Where’s the ‘F’ in snow?

On By AlexIn Other stuff1 Comment

There’s no F’in snow would be the traditional response to a global warmed planet, where grass ski-ing looks to be the next big thing. Except for today where outside it is mostly white and wintry. The garden has disappeared as has one of the children. The other one has built a snowman which has some interesting anatomical details and a “belly like daddy’s” apparently. Snowballs have been thrown, cold hands desperately blown on and some hill based bin bag action looks on the cards for lunchtime.

I’m not that cheap – it’s just what kind of idiot would buy a sledge if you live in the South of the country? Unless for nostalgic value. But at 7am, this was the scene outside the front door. Already “Angry of Aylesbury” was calling any radio station desperate for content and lambasting the railways operators, the gritting companies and anyone responsible for public services.

As you would expect, not much is working with the road blocked by those special people who fail to understand snow traditionally has an adverse effect on braking distances. The railway managed to shunt the odd carriage to London but the platform was filled to capacity with boot stamping, miserable commuters waiting for anything train shaped.

So I heard anyway. Our road doesn’t appear on any gritting map and while there was much sliding and damaging of hedgerows, almost nobody was getting out. We have a local councilor living in the road who maybe could have called in a favour if he wasn’t marooned behind a jacknifed van.

I took the road bike out for a laugh. It wasn’t that funny actually with 100psi in 23cc tyres. Each pedal stroke flipped the bike sideways and left you cursing through a mouthful of snow. The mountain bike fared somewhat better but I think the enjoyment would have faded if a slidey journey to the station offered nothing more than the chance to ride home again.

According to the weather fairies, our massive four inch dump will be nothing more than slush and ice tomorrow. It’s about stopped now but it’ll be fun while it lasts.

A few more snowy shots Here.

Must have been fun for the rest of you going to work πŸ™‚

Test Email to Blog. Surely this can’t work as well?

On By AlexIn Other stuff4 Comments
Test Email to Blog. Surely this can’t work as well?,

Steve “Watlington” Watkins a few years back when he had a proper bike. It looks a bit like that outside today with a proper wintery minus five frost and ice on every flat surface. Obviously that’s not our back garden in the picture nor does it have Steve in it right now. Which is good, because much as I like Steve, he and I have a drinking game that started about five years ago and shows no sign of abating until we’re both hospitalised with Liver cirrhosis.

It’s a simple format; turn up at the pub and start drinking until one of us falls over. And fun as it is, 10am is probably not the best time to play it.

EDIT: I’m stunned. Two bits of free to use technology working first time and without any difficult rooting around in the complex underbelly of the hedgehog. Which makes it exactly the opposite of almost any Microsoft product. I’ve decided today is Microsoft bashing day and I bet their quaking.

A phone with a camera? That’ll never catch on

On By AlexIn Other stuff3 Comments


I’ve already had quite alot to say about the sheer pointlessness of devices that claim to do anything you could ever possibly want but, in reality, do nothing very well at all. My SmartPhone nestles perfectly into this category with it’s head banging slowness, bastardised Windows apps and general unsuitability for making an receiving calls.

Occasionally though, the camera is quite fun.

If this works, it’s a direct post from Flickr. So I fully expect this picture to turn up on some other poor buggers’ blog. Good job I decided not the post the one with the goat then.

EDIT: Bloody Hell, that’s clever. I can now post pictures directly from the useless, over-hyped, irritatingly smug annoyance of the phone to the blog. How did I ever manage to survive without that?

Technology has the habit of creating fantastic solutions for which their are no obvious problems. You don’t agree? I give you Windows Vista and, at which point, the defense rests.

Flying is good.

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsense1 Comment

There’s much in the papers today about living on the edge. Whether that’s chucking a Rugby ball about, or facing terminal cancer with a cheery smile, or winning in business by playing odds no one else dares – it’s all about being something that others are not.

Life on the edge is β€œ naturally β€œ edgy. It’s about making dangerous choices while fully understanding the precarious consequences, but doing it anyway. It’s the self confidence to fight against the tide, be a sheepdog in a field of sheep and never, ever accepting that what you are doing is even close to being enough. Religion speaks to us that our short life is merely a precursor to something better, but those peering over the abyss believe that there is nothing penultimate about life on earth.

So it’s really not a nice place to be.

Sometimes I get a glimpse of what that world must be like where now is everything and you are one cowardly decision away from normality, regret and safety. And the older you are, the line between pushing it or faking it becomes increasingly blurred. Parental responsibility and physical fragility are the waves drowning your youthful impulsiveness and washing you away to a conformist shore.

