Towing The Line

Long and busy day yesterday. First off to AJP to meet up with Martin and my Irish Team Mate (my ITM) for a spot of trail riding on Salisbury Plain.

My ITM was a really friendly and jolly kind of guy from Dublin. Quick with a joke, and even quicker with a chuckle, and annoyingly good on a bike. I say annoyingly because he's only been out a couple of times and he kept up all day with the best that Martin could throw at us.

So a Scotsman, and Englishman and an Irishman walk into a pub, covered in mud. No, it's not the start of a joke, this actually happened at lunchtime.

Ruts, roots, slippery grass, mud, mud, more roots, jumps and a mountain bike course. My ITM took them all in his stride. Except for one nasty little slope where he decided that it would look rather cool to wheelie the bike up in the air and basically throw it up in the air whilst he was stood behind it holding on to the handlebars. It did look cool too - at one point I thought that he was going to spin the bike round to bring it back down the hill, it looked that well-planned. It was only when the bike landed on the deck that I realised that it may not have been that intentional.

The mountain bike course was crazy. Narrow tracks up and down really steep hills with very tight corners. I have no idea how anybody could pedal a bicycle up those slopes. OK, down the slope would be straightforward - gravity gives you this for free - but getting up them?

We rode over the plan through the artillery ranges and on to the tank obstacle course. Now when you think of the word "tank", you generally think of something weighing about fifty tonnes with huge caterpillar tracks. Tanks are things that are designed to get over pretty much anything.

When you think of the word "trap", you think of something nasty that is designed to stop things getting out of it once they are in it.

When you combine these two, you get a tank trap - something designed to stop fifty-tonne caterpillar-tracked monsters from getting out of it. They are sort of like huge bowls in the ground with soft sticky mud about two feet deep at the bottom. But you can't see the mud, because it is covered by about a foot deep of horrible brown water.

The mud is that evil Bond-villain special suction mud that goes right over your boots and stops you pulling your feet out. A bike going through it doesn't stand a chance. In fact, a bike won't go through it at all. A bike trying to go through it get stuck so deep in the mud that it will stand up ll by itself, an awful lot like this:

Not to worry. Martin produced a webbing strap which we could use to pull the bike out. He pushed the bike, my ITM and I pulled on the strap. This would have been OK except for (a) the mud which wouldn't let you move your feet and (b) the strap suddenly snapping off the bike - putting my ITM and I flat on our arses in the mud. Martin almost fell into the mud too, he pissed himself so much.

Martin took us to the top of a hill which he went down once, about two years ago. That was not a hill, it was a cliff. He was baiting me to go down it, and had a fairly plausible argument that you should do as much hard stuff as pssible because then everything else was easy by comparison. I had the equally plausible counter-argument that what is the point in doing things you don't have to. If you encountered a hill like this in an enduro then the choices are clear - down the hill in one piece, or DNF. When you are out trail-riding, you have the choice of not doing it, and avoiding the risk of hurting yourself or killing your bike. The old bull would have avoided the hill and saved his energy for enduro.

It started to rain and things got really really slippy. But still nobody came off. Martin tried to get up a steep hill and, em, laid the bike down for a rest. My ITM and I decided to give that one a miss.

We rode back to AJP in the rain. Not normal rain either, sharp rain. I dont know how raindrops can be sharp, but these ones were. I had to ride back with my hand over my face to stop them stinging.

My ITM then had to drive all the way back for his flight home at 10pm (which was late, so he didnt get in till nearly 2am). After a 4am start, and a dats riding inbetween, that's pretty close to a Dakar day. Multiply that by 20, and you've got the Dakar.

It was a glorious day by all accounts. The riding was great, more like a 6-hour enduro than trail riding. A nice change for Martin, since he got to ride at the kind of pace - on the kind of terrain - that suits him. A great day for me and my ITM, since we got to ride together. A great day for the tank trap, since it claimed a skull.

I did it all again today, well - sort of. It was much slower, with much more getting off my bike to pick people upout of bushes and ditches. We had Jason - a bee-keeper, Colin - a retired traffic cop whose 60th birthday it was, and Paul - an archaeologist who only passed his CBT last week and this was his second time ever on a bike. Since he was a learner, he couldn't ride the 200cc on the road, so I took him up to Salisbury Plain in the van.

Progress was very very slow. Paul was ultra-terrified and it showed - he was wobbling all over the place. He found it difficult to change gear, so stuck in 1st gear a lot of the time. Jason and Colin - both IAM riders - were much more confident on their bikes, to the point that Jason's over-confidence threw him on his arse a few times. Chalk, such as that on Salisbury Plain, is worse than ice when it gets wet. This is not a lesson that can be taught, it can only be learned.

Paul's reluctance to change gear, and the five minutes he spent fruitlessly spinning the back wheel in wet chalk to get the stuck front wheel over a rocky step, may have contributed to the resulting mechanical failure of his bike. When Martin couldn't fix it on the hill, it was time for a tow.

And it was here that I got the chance to teach something to Martin. Instead of tying the bikes to one another, wrap the webbing strap round the footpeg a few times and put your foot on it to keep it in place. If you need to break the tow for any reason, lift your foot and the webbing just unwraps. A nice little Dakar trick I learned from Zippy when he towed Patsy through the dunes. It is these little things that I will learn in Morocco - the riding is pretty much secondary. You cannot teach experience but, if you are willing, you can learn a lot from the experience of others.

