Best Mans Speech
Statistically speaking, we've got a great track record at AJP. A great track record of teaching people to ride, and teaching them to ride safely.
I always make a big deal about how our objective for the day is to send the guys back home in roughly the same shape as they arrived.
So, today was day 1 of our 2-day event. Brian's Stag Weekend was to start with 2 days off-roading.
There was Brian, the stag, all 50 years old of him. There was Richard, the best man, all 6 foot 5 of him. There was Patrick - same size as me and same age as Brian. There was another Richard - same age as Brian. There was Neil and Mike - Brian's son and Patrick's son respectively. Stag do.
There will be no problems with the best man's speech either - but we'll come to this in a bit.
Usual throw the bike on the floor, give them time to pick up their jaws, go through the whole pegs thing. No dramas there. Usual safety briefing. No dramas. How to skid the bike. No dramas. Ruts. Hah! No dramas. Roots. No dramas.
In fact, it was getting to the point that we were having to work very hard to even have an itsy-bitsy little bit of carnage.
Richard, and so you know which one I'm talking about we'll call him "Little Richard", was quick to oblige. He took what can only be described as "the line I would take" through a set of ruts - i.e. the wrong line. When his bike lurched sideways, he flew through the air and landed square on his back. This really hurt him.
The others came back whilst we got him sorted out. Big Richard, the best man, took this opportunity in the woods to take his clothes off and get all native and naked. He claimed he was taking his jeans off, the others weren't so sure.
Little Richard was looking very grey. The others went on ahead, Little Richard and I nursed our way to the woods. We rode across some fields that were in the middle of having a cut of hay taken. We got a toot-toot from the farmer as we rode over the field. None of this gerrof-moi-land stuff - a wave and a toot-toot. How it should be - we can all co-exist.
We caught up with Martin in the woods. The conversation went like this:
I was dispatched to retrace our steps - plus the ones we thought he might have taken - to try and find him. I set off at a hell of a rate of knots.
I've never done that until today. I've never ridden the trails on Salisbury Plain like I'd ride an enduro - flat out and to the limit. It was a total hoot. I was riding Tango - the PR3 with the full-size orange wheels - and she was superb. The large wheels gave her a much more planted feel and the longer wheelbase gave her lots more stability.
She is being test ridden by Trail Bike Magazine at the end of the month - and my bet is that they will really like her.
I rode all the way back to where Little Richard had had his wee spill. No joy. I rode all the way off the Plain to the road and back. No joy. I rode all the way up to the road that runs along the ridge - no joy. I rode back to the woods and there, to my surprise, was Brian.
He had set off with Martin and they had left him behind. He missed a turn and ended up at the main road. He found a landmark - a pub - and had been sitting there trying to call people on their mobiles. When he got through and said where he was, they went off to fetch him and bring him back. Meantime, I'm having a hoot riding around for an hour at speed on Salisbury Plain.
We got to the pub for lunch and all was well. It turns out that Little Richard works as a Management Consultant, and the others all work with helicopters - fixing them, designing them and stuff like that. Big Richard was an ex-Navy pilot.
Helicopters. Like this one:
We'll come back to this.
We rode up this track and encountered a couple of horse riders. We cut the engines and pulled over, and they were ever so grateful. One of them commented that they wished that all bikers would do that - then they could ride where they like. I know. It's not where you ride, it's how you ride.
We came to the most easterly part of our route - where I cooked the clutch a few weeks back and borrowed the rope from the traveller. As far away as we could possibly be.
There's a huge mudbath there - about two feet of water with a foot of mud at the bottom of it. All of the guys made it through, and Little Richard was a bit hesitant about it. I got off my bike and showed him the line.
He took it at tremendous speed - what a bow wave. When the water hit him, he panicked and gave it 'andful. This was one of those one times in a hundred when it was the wrong thing to do. The bike shot forward, cross-rutted and then dumped him on the floor. He was grey again.