And that’s a shitty place to be as well.

Life without risk is no life at all. With my mortality fear looming ever larger, each day is a test of your bravery, your commitment, your closeness to the edge. So you must steel yourself to step forward, to look the drop full in the face and feast on the rush of spitting fear in the eye. And then running away quickly.

A friends’ parent bravely piloted a Lightening jet fighter for many years, but now stutters through his remaining life twitching on phantom adrenalin and craving the rush. But what a life – suspended between terror and greatness never counting the cost of a junkiesm that holds you hostage to stuff you can no longer do. It’s the same but worse for those who chase the dragon in every raised vein, or grab their kicks from a bottle. You may reasonably question their willpower and social responsibility, but even they must dimly toast Dylan Thomas and his raging against the dying of the light.

It distills to this β€œ better to live to forty, fifty maybe sixty years old rather than waiting for God while dribbling into a hospice pillow, forgotten by those who were once the centre of your world. Your lie broken in a bed that’s waiting to be a coffin β€œ at best a responsibility and, at worst an embarrassment.

So there should be none of that embarrassment if you mainline your twenty something old self and remember that sometimes Who Gives A Fuck?‘ is an entirely appropriate way to greet adversity and accountability. I used to think I hated being scared for myself, or frightened for my family. You know that stomach churning revelation at 3am that maybe your best times have gone and you’d blown what little talent you had.

But I don’t anymore β€œ because even pretending to be on the edge rocks like a hurricane and while the lows are lower, the highs fly β€œ Icarus like β€œ to the Gods. And here’s the thing; the singular joy of being a coward is every time you carve a fast, sketchy bend or confront a scary inner demon, it fills your heart up with life stuff and makes you seven feet tall and invincible.

And that’s a fantastic place to be β€œ even if it is only for one minute in a thousand.

Life on the edge is not a choice. But sometimes you’re lucky enough to be aware that you can choose to shuffle sideways into conformity or, take a deep breath and jump β€œ hoping against hope you can learn to fly.

Flying is good.

Quantockastic!

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

Exactly a year ago, a few hardy souls braved the ice, wind and sub zero temperature of the Quantock Hills in Somerset. Because I’m now officially too old and decrepit to have any new or creative ideas, we chose the same weekend and trails to try again.

Except this time, the mercury was rising and a weekend of shorts, dry trails and apparently limitless singletrack awaited the slightly porkier but no wiser riding crew.

I’m far too knackered at the moment to even try and narrate one of the best riding weekends I’ve had in this country so here are some photos instead.

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Once 14 hour sleep has blissfully passed behind tightly closed eyelids, I’ll make something up to go with them.

Andy – if you’re reading this, I’m asleep at my desk. Sorry πŸ˜‰

Dead Pheasants Society.

On By AlexIn Other stuff3 Comments

It does seem unnecessarily brutal to declare open season on grouse and pheasants on the Glorious 12th or whatever it is. Because these birds are already heading towards extinction without dying of natural causes. I mean what could be more natural than being chased across a wild moor by blokes with sticks, desperately lumbering into the air to escape and then being blown into a thousand pieces by an aristocratic inbred called Toby with a thousand acres and a shotgun?

No, these birds are going the same way as the Dodo with their slavish adherence to a road crossing style that lacks a certain survivability. They stand there safe on the side of the road, cocking their heads and looking stupid and static until the EXACT MOMENT you are beyond any safe braking zone. Then β€œ belying an acceleration not obviously anatomically possible with those chicken legs β€œ they take a bead on the centre of your bonnet and make a spirited beaklong plunge under the wheels.

The first time this happened was back in my student days when we lacked both money and any common sense. So before you could say botulism alertΓ―ΒΏΒ½?, we backed over it to make sure, chucked it in the boot and took it home with us. After plucking it using all the fastidious preparation techniques one can apply with a fireaxe, we hung it in the garage and waited for the smell to subside.

Disappointingly, the final carve up merited only a buffet pork pie’s worth of meat and a slimy, gamey taste that lingered for days afterwards. So when it happened again more recently, I just sighed, got out and beat it to death with a tyre iron. It’s the way it would have wanted to go I think.

On Sunday, a third bird made swift passage under the nearside wheel and a glance in the mirror revealed it had not been a killing blow. Now my car β€œ racily awarded Towing car of the year” by What Caravan β€œ does not have a tyre iron or a jack or anything else traditionally useful for braining stupid animals. Well it may do, but they’ll be hidden away under flaps, widgets and flanges and I felt putting the poor thing out of its’ misery was of a higher priority than reading than ringing the garage, and asking where the sharp things were kept. Clearly not in the drivers seat.

