The Charity

The charity that I will supporting through my efforts is Barnardos - a UK charity dedicated to helping vulnerable children.

From the age of 8 years old, I was schooled and cared for by Barnardos. My childhood friends were orphans, abused children, and youngsters who really had no chance in life.

I got lucky. I managed to get my head down, work hard and get a good education which has given me a fairly good career in IT. Thank you Ken Aitken for the break you gave me (you know who you are and what you did). My childhood friends were not so lucky.

Imagine that I had just been written off at that age. That I had just been left to fester in some childrens home until I was old enough for the outside world. What would have happened?

But Barnardos took a chance. They invested in me at a time when there was no real reason why they should. That investment paid off in my case.

Barnardos are doing that exact same thing today. They are investing in kids that society otherwise wouldnt. Some of these kids may go on to win the Dakar, some may go on to be Prime Minister. Some may become doctors, lawyers, skilled workers.

But all of them just want a home, a chance to live a normal life free from harm and free from fear. This is what Barnardos gives them.

So, right now, there is no reason why the sponsorhip community at large would want to invest in me. I am a tourist entry, not a professional rally racer.

If necessary, I will crawl on my ands and knees to Dakar with the bike on my back. Yes, I am afraid. Yes, I am daunted by the scale of it and by the unknowns. But this is an opportunity to help children who are too weak, too frightened, too vulnerable to be able to help themselves. I cannot turn that down.

I remember being just as afraid when I first went into a Barnardos childrens home. I remember being terrified of the unknowns. I survived, largely due to the fact that Barnardos made a decision to invest in me.

Please make the same decision. Invest in me, help me give these kids at Barnardos a chance in life - a chance they otherwise would not get.

I Am Not Alone

As part of the search into previous riders, I happened across a blog kept by Chris Emerson (www.dakardiary.org).

Chris, a privateer, took a crack at the Dakar in 2004 with less riding experience than I have. Incredibly fit ("bionic" in his words), and astride a BMW 1150 (nicknamed "the Beast") he was taken out by a buggy in Stage 4 (Tanger - Er Rachidia).

Sadly, it was a case of Buggy 1, Bike 0 and Chris's Dakar came to an end at that point.

Thankfully, he lived to tell the tale (a tale involving being thrown through a fence of razor wire).

Chris, if you're out there mate - I am trying to get in touch. I am sure that you have much helpful advice you can share.

Yamaha Training tomorrow. Work were very very nice about it. Despite being short-handed, their view was "we cant sponsor you, but we can support you - take the day off and go ride your bike".

Kind of nervous and excited at the same time. I have an awful lot to learn, and the more things I learn then the more I need to practice. Learning is only the start of it - it's the practice that counts. The whole purpose of training is, IMhO, to show you what to practice. You don't go on a couple of courses and then emerge, matrix style, saying "I know Kung Fu!".

I was told by an old friend who has ridden motocross for many years (Chris Robles) that the secret is to pick one thing - e.g. berm cornering and practice it till your fingers bleed and you could do it in your sleep. Then practice bump braking. Then practice them together until they are smooth.

Every technique you learn is another tool in the box of tricks you need to take with you to survive the Dakar. Every technique you master improves the chances of surviving the Dakar.

Thank you to Chris Emerson for taking the time to post his blog (and its a great read).

Am I ready for this? Physically - no. In terms of offroad experience - no. Mentally - yes. I am absolutely committed to it.

Am I scared of it? You betcha. The fear gives me a healthy respect for what I am taking on.

So its off to the gym this weekend to start working on a fitness plan. My hunch, based on Chris's blog, is that I need to be aiming to be running 100 miles every week, plus an awful lot of work on arm, leg and upper-body strength.

I know I am a rank outsider - what is known as a "tourist" entrant, but every single Dakar entrant - and finisher - had to start training for it at one point in their life. We are all born, unable to ride motorcycles (or to walk and talk) and we practice it till we become excellent at it.

Calling Dakar Veterans

Today I have started tracking down, and trying to contact, Dakar veterans. I have always found bikers to be willing to give advice to other bikers and to pass on their experience.