The plan was to put the three guys in the pub for lunch, then Martin would tow me back to AJP to pick up a new bike. Bikes separated and joined by about 15 feet of webbing wrapped round the footpegs, off we set. We got about 6 miles up a B-road, me being towed by Martin who was on the Yamaha, and bumped straight into a police car coming the other way. He stopped in the middle of the road, so did we. The chances of bumping into a Policeman were very slim indeed. The chances of any Policemen so bumped into having a sense of humour? Zero, if not less than that. Horrified, the cop wound down his window and asked a fairly silly question:

"You're not doing what I think you're doing?"

The answer, of which there could be only one, was:

"Tell me what you think we're doing, and I'll be able to tell you if we're doing it"

The funniest part was that it didn't come from me, it came from Martin. Couldn't have put it better myself. I just started pissing myself, and what a look I got from the cop.

"You're towing a bike". You could see the cogs turning, asking himself what he could do us for - if anything - and whether the capture of these two dangerous criminals was worth being late for whatever it was he was on is way to.

"There's nothing illegal about towing a bike is there?"

"Well it's not clever is it?"

"But is it illegal?"

"Yes"

Martin though for a few seconds. I could tell that he too was weighing up the things we could be done for versus the need to stand firm. He also had to be aware that he had three guys sat in a pub up the road who, when they finished their lunch, would want to go back on the trails.

"OK, we won't do it then" he said.

When the cop went away, we debated on whether he'd be coming back. We figured that it was a cert he would do a u-turn to see if we continued towing the bike, and that if he did then hed probably take it fairly hard that we had opted not to listen to him.

Thing is, I have a hearing problem. I am what I call instructionally deaf - I hear perfectly well, unless it's somebody ordering me to do something, at which point I just don't register it unless they're telling me to do something I was going to do anyway. Even then, I'd probably change my mind just to prove a point.

We decided to dump the bike behind a hedge to avoid the temptation for passing vans to just nick it, and then we had to travel with me on the back of Martin's bike. A Yamaha WR250 is not a bike for carrying passengers. It has no footpegs, no handrails and a seat like a razor blade. If you're on the back of one, then you have to hold your feet off the ground (which kills your stomach muscles) at the same time as trying to hold on to the back of a fairly non-existent seat. We did about 5 miles back to the van, and it was agony.

We went back to AJP, wheeled out a new bike into the van and then set off back to the pub where the guys were. All in all, we were gone just over an hour - which is the time we would have stopped for lunch anyway so nobody really lost anything.

I don't really know what Martin would have done if he was on his own, it would certainly have been interesting. Knowing Martin, it would have been creative and - probably - bordering something that a passing traffic cop would not like the look of. Great minds think alike, they say, or is it that fools seldom differ?

I had been joking with Martin about how mental the world would be if Harley Davidson made off-road bikes. We'd have Salisbury Plain full of bandana-wearing Hells Angels on a Sunday. fate, who is obviously a Hells Angel or just has a soft spot for them, decided to teach me a wee lesson.

When we got back to the pub and got out of the van, there was about a dozen Harley Davidson bikes, and a bunch of bandana-wearing Hell's Angels to go with them. The bikes were all in Army green, had enduro tyres on them, and were covered with mud. Off-road Harley Davidsons. We had only chosen the same pub as the local Harley Davidson Off-Road Bike Owners Club monthly ride out across Salisbury Plain. OK fate, you win. Lesson learned.

We set off back the way we came - Martin and I having had no lunch because of the fun we were having getting the bike back whilst dodging Wiltshire's finest. Still, no drama really. Martin produced a pepperami and a packet of crisps - I felt 6 years old again, sat outside the pub whilst my Da periodically popped out with juice and crisps, shouted at me to stop doing whatever mischief it was I was doing, then disappeared back inside - leaving me free to eat the crisps before getting back to the serious business of mischief.

Everybody was getting really tired now, and the falls were becoming more frequent. I was off my bike every couple of minutes to help somebody up, or help them over an obstacle. I was complimented on the quality of my, em, "instruction", several times. Apparently people who are very good are not so good at teaching, I was told, and I was very good at teaching. This was from the ex traffic cop.

"Are you trying to imply that I am shit on a bike?" I grinned, fully in keeping with the banter and piss-taking that goes on when a bunch of guys go playing on bikes in the mud. I as assured that this was not the case.

Ayway, it greatly improves my riding when I go trail riding with learners. For one thing, I have to observe what they are doing that could be better - which means I have to have a very good understanding of technique (even though I am still developing the techniques myself). For another thing, I need to be ale to break that technique down into bite-size chunks so that I can explain it.

For example, Paul got stuck on some really slippy chalk with some steps going up it. His front wheel got stuck on a step, as did his back wheel. Despite all of his revving and roosting, it was obvious that the bike was going nowhere. I jumped off my bike and explained the technique to him - when there is no grip, it's all about momentum. There is no traction here, so you need to have all of your speed before you get here. I helped him pull his bike back down the hill, and explained about feathering the clutch, 2nd gear, weight over the back wheel to lighten the front end and help the back wheel dig in. A little tug on the bars as you approach the step, open the throttle, and up she goes.

He nailed it first time, and this was only his second time out on a bike. I then took my own advice and nailed it first time too.

When you are riding with learners, you also have to second-guess what they are gong to do. Chances are they will want the best line with the most grip - what looks like the safest path - so you have to be prepared to take the worst path with the least grip. Yo have to be prepared - and able - to switch from rut to rut in order to avoid slamming into the back of them if they come off. You have to be prepared - and able - to turn bikes around and get them out of sticky situations (like falling off halfway up a hill). These are excellent skills for me to learn.

I found myself hanging back a lot from the group, letting them get ahead of me, so that I could take a series of ruts (or mud) at speed. Not only was it a bit of a hoot, and poseable, it also felt much safer doing it with a little speed - less wobbly.

