Category: Bikes

Tens of thousands of words and the odd blurred picture of fast moving vegetation rehashing one of two tenuous threads. Spliced together using random punctuation and alcohol.

Thursday? Must be time to go to the hospital.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding2 Comments

It is more than a little disturbing to find myself lying in the same hospital bay last visited after ripping my knee open on a summer flint. That encounter traded pain for boredom over the next three days until eventually a nice man with seven years training and a wire brush removed a kneeful of trail dirt and rocks.

Stoke Mandeville hospital has lately become like a second home or the local pub. Every time I stagger into the front entrance with some imagined fatal disease, the receptionist greets me as an unwanted smelly Uncle who keeps turning up, even after the kind of hints that have an iron bar wrapped around them.

I fully expected to suffer the same six hour wait as the previous summer, and so prepared myself with a flask of coffee and a selection of periodicals with sufficient depth to keep me going long into the night. Fortified thus, it was almost a disappointment, therefore, to be called in for an educated prodding within thirty minutes of darkening the A&E doorstep.

And I’d barely started on a gripping article entitled, bevelling a radiator grill with emphasis on the waffling flange and homologising the rebate bracket� This is the type or periodical written for and written by a special but shadowy sector of the UK population; known only as the “retired“

Once the traditional lies around smoking and drinking had been documented “ much to my amusement when considering the relevance to a manky shoulder “ much wiggling and attempted rotation followed. During some extended prodding, I felt her enquiry on whether there was any pain was somewhat superfluous, since by this time I was chewing the bedpost and answering almost any questions with “arrrgghhh that bloody hurts”

A severe blow was dealt to my hypochondria once she’d announced that nothing was obviously broken, it wasn’t worth the cost of an x-ray and the best medical science could offer was Ibuprofen, ice and a concise explanation of age, injury and fast healing. Pick any two from three apparently.

The doctor’s prognosis that it may be more painful in the morning�? was absolutely spot on once you’ve exchanged more for excruciatingly. The arm works pretty well below shoulder level and partially above. The eye watering transition between the two has only been slightly dulled by a druggy concoction of aspirin, cocodemal and “ the bikers friend “ industrial strength Ibuprofen. The dosages I’m taking would probably stun a small donkey but, over the years, my body has built up a bit of a resistance.

How did it happen? Obviously I crashed the bike again. Less obviously, it was a cruel permutation of stump high mud, a stump and a narrow gulley. My foot took the initial impact before an outstretched hand took the rest as I was flipped over the bars sporting a very surprised expression. This is the classic scenario where the next thing you hear is your collarbone snapping. So this makes me lucky I guess. Not feeling terribly lucky though, now yesterdays full range of movement has long gone and been replaced by a sharp ache.

I need to stop crashing. Or learn to bounce better. The kids reckoned I should just stop riding mountain bikes. Wisdom of youth eh? I don’t think so.

The body “ even in us elder gentlemen “ is an amazing thing and the Doc confidently predicted a repair in about two weeks. Since that’s on the exact timeline of a five day riding trip to Morocco, he’d bloody better be right.

Stereotyping..

On By AlexIn Bikes4 Comments

… which, if you properly deconstruct the word, should mean writign this with both hands. Instead, it’s at the heart of a reply, written by the British Cycling Federation, to Nigel “Panto and Ranting are my only incomes now” Havers and his cycle hating nastiness.

It starts like this:

I guess many cyclists will have shared my anger at the anti-cycling pieces in the Sunday Times, 4th February. In the In-Gear (formerly Motoring) section of the paper, actor Nigel Havers has had another of his regular pops at cyclists, whilst the letters column of the same section features an anti-cycling diatribe for the second week running.

It feels personal, it’s annoying and it’s highly frustrating. But above all that, if you sit back and think about it, it’s a stance which is pretty dumb. Yet it’s one we hear and see a lot more often than we should in the supposedly intelligent end of the national media. Nigel Havers has been on this soapbox more often than our small screens of late, so it’s not even original on any level, yet he’s at it again and editors seem content to keep paying him to do so.

But, do you know, it’s not the accuracy of these pieces which gets to me. I’m realistic enough to accept that cyclists are not all angels. Some cyclists jump red lights (a recurring theme in the letters columns of papers nation-wide). Some cyclists ride on the pavement. And, sad to say, some of us look pretty ridiculous in the garb we wear for cycling – the practicality which is usually lost on non-cyclists.

No, it’s the underlying thought processes which disturb me. There are some 2 to 3 million bikes sold in the UK every year. Cycling is the third or fourth most popular form of exercise, depending on your source. And yet, the kind of rubbish these articles contain is built on the generalising of cyclists into one big group. The term for this process is stereotyping. The authors take their personal, negative experience of one or two cyclists and extrapolate from that and ascribe the same characteristics to all cyclists.

And goes on at some length to make the point. Read it all here

It finishes not with a stereotypical analysis of car drivers, but with some real world facts:

– Cyclists very, very rarely kill people they collide with
– Motor vehicles kill thousands on our roads every year

– Cycling does not contribute to global warming
– Motor vehicles are a major contributor to global warming

And next time you see a car driver doing something foolish, consider just how ridiculous it would be to condemn all motorists on the evidence of that incident alone.

That seems a reasonable point of view to take however you use the road.

Random Photo

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding3 Comments

In keeping with Random’s upcoming birthday, here’s a random picture taken by Grahame Baker in Moab, Utah.

The pilot is Dave Perkins attempting the first Cross Country Front Flip only recently perfected by dirt jumpers and other nutters.

Check out the technique – the weight all the way over the front wheel, the brakes hard on and the look of abject terror as his face races towards hard pointy rock.