We gave him a few minutes, then he couldn't stand up. His leg wasn't working right. We're in the middle of the deepest muddy track on our route - three feet of mud behind us, and two feet of mud in front of us - sort of like on an island in the middle of it.
I took a look inside his boot and saw blood. He was going into shock. That blood in the boot was coming from his shin. This sits under the shinguard - and the shinguard wasn't punctured. Which means that the blood could only come from the skin being broken by a bone poking through it - aka a compound fracture.
Martin called an ambulance whilst I got the maps out to get a position fix. Pylons or no pylons, I knew exactly where we were and rattled off the grid reference and long / lat co-ordinates to Martin who relayed them to the ambulance people. I then set off to the main road to guide the Ambulance in.
The Ambulance driver, old guy by the name of Dave, was a real trooper. He came blastring along the road with his sirens blazing and then we set off up the muddy track. He was in a 4 wheel-drive car - he was a lone paramedic - and took on the tracks with gusto. He ripped the exhaust off the car on one of the particularly bumpy and rutty tracks, and I kept stopping in the puddles to show him how deep they were and where the shallow side was. All the while, the sirens kept going.
We got to the end of the track where Little Richard was lying, and there was no way a 4 wheel vehicle was getting along there - it was two-feet deep of mud all the way along. We got his ger out of the car and walked along the track.
He got right on his radio and asked for the Air Ambulance - there was no way that a land vehicle could reach here. The Air Ambulance was already in the sky and only a few minutes away - we heard it approach.
We started looking for somewhere for it to land, and the only place was a farmers field which (unfortunately) had crops in it. The photo above is the air ambulance coming into land.
When it landed, I realised that it was actually a Police chopper - apparently the Police and the paramedics share it and they travel as a crew. So, next time you watch one of those car chase things on TV, know that there are two cops and a paramedic in the chopper:
We all helped the paramedic unload her gear - lovely lady by the name of Jill - and trooped it through the mud and stuff to Little Richard.
I was carrying this big white stretcher that looked like a surfboard, bouncing along the track giving it "na na na na naah naaaaaaaah, na na na na naaaaaaah!" - Hawaii-5-O style. I mean, you had to.
The paramedic got the morphine straight out and filled Little Richard up with it. Colour came back into his face and he wasn't grey anymore. We got him on the stretcher, all strapped up, and got his boot off. More morphine.
Then we set back off towards the helicopter - 6 of us carrying the stretcher through the mud whilst the paramedics and policemen kept their feet dry by scrambling along the embankment.
Then we came to the locked gate and the fence. No choice but to go under it. We put Little Richard on his surfboard on the ground and dragged him under it and got him into the chopper. The pilot was holding an oxygen tank which was feeding Little Richard oxygen to keep him nice and calm and breathing regularly.
As you can see, I'm not the only one taking photos.
They give you oxygen first because it helps keep you calm but - most importantly - because it stops you hyperventilating. Quite clever really. By putting a mask on your face, and regulating the amount of oxygen you get, it forces you to breath regularly and steadily rather than short panic breaths.
Meantime, whilst all this is going on, Big Richard is having an in-depth discussion with the pilot about the technical and flying characteristics of the helicopter. I am reliably informed that it is a 109, made by McDonnel Douglas, and rather a nifty little machine.
Richard was medevaced off the Plain and now we had to get the bike back. We did this by relaying. I ride a mile, then Martin takes me on the back of his bike to pick up the other bike, then I ride two miles (i.e. a mile past the other bike). Ride back to pick up the other bike, ride two miles, rinse and repeat. It was slow going.
The guys pressed on ahead. We gave them a map and showed them the route - they're aviators, maps are no problem. They all made it back before we did.
News from the hospital is that Little Richard didn't quite finish the day in roughly the same shape as he started it. He has four fractures of his tibia (shin bone) and fibia (bone at the back of the lower leg) and two of those are compound - i.e. the snapped bone pokes through the skin.
So, now that we've dispensed with the easy stuff on our 2-day adventure, we can make it difficult tomorrow ...
I always make a big deal about how our objective for the day is to send the guys back home in roughly the same shape as they arrived.
