{"id":726,"date":"2010-02-14T11:47:35","date_gmt":"2010-02-14T11:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/?p=726"},"modified":"2010-12-01T02:13:44","modified_gmt":"2010-12-01T02:13:44","slug":"west-africa-fast-approaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/blog\/2010\/02\/14\/west-africa-fast-approaching\/","title":{"rendered":"West Africa fast approaching"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hello from the UK,<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m Phil one of the coordinators of this epic journey and you find me busy supporting the road crew from my home in Brighton as Andrew and Christian race with The Ball through Europe. My excitement is\u00a0building fast&#8230;\u00a0laced with some apprehension and a heavy heart (I leave behind my dear wife and two year old boy) as I prepare all manner of travel paraphernalia, from football pump to guitar, in readiness to leave.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m joining Andrew and The Ball through West Africa in a week&#8217;s time and, in the meantime, am doing my best to resemble a pin cushion as I receive vaccinations from all directions. Shades of voodoo&#8230; a blessing from ancestral western spirits perhaps? The Ball will need all the help it can muster\u2026 from jujus to doctors, I&#8217;ll consider them all.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/theball.tv\/\"> Here&#8217;s our facebook page&#8230;<\/a> so jump into the game and leave your skills here in whatever form you fancy\u2026 well wishing, bad wishing, your football stories, people and places we might visit on the journey and more\u2026 and more besides.<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow The Ball takes a boat ride across the Mediterranean Sea to Africa and Morocco.<\/p>\n<p>Me, I&#8217;m packing my bags&#8230; \u00a0bound for glory.\u00a0Ready or not, West Africa, here I come.<\/p>\n<p>This ball is your ball.<\/p>\n<p>Phil x<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hello from the UK, I&#8217;m Phil one of the coordinators of this epic journey and you find me busy supporting the road crew from my home in Brighton as Andrew and Christian race with The Ball through Europe. My excitement is\u00a0building fast&#8230;\u00a0laced with some apprehension and a heavy heart (I leave behind my dear wife [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,232],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-ball","category-the-journey"],"geo":null,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/02\/uk_phil_ball.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}