Left Foot Up

At the start of an enduro, when you're waiting for the flag signalling GO!, you'll generally have your bike in neutral (since then you don't need to hold the clutch). The classes in front of you will fire up their engines and roar away one by one. Anticipation builds, adrenaline starts to flow.

When the class immediately in front of you go off, you know you're next. You are really starting to buzz a bit now. You will lift your left foot and place it on the peg. That motion - putting your left foot on the peg so you can work the gearshift, means an awful lot to a biker. You're ready now, just about to take off like a bat out of hell.

Riding up to work this morning was fantastic - best ride I've had in a while. I could do no wrong, and the bike was absolutely solid. My usual jaunt on Salisbury Plain was particularly enjoyable - it's the last time I'll be doing it on my way to work.

Starting to get really geared up for Morocco now - I can almost taste it. I have my left foot on the peg.

We're off to a place called Ouarzazate (pronounced "War-za-zat") in the South-West of Morocco. It began its life as a crossing point in the Atlas Mountains where African traders would travel en route to Europe. Under French rule, it became a garrison town and it grew considerably.

Bizarrely, it also houses one of the largest film studios in the world - Atlas studios. Some of the films to come out of there include Lawrence of Arabia, Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven and Alexander. I might have some more to say about Alexander in the future - I kind of quite like the guy.

Lawrence of Arabia. Hmm. Rode a motorcycle. Had a bit of a thing about writing stuff. Took on the might of the Ottoman Empire through having lots of respect amongst the grass roots normal folk. I can identify with a lot of that.

Here's some of the stuff we'll be riding in.

Right there is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Tell you what though, I'd rather be doing it on a bike than getting my bones rattled to bits in a 4x4. I better remind The Missus to pack a cushion or two.

Did a few beers tonight, with the guys from my team. Nice to say goodbye to them properly. Hopefully, if things work out as we hope, I'll work with them again.

The Wee Yin, who doesn't have anything resembling quiet on her volume controls, is so excited about Hallowe'en and getting all dressed up and stuff. We're even going to make some little cardboard fangs to put on the dog and turn her into some kind of crap werewolf or something. Poor dog. She doesn't mind being crap.

I'm actually quite emotional abouty leaving today - more emotional than I thought I'd be. As my ITM says, onwards and upwards.

I also got an email from somebody who thought that the following may well help my ageing friend to understand my context when I use particular language:

If you're at work, please turn the volume down.

Nature hates a vacuum.

Chequered Flag

Today is my last day at work.

I've had a great time here, a lot of shit as well, but I had the privilege of going through that shit with some of the finest people I have ever met.

Part of me is sad, part of me is relieved. I'm sure you know the feeling. It's the end of an era, the end of another chapter in the Big Book of Life.

I've already started noticing that I have more room in my head to think about Morocco, and I'm starting to get quite excited about it.

It being Hallowe'en today, I took a sheet from the linen cupboard and put it over my head. I then went downstairs and did the whole "whoooo!" thing - ghost style whilst The Missus and Wee Yin was eating breakfast. The Wee Yin was tickled, The Missus somewhat less so. I got a bunch of earache about making sure that that was folded away properly. I bet Casper never had that kind of trouble.

She has a point - she has been very busy indeed preparing everything for all this Morocco business. It was still amusing though.

Anyway, off for the last leg. What happens from here is in the lap of the Gods. I do know one thing though - Nature hates a vaccuum. She will fill this empty space, she's been doing just that for millions of years.

I Is Alive, Innit?

George Orwell wrote books. 1984, Animal Farm. You've heard of these.

What you may, or may not, have known is that George Orwell was first and formemost a journalist. He wrote over a hundred essays on various things. He was a fantastic wordsmith, and knew how to craft memorable sentences and phrases. If I had only one percent of his talent, I'd have made a living as a writer instead of as an IT geek.

George Orwell was also a Policeman. Not just any Policeman, he was a Colonial Policeman in Burma back in the days of the British Empire. It was his job to beat the natives with sticks if they got out of line, and fabricate evidence against them to make sure that the British natives were always the winners in legal disputes against them.

This experience helped shaped the young Orwell. He learned to be cynical, and to distrust the purity of motives of those in authority.

