An interesting coincidence on the way home from work tonight. I was late in leaving, so it was getting dark, and it was at the point where I was having to consider my route options. Do I take the shortest route - through Gratelely - and risk having to play "dodge the deer" (blogs passim)? Or do I take a slightly longer - but more deer-free - route?

There is a fairly obvious and mutually exclusive fork in the road about halfway through my journey. As I pass this fork - every night - I always wonder what would have happened if I took the other path.

This dilemma is summed up in a poem by Robert Frost, published nearly 100 years ago. The poem, The Road Not Taken, kind of points out the obvious - once you take a certain path, you cannot change your mind. You can change direction, and rejoin the other path later, but you cannot go back and re-make that original choice. The past is fixed, only the future has possibility.

There was the most beautiful orange moon in a dark blue sky, so I stopped the bike for a few minutes to just kind of appreciate it, whilst I decided what route to take. I also took the opportunity to walk up a wee track I have been eyeing up - looks like a byway - and my map confirms that it is. Leads right on to the tank obstacle course on Salisbury Plain.

About a minute after I stopped the bike, my phone rung. A minute earlier, or five minutes later, and I would have missed the call. It was Martin of AJP, with a couple of tantalising bits and pieces.

The first was a tip - based on years of racing - to fit a couple of straps to my bike. Tough straps, made of seatbelt material, to help me drag it out of ditches in the event of a spill without having to touch hot exhausts or risk getting fingers caught up in spokes.

The second was to tell me that he knows a guy in the New Forest who is known to allow people to ride bikes on his fairly considerably-sized land. This is only about 15 minutes from where I live. Allah will provide.

The third was to tell me about a guy who I have already ridden in a race with. Martin mentioned that I was doing Dakar, and apparently the guy is completely and totally up for doing it. He also rides an AJP, is a damn fine rider, and keen to do Dakar. I am riding alongside him at Midwest Enduro on 9 August, we can talk more about it then.

The other thing was to tell me that there is another AJP in my class at Sunday's Chicken Run. A 125cc (we think bored out to 150cc). Martin tells me - "you have to beat him, he's on a smaller bike". I protest that the guy may be very very good, and Martin helpfully tells me that "you better be better then. You have a faster bike, you must beat him".

So I chose to stop and look at the moon. If I hadn't, then none of the above would have happened. We don't know what would have happened. How much have you missed because you never stopped to look at the moon?

We spoke about some of the bike options for Dakar - building one versus getting one from somewhere else. Bear in mind that I am standing at the side of an A-road, with trucks flying past, but also bear in mind that there is never a bad time to talk about bikes - especially Dakar bikes.

AJP are currently developing a bike which is being designed with Dakar in mind. Still only a set of blueprints just now, it's still something to keep an eye on. AJP bikes are designed by racers, and every bike that leaves the factory is hand-inspected by racers. This is not a pile-em-forty-feet-high-in-a-warehouse operation, these are craftsmen who produce bikes that they themselves would ride.

One of the challenges for a Dakar bike is how to deal with the amount of fuel you need to carry. The normal equation is to add more fuel capacity of the bike, extra tanks and the like. This adds weight - lots of it. So you add a bigger engine to cope with the weight. This means more fuel for the bigger engine. Which means weight. And so on.

Something that AJP considered a few years back was how to reverse this cycle. What if, they reasoned, you had a bike that was dead light and had brilliant fuel economy? What if you only needed to carry - say - 20 litres of fuel instead of 40 since the bike was so light and efficient? They even mooted the posibility of taking a bike like Queen Madge II to Dakar.

OK, there would be modifications to get rid of even more weight. Different forks, lights and a bit of tweaking with fuel tanks and filters but it could be done.

It could especially be done now that the race is changing a little - more fuel stops to favour lighter and smaller bikes.

There's an awful lot of options about which bike to build to get to Dakar on. Whichever path I end up taking, there will be no turning back - I just need to make the best of the option I've chosen, and make sure I absolutely give 100%.

Yet another one of those metaphors for life.

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