Jim Kouzes, chairman of the Tom Peters Company (one of those leadership and vision organisations that do seminars for Very Important People) says that "when I want to learn something, I teach it to somebody". There is an awful lot of truth in this. In order to teach something, you have to understand it very well indeed. It helps if you can also do it, but understanding is the key. By breaking down techniques into small chunks, I am giving myself greater understanding. By comparing my own techniques against these chunks, I am able to measure - and improve - my own progress.

It looks like I managed to blow out Witley on 7 October by having a late entry. Still, there's a Midwest racing the following week, which Jago and Martin are doing, so I'll try and get into that one.

Something that occurred to me on Friday, whilst out riding with my ITM and Martin. I started the day feeling really shit - it had been a hell of a week - and ended the day felling awfully good about things.

Martin also gave me a new 50-tooth sprocket for Queen Madge II since my existing sprocket is looking a little worn. He wouldn't take any money for it either. Thanks Martin. I will probably fit this next weekend, at the same time as doing a good bit of overhaul and maintenance and TLC on the young lady anyway.

Incidentally, tricyclics are a form of medication used to treat depression. There is eividence that they can actually make you worse, and I hate taking them. They really do impari your ability to function in ay meaningful way. How they work isn't important just now, but the translation is loosely "three cycles". So I went out on Friday feeling a bit depressed in the morning and had a day of three cycles - or tricyclics. Great cure for depression.

Book a trail ride at AJP - you don't have much time before Martin shuts up shop for the year.

Perspective

Spoke to Martin tonight, off for a spot of AJP trail-riding with him and my Irish Team Mate tomorrow. My Irish Team Mate has been having a bit of a nightmare with his bike - it has still not been delivered yet. Unperturbed, he is flying in from Dublin to Bristol in the morning, driving to Trowbridge, a day's trail riding and then back the same day. Now that's fit. Or keen. Or mad. Or some combination of the above. That's Dakar-level commitment, right there.

I also spoke to Jago (our 3rd team member) who has been doing some research on the whole thing. Apparently ASO are providing all of the fuel for the 2008 Dakar (which is a new development - you used to have to provide your own) and - significantly - all entries are now 'assessment based on merit' (whatever that means).

Exactly how this pans out in the real world is a question for Patsy Quick when we get to Morocco - one of the reasons for going in the first place is to find out all of the this stuff. I don't really know why I think this, but I just know it's not going to be a problem. I know I am going to Dakar and I'm really not that worried about the detail and the hurdles and the beaureacracy. I just know.

Jago had some interesting questions about sponsorship and thought that my angle of "I am bi-polar, not a pro rider, not a factory rider, just an ordinary guy doing extra-ordinary things" was quite novel and, in a strange way, quite appealing. Him and Missus Jago are popping in on Sunday so we can all kind of figure out what to do next and how best to marshall our efforts.

So I think there was a bit of a turning point today. I'm not sure how, or why, and it's most likely just that my own perception of things shifted a little. I was less hostile, and saw a lot less hostility in return. It's all about perspective.

I used to commute every week on the train fro Edinburgh to London. Down on a Monday morning on the 6am red-eye, back on a Friday night. Lots of fun.

The train was an InterCity 225 - an electric-powered job with a locomotive at the front and the rear. Only one of these was operational at a time, so the train was either being pulled from the from or pushed by the rear.

One time, the train broke down about an hour out of Edinburgh. The guard came on the tannoy and announced that there was a problem with the front engine and that we would be hooking up power to the rear one so we'd be on our way shortly. Sure enough, we were back on our way shortly after about a half-hour delay.

A short time later, the train ground to a halt again. The guard came on the tannoy again and announced:

"I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that the second engine has also failed. The good news is that this is not a Boeing 737".

As I say, it's all about perspective.

Lessons

I had to share this with you, and it's a totally true story.

In my last post, I was talking about lessons and stuff like that. So, tonight I went to take the dog out for a walk. It's about 100 yards from the front door to the trees, going round a corner and into a narrow path. The trees are quite dense as you walk up this path until you come into this lovely big clearing all full of bracken and small saplings. It's particularly lovely in the morning when the sun is shining - especially in wintertime when everything is caked with frost - real picture postcard.

So here I am walking through the trees tonight and it's dark apart from the moonlight. I shout on the dog, who I am expecting to be right behind me, but she's not there. Just what I need, an AWOL puppy. I whistle, and shout again - still no dog. Now she is normally very obedient, and would have came in a flash, but not not tonight.

I start retracing my steps, thinking maybe she got spooked by something, and end up back at the house. This is very strange indeed, most out of character.

I open the door and poke my head inside to tell The Missus that I need to go looking for the dog. There, inside the door, is a rather confused collie with a full bladder.

The lesson that the universe was trying to teach me could very well be this: Next time you go for a walk with the dog - remember to take the dog.

So, This Patience Thing ...

A farmer plant his seeds in the autumn, and harvests in the summer. The earth takes 365.25 days to go round the sun. It takes forty years to get forty years of experience. You get the picture - everything happens at its own natural speed and cannot be rushed.

Pain is a signal. It is a little reminder from the universe that something is not quite right. Put your hand in a fire, you'll soon be aware that something is not quite right. Pain is there to bring your attention to something that you need to do something about. The same is true of anguish (pain and anguish being different things). Anguish is a little indicator from the universe that something is not quite right.

More accurately, it's a little prompt that there is a lesson you need to learn. If you experience the same anguish over and over again (even though the circumstances may be slightly different) then you haven't yet learned the lesson.

When I started riding a bike off-road, I ate rather a lot of mud and had rather a lot of bruises. This pain (and the anguish about it) was teaching me a lesson - don't fall off your bike. It also taught me about patience - learning not to fall off my bike was a lesson that would take time, and would not be rushed.