Being cynical, and a master with words, he realised that you can own peoples thoughts simply by owning their language. For instance - hieroglyphics. The Egyptians used them, all over the place. Everybody in Egypt knew how to read and write them - Egypt was the most literate nation in the ancient world. Yet today, we need bearded boffins to decipher them. Why is that?

One reason is the Romans. They systematically destroyed knowledge of how to read and write hieroglyphs, and made sure that everybody spoke Latin and Greek instead. Within a few generations, nobody could read what the hieroglyphs said. Same thing happened in Scotland with Gaelic. Own the language, then you own the thoughts. Orwell knew this - this is why he banged on about "Newspeak" so much in 1984.

Here's a modern-day example. Four soliders were killed in Iraq due to "friendly fire". Aw, that's not so bad - the fire was friendly. The real message is that four people died when somebody fired a missile right at them and scored a direct hit - they were blown to bits. But, somehow, "friendly fire" conjures up a different picture in your head. Own the language, own the thoughts.

So when I started working at the global Bank I currently work for (1 more day), I started owning the language. This was not an Orwellian thing, it is a necessary part of making sure that the things needing done got done. By making sure that there was a common language for what we were doing, everybody was on the same page.

So, as well as introducing new words into common currency - which people now use every day (such as "upstream" and "downstream") I figured that it would be an amusing aside to have everybody speak Gangsta.

By "Gangsta", I am thinking of Ali-G and his ilk. By appending the word "innit" to every sentence, and saying things like "I is" instead of "I am". Stuff like that. You have to keep yourself amused somehow.

My biggest achievement in this was when one of the Directors of the Bank asked me what I thought needed to be done to fix a particular problem. I replied that "we needs to lock everybody in a room till its fixed innit?". His frank, and amusing, response was - "then we is f**ked, innit?". This is the Director of a Bank - he makes decisions on your application to extend your overdraft. But at least he had a sense of humour. That said, he'd need a sense of humour with the size of my overdraft.

For some bizarre reason, I was thinking about plastic surgery today and how it works in the long term. Suppose I was really ugly (and maybe I am). Suppose that I decided to have plastic surgery to make me look like Brad Pitt. So now I look like Brad Pitt but, genetically, I am ugly.

Supose that The Missus is ugly (she's not). Suppose that she decided to have plastic surgery to look like, em, to look as beautiful as she does now (close call, well recovered). And a boob-job. Anyway, genetically, she'd still be ugly.

So our children, like the Wee Yin, would be genetically ugly twice - despite having plastic parents who look like Ken and Barbie. They would need plastic surgery just to look average. Some more plastic surgery to look beautiful, but genetically they're still ugly, and so on.

In a few generations, you'd have kids being born who grew up to look like Shrek.

Apparently, eskimos have 24 different words for snow. There is fluffy snow, wet snow, powder snow, snow that the huskies have pissed on, snow you used to get as a kid that is so much better than modern snow - you get the idea.

My ageing friend has cottoned on to the fact that I use the word "f**koff" the way that eskimos use the word for snow - The Missus cottoned on to this years ago. There is "f*koff" in the context of "go away for ever", there is "f**koff" in the context of "I am not yet convinced", "f**koff" in the context of "I don't like that guy" and stuff like that.

Amongst of all of this multi-context Tourettes, he is trying to put together a project plan and a proposal. He is better at this than he is at brake calipers, but let's hope that it achieves its intended purpose - to have Mr Happy become Mr Sad and Defeated - and he doesn't over-torque this one. I will keep you posted, but am expressly forbidden from revealing details right now. He is begging me to forget the brake caliper thing, almost on a daily basis, but when you got the ammunition you keep firing ...

My ITM got a DNF in his first enduro. No shame really, it was the toughtes enduro on the Irish calendar and he got DNF because of time. Only 3 people in his class finished. Only 3. Most of them gave up - he did not - and the rest were out of time. Well done ITM - well done for having the balls to take it on. Roll on Morocco.

I am s-o-o looking forward to Morocco. I am so looking forward to getting on the bike and just, well, giving it some. No 2-strokes. No Mr Happy. No Gangsta directors of global Banks. Just me, a KTM 525, and loads and loads of sand. And The Missus. She is the only Missus who is going - I remember telling Patsy Quick that I really really wanted to go, and that if the Missus got left behind then I would end up singing soprano. God Bless Patsy, who understood this and arranged a special place (for a special Missus) in the 4x4.

