I spoke to my ITM tonight, it seems he's finally coming round to getting back into reality.

I remember speaking to Chris Jones - of Dakar101 - almost a year ago now and him describing the feelings he went through when he came back after finishing the 2007 race as a rookie. He described a vague feeling of accomplishment, then a really empty void that was akin to depression. A real listlessness, a yearning for more but - strangely - not wanting more right now.
All the minor traumas - that seemed so important at the time. All the oil leaks, cable-ties, dodgy lights, no water, the falls, the panicking about time and speed, the navigation errors kind of lose a bit of their edge. A bit like remembering a time when you were unwell. You remember you were unwell, you may even remember the symptoms, but you cant re-feel the feelings.

And on top of this, you're trying to transpose what you've done into the life you left behind in order to do it. It's not easy.

In 1945, at the end of the second world war, all the troops in Europe and the Far East had to be de-mobbed. They all had to come home when the war was over. Since most of them were conscripted, they were all having to come home to the lives they had left behind. Yet they had to do it in a world that had radically changed - munitions factories were staffed largely by women who, until then, hadn't worked. The women, understandably, weren't too keen to just leave the factories and let the men go back to work.

Some of the guys had been away for years, and were returning to a land that was not the land that they had left. Lots of children had been evacuated and had to be found and gotten back home. Friends and family had died. 4 years of Amercian troops based in Britain had changed the culture and the language forever.

Men are better at compartmentalising their worlds than women. This is one of the reasons why it's harder for men to talk intimately like women do. Women are more able to kind of join everything together and think lots of things at once - which is why they are much better at multitasking than men are. Men make better spies for this very reason - he finds it much easier than a woman does to live a double life and keep the two separate. Women find it much easier to just be lots of things at the same time and mix them all up and do them all well.

So, when these guys came home, they started compartmenting away their old military life and tried to fit back into the life they had left. When you've spent days and weeks in harsh and hostile terrain, with the adrenaline flowing and no idea what will happen next, then it's very difficult to settle back into a life where you know exactly what's in the post.

I don't know how I would cope with this. I have my own mechanisms for dealing with stuff like that, not all of them good ones. I reckon that it would take me some time to just deal with it, and nobody could deal with it for me - only I could do it and only in my own time.

One thing I do recognise, and that is perspective. You cannot take on something like Heroes Legend and spend weeks riding through the desert without it changing your perspective. You'd feel torn in some way. You'd hear and see people getting all concerned and passionate about petty little things which, in the grand scheme of stuff, are just so trivial compared to the things you've seen and witnessed and been part of.

I'd hear, for instance, myself banging on about cowshit and phantom laps and annoying 2-strokes and - to some extent - I'd kind of pity me if that was the extent of the things I was worried about.

I'd see a couple of people fighting over a parking space in a supermarket and you'd compare that to the folks I saw in Morocco who travelled hundreds of miles on donkeys to take their palm leaves to market in return for a few dirhams. I'd be kind of wondering how - or if - I could ever get back into a mindset where that would be normality.

I don't know what lays ahead of me beyond Dakar or Beijing. I have no idea. The title of the blog is not "After2009Dakar.com". I've never thought about it.

So, in the mighty Company of my ITM, yes I do feel a little bit inadequate and there would be something wrong if I didn't. I am delighted for him that he made it, we all are, and I wish that I had been able to share it with him. I wasn't, and it was my own lack of skill that put me there. This feeling of inadequate is my problem, not his. In a way, I feel as sad as I feel guilty about not having done Heroes Legend with him.

The good news is that Billy has obviously necked a few Gins and Tonics and is totally up on his feet again - no malaria. Which is nice, because there is apparently going to be a global shortage of chirpy scousers who are quick with a joke - Billy can now save the planet.

We are going over to Ireland this weekend, to deliver Flat Stanley back to the wee ITM-ettes, meet the (hopefully no longer stressed-out ITM-esse) and I really look forward to his tales from the desert. I really look forward to looking ahead to see what may be on the horizon for next year and beyond. I want to see him and learn all the tales.

Goldilocks is going out on the back of a truck, then we get the boat from HolyHead to Dublin. So this means that there will be bike riding involved. Get to see what it's like to ride with a guy who doesn't get phantom laps. Chew the fat. Enjoy doing what we both enjoy doing.

Enduro is not motocross. When you race, you race against yourself. The race is long, but there is nobody else in it but you. It is not what others do that matters, it is what you yourself do. Just like life.

You are the sum total of the impacts that life has had upon you. Life is the sum total of the impacts that you have had upon it.

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