I am hoping that I can talk to a couple of Dakar veterans to get their advice on how I should be going about this to give me the best possible chances of success. Advice on preparation, training, experience, entry, bike choice, do's and dont's. All that kind of stuff.

The Internet being what it is these days, all full of spam offer cheap viagra, it's difficult to get people's email address and contact details but I will keep at it. A few words of advice from somebody who's done it before is worth its weight in gold.

"Sensible" Sponsorship

So I just got a response from the market leader in mobile communities (can't say their name yet until I get their permission) whom I approached about sponsorship.

Their response was that they are willing to consider anything that is "sensible".

I was struck by the irony of that statement - which part of the Dakar Rally is the part that could be described as "sensible"?

Looks like I better get started on the sponsorship pack then ...

What Can You Learn From Books?

Postie turned up this morning with all of the paperwork for the Yamaha Training School (see blog passim), where I am booked in on Friday.

In the meantime, I have been reading up on all of the offroad biking tips I can lay my hands on, and watching all the videos and video clips that the Internet has to offer.

When I started riding road bikes seriously, I read and read and read as much as I could on the subject. The theory, the physics, the practice, the gotchas, the advice - the whole lot. I then started putting it into practice - every day over a couple of hundred miles.

My road-riding techniques, aka "roadcraft" is now absolutely superb. This was helped along even further by enrolling on a couple of BikeSafe courses (where you go out on your bike accompanied by experienced and helpful traffic cops for a 1-day training course).

Incidentally, the most fantastic book on road riding in the real world is Motorcycle Roadcraft (the Police Rider's handbook). Before you getting all snooty and thinking "Yes, but what can you learn from a book?", try reading it. The chapter on "Observation", for instance, deserves a book of its own. One example still springs to mind:

• You're riding along a country road and you see a single lamp-post ahead (possibly round a bend). What does that tell you?
  
  
• Similarly, you see a cluster of a half-dozen lamp-posts up ahead. What does that tell you?

The answers are "Junction" and "Roundabout" respectively. If you already knew that, don't bother reading the book.

Anyway, the point is that there are things you can learn from books. The problem with learning from books is that it is all theory and it must be put into practice before the learning can become real.

So I am swotting up on all things motocross and enduro. This doesn't mean that I think that I will be an expert just because I've read a couple of books. Quite the opposite, reading these books is showing me just how much I have to learn.

And the learning proper starts at Yamaha on Friday.

Donations Gratefully Accepted

I added the Make a Donation button above to tthe blog. Please do donate to the cause. All proceeds will be going to charity - I am not in this for the money.

Response from SANE

I got a nice email back from the fundraising manager at SANE today. Very supportive - she thought that the Dakar is a "brilliant idea", but he couldnt offer much help in way of the logistics of helping me to find sponsorship.

She did say that it is very very important that I do not present myself as a representative of SANE or that I am acting on their behalf. I must make it clear that I am a sole inividual, who will be donating any money made from the event to charity.

I also approached a software company who are the market leader in "Mobile Communities". What community is more mobile than the Dakar? Will keep you posted on how that one turns out.

The Training Begins

So I booked into the Yamaha off-road school for this week. Well, actually, I got a text message from the missus telling me that she had booked me on. This was the only slot that they had for nearly 3 months, and it was already taken, but the missus was just quicker on the draw with the deposit.

That smacks of somebody watching over me. I think I'm going to need lot of that over the next 579 days.

There's a couple of ways of looking at this. Either (glass-half-full) she's being really encouraging, and has decided that I am going to do this thing anyway, so I might as well be well trained for it. Or (glass-half-empty) he's hoping that I get so bruised and battered that I swear never to get on a dirt bike again.

It was still lovely though, getting a text message that says:

• "I have made a decision. You are going to Yamaha School on Friday"

I should marry this girl. Hold on, I already did. I can see why too :)

This will be my first time out on an off-road bike in over 20 years. Got to start somewhere though. Pretty neat - they provide all of the gear, the bikes and the training. All I need to provide is the willpower and - apparently - a packed lunch.