Amazingly he wasn’t killed. There was a collective intake of breath as he bounced down the remaining rock steps and lay motionless for a second.

But we knew all was well after patching up bleeding knees as Dave asked for a medicinal lager. It was about 9am in the morning.

Random goes global.

On By AlexIn Bikes3 Comments

Random has – against the laws of probability – almost reached the age of six. And that is simply because she’s only loosely connected to this world of dull reality which houses the rest of us. Random’s world is merely an infinite goldfish bowl where every day is going to be brilliant and every thing she does is always new and exciting. She has an unnerving habit – in fact she has many, I’m merely picking one as a representative example – of snuggling into the sofa while – say – Shrek is on and after ten minutes of golden silence innocently asking “has it finished yet ?” or “Is the green man a cabbage?“.

Her elder sister never did this. Because she’s been going on fourteen since looking bloody irritated as she was brought into this world. It’s an expression she often goes back too. Could also be that we never let her watch TV while she was locked under the stairs for the first five years, but we don’t like to talk about that.

Random refuses to accept the nuggety existence of physical manifestations of dangerous stuff. Like cars on an intercept trajectory or interesting looking ground that could be better explored from ten feet up. Head first. There is some guff that a second child merely doubles your love for your offspring rather than divides it. This is clearly rubbish – it trebles at least with the gradual understanding that you now have two separate chances to totally screw them up in later life.

Oh and yes, I suppose they are sort of fantastic as well, frustrating, refreshingly selfish, expensive, bloody annoying, often showing violent sibling rivalry but kind of beautifully integral to your life. Sure we could have probably retired by now if we didn’t have kids, paid off the mortgage, sailed round the world, put an offer in for Guatemala, slept peacefully most nights and never suffered the stomach churning embarrassment of a three year old exploding in Tesco but apart from that….

Anyway, as a testemant to the robustness of RandomWorld(tm), she’s getting a rather tidy birthday present.

Jessie's new bike

Well what did you expect? Of course it’s a bike. It’s pink, it has more fork travel than my first three mountain bikes and is rather better made. Verbal has been surprisingly and worryingly calm about being gazumped in the new bikes stakes but this I’m putting down to her current tomboy phase. If it’s not blue or can fire deadly weapons, she’s not that interested.

And while the Leigh collection of two wheeled detritus now extends to two outbuildings and a count of fifteen, I can finally sell/burn/disembowel with powertools the final singlespeed in the bikey herd. Poor old Random was spinning at about a million RPM out on a family ride, which also had the disturbing attribute of disconnecting her steering circuit and sending her plunging down the nearest railway embankment.

The outsourced postman will be delivering it tomorrow. Luckily it’s a bike box so the kids will just assume it’s for me which is a bit rich since Carol had a new one for her birthday and since then I’ve only had one more. This is likely to change rather sooner than Carol probably expects but if I wave my hands around in an excited manner and talk quickly, I reckon all shall be well.

So coming to sustrans near you soon – the Leigh family stone terrifying other legitimate trail users, playing chicken with the concrete and failing to crack the complex code of gearing. And that’s just me.

it’s going to be great 🙂

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 “ naturally “ 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 “ 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 “ 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 “ because even pretending to be on the edge rocks like a hurricane and while the lows are lower, the highs fly “ Icarus like “ 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 “ 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 “ 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 😉

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 “ if biologically possible “ 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 “ whereupon it furiously maimed an innocent badger “ 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 “ 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 🙂

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 “ 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 “ 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 “Gulfstream to Cessna “ 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 “ 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 “ 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 “ 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 “ 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 “ I know I should be touched by the core of their sentiments but I’m not. Later I chill out a bit “ 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 “ there is no cure “ 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 “ 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 “ 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 “ 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 “ our sport is a drug “ 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 “ 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.

Plagiarism

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

In the back of my mind was a slight niggle that the stuff I wrote about handbags in this post had been nicked from somewhere. And it had. From me. I wrote this about five (five! Bloody hell how did 60 months go past so fast?) years ago when I was clearly less grammatically lazy and possibly slightly more amusing.

Miss Hillary Yoghurt in seat 33d provided a fascinating insight into the oldest of Japanese arts – Feng Shui . Clearly attached to a somewhat bedraggled and whiffy holdall, she refused to file it in the overhead lockers where it would have probably eaten the other luggage. Rather, she spent the whole six hour flight rearranging items from her trivia bag via an extended transit to the table in front of her.

Root, Root, oh here’s a comb, clean off the suspicious discharge from the prongs, place it carefully on the side of the table, rotate it 15 degrees, sit back, frown, rotate it the other way 5 degrees, sit back, suck hair, furrow brows, delve back into bag and start again with a boiled sweet. I watched helplessly in some kind of sick admiration that anyone could be this dull as item after item was plucked from what I now thought of as the trivia tardis”, arranged, re-arranged and then if it for some reason didn’t pass muster dispatched unloved back into the hell-sack.

After 3 hours, the table looked like the winner of the worst bric-a-brac stall at the village fate. My barks of laughter were covered hastily by phlegmy coughs but even without my impression of advanced TB, she would never have noticed as each item was subjected to a Krishna like chant delivered in a base grunt that would have had most of us calling the RSPCA, or gunning for the person doing something that sexually obtuse to a cat.

This is from a journal written to commemorate a wet, damp, painful and rather uplifting cycling trip to Ecuador raising money for Cancer relief. It’s a roller coaster of a novelette in 14 loquacious chapters and when I’m feeling lazy (so that’s ALL THE TIME then), I’ll post a few of the choicer bits.