So I have a lot of anguish right now. It's mostly triggered by insecurity, and the shenanigans going on at work. I get really jumpy, and become almost desperate for something to make the anguish go away. Just now, I complain that I need some certainty. On reflection, that may not be quite right - things may actually be fairly certain.

When you hear somebody (or yourself) complain about "it's not what as done, its the way it was done", then five will get you ten that what they are actually complaining about is what was done. We tell stories - to others and ourselves - to make things palatable. This is ultimately what separates us from animals - we can tell stories that abstract things and we can think about stuff in an abstract way. Put a bowl of food in front of a dog, and the dog will eat it - it has no concept of "wait till later" when it comes to food.

So I am complaining about uncertainty, but is this really the case? Is it not equally possible that I am anguished about the things I know to be true?

Anyway, the point is that I am feeling very very jumpy and I don't know why. I am questioning all sorts of things, and feeling all sorts of anguish. We have many irons in the fire, my ageing friend and I, and I get jumpy about the uncertainty of the outcome. Or do I? Is it that I am just impatient, and need to just allow things to develop as they will do all by themselves? How much is causeand how much is effect? How much is my own spin on what's going on, and how much is what is actually going on? In short, how much of this anguish is down to me and me alone?

My ageing friend is full of wise counsel. Stripping through the paranoia and pointing out where the glass may actually be half-full. I hate it when he does that - all sensible and analytical and stuff. Real old bull style (blogs passim).

I am impatient to get better on my bike. I am impatient for the stuff cooking with my ageing friend to bear fruit. I am impatient about lots of things.

The universe is trying to teach me a lesson - "be patient". As I've said before though, it cannot be learned in a hurry. The universe must absolutely be pissing itself at the irony - I know I would.

Lack of bike time, that's what this is.

Combinations

Iron oxide, more commonly known as rust, is nothing special really. It is a commonly-found element and doesn't do a whole lot. It is unreactive, and quite heavy. Sort of like my ageing friend. Aluminium ('alloominum' to the Americans) is equally unexciting. It's light, and reactive under certain conditions. It creates its own invisible barrier against the outside world to protect the shiny stuff underneath. Sort of like me in a way. We'll come back to this.

It has been a hell of a weekend, I have not stopped for a minute.

In between doing the things I need to do, I have churned out over 100 pages of technical documentation, and something in the order of 20,000 lines of software. OK, so the software was largely just a moving around exercise - consolidating all the bits and pieces that I have written over the years - but still a big old job.

It occurred to me, as I re-read the documentation I wrote, that I am a fairly well-rounded individual. This is not the same thing as being a well-balanced individual (and I am well-balanced - I have a chip on both shoulders), it means more that I can apply myself to an awful lot of different things and be good at them.

For example, I write software. Lots of it. But I am not a software developer. Although I am a better software developer than a lot of people I encounter who only do software development. I can write great documents, but I am not a Technical Author. Although I can write docments much better than a lot of people I encounter who only do technical documents.

That aside, I don't ever think of myself as 'better' - it's very rare that I compare myself to other people at all. This is something I noticed when I started racing - I wasn't used to comparing myself against others (what position am I in? Am I behind so-and-so or in front of him?) - and it really does affect my results.

At the last race - Track and Nailed - I was comparing my position to Martin's. Not only did this make me keep pushing myself - because I knew he was faster - it also helped me begin to develop the mindset I need for racing.

Ultimately, though, I am racing only against myself. Which is fine, as long as I don't lose - that would interesting.

So my ageing friend just left to go into battle. He looked very impressive with the suit on and all - anybody with any experience of dealing with me would be absolutely blown away by the contrast. They won't see him coming, or at least we hope not.

He has, in his briefcase (which looks more like a handbag as I never tire of telling him), a very well thought-out and brilliantly written white paper on What Is Wrong With The World (in terms of software projects). He will be handing this to a senior manager at the outsourcer today, and talking about other things to do with bizz-ness.

Four years ago, I came up with an idea. I managed to sell it a couple of times, but always failed to sell it to large companies because of an inability to play the corporate game - I thought that it was enough to be really really good at what you do, and that being a buzzword-filled suit didn't apply to me. I was wrong. Sad as it may be, large companies will only deal with you if you have both sides of the equation - technical people who don't understand business and business people who don't understand technology.

It has only been in the last 12 months that the world has cottoned on to the need for what I came up with four years ago. This happens regularly. I come up with something, and the world catches up two years later.

Mr Happy, when he reads the contents of that white paper, will weep. There is no way they can compete with it. Sure, they can use their commercial muscle to make sure that their sub-standard solution is the one that gets chosen - this happens all the time - but they can't compete with it. Technically, they are already in second place.

When I finished the white paper - and my ageing friend had added in all of the bits that relate to his side of the equation - we sat back and took a breath. We were blown away by how brilliant it was. This must be how God felt on the seventh day.

The contents of that white paper in my ageing friends handbag - sorry briefcase - is two years ahead of its time. But there is nothing complicated in it. It is so simple that it is brilliant. The trouble with common sense, especially in IT, is that it is not as common as we'd like it to be.

As I never tire of saying to people - "the wheel is the most efficient machine ever built by man. Count the moving parts".

So, anyway, we came up with the Company mission statement. Not one of those bollocks bland corporate things like "we aim to be the premier supplier of bitz to the widget trade" - oh no.

We opted for something much simpler, something you could put on a t-shirt:

"Nobody gets shafted. Unless they try to shaft us first".

Apologies for not having anything to say over the past few days - my head (and my waking hours) has been filled by computer stuff so boring that it would make you cry.