So, today was day 1 of our 2-day event. Brian's Stag Weekend was to start with 2 days off-roading.
There was Brian, the stag, all 50 years old of him. There was Richard, the best man, all 6 foot 5 of him. There was Patrick - same size as me and same age as Brian. There was another Richard - same age as Brian. There was Neil and Mike - Brian's son and Patrick's son respectively. Stag do.
There will be no problems with the best man's speech either - but we'll come to this in a bit.
Usual throw the bike on the floor, give them time to pick up their jaws, go through the whole pegs thing. No dramas there. Usual safety briefing. No dramas. How to skid the bike. No dramas. Ruts. Hah! No dramas. Roots. No dramas.
In fact, it was getting to the point that we were having to work very hard to even have an itsy-bitsy little bit of carnage.
Richard, and so you know which one I'm talking about we'll call him "Little Richard", was quick to oblige. He took what can only be described as "the line I would take" through a set of ruts - i.e. the wrong line. When his bike lurched sideways, he flew through the air and landed square on his back. This really hurt him.
The others came back whilst we got him sorted out. Big Richard, the best man, took this opportunity in the woods to take his clothes off and get all native and naked. He claimed he was taking his jeans off, the others weren't so sure.
Little Richard was looking very grey. The others went on ahead, Little Richard and I nursed our way to the woods. We rode across some fields that were in the middle of having a cut of hay taken. We got a toot-toot from the farmer as we rode over the field. None of this gerrof-moi-land stuff - a wave and a toot-toot. How it should be - we can all co-exist.
We caught up with Martin in the woods. The conversation went like this:
- "Where's Brian?"
"He set off with you"
"No he didn't - he stayed behind with you"
"No he didn't, he set off with you"
I was dispatched to retrace our steps - plus the ones we thought he might have taken - to try and find him. I set off at a hell of a rate of knots.
I've never done that until today. I've never ridden the trails on Salisbury Plain like I'd ride an enduro - flat out and to the limit. It was a total hoot. I was riding Tango - the PR3 with the full-size orange wheels - and she was superb. The large wheels gave her a much more planted feel and the longer wheelbase gave her lots more stability.
She is being test ridden by Trail Bike Magazine at the end of the month - and my bet is that they will really like her.
I rode all the way back to where Little Richard had had his wee spill. No joy. I rode all the way off the Plain to the road and back. No joy. I rode all the way up to the road that runs along the ridge - no joy. I rode back to the woods and there, to my surprise, was Brian.
He had set off with Martin and they had left him behind. He missed a turn and ended up at the main road. He found a landmark - a pub - and had been sitting there trying to call people on their mobiles. When he got through and said where he was, they went off to fetch him and bring him back. Meantime, I'm having a hoot riding around for an hour at speed on Salisbury Plain.
We got to the pub for lunch and all was well. It turns out that Little Richard works as a Management Consultant, and the others all work with helicopters - fixing them, designing them and stuff like that. Big Richard was an ex-Navy pilot.
Helicopters. Like this one:
We'll come back to this.
We rode up this track and encountered a couple of horse riders. We cut the engines and pulled over, and they were ever so grateful. One of them commented that they wished that all bikers would do that - then they could ride where they like. I know. It's not where you ride, it's how you ride.
We came to the most easterly part of our route - where I cooked the clutch a few weeks back and borrowed the rope from the traveller. As far away as we could possibly be.
There's a huge mudbath there - about two feet of water with a foot of mud at the bottom of it. All of the guys made it through, and Little Richard was a bit hesitant about it. I got off my bike and showed him the line.
He took it at tremendous speed - what a bow wave. When the water hit him, he panicked and gave it 'andful. This was one of those one times in a hundred when it was the wrong thing to do. The bike shot forward, cross-rutted and then dumped him on the floor. He was grey again.
We gave him a few minutes, then he couldn't stand up. His leg wasn't working right. We're in the middle of the deepest muddy track on our route - three feet of mud behind us, and two feet of mud in front of us - sort of like on an island in the middle of it.