All that came to hand was a rolled up copy of the Times. This seemed a little cruel to admonish the pheasant for its’ stupidity by applying said newspaper across the nose in the manner of puppy punishment. It might have killed it but only through boredom and anyway I hadn’t even started the crossword.

It’s mad eye rotated frantically, but that was the only thing that was moving unless you count some unpleasant twitching. I couldn’t leave it there in pain so β€œ sighing again β€œ off came the shoe and the poor sod was dispatched. The single killing blow I was aiming for was compromised because half of my body β€œ the bit with the eyes in it β€œ was turning the other way. So only when the tarmac had been given a good kicking did my random flailings finally deliver the coup de grace.

I’m not sure kicking it into a ditch and throwing some soil over it constitutes a decent burial but the whole episode hardly rang out with dignity.

If I’m reincarnated, I have a nasty feeling that there may be squawking and shotguns in my next life.

Anyone for Yoda?

On By AlexIn Other stuff4 Comments

This is clearly the month for rubbish retro sci-fi gags even after my pithy Battlestar Gallactica pun failed to crack a smile. It did however trigger a scarily intense e-mail from one of my more β€œ how can I put this politely β€œ factually keen readers. Apparently they didn’t do Hyperspace in the original BC except in episode 37 when Bulbon the Destroyer Of Sprouts tricked Captain Picard into handing over the Flux Capacitor. Or something like that, but whatever let me just air my response in public β€œ I DON’T FUCKING CARE, ALRIGHT?

Glad we’ve cleared that up.

Anyway in preparation for a date with a destiny, that I would happily have run over broken glass to break, my early evening reading was the refreshingly kaftan Mung Bean Times incorporating ˜What Lentil’. Yes, dear readers, I’m going to admit on an open blog β€œ or Chronicle of Angst as I’m increasingly thinking of it as β€œ that a relatively healthy and not totally mental bloke went to Yoga.

The vision that’s impossible to shake is made up of a room full of Cassandras’ and Skys’ clothed in tie-die shirts and leg warmers, chanting runic base lines and inserting purple painted toes into jewellery infested ears. Add a dash of dreary music easily categorised into relaxing tunes to slash your wrists by” and some way out hippy imploring us to locate our inner child, and the whole foot laceration begins to look like the less painful option.

Obviously there were no blokes except me and a few of the women were certainly of the original bra burning generation. But not all of them β€œ one of which was my wife as I cravenly refused to go on my own. In case someone gave me a jostick and insisted on adorning my person with occult jewellery. And as for the instructor β€œ well let me tell about Darcie, who is supple enough to throw a leg carelessly into the next room while elegantly rotating on a single finger. And β€œ apparently I didn’t really notice as Carol was yoga-matted right next to me β€œ she was pretty damn hot too. Fellas, consider this β€œ extremely athletic, the perfect figure and probably susceptible to the odd recreational pharmaceutical. Quite a combination I should think, if I were thinking about it. Which I’m not but the rest of you, go fill your boots. Or something.

Anyway it was bloody hard β€œ stop sniggering at the back β€œ and while ladies who lunch stretched languid muscles with irritating ease, I was all trembling veins and slouchy posture. Twenty years of cycling has reduced my hamstrings to a length better suited to a 10 year old child. Whereas my flexibility would be better matched to an 80 year old man with arthritis. Or possibly rigour mortis.

Blokes generally like lifting big weights or sweating in a manly manner while sucking in their gut and thrusting everything pelvic in the opposite direction. But this isn’t like that at all, it’s all the pain you can handle by pitting opposing muscles in an uber bitch fight and there really aren’t any winners. Except β€œ and it’s not without some grudging am I writing this β€œ an hour later, all sorts of previously unseen rotational vistas had opened up.

Thankfully for all my stereotyping, mung bean made a late entry into proceeding when we all had a much needed lie down with the lights off. Someone even brought a blanket. I was doing my best to relax butΒ¦ (edited for reasons of not wishing to die horribly by cheese grater) instead found myself thinking that this wasn’t quite as silly as originally envisaged.

As the great man/dwarf/Jedi may once have said Practise the art of Yoga or touch your toes you will not”. I had a far better line for the old loppy eared one but the thought of the cheese grater made me reconsider.