Have a look at this, I found it on YouTube. It's really reallt cheesey, but it joins together two things I really like - Star Wars and Meat Loaf. Not the most obvious combination, granted, but I'll say in blogs futuro how Meatloaf became a large part of the soundtrack for me growing up away from home.



As for the Darth Vader thing, I know how Darth Vader became Darth Vader. I made a similar journey myself. Imagine this. Supremely powerful, superbly intelligent, abilities which people around you wish they themselves could have. Sounds good huh?

Now do it all behind a mask. All that power. All that potential. And this dirty great mask you have to wear, because revealing yourself to the outside world means certain death.

Why certain death you ask? Let me explain.

Imagine, for a second, having a conversation with the Director of a Global Bank. What he sees as amusing, talking in Gangsta, takes on a completely different shape if he realises he's talking with somebody who's spent time in a mental hospital. That judgement - that famed judgement of mine he has come to rely on - is now flawed. That uncanny ability I have to spot the flaws and shortcomings in large computer systems (my ageing friend calls it spooky) - has now become the ramblings of a madman.

The problem of mental illness is shared by 100% of the population. 25% have the illness. The other 75% have the problem of their attitude to those who are. That said, I know when it is in my interests to just put the mask on and keep the light saber sheathed.

We fly out on Friday. Family has moved heaven and earth to make sure that the Wee Yin is looked after in order for us to go to Morocco. How lucky am I, to have a family like that?

Everything is packed. I know everything is packed because The Missus is not allowing me to wear any off-road bike gear because it's all packed. Which means no Byways. The Missus is firm on this point. In the same way as my ageing friend is learning to interpret the many possible meanings of "f**koff", I know the difference between a "No-means-no-youre-not-getting-your-bike-gear" and a "no-you-havent-asked-me-enough-times yet" maybe.

And that language is universal - whether in Latin, hieroglyphs or Mongolian. When The Missus says "no" and means it. All of you gentlemen out there will know what I mean.

I wonder how many words there are in Arabic for sand? More importantly, when I tell my ageing friend that "sand can just f**koff", will he know exactly which "f**koff" I am talking about?

Which reminds me of a story I heard about a guy who parked his car on a double yellow line. A traffic warden comes right up and tell him he can't park there.

"Why not?" asks the guy.

"Because you can only park there if you are disabled" replies the rather smug traffic warden.

"Oh," says the guy, "but I am disabled"

The traffic warden looks him up and down, there is nothing visibly wrong with the guy.

"How are you disabled then?" he asks.

The guy considers this for a second and sighs.

"I have Tourettes. Now FUCK OFF!"

Apologies for the language.

Light Brigade

I got a parcel from the Witley Motorcycle Club, which I joined recently. Remember the long-distance trial on 7 October that I failed to enter in time?

Anyway, the parcel contained a branded diary - one of those pocket jobs with the logo on the front. Flicking through it, they've put stickers on the important dates in it (like the Boxing Day enduro). Each day also has a "on this day in History" part, which is quite interesting.

I noticed the entry for 25th October - only a few days ago. On this day in 1854 was the Charge of the Light Brigade. Tennyson (who was bipolar) wrote about it in a poem, and really went to town on how brave these guys were and how they were riding to certain death. Which they were, and they were respectively.

What Tennyson didn't mention in his poem was how on earth they came to be having to do that suicide mission in the first place.

The cavalry in the Crimean War were commanded by the Earl of Lucan. Cavalry in those days were split into brigades - the heavy brigade (fully armoured) and the light brigade (less armoured).

So the Earl of Lucan's brother-in-Law - the Earl of Cardigan - commanded the Light Brigade. This situation would probably have been not so bad except for the fact that the two of them despised eachother. Already you've got a bit of a problem here - these guys are nominally on the same side, but their own personal pissing contests cold get in the way.

The British were at the head of a valley in a place called Balaklava. The valley went on for over a mile, and there were russian forts and guns all over the place. Right up at the end of the valley, there was several thousand Russian soldiers who were being supported by nearly 100 artillery pieces.

Lord Raglan, overall commander of the British forces, saw that the artillery placed on the hills at the side of the valley were causing him a bit of a problem since they were rather inconveniently dropping shells and stuff. He saw the Russians attempting to move the guns further into the valley, so they they would be in a position to drop even more shells on the British. He obviously wanted this not to happen. He gave the following order to one Captain Nolan:

"Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, follow the enemy, and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Horse artillery may accompany. French cavalry is on your left. Immediate."