So, back to the chemistry lesson. My ageing friend and me. Iron oxide (rust) and aluminium. Mix them together (approximately 74% iron oxide, 26% aluminium powder) and the combination is one of the most powerful substances known to man - thermite. It burns at 4,000 degress centigrade and it can turn steel into liquid within seconds.

As I said in my last blog about continuity, the individual parts by themselves have no power - it's only when you combine them that things start to take shape and become forces to be reckoned with. The combination of me and my ageing friend is something approaching unstoppable.

The SAS has a motto of "Who Dares Wins". Its aquatic counterpart - the SBS - has a motto far more in line with the way people of my size have to do things: "Not by strength, but by guile".

Please wish the very best of luck to my ageing friend. May the force be with you old man.

Continuity

So I've been giving a lot of thought to where my minutes are disappearing to in these enduro events.

I'm reasonably quick, and getting more competent all the time. I can keep up with the people around me (except the experts, who seem to have laws of gravity that apply only to them) and I'm reasonably confident on the bike. So where are the minutes going?

One place where they are going is what I ca;; "throttle chop". When I see something I don't like - such as a bunch of nasty roots - I get a bit panicky and I roll right off the throttle. This wastes a lot of time, and loses momentum. It takes me a minute to get over an obstacle that an expert would do in seconds. Multiply this by the number of really nasty obstacles on the course, and you have a couple of minutes at least.

The main place where they are going when I fall off. This loses at least a minute, and more if I pause to get my breath back and take a minute to lose the adrenaline rush (it's dangerous to get right back on the bike without calming down for a few seconds first). If I fall off a couple of times, combined with throttle-chopping, then I am losing nearly 10 minutes a lap. Not good.

I can resolve this problem in a couple of ways:

1. consciously stay on the throttle when I see things I don't like
   
2. don't fall off

but these seem to be mutually exclusive.

What I really need is better continuity. There is no point in taking a brilliant corner at excellent speed if I then panic at the bunch of roots waiting round it. This is a lack of continuity - I need to either attack the roots at the same speed I took the corner, or go round the corner at the speed I want to attack the roots at. It needs to flow an awful lot more.

When you are learning to play chess, you think about your moves in terms of individual pieces. As you get better, you think about your moves in terms of combinations of pieces - then it starts to flow. When you learn to drive, you think about it in terms of one control at a time (steering, clutch and the like), it's only when you combine them then it starts to flow.

A bad boxer throws single punches. A good boxer uses combinations. Ali could lay a left jab, a right hook and a left uppercut so rapidly that it was like getting hit my 3 punches at once. WHat made him a brilliant boxer was that he flowed. His had continuity.

So I need to work on my combinations, my continuity. Up to now, I have been getting round the track one obstacle at a time. It is now time to look a little further round the corner at the next obstacle and start stitching them together.

Continuity is the objective now. I will start by dealing with obstacles in pairs, then stitching a little more of them together. My lap times will start to tumble.

Continuity is what it's all about. It ihas to be at the cente of what I do if I am to succeed.

My thanks to my ageing friend for the insight and the wisdom on this one.

Monkey Bizz-ness

Tonight we all went for curry. Myself, my ageing friend, my gangly friend and a couple of the Hockey Team guys. We were talking about bizz-ness and the possibilities that lay before us.

I have been working for many many years on software that solves the very problem my employer wants to solve by outsourcing. The details are not important, but it seems to be a no-brainer.

I had a conversation today with a senior manager in the outsourcing giant, and he is to meet my ageing friend on Monday to talk about what can be done that makes everybody better off - my employer, outsourcing giant, my team and me. We don't know where that one will go yet.

I spoke to Martin this evening. He ripped off his toenail and mangled his foot when he trapped his foot between the footpeg and a tree root at 20mph at the race on Sunday. This was on the sighting lap, and he still finished the race. There is a bit of fun up at Husaberg on Saturday riding Husaberg race bikes, and he is heading up there. Workload permitting, I'll take a trip up too - you can never get too much bike-time in.

Great idea for a bumper sticker - "Enduro riders do it by getting the best grip".

Trying to organise flights and stuff to get to Morocco in November for desert training. The prices are fairly reasonable, but it's a 6am flight back again. Ouch. I don't like flying at the best of times, and I don't do mornings.

Somebody else who doesn't like flying is Matthew Parris - former MP and now a journalist, he is the guy who outed Peter Mandelsson.

Anyway, he was flying on a RyanAir flight and was carrying hand-luggage only. He put his hand luggage on the scales and it weighed 12 kilos. The girl said he was only allowed 10 kilos and he'd need to check his bag in.

Matthew Parris protested about this - he pointed out at least 10 people in the queue who were at least 20 kilos heavier than he was. "Do they have to check in their buttocks?" he asked. The RyanAir checkin staff didn't see the funny side. "10 kilos" they insisted.

There was only one thing to do. He unpacked the bag at the desk, and put on the clothes that were in it, then filled his pockets with everything else. He ended up wearing about 4 jumpers and 3 pairs of trousers, but he got the weight down to 8 kilos.

He had proved his point, and the luggage was allowed as hand luggage. Security was a bit of a trauma, since he had to empty all of the pockets, but it was still a victory. I'd have done exactly the same thing.

If me and my luggage weighs in at 80 kilos, then this means that I have 25 kilos of luggage. If my luggage allowance is 20 kilos, then I am 5 kilos overweight and will have to pay for this. An 80-kilo person with 15 kilos of luggage has to pay nothing, but they are loading the plan with 15 kilos more than I am.

Something is wrong with that picture. Why not put the person and the luggage on the scales and weigh them both? I mean, that's what the plane is gong to have to get into the air - not just the luggage.

