For thousands of years, carvans of camels trekked across the Sahara desert - mostly transporting and trading goods, spices and the like.

This tradition - trading and bargaining - is entrenched deep in Moroccan culture, and is one of the main culture shocks you get when you go to Morocco. Prices are never marked or written down. A fair price is, well, whatever the two of you agree is fair. Haggling is as much a part of life as breathing.

Of the two main tribes in Morocco - the Berber and the Tuareg - the Tuareg were the most fearsome. It is the Tuareg (or Touraeg) who form the image of the Dakar logo:


The Tuareg had a reputation for ferocity and plain old not giving up. When you're haggling with a Moroccan, and driving a hard bargain, he'll call you "un Touareg". I'm still trying to figure out whether it's an insult or a compliment.

After many years of ferocious fighting against French colonisation, the Tuareg swords were no match for french artillery and Saharan Africa eventually came under French rule. When we were in Morocco, we saw forts and keeps at the top of the mountains - built by the French to guard the passes where the Tuareg crossed the mountains. Impressive things, built hundreds of years ago without cranes or machinery - today we build houses that don't stand up for more than 50 years.

Here's another logo you may recognise as being similar to the Dakar one. It too is based on the image of a Tuareg:


It's the official logo of the Tuareg Rally - it runs from 30 March to 7 April through Southern Morocco. Two of the guys we were in Morocco with - Paul and Mike - are taking it on in 2008. Paul, a lawyer when he's not riding bikes, also smashed his collarbone after a "disagreement" with a vertical cliff at the side of the road in Morocco. He broke his other one a few years ago and got it all pinned up. Collarbones are a common injury for us lot - perhaps a new style of armour is needed which protects against this, I'll get my drawing board out.

The Tuareg is just under half a Dakar in length, and less than 10% of the cost. The regulations and stuff are pretty much the same - desert rallies tend to have the same format - and it's great training for the Dakar. There would also be the cost of getting the bike to southern Spain, but perhaps Billy at BikeTruck can help out here. What BikeTruck do is shift bikes from one place to another so that they can be ridden where you like without having to ride them there and back. Crucially, Billy is a biker and knows how to take care of people's pride and joy - he's not just a guy with a van. When you consider how expensive a rally bike is, and all of the parts on it which need to be in perfect working order during a race, it becomes very important to be able to trust getting the bike to the start line unscathed.

There's enough time to get a bike ready and prepared for it, and it would be an excellent proving ground for both the bike and for me. It would allow us to fine-tune the AJP to cope with 7 days of non-stop riding through pretty tough terrain. It would also fine-tune me for the same.

Come the end of March, it will be 4 months since my operation so I'd hope that things were healed up nicely by that time.

I've been looking an awful lot at navigation equipment and roadbook holders. This has involved some pretty complicated mathematics, which I never figured on. The calculations are around voltages, current and the power output of the generator in the AJP. I think that we may need to be looking at adding a second generator. Not only will this give more power to play with, it also provides a backup if the first one fails.

Reminds me of an interesting discussion I had a long time ago about parachute jumping - something I never actually did. The way I figured it, there is no surer sign of insanity than throwing yourself out of a perfectly serviceable aircraft - gravity always wins.

So anyway, I was asking about what if the chute failed. The conversation, as I recall it, went sort of along these lines:

"What if the chute fails to open?"

"It won't"

"But surely there's an outside chance that something can go wrong?"

"Well, yes, there's a very very small chance that something might go wrong"

"So then what?"

"Well, that's why you have a reserve chute"

"In case the first one fails to open properly?"

"Yes"

"What if the reserve chute fails?"

"It won't"

"But that's what you said about the main chute"

"Yes, and the main chutewon't fail"

"Then why do you need a reserve then?"

or something like that. I think the logic is that the chances of both chutes failing are so astronomical that it just won't happen. That's what they said about the Titanic and it's honeycombed hull design - the chances of more than two of these compartments flooding are zero, and four compartments need to flood before the ship will sink. Yes, but they never figured on what would happen if the water rose above the top of the compartments and we all know what happened there.

Anyway, a second generator seems like a sensible option. When you consider the job of the generator - turn engine movement into electricity - and what you then do with that electricity (power your crucial navigation equipment) then it seems like a good idea to have two of them. Exactly how to achieve this is an engineering problem.

John at XRStuff is sending me a fuel tank to see if it fits. If it does, then we will then know what the options are. If it doesn't, and I can properly measure things up and say why it doesn't, then - again - we will know what the options are.

Been working on the website for my ITM and Oz, who are doing the Heroes Legend rally in March. My ITM is doing it on a KTM 525 that he got from Phil Noone - all rally prepared. I'm not sure yet what Oz is doing it on but, knowing Oz, it will be a work of genius. If there was ever somebody you wanted with you in the middle of nowhere, it'd be Oz. The guy can engineer new exhaust pipes out of sticks and stones and stuff like that. You'd never be stuck. Mind you, his tendency to "open the can of whoopass" is probably what would end up damaging the bike in the first place, but at least he can fix it when it does.

I took the Wee Yin out today on her bicycle, with no stabilisers. She done very very well. Funnily enough, she did much better when she didn't know if I was holding her or not. As soon as she realised I wasn't holding her, and she was doing it totally on her own, she'd wobble and fall off. Perfect example of unstructions - if you don't think that it's possible to fall then you won't fall. As soon as the possibility of falling enters your head, you're on the deck.

My ITM is at the Tinahealy enduro tomorrow. From what I can gather, it's a fast enduro - MX-style - rather than the really technical stuff you get at MidWest. Here's some footage from the 2006 event, taken by some guy on a Yamaha (which is what my ITM will be riding) and it looks quite fun. Couple of very nasty hills though ...



So, looking ahead to next year, it seems that the Tuareg in March followed by the La Maroc rally in September are the best bets.

Discussions with The Missus are also throwing up the possibility that we may be 2010 rather than 2009 for a Dakar start. This is various things - finances, fitness (losing 4 months of riding time hasn't helped) and rally experience. Getting a couple of rallies in is a smart thing to do. I only have 1 shot at this, and I want to get it right. Doing it half-arsed and learning along the way is a pretty expensive option and, possibly, recipe for disaster.

One school of thought says I am obviously going soft on the idea. I mean, if I was serious then it would be "Dakar as soon as possible, now now now ...". Another school of thought is that I would have that attitude only if I wasn't serious. If I wasn't serious about completing the race, if I didn't have sufficient respect for how tough it is or what was involved in a gruelling desert rally. I know what school of thought I am in, your mileage may vary.

Time will tell.

Whilst searching around this Internet thing for pictures of Kiwis (trying to explain to the Wee Yin what a kiwi looks like), I came across this little gem:



You have to bear in mind that the kiwi is a flightless bird. It's all about dedicating yourself to achieving something and achieving it. Whatever it takes.

Download the Manic Mission Information Pack for the full story ...