Alarming

On By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuff6 Comments

During what should be sleeping hours, there is occasionally the very disturbing sensation of the real world impinging on your deepest dreams. This is doubly upsetting if the dream in question involves certain images and actions which β€œ if biologically possible β€œ you’d really rather not interrupt.

The doubling of anxiety is ratcheted up to a spine chilling treble once your aural nerves transmit the alarming audio stream to a REM concussed brainstem. It takes but a second for a sleepy brain to instigate a full body audit followed by a manikin like jerk out of bed. Because that noise is not just a noise, it’s the frantic bleating of the alarm system, which represents the final barrier to a scrotal removal of your property.

And it’s worse that that, it’s not the house alarm, it’s all gone off in the barn where the bikes hang unlocked at the mercy of anyone with a crowbar and a careless attitude to other peoples’ property.

My headlong charge through the house and up the garden was arrested by a bleary Carol suggesting that, any challenge to my property authority would carry significantly more gravitas if I was wearing any clothes. I’ve always found trousers a bit of a challenge and a body stressed with extreme anxiety helped not at all as we desperately played the right leg, wrong hole game. During this hour or so, the claxon call of the alarm proceeded to wake about half of the village.

Finally appropriately trooned and with no concern for personal safety, I mounted a one man pincer attack on the barn, ready to scream challenges and lay about this crack crime syndicate with nothing more than a righteous expression and a battle cat*

My plan was cruelly thwarted by a locked door which I fully expected to be broken open and filled with the silhouette of rapidly shifting bikes. I released the cat β€œ whereupon it furiously maimed an innocent badger β€œ and scrambled with a logistically tricky two keys for a while before the door gave way.

I checked every nook and cranny using an approach first honed at the age of eight when being convinced there was a bogeyman hiding in the cupboard. Run to door, pause and whimper a bit, grab handle and wrench open while offering up a don’t mess with me” granite gaze but taking four rapid steps backwards just in case a hundred overlapping teeth were slavering away.

No bogeymen, no obvious reason for the sensors to have kicked into life. Obviously I checked every window and door at least three times and equally obviously I barely got any sleep for the remainder of the night. Or the next night come to that.

So I’m giving up on technology. Instead my plan is to install a very large dog and not feed it very often. Either than or I’m googling for some ninja voles.

* to create a battle cat“, take one semi domesticated and wide asleep feline, grab by the tail and begin to swing around your head in an every increasing arc. Once your foes are in sight, release wailing, pissing cat at face height just as it reaches terminal velocity. Then hide behind a bush until the screaming stops. At this point, your opponent is probably dead and if not, almost certainly mentally and physically incapacitated.

Put me back on the bike.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding2 Comments

Hardly a weekend has passed in the last five years when I’ve not cheerfully abandoned my family to seek a β€œ frankly pervy – sweaty and muddy outdoors experience with a lycra clad flange of middle aged blokes.

Somewhere in this period, I carelessly crossed the line between a hobby and a mental illness which opened up a black hole, into which I willingly plunged money, blood, time and a few post crash whimpers.

So an unbroken run of eight weekends without trailering a bike and heading off to fill a couple of circular hours before the pubs opened, grooved an ominous record which suggested DIY and bigger trousers lie in wait.

Better go riding then because the option was a continuing approach to life based on the grumpy bastard” scenario, which offered much misery and probable rolling pin based injuries in the near future.

Traditionally, I don’t ride in the Chilterns much between November and March because the entire area is twinned with Flanders. Yesterday, I lost first my sunglasses and then most of my gears as we slogged through never ending mud and slime for three and a half painful hours. Uphill was a trudge for traction, the flat sections were a constant battle against deep trenches full of slime and the downhills were either pedally boredom or a terrifying plunge through a mud slick with no obvious methods of steering or braking. Options at this point involved instantly falling off in a comedy heap or surfing towards spikey shrubbery using your face as an emergency brake.

I did both. It should have been dreadful. But you know what? It was bloody fantastic to the power of two working lungs. Starting off nervous, with a pounding fear that the first climb would confirm some unnamed permanent damage to my lungs, the day just got better and better as the conditions went the other way. Normally I’d hate riding in mid winter gloop with its pleasure killing slime and component destroying grit. But now today, although I’ll not be a rush to go back until some public spirited soul has been out with a hairdryer.

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It took me only the remainder of the day to rebuild the battered husk of the transmission and a few more beers to dull the horror of the grit stripped paintwork. Still it’s only money and the financial disaster that is my credit card deals with the detritus and I can go riding again. I have some catching up to do.

