That’s my friends’ best medical diagnosis of the spare nose I’ve grown on my shoulder. On Saturday, under clear skies and with temperatures in the mid 70’s, I should be doing a bit of this.

That’s a trail in Morocco and it’s easily identifiable as “not this country” because water is not cascading down it, the bike doesn’t appear to be weighed down with a tonne of finest mud products, and the sky has something in it other than rain.

Aside from the insanely early flight, this trip has much going for it; great friends, dry trails, a support vehicle that will shuttle you up those difficult hills and a country I’ve never been too. Weighing against this is the shoulder of doubt and its’ worrying nobblyness. Having seen no improvement and less sleep for the last week or so, I see my options as:

1/ Demand an A&E X-Ray and some useful treatment.
2/ Do nothing and hope for the best
3/ Be sensible and don’t ride because the potential for fuck ups are legion.

Problem with 1/ is if they find something cracked or bust, it invalidates my riding insurance. Problem with 3/ is that it is extremely dull. So 2/ it is then with additional camera batteries and patience if riding becomes too difficult and I become “man, tanning on truck”

I’ve been looking forward to this trip through the dark and wet winter months. To say I’m irritated after taking ownership – yet again – of the mantle of mong would be a bit of an understatement.

For those of you neither of mountain bike or mechanical persuasion, I heartily recommend you look away now. For the rest of you, I am seeking re-entry through the bolted door – double locked with nailed wood – which bars entry to “the tools of war“. Yes after a day where I was forced to self-harm with the “spoon of hurt“, it seemed apposite to explode violently creating a blast radius where there was once expensive bike parts.

The reasons are simple. My crushing inability to wield even the most harmless tool without the kind of collateral damage last seen during the Tet Offensive is well documented. My mental detonation was fused by a series of meetings where the word “estimating” had euphemistically replaced the rather more accurate “fucking hell, let’s just have a wild guess eh and then fuck off home”. Chiltern Railways then provided all the cerebral C4 a man can reasonably be expected to handle when abandoning us first in Rickmansworth, then ChorleyWood, then Chalfont and Latimer before grinding to a shunting halt somewhere outside Amersham.

The final spark was travelling in a suit, compressed into a carriage I’d inadvertently wandered into not realising it was reserved only for those with weapons grade body odour and a seat companion who was both fat AND sniffly. I really want my shoulder to work so I can smell at them right back and stave off arse cheeks the size of Belgium.

So right now, I’m looking at this.

Out of shot are some serious tools normally spun by men sporting a stern expression and a damp rollup behind the ear, whose only clothes are three pairs of identical oil stained overalls. The type of bloke who can rebate a dwell angle inlet valve and create almost any shape from an old nail and a stick. Copies of well thumbed “What Lathe incorporating Popular Angle Grinder” litter every horizontal surface and the remnants of a once proud engineering nation are clear to see.

I’m not like that. I’m less studied, more twitchy and far, far more destructive. I don’t want to be but when God was handing out motor skills, I was accidentally setting fire to an angel. If all that remains of something once lovely are a few collapsing atoms and a guilty expression, it’s probably been FBA. I like to think of that as Fixed By Alex although some would select a different F verb.

In front of me are a headset press, a bottom bracket facing tool, a thread reamer and a star fangled nut. No, I’ve really no idea what they are do either but each offers sufficient flat metal to receive a well directed hammer blow. But I think the frame could take it – it appears to have been hewn from deck sections of the Graf Spee and welded by uncomplicated men who bond ocean spanning bridges for their day jobs.

My last steel frame was all swoopy lines and pretty detailing. It was a wheeled gazelle, frolicking in the fields and breezily galloping down trails barely marking their surface. This frame however does not frolic. It has no truck with leaving the surface untouched – rather it stamps like an invading army beating the ground into submission and if that fails, eating it. Someone has looked at a bunch of stress models on a computer screen, thought “bugger this” and added 25{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} more thickness to every tube.

A sticker proclaims this angry amalgam of tubes is lightweight steel. But I’m not sure, I think it is a little known oxide of annoyance and hostility well hidden in the periodic table. I think it’s made of Chunk.

So I could make a start. What is the worse thing that could happen? Or for those of us with a fevered imagination, what’s the 10th worse thing that could happen? I’m having a badger* to think about it.

Oh and it’s battleship gray. Co-incidence? I think not.

* This is not some kind of nasty “bodging the badger” sexual metaphor. It’s a beer. Honest.

