unstoppable as it is inevitable.

The clock in San Dimas is still running.