Forty miles down the road offers up sand instead of chalk as the subsoil structure so thigh deep mud was replaced with fast, dry trails interspersed with thick wheel gripping gloop which’d happily punt the unwary into a waiting tree. All part of the fun, apparently.

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So it appears I got my lung back although in keeping with someone pursuing a one man quest to undertake every possible diagnostic test on the NHS, it’s not all beer and skittles just yet. Well it’s certainly missing the skittles.

Anyway, I’m sure you’ve got the point and even if you haven’t, this seems a good time to stop especially as I’m eagerly anticipating a short but intense relationship with a warm chicken.

Nothing wrong with that in the comfort of your own home.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m BACK πŸ™‚

A serious post.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding8 Comments

I joked a little about recycling old unpublished stuff. And mostly that’s true but in this case it really isn’t. Coming up four years ago, my friend Russ Pinder has a massive crash on a brutal descent in Wales. The outcome was a “T4” which means he is paralysed from the chest down. But he’s doing ok and that’s almost entirely due to his mental strength, refusal to succumb to misery and the love and support of his family. He’s an inspiration to everyone but his survival is due – at least for the first days – the air ambulance.

The “hour of life” which differentiates those dying in inaccessible mountains and those being cared for in hospital is often down to the charity funded yellow helicopters. You can read more about a foundation Russ and his friends started to support them here. If you’ve got a spare quid, there are far worse places to spend it.

Anyway here’s the article written in March 2003. It was too raw to publish after the accident and I’m only doing it now in the hope that at least one of you who occasionally find the hedgehog amusing may like to donate to a fantastic cause.

I have a friend called Russ. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not some schoolyard pal or a soulmate whose take on life complements mine. He’s just a bloke I’ve been riding with, on and off, for the last eighteen months. He’s fast everywhere; uphill, downhill, over technical challenges and on the road. He’s passionate about our sport to the point of being a little intense. He’s a bike per genre kind of guy with a lightweight hardtail, a pimpy full-suss and a FR/DH bike. Sometimes he’s a bit condescending and his competitive gland is scarily overactive but all in all, he’s a generous, warm hearted, committed mountain biker.

Like I say I’ve got a friend called Russ. He’s lying in a hospital bed paralysed from the chest down. He wanted to be the perfect mountain biker, straining for the pinnacle of his sport and yet for all he has put in, the rest of his life stretches away in a chasm of paralysis that his wheelchair can never cross.

It’s a week since it happened but details are still sketchy. Whilst my downhill medium was snow and skis, a bunch of the usual suspects had taken advantage of the unseasonably dry weather to tackle the famed Tal-Y-Bont loop. Last year, I’d done the same and been blown away by the pace and the mountains. It was a pretty intimidating ride on all counts but Russ was in his element β€œ fast and confident, excelling in his chosen sport. This time out, the world schismed and we’ll probably never know why. But on the descent from the Gap, Fate tipped the balance delivering a partial sacrifice to an uncaring God. It’s a brute of a descent β€œ steep, scary and unforgiving at the top tending to stupidly fast whilst retaining it’s rocky backbone toward the bottom. I vividly recall Russ blowing by me last year β€œGulfstream to Cessna β€œ accelerating to Motocross speed with only a light plastic compound helmet as protection against a fall.

I’m working off eye witness accounts swayed by aftershock and grounded in guilt. ˜What else could we have done?’ his riding companions plaintively ask. Probably nothing but the spectre of passiveness in the face of nebulous evidence will haunt them for a long time. Maybe for ever. No one actually saw the accident but empirical evidence from the aftermath is compelling β€œ the front wheel 50 yards behind the battered frame, itself lying beyond the trail boundary fence, equidistantly bisected by a permanently damaged and limp Russ, lying motionless on the unyielding rocks which broke his fall and broke his back.

His riding friends were magnificent. They kept him warm, took a GPS reading and urgently called an air ambulance. This in the light of Russ’ helmet being nothing more than polycarbonate shards and the man himself crying ˜I can’t feel my legs’. I just don’t know who to start feeling sorry for first.

Helicopters, hospitals, logistics and worrying ate up the next 6 hours as Heather (Russ’ wife) is driven from Didcot in Oxfordshire while his riding buddies crowd into the ward waiting for news. There wasn’t much and none of it was good β€œ rumour and introspection are not happy bedfellows.