I took a look inside his boot and saw blood. He was going into shock. That blood in the boot was coming from his shin. This sits under the shinguard - and the shinguard wasn't punctured. Which means that the blood could only come from the skin being broken by a bone poking through it - aka a compound fracture.
Martin called an ambulance whilst I got the maps out to get a position fix. Pylons or no pylons, I knew exactly where we were and rattled off the grid reference and long / lat co-ordinates to Martin who relayed them to the ambulance people. I then set off to the main road to guide the Ambulance in.
The Ambulance driver, old guy by the name of Dave, was a real trooper. He came blastring along the road with his sirens blazing and then we set off up the muddy track. He was in a 4 wheel-drive car - he was a lone paramedic - and took on the tracks with gusto. He ripped the exhaust off the car on one of the particularly bumpy and rutty tracks, and I kept stopping in the puddles to show him how deep they were and where the shallow side was. All the while, the sirens kept going.
We got to the end of the track where Little Richard was lying, and there was no way a 4 wheel vehicle was getting along there - it was two-feet deep of mud all the way along. We got his ger out of the car and walked along the track.
He got right on his radio and asked for the Air Ambulance - there was no way that a land vehicle could reach here. The Air Ambulance was already in the sky and only a few minutes away - we heard it approach.
We started looking for somewhere for it to land, and the only place was a farmers field which (unfortunately) had crops in it. The photo above is the air ambulance coming into land.
When it landed, I realised that it was actually a Police chopper - apparently the Police and the paramedics share it and they travel as a crew. So, next time you watch one of those car chase things on TV, know that there are two cops and a paramedic in the chopper:
We all helped the paramedic unload her gear - lovely lady by the name of Jill - and trooped it through the mud and stuff to Little Richard.
I was carrying this big white stretcher that looked like a surfboard, bouncing along the track giving it "na na na na naah naaaaaaaah, na na na na naaaaaaah!" - Hawaii-5-O style. I mean, you had to.
The paramedic got the morphine straight out and filled Little Richard up with it. Colour came back into his face and he wasn't grey anymore. We got him on the stretcher, all strapped up, and got his boot off. More morphine.
Then we set back off towards the helicopter - 6 of us carrying the stretcher through the mud whilst the paramedics and policemen kept their feet dry by scrambling along the embankment.
Then we came to the locked gate and the fence. No choice but to go under it. We put Little Richard on his surfboard on the ground and dragged him under it and got him into the chopper. The pilot was holding an oxygen tank which was feeding Little Richard oxygen to keep him nice and calm and breathing regularly.
As you can see, I'm not the only one taking photos.
They give you oxygen first because it helps keep you calm but - most importantly - because it stops you hyperventilating. Quite clever really. By putting a mask on your face, and regulating the amount of oxygen you get, it forces you to breath regularly and steadily rather than short panic breaths.
Meantime, whilst all this is going on, Big Richard is having an in-depth discussion with the pilot about the technical and flying characteristics of the helicopter. I am reliably informed that it is a 109, made by McDonnel Douglas, and rather a nifty little machine.
Richard was medevaced off the Plain and now we had to get the bike back. We did this by relaying. I ride a mile, then Martin takes me on the back of his bike to pick up the other bike, then I ride two miles (i.e. a mile past the other bike). Ride back to pick up the other bike, ride two miles, rinse and repeat. It was slow going.
The guys pressed on ahead. We gave them a map and showed them the route - they're aviators, maps are no problem. They all made it back before we did.
News from the hospital is that Little Richard didn't quite finish the day in roughly the same shape as he started it. He has four fractures of his tibia (shin bone) and fibia (bone at the back of the lower leg) and two of those are compound - i.e. the snapped bone pokes through the skin.
So, now that we've dispensed with the easy stuff on our 2-day adventure, we can make it difficult tomorrow ...
Download the Manic Mission Information Pack for the full story ...
posted by 2009 Dakar at
Friday, June 27, 2008
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