Do Not Adjust Your Set
Been a fun old weekend.
First, I had to work - this is never pleasant. Getting paid is pleasant, and I like getting paid, but the working part is a bit rubbish. It's even worse when you are working on something that you know from the outset is going to fail, and that the task has been given to you so that you are the one responsible when it does fail. Corporate bollocks. There are people who make a career out of it.
My manager, a young guy by the name of Kevin, popped into work on Saturday. He was in town with his girlfriend and popped in (a) to thank me profusely for saving his arse (he is up against the same corporate bollocks) and - more importantly - because he thought I'd appreciate a nice Starbucks and a couple of muffins. He delivered these whilst his girlfriend was waiting on a double-yellow line outside. Obviously she was in a car, otherwise the yellow line wouldn't have been a problem.
So I salvaged some dignity out of having to ride up to work on Saturday and Sunday. First of all, I appeared for work an hour late (and all muddy) because I took a detour on Salisbury Plain. On Rosie.
Now we know from experience that we do not take our several-thousand-groat bike that we need to get us to work on Salisbury Plain. We know that we especially do not do this whe we have a top box on the back, whist wearing a rucksack containing an expensive laptop. Yes, we know. We know that it is a Bad Idea to fill your bike up with fuel, making it all heavy, and then take it off-road. We know that we can't even pick it up when we drop it on the driveway, as we just did the day before. Yes, we know.
Like that was going to stop me. I go to Morocco in less than a week and I have nowhere near enough bike time. I knew that The Missus would give me an earful about it, bt I figured that if I didn't drop the bike then she'd never know about it. So off we went, up the tank tracks.
Rosie is a fairly fast bike - lots of torque. I got over 80 mph on some of those tracks - especially the gravel ones - and I was on road tyres. The sides of the gravel tracks are steep - it gives good drainage - and this means that if you hit the road from the side then you have a tabletop, or a jump. For such a heavy bike, Rosie is actually very good at jumping. A BMW kangaroo if you will.
On nearing Swindon, I saw the most beautiful thing. I screeched the bike to a halt and just admired it. It was a track, sort of a road, leading off up the hill. There was a blue sign - and this was the thing of beauty - that said "Not suitable for motor vehicles". Off I went up the hill.
After a few hundred yards, I got the meaning of the sign. It was chalky ruts - all wet and slippery - and made worse by the road tyres. I got to the top of the hill and realised that I had been at this place before - it was The Ridgeway - where I had my first off-road spill on Rosie. I pressed on.
The tyres gave me no grip on the mud, and the bike was all over the place. Either Fate was giving me a break, or Physics was having a nap, or I was better on a bike than I used to be. Whichever it was, doesn't really matter - the bike stayed on her wheels even though she slipped all over the place.
On the way home, it was dark. Sensible people would have went straight home. I never did well in the sensible exams at school, and went for a bit of night time enduro on Salisbury Plain. Good training for Dakar I thought. Now that was exciting. Need to get much much better lights on my Dakar bike - I am thinking football stadium type lights would be sort of about right.
Up again on Sunday, did pretty much the same thing. Except this time it was pissing with rain. Were there was no grip yesterday, there was even less today. Salisbury Plain was sort of OK - a bit slippery - but that hill was a joke, and it wasn't even a funny one. I turned round halfway up - there was no way I was getting up it. On the way back down, I bumped into three guys on their way up, all riding KTMs. We stopped and chatted for a few minutes. They were well impressed that I had the balls to try and get a bike like Rosie up the hill, and ultra-impressed that I was on my way to work but wasn't in a hurry to get there.
I arrived at work today completely covered in mud and bits of Salisbury Plain. My bike used to be blue. And I was completely soaked.
In protest, I kept my muddy boots and leathers on. Nobody told me there was a dress code on a Sunday.
Came home and jumped right in the bath. The Wee Yin jumped in with me, after begging to do so. We played in the bath, and had a lot of fun spraying a can of deodarant underwater - even pretending to a very unimpressed Missus that we were doing underwater farts.
My ageing friend came over. He didn't jump in the bath though, we were out of it by then. After busting his nuts about tightening bolts on brake calipers for a while, and him busting mine on using the word "criteria" when I should have used "requirements" we got down to what we should have been doing with this proposal that needs to be in for a bit of bizz-ness.
I looked at my maps again last night, and discovered that there are a lot of byways fairly close to me - about 15 minutes ride away. An awful lot of them. I thought they were further than that. I would have went today, but The Missus has forbidden me from wearing any gear that I am taking to Morrocco - which is pretty much all of my offroad gear. Those byways have been there for hundreds of years - they'll keep for another week or so.
I also printed out the Dakar regulations - all 65 pages of them. The front page tells me that they should be "read, re-read and mastered". there is also a lot of stuff about entry criteria in there.
Only 250 bikes are allowed to enter, and entries are "based on merit" but they don't ay what "merit" means.
My big worries right now are that I will fail the medical (being bipolar) or that I have not won enough races. Maybe I am worrying about nothing, maybe I should be worred about it and get off my arse and start winning races.
Which may well be possible on the 89kg AJP PR3. Plus, I discovered a whole new training ground only 15-20 minutes away. That, right there, is a Sign. So I am not yet good enough on a bike. This means training, and lots of it. It may well be time to go up a gear.
My ITM had his first enduro today. I've yet to learn how he got on, but something tells me he did OK - he's made of some fairly stern stuff.
Sorry if I'm a bit terse today, I'm just in one of those moods. I'm somewhere between being utterly pissed off and completely knackered. I really am looking forward to Morocco, but there's been so much going on that I haven't really had a chance to think about it properly.
Hopefull I'll have more interesting stuff to say tomorrow. For today though, please just bear with me. Do not adjust your set.
