Not A Gillette Advert Then
ITM made it back to Dublin today on the re-booked flight with his emergency travel documents. It's probably just as well that he didn't have his passport - the fairly massive beard he's wearing would have meant that he didn't match the photograph. Think of Tom Hanks in Castaway, and you're in the right ball park.
We got a lovely photograph from ITM-ess. It was the Stanley Twins - the flat Stanleys made by the Wee Yin and by ITM-ette. Only one of them has been to Dakar - the clue is the finishers medal right in the middle of the picture. Now, I'm willing to bet that that travelled back in a pocket, and was the first thing to be unpacked. I know mines would have been.
Email today from Patsy Quick, full of advice about events and objectives. Patsy's fairly solid advice was to stay away from La Maroc at the end of the year - it's in the South of Morocco and it is very very rocky down there. She suggested that Heroes Legend is worth serious consideration - and that she is running another Morocco trip in May with Zippy.
She's racing at Midwest on Sunday, along with Simon Pavey and also Jago and Martin. Apparently, and I'll leave you to guess who might have suggested this, I "would love it". It's set in a valley, so lots of steep downhills. Can we think of anybody who might have a sense of humour such as this?
I spoke to my gangly friend today, and he was telling me that my namehas been cropping up rather a lot at the global Bank where we were working. It's something to do with the plate in my shoulder unscrewing itself - the consensus there is that it is now official: I do actually have a screw loose.
I'm off with Martin on Friday for a bit of a play on Salisbury Plain. There's no trail riding, but we're going to do a bit of exploring - damage the bikes sufficiently that there's a good excuse to fix them when we get back. There's some brake pads to replace, and a couple of fork seals. Then, there's some hammering to be going on with to deal with the 260cc engine and the PR3.
One of the things that we'll be looking at is a roadbook. Making up a roadbook that covers the trails we ride. It is entirely possible that AJP will be the only people in the UK to offer roadbook navigation training. Being an ex-rally driver, and also a route scout for Land Rover, Martin knows roadbooks inside and out. Making them up will be a total hoot, arguing over whether a particular obstacle warrants one, two or three exclamation marks. The funniest part of all will be testing them.
The thing about roadbooks is that you cannot follow your own. You cannot follow a roadbook that you yourself have made - it would be a lot like trying to play chess with yourself. The whole point of the roadbook is that it guides you through terrain you've never seen before - by definition, you cannot follow your own.
So this basically means that Martin will need to test my roadbook writing, and I will need to test Martins. This sounds quite simple, but just thing about it for a second. I mean, I can forsee a Martin-prepared roadbook that indicates "turn right down shallow incline" - maybe even an exclamation mark. When I actually do turn right, it will be down that hill. The next image on the roadbook would be Martin rolling about pissing himself.
But what fantastic training that will be. By making up roadbooks, I will understand them far better than simply by following them. By following them, I will be proficient at it. We have a year, or more, to prepare and being able to navigate by roadbook is an absolute must. Being able to read the signs in the roadbook and instinctively know what they mean - the same was as you can look at your watch and know what time it is without having to think about it - will make a hell of a difference.
The Heroes Legend was not only tough in terms of riding and endurance, it was also tough in terms of navigation. A single missed fork in the road can take you the wrong side of a mountain range - as happened to my ITM - and cost you hours and hundreds of kilometres to get back on track.
Which, in a way, is another great metaphor for life. If you don't have a roadmap of where you want to go, how will you know if you've got there?
We got a lovely photograph from ITM-ess. It was the Stanley Twins - the flat Stanleys made by the Wee Yin and by ITM-ette. Only one of them has been to Dakar - the clue is the finishers medal right in the middle of the picture. Now, I'm willing to bet that that travelled back in a pocket, and was the first thing to be unpacked. I know mines would have been.
Email today from Patsy Quick, full of advice about events and objectives. Patsy's fairly solid advice was to stay away from La Maroc at the end of the year - it's in the South of Morocco and it is very very rocky down there. She suggested that Heroes Legend is worth serious consideration - and that she is running another Morocco trip in May with Zippy.
She's racing at Midwest on Sunday, along with Simon Pavey and also Jago and Martin. Apparently, and I'll leave you to guess who might have suggested this, I "would love it". It's set in a valley, so lots of steep downhills. Can we think of anybody who might have a sense of humour such as this?
I spoke to my gangly friend today, and he was telling me that my namehas been cropping up rather a lot at the global Bank where we were working. It's something to do with the plate in my shoulder unscrewing itself - the consensus there is that it is now official: I do actually have a screw loose.
I'm off with Martin on Friday for a bit of a play on Salisbury Plain. There's no trail riding, but we're going to do a bit of exploring - damage the bikes sufficiently that there's a good excuse to fix them when we get back. There's some brake pads to replace, and a couple of fork seals. Then, there's some hammering to be going on with to deal with the 260cc engine and the PR3.
One of the things that we'll be looking at is a roadbook. Making up a roadbook that covers the trails we ride. It is entirely possible that AJP will be the only people in the UK to offer roadbook navigation training. Being an ex-rally driver, and also a route scout for Land Rover, Martin knows roadbooks inside and out. Making them up will be a total hoot, arguing over whether a particular obstacle warrants one, two or three exclamation marks. The funniest part of all will be testing them.
The thing about roadbooks is that you cannot follow your own. You cannot follow a roadbook that you yourself have made - it would be a lot like trying to play chess with yourself. The whole point of the roadbook is that it guides you through terrain you've never seen before - by definition, you cannot follow your own.
So this basically means that Martin will need to test my roadbook writing, and I will need to test Martins. This sounds quite simple, but just thing about it for a second. I mean, I can forsee a Martin-prepared roadbook that indicates "turn right down shallow incline" - maybe even an exclamation mark. When I actually do turn right, it will be down that hill. The next image on the roadbook would be Martin rolling about pissing himself.
But what fantastic training that will be. By making up roadbooks, I will understand them far better than simply by following them. By following them, I will be proficient at it. We have a year, or more, to prepare and being able to navigate by roadbook is an absolute must. Being able to read the signs in the roadbook and instinctively know what they mean - the same was as you can look at your watch and know what time it is without having to think about it - will make a hell of a difference.
The Heroes Legend was not only tough in terms of riding and endurance, it was also tough in terms of navigation. A single missed fork in the road can take you the wrong side of a mountain range - as happened to my ITM - and cost you hours and hundreds of kilometres to get back on track.
Which, in a way, is another great metaphor for life. If you don't have a roadmap of where you want to go, how will you know if you've got there?
Download the Manic Mission Information Pack for the full story ...
posted by 2009 Dakar at
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
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