Martin gave the thumbs-up to me coming along AJP trail riding on 28 September, which means that I will get a days riding with my Irish team mate (who is flying in from Dublin and back in one day - he will be knackered).

It turns out that my Irish team mate has a pilots licence, and has an awful lot of hours of flying time behind him. Navigation is a breeze he tells me, he's been doing it for years. This will serve us well getting to Dakar, so I am putting this in the "good sign" category. It still doesn;t solve the road book trauma, and deciphering that little lot whilst dodging rocks and soft sand. Much ractice is needed here.

My nautical friend has left for Brazil - long old journey across the Atlantic for him - and we wish him well.

I spoke to Young Sky today as well. He has just been offered a job at THE company to work for - Google of all places. Well done to him, he will fit right in there. He is one of the brightest people I know - if not the brightest - and Google are lucky to have him. Good luck.

Because I am in late tonight, The Missus is already tucked up in bed as is the Wee Yin. This meant that the only welcome I got tonight was from a rather crap collie who makes silly whimpering noises. Been a long day today and tomorrow will be longer still. We are still not out of the woods yet with the whole outsourcing thing, even though the trees are starting to thin.

I have sort of reached a place where I know what is the right thing to do, and have volunteered this as a solution to the problem so that everybody gets what they want out of it. If this cannot happen for any reason, then there's not a lot else I can do except leave them to follow the course they have set for themselves. All of this cycle-stealing has caused a fair amount of turmoil these past few weeks, and The Missus and I were having raised voices last night - it cannot go on much longer.

It was occupying my mind so much that I rode right through a speed camera at 10mph over the sped limit. The double-flash brought me to my senses, but tht's not the bad part. The bad part is that I know that camera - I pass it every day. I was riding on autopilot and was not aware of my surroundings. This is not good, not good at all. This is a major cause of needing to put up "Dead Biker Ahead" signs.

Something is in the wind. Not sure what it is, or how it will pan out, but something is around the corner. I don't know if something wicked this way comes, or if it's something good, but I just got this uncanny feeling that something is about to come right in out of the blue.

With bikes, as in life, It's always the things you don't see that get you - not the ones you're looking at.

Invisible Martin

The results for Track and Trail have been published. Let's crunch some numbers.



I finished 8th in my class, which consisted of 19 riders. This puts me in the top half of my class. Martin came 3rd in the class, and somehow seemed to pass me twice without me noticing because he got a rather impressive 7 laps.

I came 92nd overall, out of 145 riders. There were 45 DNFs, so this means I was out of the bottom third overall. I am not too upset about these particular results. Not too upset at all, but I'd still like to know where and how Martin sneaked by without me noticing him. He claims that he was carrying a hole punch, and punched his own timecard. If he weren't such a good rider, with such a passion for racing, this would be possible but he'd rather have 7 hard-earned laps than 20 laps gotten by cheating. I must've took a wrong turn somewhere.

Awfully bad day today. The outsourcing giant brought in their rather frustrated big guns - senior managers - who were making some pretty demanding demands. My ageing friend had a slightly different perspective on it, as he usually does, but I still took it pretty hard.

It occurred to me today that bizz-ness is an awful lot like enduro riding. It's a tough old slog, and sometimes you'll pull off a corner or a jump that makes you think you're doing really well. Then, at the next corner, you'll hit a few roots or something and end up on your arse. You have to be prepared to take the knocks if you are going to get anywhere. Enduro is about persistence, tenacity, and never, ever, giving up. Bizz-ness is the same.

One snior manager is well-suited to riding a two-stroke - he has a particularly high-revving and impatient style. Further discussions need to be had with him, but I think we established that bullying is not really a tactic that will produce much traction.

Still a shit day though. Just needs to be over. It will be tomorrow.

If Anyone Can, Caro-Kann

News from the world of work - there seems to have been a change in thinking over the last week.

Firstly, my team is to get 5 new people to help us cope with the amount of work we have to do. These people are to take on the day-to-day work, freeing my existing guys up to get on with fixing the problems in the system, instead of just constantly fixing the symptoms with rubber bands and elastoplast.

This would be good enough, but it gets better. These five guys are not to come from Mr Happy it has been decreed. This is to make sure that the "wrong message" is not being sent to the guys in my team.

As a final confidence-vote, I was asked if I knew people who could fill this gap. Strangely enough, there are a couple of people I can think of - card-carrying Hockey Team members all of them. The work that I do needs a certain type of person.

I am not arrogant enough to think that all my manic activity last week is what caused this turnaround, although I would like to think that it helped in some way. Regardless, it seems that senior management have paid attention to what is going on in the trenches, and are making the right decision.

I can certainly say that the strategy advice of my ageing friend played a big big part. Sometimes you need to use the club (that's me). Sometimes, it's better to use the rapier (that's him).

Which means that I can stop having this steal cycles from my thinking, and get on with the job in hand. I can keep my guys cohesive instead of having to constantly talk them out of resigning. I really don't see who loses out of this situation at all.

Well, there's Mr Happy I suppose. I'm not sure exactly when this became a personal thing, but it didn't have to be there at all. Mr Happy, and his supporters, were absolutely not prepared for the robustness of the defence - and counter-attack - that was put up over the last couple of weeks. One of the great things about manic depression is if you can harness the mania to focus on something you really, really want and this is exactly what happened last week.

So I really, really want Dakar. A seemingly impossible task, me being a complete underdog. Two weeks ago, I faced the seemingly impossible task of getting the senior management of a huge global bank to change their mind and make a different decision from the Plan. I was up against a much larger opponent - themselves backed by one of the largest IT outsourcing companies in the world - and it looks like we may well have succeeded.

When you believe passionately in something, you have to be prepared to fight to the death for it. Dying in pursuit of something you really believe in is much much less painful than living with yourself because you didn't have the balls to stand up for your beliefs.