It's local - just 10 minutes up the road - although its Motocross (as opposed to the Enduro-style stuff that I will be doing at BMW in Wales). Still, motocross will be fine for a starter - I need to make sure that I can get totally comfortable with the wheels spinning underneath me, without being in complete contact with the ground. This is so much different from being on the road, where the rubber contact is so important.

I also got a test ride of the BMW 650 GS booked for the weekend. It's possibly not the bike that I will use for the Dakar, but its the right shape, style and size for getting the serious offroad seat time in.

I'm also currently looking for a 'disposable' offroad bike that I can practice on. The reason why I say 'disposable' is because I am expecting a fair few spills and knocks - which probably is not a good idea on a new (and expensive) bike. A bike that is big enough to be real, but small enough that I can work on my techniques properly - the bike will tell me when I've outgrown her and am ready to move up.

Bikes are a lot like women in that respect - always happy to tell you when you need to grow up :)

DVD Reruns - Always Different Second Time

So I just watched episode 2 of Race to Dakar for the millionth time.

Something was different about it this time. Something subtle, intangible. The missus picked up on it too.

The previous times I've watched it, it has been informative and very entertaining. Possibly even dramatic at times. But never scary. Never seat-edge, nerve-tingling scary. Except this time.

Even the smallest things were scary. The detail of scrutineering. The paperwork. The sheer amount of medical supplies that had to be carried. Envisaging being on the starting ramp, looking ahead at the first 15 feet of what will be a 6,000 mile trip.

A new experience for me - I never thought that I'd be scared by a documentary.

And the road book? That's got 'trauma' written all over it. I wonder if there are books or computer software thatI can use to practice. Somebody somewhere's got to have done it.

Its half-exciting, and half-scary. My biggest concern right now isnt the riding, its all of the stuff that needs to be done before it - getting in to the rally for one thing. There's only 250 bikes entered in it, so what's the criteria? How do they decide who to reject? There was a question on the form about "are you being sponsired by another experienced rider?" - perhaps that's the key. Anybody out there who is an experienced Dakar rider who will sponsor me to enter the race?

Approaching the Charities

So I started approaching the mental health charities in the UK (SANE, Mind and MHF) for their advice on how to attract sponsorship. I am presuming that they have experience of this, or possibly can introduce me to people who have.

Better still, perhaps they've even got a list of corporate bodies who are sympathetic to mental health issues.

Fingers crossed ...

What Needs To Happen Now

The list of things needing to be done is getting bigger. In no particular order, I need to:

• find a sponsor
• get trained in off-road riding
• get more training in off-road riding
• get sand training
• get fit
• get fitter
• get competing in off-road races
• get FIM registered

I've been looking into training. It seems that the cream of the crop is the BMW off-road training school in Wales, run by Simon Pavey.

There's about 70 weekends between now and the 2009 start line - 580 days or so. That's not as much time as I'd like, but is enough time to start getting the training in.

I already do approximately 3,000 miles per month on a road bike, and I've done a 2,5000 km solo ride to Malta so I am pretty bike fit. The first objective is to translate this into off-road bike fit and this starts with BMW.

It's a holiday in the UK today, so nobody is picking up the phone. First thing tomorrow then ...

Need a Sponsor!

We always knew that this one was going to pop up at some point ...

I am searching for a sponsor who can help me raise the funds that I will need in order to compete in the 2009 Dakar.

This money is to cover, between now and 2009, the following:

• entry fees
• bike and parts
• clothing
• training

Corporate sponsors will obviously get their logo plastered in as many visible locations as possible. Private sponsors will be individually mentioned (unless you want anonymity) and thanked. You don't even have to sponsor me for the whole amount needed - simple donations are gratefully accepted.

What Would You Get Out Of It?
It sounds really cheesey, but you'd get to help somebody for whom life stacked the odds. You'd get to help raise the profile of manic depression, and help to prove to the world that it is just an illness - and that like other illnesses it can be overcome.

If you're a business, you get publicity. You also get a tax break. By sponsoring the Dakar, you are sending a clear message to your employees about how you value commitment, effort and battling against the odds. By sponsoring me, you are sending the message that your organisation values diversity and wants people to achieve their full potential regardless of physical or mental disability.