I’m not a man who deals well with boredom. And since I can’t ride proper bikes at the moment, I’ve already served a Sunday penance on the Turbo Trainer and jetwashed both children. In a desperate attempt to remove myself from rubbish TV, I found this nifty free add on to Firefox (similar to IE in the same way that Linux is similar and way better than Windows) which grabs web text and pictures and sends them hurtling to the hedgehog.

A picture from James showing a man winning the inaugural “Hug a Tree with your head” competition at Glentress in Scotland. An outstanding effort easily painful enough to secure first prize.

There’s a litany of pain, suffering and amusement to be found on this thread posted on Singletrackworld. My picture started it but it just gets better and better.

Another weekend where riding through mud and gloop is happening to almost everyone I know. Gloaters the lot of them, struggling through trails rendered unrecognisable by Winters’ glacial ascent over the hard packed singletrack of a forgotten summer. Like a monster from the deep, brown slop rises inexorably over your favourite tracks and the water table rises with it.

So while those lucky bastards are sliding about in freezing conditions and condemning their wallets to hard day at component replacement central, I was left to muse on an inability to bounce which seems inescapably linked to increasing age.

Back in 2001, when the world seemed a simpler place and mountain bikes replaced motorbikes as my mental illness of choice, I hardly ever hurt myself. Sure I fell off “ often “ but never injuring anything other than inflated pride and wearing the scars as this years accessory to tight lycra. That’s another thing that has changed, any attempt to squeeze myself into those riding garments would see great swathes of extra flesh trying to get back out again.

Still being rubbish will eventually catch up with you and it didn’t have to run that hard when I swapped fitness for fun. Here’s an abridged chronology of who broke what where from 2005.

Feb 2005:
Jump going badly wrong resulting in a testicle slam that broke the saddle. Yes that’s right I bent and broke a steel railed saddle with my bollocks. Feel free to grab your sack and go all cross eyed. I know I did.

May 2005
Failing to lower the saddle when pitching into the pit of doom. Spat out forward in accordance with laws of physics. Sharp flint created additional arse crack and 35lb freeride bike added all body bruising as it fell out of the sky from a great height. Onto my head.

June 2005
Target fixation on a tree while clipped in for the first time in four months. Practical experiment testing the theory that if can’t tear your eyes away from an impending tree you will hit it. Hypothesis confirmed at the cost of a cracked rib.

December 2005
Refusal to admit that crappy balance centre and fear of heights above 6 inches prevent a man from being a North Shore God. Plank bites Man. Some blood and recently repaired rib much disturbed. Sleeping optional for a week or so, breathing less so but I wish it had been.

July 2006
Six months of atheism when the Cult of the Monged was calling to others. Made a bloody sacrificial offering to Altyr Of The Broken when a tyre lost a battle of traction with gravity, and knee lost a battle of abrasion with a spikey flint. Was latterly awarded Order of the Mong, first class. Became a fervent believer in Fate, to whit her specific irritation that with yours truly.

August 2006
Second day back on the bike after interesting noughts and crosses motif inscribed on kneecap by man with wire brush and needle. Courageously removed one arm from bars on flat section of trail and was instantly transported to the horizontal. Smashed up recently healed elbow due mainly to arm pads protecting the inside of the car. Sown back up by GP’s son who’d got a pretty good idea of what to do and medicated entirely by Nurse Stella Artois for days afterwards.

January 2007
A doomed attempt at a stylish takeoff ended “ unsurprisingly “ in a footless landing with limbs vigorously attempting to escape the host before a head slam to dirt bank brought home the full meaning of deceleration trauma. Adrenalin painkillers got me home at which point pain turned up and hung around for a few days.

February 2007.
Stuffed a front wheel into a muddy ditch. Ditch deeper than anticipated with a groundhoggy ˜here we go again‘ exit over the bars. Bars provided the perfect foil for soft flesh and bruises marched from the toes upwards.

February 2007.
Stump bites man. Shoulder now on disability benefit and showing no signs of wishing to return to work.

Now there’s a school of thought much aired in the Leigh household than maybe, just maybe, this hobby is too expensive both in terms of time, hard cash and body parts. Hah, I would rather chop off the offending limb that brook even a tributary of that argument.

Because between the accidents, I was having the time of my life and until the risk/reward ratio tips firmly towards being to broken or too scared to carry on, it’ll be business as usual.

Although can someone else have a turn at crashing? Thanks.

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.

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.

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.

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 😉

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.

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.

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 🙂

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.