Tough conversation with The Missus about November and groats. I'll give you the details later, but The Missus and I are both off to Morocco in November. She is travelling in the support 4x4, with a Dakar-veteran support crew, and I am riding on the bikes with a bunch of guys doing Dakar in 2009. The tips, advice and experience we will both get could not be bought for any sum of money I don't think - there's a lot more to Dakar than just riding a bike.

So now I can concentrate on that, and take my eyes off Mr Happy a little. He, having licked his wounds, will be back - those who fight for the Status Quo always lose in the end - but, for now, there is a real smell of Napalm in the morning.

Smells like Victory.

Track & Nailed

Listen. That silence you hear is the sound of a slain dragon. That lovely gloating feeling you get when you settle an outstanding score.

The artist formerly known as Track & Trauma was today. It began at 5am with the usual force-feeding of porridge, then a 150-mile hike off to Wales. En route, I got a text from Martin - "Gorgeous weather!". When we crossed the Severn Bridge, the sky turned black, so I replied to Martin's text - "about this lovely weather ...".

We pitched up next to Martin and started getting ready. Queen Madge II cruised scrutineering and I placed it next to Martin at the start line. Martin tells me that he's expecting 12 laps today, and he couldn't decide which of us should be first and which should be second.

Since the race was starting late, we walked the track a little with the Wee Yin. It was absolute trauma. There was a really nasty zig-zag section between piles of old tyres, with ruts and bomb holes a foot deep. This would have been bad enough, but everything was just powder - it had not rained here in weeks. Martin commented on how this was excellent sand training - just like the real thing.

I then could have sworn I heard him say something about jumps. I double-checked, and followed where he was pointing. There, right after the start, was a motocross section with about half a dozen big jumps and a tabletop. I know absolutely nothing about jumping. Martin's advice was short and to-the-point - "don't land on your front wheel". So we're riding on brown talcum powder, with zero grip, and we've got more jumps than a box of frogs. At least it couldn't be worse.

Being an ORPA race, we have to do a sighting lap (which is an unscored and untimed lap). I was off like a bullet from the start, beating everybody to the first corner. We started over the jumps, and I made a complete mess of the first one - straight down on to the front wheel. The second one was better, and the third, but I was struggling to get grip - the bike was all over the place.

We went through the nasty zig-zags, Martin hot on my heels. The Missus shot it on video - I was sat down and paddling to keep the bike up, Martin was just coasting behind me on his pegs.

We set off across a field and then turned a tight left hander. Imagine a cliff covered in 12 inches of brown talcum powder. Now imagine that you are trying to ride a motorcycle down it. Scary. Very scary. All you could do was let go of both levers and hope that the engine braking would be enough to slow you down - it was like ski-ing as the wheels slid over the dust and powder and I careered down the hill. Sir Isaac Newton was in the driving seat - this was a fight between rubber and gravity - there was only going to be one winner.

Round a tight right-hander at the bottom, and we started off back up the hill. Same powder. Same steepness. Same zero-grip. But gravity was still winning. Myself and four other people slid right off at the steepest part of the hill. I christened this hill "MOAH" - "Mother Of All Hills". When Everest was a little boy, he wanted to grow up to be as steep and nasty as this hill. I recalled my own comment about Queen Madge II - "I have yet to find a hill she couldn't get me up" - and thought that I may have found one right here.

I walked the bike up a little, re-mounted, and got up the hill. A tight left-hander and it was back down again - same surface and lack of grip. Tight right-hander at the bottom and then - guess what - straight back up again. We zig-zagged our way up and down three times in total. It was knackering.

Through the trees, some seriously off-camber stuff with about a 50-foot drop to the right, and into a farmyard. I turned a corner and the course reached a dead-end - there was this huge haystack in front of me. I was about to turn the bike round when a two-stroke roared out of nowhere and climbed up and over the haystak - all fifteen feet of it. Somebody had a real giggle when they set this one up I thought, and roosted over the top of the haystack. The drop on the other side was quite, em, exciting.

More fields, a really nasty gully where we had to ride up a stream, and then into another Motocross section with more jumps, but bigger this time. Scary at first, I got those jumps nailed and was flying through the air by the end of the day. The Missus, shooting some of this on video, was heard to say a surprised "Wow!" as I leapt into the air. Queen Madge II was solid as a rock, and never missed a single landing.

I fell off at least a dozen times, and snapped a lever after about 10 minutes. I'll let you guess which lever it was, but the clue is that it's always the same one.

When riding into the gully, I heard a bike behind me so I pulled over to let the guy past. It was Martin. Do you think I could catch him? Not a hope.

That said, Fate was smiling on me. I came in at the end of my 3rd lap with 1 hour and 4 minutes to go. I came in at the end of my fourth lap with 35 minutes. This meant that I was doing approximately 30 minute laps of a 7-mile course, which is not too bad at all. This told me that I could get a fifth lap in just before the clock run out, and I'd still be on the course so I'd get a sixth lap in.

I figured that Martin was more than 5 minutes behind me (but catching up to lap me again) so he would come in the wrong side of the clock and not get another lap. As it turned out, I came through the gate with four minutes left, and Martin came in 1 minute after time was up. This gave me the lap back. The Missus saw that I had a couple of minutes to get through, and was jumping up and down like a frog on a pogo-stick. Nice sight it was too, made me smile.

Knackered, and my right knee killing me where I had dropped the bike on it and twisted it really badly, I set out for my sixth lap. I knew that I had to finish this lap, or it was DNF. The bike was holding up well - these AJPs are tough - and I owed it to her to do the same.