Fast forward a day. He’s due at the Spinal Injuries ward in Stoke Mandeville hospital. That’s good β€œ it’s the premier institution in the UK for such injuries and it’s only five miles from my house. A friend of I go to see what’s happening. No Russ as yet but the ward is still terrifying β€œ not the nurses who are kind and calm, but the distress of the patients and the signs on the wall accentuate the long term hell for anyone that passes through these doors on a trolley. It’s hard to look at a noticeboard displaying a rota for bladder training and not lose the plot completely.

A marker here – I hate hospitals. Irrational and stupid but I still do. I’m shaking as we leave and it gets worse. Outside the entrance to the spinal ward is a bloke our age in a wheelchair apparently paralysed from the neck down. He’s talking earnestly to his seven year old daughter who looks on with wide eyes and no understanding. The chair reminds me unpleasantly of Davros of Dr Who fame and I can’t shed the image of a restless body confined to 5{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of the movement it was born with. This is real and it’s scary shit.

Click fast forward again. The MTB forums are aflame with questions, updates and messages of goodwill. They ring hollow in my head: Get well soon and back on the bike Russ?. Yeah right like that’s going to happen. I’m angry now, the piousness and hypocrisy is cloying β€œ I know I should be touched by the core of their sentiments but I’m not. Later I chill out a bit β€œ maybe the threads are a little naïve but they’re heartfelt and now I’m proud of our little community. We really care for our own.

It’s been a week. The tape wind forwards but not much changes. No visits except the family made up of Russ’s brother, wife and two kids both under 10. Heather is hanging in there by all accounts but what can she tell the kids? They’ve only known daddy as a sporty, athletic can-do-anything kind of guy and now they’re facing a major readjustment.

The prognosis is bad. Russ has been told his spinal cord is shattered β€œ there is no cure β€œ he’ll be paralysed for the rest of his life. He is 38 years old. But he’s a fighter with a positive mental approach yet I can’t help thinking this must be too much too soon for anyone. One minute in your prime, confident and successful supported by a loving family and the next WHAM, you’re a cripple, a dependant, fighting daily embitterment and questioning always questioning ˜WHY ME?’ to a world that has branded you different. You must think of all the things you used to be able to do but now you’re an object of pity or ridicule defined and imprisoned by your wheeled cage. Christ it’s keeping me awake so how is Russ coping surrounded by the sterile hospital environment, lying awake with a broken back and broken dreams? All the time in the world to think and no physical ability to do.

We went for a ride. Many of the guys who’d witnessed the accident were aghast at the prospect of getting back on a mountain bike. But we had demons to exorcise. It’s strange because I was sure we’d take it easy β€œ maybe ponder the pointlessness of our sport or tell tall tales of our rides with Russ. But we didn’t. We nailed everything right on the razors edge pushing uncaring into the adrenal zone and loving the rush. Maybe that’s it β€œ it’s a risk and reward gig and even with Russ lying in hospital, that’s still not enough to make us stop.

Mountain biking is sometimes an exercise in not thinking. It strips away the social conventions that drive you to ˜do the right thing’. It reduces life to simple pleasures and binary decisions; left or right, slow or fast, spin or race. It makes you love it β€œ the lifestyle, the danger, the bullshit, the dopamine hit, the difference even when you think you’re hating it.

Don’t misunderstand me. Russ’s accident has shaken me to the core. I’m dreading walking into his hospital ward because I know he’ll see the truth in my eyes: ˜Sorry Mate, I’ll do whatever I can but THANK FUCK it’s you and not me’. I’m not proud of that neither am I alone in thinking it. And it scares me β€œ our sport is a drug β€œ yet I’ll never give it up until I’m too old, too scared or too damaged. And I know Russ would have done the same. He’s not a martyr and I’m not going to canonise him because we all embrace the danger and we have to live with the consequences. It’s not fair and it’s not right but it’s our choice. There is no middle ground.

Mountain Biking is in our blood. It’s like the Hotel California β€œ you can check out any time you like but you can never leave.

I’ve got a friend called Russ. It’s early days but I’ve got a feeling he’ll come good. In two years time, we’ll be cheering on the Mall as he races past in his wheelchair, arms pumping and race face in place, against the other heroes who we applaud but will never quite understand. I hope it’s not wishful thinking but I just know in my heart he’ll be fine. And if he isn’t, he’s going to have a whole community of like minded people who will never stop helping him be all he can.

I’ve got a friend called Russ. I’m proud to be his mate.

PS: I never got to see Russ race down the mall but he’s back on a 4 wheeled bike now and he is off skiing next month. Which is about as close to a happy ending as you could hope to get.