From where the cavalry were sat, much lower down than Lord Raglan, they couldn't see the guns on the sides of the valley. The only guns they knew about were about a mile away, being defended by 10,000 or so Russians.

Not being sure what he was being told to do, he asked the fairly obvious question:

"Attack, sir! Attack what? What guns, sir? Where and what to do?"

Lucan was obviously one of those people who need to understand what it is they are beign asked to do, and why, so that they can make sure it gets done and gets done properly.

Captain Nolan, infuriated by the man's evident failure to understand the simplest of instructions and his insistence on challenging Nolan's ego in this way simply waved his arm in the general direction of the valley and said:

"There is your enemy! There are your guns!"

So that would be pissing contest number 1 being the start of a problem then.

Lucan could have, if he chose, rode to Lord Raglan and asked for clarification of the order. If he himself had been leading the Light Brigade then he might well have done this. His contempt for his brother-in-Law though, prevented him doing this. He simply passed on the order, along with the 'clarification' given by Captain Nolan.

And that would be pissing content number 2.

The Light Brigade then set off down the valley, straight towards the assembled Russian infantry and artillery. From his vantage point high up in the valley, Lord Raglan saw that they were heading in the wrong direction - away from the guns he wanted recaptured and straight into what was an assured bloodbath. They trotted merrilly down the valley. The Russian guns were silent - no point opening fire until they were in range.

Captain Nolan, to be fair, realised the mistake and rode to the head of the line to tell Cardigan that he was going the wrong way. Exactly as he was shouting at them to tell them this, the Russians opened fire.

The Light Brigade opened into a gallop, raised their swords, and charged straight ahead. Cannons, rifles and shells were firing on them from three sides and they kept on charging. They broke through the Russian infantry and then stopped. A quick u-turn, and let's do the whole thing in reverse.

Out of the 677 cavalrymen who set off into the valley, only 195 made it back with horses. The rest of them were killed, wounded or captured.

Despite being a tale of heroics, the Light Brigade is more of a tale about how egotism and pissing contests can cause untold damage. If Captain Nolan had been concerned about the Right Thing being done - instead of simply that people don;t question his orders - then it might have been different.

If Lucan had bothered to check the order, instead of just letting it go because it was only his brother-in-Law, then it might have been different.

It was ever thus. Clever and Important people make decisions. Implementing those decision without question becomes more important than whether or not those decisions are the right ones. The reason for the decision gets lost amongst the need for it to be implemented.

Thing is, here's the bit I can't quite figure out yet. Nobody wants to look stupid, of course they don't. Is it stupid to stop and ask yourself "why am I doing this?", or even to ask somebody to explain something to you because you don't know. Is it stupid to continue to do something that you know is wrong, simply because you can say "it wasn't my idea - I am just doing what I was told?". Is it stupid to re-evaluate what's going on and - potentially - change a decision you've made because you can see that it's not working out as you hoped?

I've been scouring my maps looking for the green crosses - Byways. I have a rough idea where they are, but you need to keep your eyes peeled for them since a lot of them look like laybys or small footpaths.

Riding up to work this morning, I went looking for one that runs parallel to my ride to work but does it over fields. Found it. Had a wee look up it, seemed to be relatively OK - fairly flat and not too rutty. "There is your enemy. There is your Byway".

I got about a mile up it, and things started to change. Foot-deep ruts started to form. The thorny bushes on either side of the byway started to thicken. The right-hand rut, where I was firmly planted, was going straight into the thorns and was getting deeper and slippier.

I had to have respect for the fact that I didn't know where this byway led. I also had to have respect for the fact that I had 200kg of (probably) unliftable bike to worry about. I then had to have respect for the fact that I really should have been on my way to work. That little lot had to have respect for the fact that I made the decision to go up this byway.

It was the thorns what won it though. The rut I was in basically rode right through the bush and there was no way I could change ruts. I hopped off the bike, dragged the front wheel out of the rut and roosted the back one to turn the bike round, before setting off back the way I came. I'll come back on the AJP - that byway is claimed.

I did the usual detour on Salisbury Plain and saw the weirdest thing. A lady walking her dog - a Jack Russell - on one of these really long extending leads things. The dog was about 20 metres in front of her, running away merrily and straining at the lead, as dogs do. She was following behind, em, in the car.