It Started With a Wish ...

So today was the day that I decided to do the Dakar in 2009.

When I say "decided", I mean exactly that. I'm not talking about some idle fancy, some "wouldn't it be nice if ..." daydream - I've been through all of that for weeks. I'm talking about actually deciding - actually setting my sights on it and starting to make it happen.

Whenever I have told anybody about my daydream (as it was before today) I have predominatly had a one-word response:

"Why?"

Which is how come it is only today that I have actually decided - I have not really been able to answer that question myself.

The Dakar is all about endurance, and only some of that endurance is physical. It is about taking yourself to your limits, and then realising that you have to push yourself beyond them. It is about setting objectives, and having the commitment to achieve them. It is about discovery, about looking deep inside yourself, about getting to know yourself as a person.

About 2 years ago, I was diagnosed as manic depressive. Basically, that means that I can flip from euphoric to miserable on a daily basis. On the upside, it means that I can experience joy the likes of which normal people never can. The downside is that I can utterly miserable for no reason at all. I kind of think of it as the price I pay for being smart.

It's not the kind of news that you welcome when you're in your mid-30s, trying to bring up a family and hold down a job. Thankfully, I work in IT where temperamental types are sort of tolerated and this has helped me to just blend in with the background.

So, anyway, over the last two years I have been trying to reconcile this and come to terms with it. Sometimes I'm in denial about it, and sometimes I kind of accept it. Today, I'm sort of not believing that I have it.

Imagine that you are expecting visitors to come and stay with you for a while. You dont know when they will arrive, how many of them there will be, or how long they are going to stay. Being bipolar is a lot like that. I am, right now, in the eye of the hurricane and probably will remain there for several years, but I reckon that there's another one in the post.

Some of the most brilliant people in the world are, or were, bipolar:

• Vincent van Gogh
• Napoleon Bonaparte
• Wiston Churchill
• Abraham Lincoln
• Buzz Aldrin
• Spike Milligan
• Stephen Fry
• Alfred Lord Tennyson

Strangely enough, Tennyson also wrote Charge of the Light Brigade. Why is this strange? Because it contains the immortal lines:

Into the valley of death,
rode the six hundred ...

which sort of ties in nicely with the whole reason for this blog - the Dakar Rally.

I watched the Long Way Round DVD (Ewan MacGregor and Charley Boorman) and it inspired me. It inspired me so much that when we went on holiday to Malta from the UK, I rode there on my bike (wife and kids flew out). I set out with nothing much more than a vague idea of how to get to Malta, a rucksack and a tank bag. Maybe I'll copy the diary I kept up here on the blog one day.

My missus then made the absolutely fatal mistake of buying me the "Race to Dakar" book. I read it in one sitting - it was absolutely brilliant. Prior to this, I kind of had some vague recollection of Mark Thatcher getting lost in the desert on some mental rally or other - this was the extent of my knowledge about the Dakar. So I immediately bought the DVD - and have almost worn it out watching it.

I used to ride motorcycles many years ago and I got back into it shortly after being diagnosed. There's an awful lot about riding motorcycles that are excellent metaphors for life. My favourite is target fixation or, more simply, 'the bike goes where you look'. It translates into a metaphor for life very well indeed - you will achieve whatever you focus on.

Which brings me to the blog.

I am aiming on completing the Dakar Rally in 2009. I ride approximately 3,000km a month going to work and back but that is on roads. It being some 20 years since I rode a dirt bike, I am effectively doing this from a standing start.

I will be raising money for charity - a mental health charity somehow seems appropriate - I have no idea where to start or how to go about it, and will be trying to enlist the help of people who do.

I will post my progress here. The world may well be interested in it, or may not, but that is the world's concern. Posting here will serve as a day-by-day record of progress so that I can measure it. It is a public sign of my commitment to this project.

Feel free to drop me a line - whether its feedback, questions or if you just want to chat.

If my blog also serves as a source of hope and inspiration to those of us who spend half our time in the pit of despair, then that is a good thing. You are not alone. If it is night for you right now, then day will follow. Hang in there...