30 minutes later, and a completely shagged but very chuffed me made it through the chequered flag. Six laps. Same as Martin. OK, there was some timing chicanery involved (he was much much quicker than I was) but it's still a real six laps of a very very tough course. More importantly, it's almost 4 hours of non-stop riding. No pits. No stops. None. Except for when I fell, in which case there were lots. But every time I fell, I just got back on and kept going. That is what enduro is all about - just keep going. That is what Dakar is all about - you just have to keep going.

Martin told me afterwards that he only did six because he didn't want to upset and demoralise me , but he didn't count how many he did - he thought he had done 10 at one point. Given that he only lapped me once, and got caught by the clock, I don't see how it could be more than 6. The Missus concurs.

The Wee Yin looked like some urchin out of a Dickens novel when I finished the race. She had been playing with tyres and rocks, and she was absolutely filthy. I told her "where there's muck, there's luck" - nothing wrong with a muddy child at all. Especially one wearing a grin like that. She got helmeted up, and went for a wee ride on the bike around the field, squealing away as she does. It's the highlight of her day, and mine to be honest.

So I am particularly pleased with myself. Not only did I ride without stopping for four hours, I also put in a very respectable 6 laps (not including the sighting lap). This on top of a 300-mile round-trip drive. Put another way, that's 2 x liason stages and a special stage inbetween. On powder. Very similar to a Europe-Africa race that happens every year. Hmm.

So I have nothing on the radar now except trail riding on 29 September. To tell you the truth, I am looking forward to having a rest next weekend - it's been fairly constant for the last month. I can work on the bike, and give her a little TLC - she has looked after me. I will also do the same for The Missus, because she has looked after me too. I could not do this without her.

And nobody kicked me off my bike.

This Time It's Personal

5am on a dark September Sunday morning, and I am really enjoying my bed. My alarm clock has other ideas - it wants me to get up.

R.E.M. is blaring out and, instead of the appropriate-for-this-time-of-the-morning "Everybody Hurts", we get "Shiny Happy People". The DJ is either in need of sectioning, has a sick sense of humour, or both.

Plan for the Wee Yin is to leave her till the last minute, then get her out of bed and wrap her up in the van still in her pyjamas. She's quite excited about it, especially since she knows that race day is "ride on daddy's petrol tank day".

The Missus is Terminator efficient, packing stuff inbetween force-feeding me porridge . The Crap Dog is wondering what is going on and is hiding from everybody in case it's one of those ones where we are going on an aeroplane and she's off to the kennels. If you've never seen a collie trying to pretend that it's not there, it really is worth watching.

Now I have to have respect for the fact that Track & Trauma is a tough race. They have to have respect for the fact that I am better trained than previously, I now know what to expect, and - above all - I am ready for them. I have a great bike, all the ingredients of great technique, and I have a score to settle.

I won't be winning today, but I won't be getting kicked off my bike.

The Lovely Debbie McGee

Paul Daniels was a TV magician, and a very successful one. He had three catchphrases:

"You'll like this - not a lot"
"Now That's Magic!"
"For this next trick, I will need the assistance of the lovely Debbie McGee"

Whilst nowhere near as pretty as The Missus, the lovely Debbie McGee was indeed lovely. She was Paul's assistant, and also his Missus.

Anyway, Paul Daniels was on tour in the UK. Towards the end of this act, he would invite members of the audience who could perform magic to come up on stage and perform a trick.

One guy, a fairly dour looking chap, came up on stage and said "for this trick Paul, I will need a kitchen table and also the assistance of the lovely Debbie McGee".

The kitchen table was brought on to the stage, and the lovely Debbie McGee took centre stage alongside the table.

The guy explained how he was going to perform magic and, as he did so, bent the lovely Debbie McGee over the table. After swiftly removing her underwear, he proceeded to have sexual intercourse with her.

An aghast Paul Daniels exclaimed "That's not a trick!".

The guy replied, "No, but it is magic!".

I did not want to go trail riding today. I was knackered, and have had such a shit week. I just wanted to do nothing. I woke up with the alamr, and was in half a mind to just phone Martin and not go, but after getting up I realised that I was very looking forward to it.

How on earth could I not have wanted to go trail riding with Martin? The drive up really cleared my head - it's the first time in over a week that I have had any chance togather my thoughts and kind of arrange things in order mentally. I was so engrossed that I drove right past Martin's and had to do a U-turn a few miles down the road.

When I got there, our riders were already assembled. There was Roy, a 21-year-old GameStation store manager who rode a SV650. There was Tony, a quantity surveyor. There was Mike and Steve - two brothers - and, of course, there was Martin and now me.

Mike was on a brand new AJP that had not yet been ridden 1 mile. Tony had the Yamaha WR 250, everybody else had an AJP. Except Martin - he opted for his nippy little 2-stroke.

We went up onto Salisbury Plain and stopped for our first lesson - how to pick the bike up. Martin explained that it was actually very easy to pick a bike up, no matter how small you are, as John will now demonstrate.

I realised at that point that I was to be the lovely Debbie McGee for the day, and I desperately hoped that there were no kitchen tables on the route.

I put the bike down, and then went into a shpiel about how the bike weighs about 120kg full of fuel, and I weigh about 55 kilos soaking wet. I saw the rather bemused looks on the guy's faces - they were obviously expecting a bit of huffing and puffing and carnage as l'il ol' me struggled to get the bike up again.

I explained the technique, ending with a "... and she just comes straight up" as I lifted the bike effortlessly. Jaws dropped. Martin smiled. I grinned. "Now you try", I said. What they didn't know is that when you fall off a lot, you get pretty good at picking your bike up.

We rode some trails, some ruts, some mud, and onto Salisbury Plain proper. Martin stopped at the bottom o