No shit. She was driving the car, one hand out of the window holding on to the dog's lead as it ran up the road. I wondered how you train a dog to do that, it's a neat trick.

This is my second-last day at work today. I am off tomorrow, and my last day is Wednesday. I hate this feeling. You feel really useless, since nobody is giving you any work to do (you're leaving remember?) and you sort of also feel that you don't want to go anywhere - these people are your friends who you've shared a lot with.

And you're afraid of what lies ahead. I don't (yet) have somewhere else concrete to go, but have many irons in the fire. It was a worry I was hoping to have sorted out by Morocco, but I guess I just need to deal with it.

I have put in so much effort trying to make sure that the right things were being done, in the right way. I have put in so much effort to make sure that my guys were treated fairly. I lost a lot of friends in the process and shot a lot of my credibility (I am no longer impartial - everything I say is tinged with the Me v Mr Happy Pissing Contest).

If only I had realised that, ultimately, this was not about doing the right thing. If only I could have realised that it was about making sure that decisions were implemented without question - even if they were wrong. That it was about protecting peoples egos. Then, perhaps, I would be in a different position.

But what kind of person would I be? I have done what I think is right, I have been congruant with what I believe. I believe that people should be treated fairly, with respect, and not like coca-cola machines.

Many many years from now, I will have forgotten the details. I will have forgotten the turmoil I feel right now. All I will remember is whether or not I did what I believed to be the Right Thing, and whether or not I can look people in the eye.

That, ultimately, is what matters.

Normal Service

Due to feeling-like-shit technical difficulties beyond our control, please accept our apologies for this interruption in transmission.



Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

We apologise for the inconvenience.

Do Not Adjust Your Set

Been a fun old weekend.

First, I had to work - this is never pleasant. Getting paid is pleasant, and I like getting paid, but the working part is a bit rubbish. It's even worse when you are working on something that you know from the outset is going to fail, and that the task has been given to you so that you are the one responsible when it does fail. Corporate bollocks. There are people who make a career out of it.

My manager, a young guy by the name of Kevin, popped into work on Saturday. He was in town with his girlfriend and popped in (a) to thank me profusely for saving his arse (he is up against the same corporate bollocks) and - more importantly - because he thought I'd appreciate a nice Starbucks and a couple of muffins. He delivered these whilst his girlfriend was waiting on a double-yellow line outside. Obviously she was in a car, otherwise the yellow line wouldn't have been a problem.

So I salvaged some dignity out of having to ride up to work on Saturday and Sunday. First of all, I appeared for work an hour late (and all muddy) because I took a detour on Salisbury Plain. On Rosie.

Now we know from experience that we do not take our several-thousand-groat bike that we need to get us to work on Salisbury Plain. We know that we especially do not do this whe we have a top box on the back, whist wearing a rucksack containing an expensive laptop. Yes, we know. We know that it is a Bad Idea to fill your bike up with fuel, making it all heavy, and then take it off-road. We know that we can't even pick it up when we drop it on the driveway, as we just did the day before. Yes, we know.

Like that was going to stop me. I go to Morocco in less than a week and I have nowhere near enough bike time. I knew that The Missus would give me an earful about it, bt I figured that if I didn't drop the bike then she'd never know about it. So off we went, up the tank tracks.

Rosie is a fairly fast bike - lots of torque. I got over 80 mph on some of those tracks - especially the gravel ones - and I was on road tyres. The sides of the gravel tracks are steep - it gives good drainage - and this means that if you hit the road from the side then you have a tabletop, or a jump. For such a heavy bike, Rosie is actually very good at jumping. A BMW kangaroo if you will.

On nearing Swindon, I saw the most beautiful thing. I screeched the bike to a halt and just admired it. It was a track, sort of a road, leading off up the hill. There was a blue sign - and this was the thing of beauty - that said "Not suitable for motor vehicles". Off I went up the hill.

After a few hundred yards, I got the meaning of the sign. It was chalky ruts - all wet and slippery - and made worse by the road tyres. I got to the top of the hill and realised that I had been at this place before - it was The Ridgeway - where I had my first off-road spill on Rosie. I pressed on.

