You really need to meet my gangly friend in order to believe him. he is a cross between Neil from the Young Ones and Jar-Jar binks. He has two very amusing and endearing traits:

He says things four times. He doesn't say "cool", he says "cool cool cool cool", or "yeah yeah yeah yeah"

He regularly takes words that have a specific meaning, and completely tortures them to mean something different. Things like "wicked", "bad" and "rude" tend to mean "brilliant", "superb" or just plain "cool cool cool cool".

He's also a fixer, a doer. He's never stuck for long - has a remarkable ability to think on his feet. And he's a thoroughly nice guy with a great sense of humour. The kind of guy you'd want supporting you on a long rally.

So we put this to him last week - "How would you fancy driving a 4x4 to support a couple of bikes?". After several bouts of "cool cool cool cool", he considered it and decided "yeah yeah yeah yeah". So far so good.

Then we pointed him at the websites - Heroes Legend and Transorientale. Whilst he conceded that both of them would be "wicked", he proclaimed that the China one would be the "baddest" - it goes through some "rude" countries and its just a "bad, fat dirty stretch".

Speaking of bad, fat and dirty, Chief decided that he'd have a weekend in Spain this weekend and flies back today. Spot of Sangria, sunshine and chorizo for the lad and the Chief-ess.

And speaking of stretch, at least in the context of finance, my ITM had to pick up his emeergency travel documents from the British Embassy in Dakar today, after ditching his passport in Morocco. Since it was a Bank holiday yesterday (even in Dakar?), the embassy wasn't open. He was booked on a flight at 6:30 this morning, but has had to rebook it for tomorrow to allow him to pick up his passport. ITM-ess rebooked the flight for tomorrow and, for what it cost, she might as well have chartered a private jet.

That said, let's look at it a slightly different way. Ignoring for a second what the event actually cost, what would you actually be willing to pay for an adventure the likes of which they've been through these past couple of weeks? A year from now, the memory of the details of what this flight cost or this chunk of money or that chunk of money will have faded. All that will remain, rightly, is the memory of the achievement and the adventure. The trauma of blagging your way over an international border without a passport - and how stressful it was at the time - will become a great tale to be told round a warm Irish fire in the winter evenings.

I could not put it any better than ITM-ess herself: Life is for living.

My gangly friend would probably have that one down as: Life's a bad, fat, dirty stretch.

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