First, I had to work - this is never pleasant. Getting paid is pleasant, and I like getting paid, but the working part is a bit rubbish. It's even worse when you are working on something that you know from the outset is going to fail, and that the task has been given to you so that you are the one responsible when it does fail. Corporate bollocks. There are people who make a career out of it.
My manager, a young guy by the name of Kevin, popped into work on Saturday. He was in town with his girlfriend and popped in (a) to thank me profusely for saving his arse (he is up against the same corporate bollocks) and - more importantly - because he thought I'd appreciate a nice Starbucks and a couple of muffins. He delivered these whilst his girlfriend was waiting on a double-yellow line outside. Obviously she was in a car, otherwise the yellow line wouldn't have been a problem.
So I salvaged some dignity out of having to ride up to work on Saturday and Sunday. First of all, I appeared for work an hour late (and all muddy) because I took a detour on Salisbury Plain. On Rosie.
Now we know from experience that we do not take our several-thousand-groat bike that we need to get us to work on Salisbury Plain. We know that we especially do not do this whe we have a top box on the back, whist wearing a rucksack containing an expensive laptop. Yes, we know. We know that it is a Bad Idea to fill your bike up with fuel, making it all heavy, and then take it off-road. We know that we can't even pick it up when we drop it on the driveway, as we just did the day before. Yes, we know.
Like that was going to stop me. I go to Morocco in less than a week and I have nowhere near enough bike time. I knew that The Missus would give me an earful about it, bt I figured that if I didn't drop the bike then she'd never know about it. So off we went, up the tank tracks.
Rosie is a fairly fast bike - lots of torque. I got over 80 mph on some of those tracks - especially the gravel ones - and I was on road tyres. The sides of the gravel tracks are steep - it gives good drainage - and this means that if you hit the road from the side then you have a tabletop, or a jump. For such a heavy bike, Rosie is actually very good at jumping. A BMW kangaroo if you will.
On nearing Swindon, I saw the most beautiful thing. I screeched the bike to a halt and just admired it. It was a track, sort of a road, leading off up the hill. There was a blue sign - and this was the thing of beauty - that said "Not suitable for motor vehicles". Off I went up the hill.
After a few hundred yards, I got the meaning of the sign. It was chalky ruts - all wet and slippery - and made worse by the road tyres. I got to the top of the hill and realised that I had been at this place before - it was The Ridgeway - where I had my first off-road spill on Rosie. I pressed on.
The tyres gave me no grip on the mud, and the bike was all over the place. Either Fate was giving me a break, or Physics was having a nap, or I was better on a bike than I used to be. Whichever it was, doesn't really matter - the bike stayed on her wheels even though she slipped all over the place.
On the way home, it was dark. Sensible people would have went straight home. I never did well in the sensible exams at school, and went for a bit of night time enduro on Salisbury Plain. Good training for Dakar I thought. Now that was exciting. Need to get much much better lights on my Dakar bike - I am thinking football stadium type lights would be sort of about right.
Up again on Sunday, did pretty much the same thing. Except this time it was pissing with rain. Were there was no grip yesterday, there was even less today. Salisbury Plain was sort of OK - a bit slippery - but that hill was a joke, and it wasn't even a funny one. I turned round halfway up - there was no way I was getting up it. On the way back down, I bumped into three guys on their way up, all riding KTMs. We stopped and chatted for a few minutes. They were well impressed that I had the balls to try and get a bike like Rosie up the hill, and ultra-impressed that I was on my way to work but wasn't in a hurry to get there.
I arrived at work today completely covered in mud and bits of Salisbury Plain. My bike used to be blue. And I was completely soaked.
In protest, I kept my muddy boots and leathers on. Nobody told me there was a dress code on a Sunday.
Came home and jumped right in the bath. The Wee Yin jumped in with me, after begging to do so. We played in the bath, and had a lot of fun spraying a can of deodarant underwater - even pretending to a very unimpressed Missus that we were doing underwater farts.
My ageing friend came over. He didn't jump in the bath though, we were out of it by then. After busting his nuts about tightening bolts on brake calipers for a while, and him busting mine on using the word "criteria" when I should have used "requirements" we got down to what we should have been doing with this proposal that needs to be in for a bit of bizz-ness.
I looked at my maps again last night, and discovered that there are a lot of byways fairly close to me - about 15 minutes ride away. An awful lot of them. I thought they were further than that. I would have went today, but The Missus has forbidden me from wearing any gear that I am taking to Morrocco - which is pretty much all of my offroad gear. Those byways have been there for hundreds of years - they'll keep for another week or so.
I also printed out the Dakar regulations - all 65 pages of them. The front page tells me that they should be "read, re-read and mastered". there is also a lot of stuff about entry criteria in there.
Only 250 bikes are allowed to enter, and entries are "based on merit" but they don't ay what "merit" means.
My big worries right now are that I will fail the medical (being bipolar) or that I have not won enough races. Maybe I am worrying about nothing, maybe I should be worred about it and get off my arse and start winning races.
Which may well be possible on the 89kg AJP PR3. Plus, I discovered a whole new training ground only 15-20 minutes away. That, right there, is a Sign. So I am not yet good enough on a bike. This means training, and lots of it. It may well be time to go up a gear.
My ITM had his first enduro today. I've yet to learn how he got on, but something tells me he did OK - he's made of some fairly stern stuff.
Sorry if I'm a bit terse today, I'm just in one of those moods. I'm somewhere between being utterly pissed off and completely knackered. I really am looking forward to Morocco, but there's been so much going on that I haven't really had a chance to think about it properly.
Hopefull I'll have more interesting stuff to say tomorrow. For today though, please just bear with me. Do not adjust your set.
Download the Manic Mission Information Pack for the full story ...
posted by 2009 Dakar at
Sunday, October 28, 2007
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