The tyres gave me no grip on the mud, and the bike was all over the place. Either Fate was giving me a break, or Physics was having a nap, or I was better on a bike than I used to be. Whichever it was, doesn't really matter - the bike stayed on her wheels even though she slipped all over the place.

On the way home, it was dark. Sensible people would have went straight home. I never did well in the sensible exams at school, and went for a bit of night time enduro on Salisbury Plain. Good training for Dakar I thought. Now that was exciting. Need to get much much better lights on my Dakar bike - I am thinking football stadium type lights would be sort of about right.

Up again on Sunday, did pretty much the same thing. Except this time it was pissing with rain. Were there was no grip yesterday, there was even less today. Salisbury Plain was sort of OK - a bit slippery - but that hill was a joke, and it wasn't even a funny one. I turned round halfway up - there was no way I was getting up it. On the way back down, I bumped into three guys on their way up, all riding KTMs. We stopped and chatted for a few minutes. They were well impressed that I had the balls to try and get a bike like Rosie up the hill, and ultra-impressed that I was on my way to work but wasn't in a hurry to get there.

I arrived at work today completely covered in mud and bits of Salisbury Plain. My bike used to be blue. And I was completely soaked.

In protest, I kept my muddy boots and leathers on. Nobody told me there was a dress code on a Sunday.

Came home and jumped right in the bath. The Wee Yin jumped in with me, after begging to do so. We played in the bath, and had a lot of fun spraying a can of deodarant underwater - even pretending to a very unimpressed Missus that we were doing underwater farts.

My ageing friend came over. He didn't jump in the bath though, we were out of it by then. After busting his nuts about tightening bolts on brake calipers for a while, and him busting mine on using the word "criteria" when I should have used "requirements" we got down to what we should have been doing with this proposal that needs to be in for a bit of bizz-ness.

I looked at my maps again last night, and discovered that there are a lot of byways fairly close to me - about 15 minutes ride away. An awful lot of them. I thought they were further than that. I would have went today, but The Missus has forbidden me from wearing any gear that I am taking to Morrocco - which is pretty much all of my offroad gear. Those byways have been there for hundreds of years - they'll keep for another week or so.

I also printed out the Dakar regulations - all 65 pages of them. The front page tells me that they should be "read, re-read and mastered". there is also a lot of stuff about entry criteria in there.

Only 250 bikes are allowed to enter, and entries are "based on merit" but they don't ay what "merit" means.

My big worries right now are that I will fail the medical (being bipolar) or that I have not won enough races. Maybe I am worrying about nothing, maybe I should be worred about it and get off my arse and start winning races.

Which may well be possible on the 89kg AJP PR3. Plus, I discovered a whole new training ground only 15-20 minutes away. That, right there, is a Sign. So I am not yet good enough on a bike. This means training, and lots of it. It may well be time to go up a gear.

My ITM had his first enduro today. I've yet to learn how he got on, but something tells me he did OK - he's made of some fairly stern stuff.

Sorry if I'm a bit terse today, I'm just in one of those moods. I'm somewhere between being utterly pissed off and completely knackered. I really am looking forward to Morocco, but there's been so much going on that I haven't really had a chance to think about it properly.

Hopefull I'll have more interesting stuff to say tomorrow. For today though, please just bear with me. Do not adjust your set.

Versailles

At 11am on 11 November 1918, the guns fell silent in Europe. The Great War had come to an end. Since there was no other world war yet, it was still called the Great War - it was only after the 1939-194 war that it became known as the First World War.

Anyway, after the war came the peace conference. The victors - Great Britain, France and the USA sat down with the vanquished - Germany and Austria - and basically rinsed them for every penny they could get. The reparations they asked for - billions and billions of pounds - could never be afforded. The economic hardship that they caused were one of the main reasons why Hitler was able to come to power. Ironically, the big conference that was supposed to be about "Peace" actually sowed the seeds for the next world war, which kicked off about 30 years later.

One of the other terms of the peace deal was that Germany was not allowed to re-arm. This meant that all of the companies who supplied bullets, shells, tanks and stuff like that had to diversify and find other things to manufacture.

There was one fairly sizeable company, only two years old at the time of the peace conference, who produced fantastic engines for aeroplanes. 226 horse power, 19-litre engines. Solid and reliable - just what you need in aircraft, especially when they're being shot at. The peace treaty restricted them to producing 6.5 horse power engines only - nowhere near powerful enough to get a plane in the air.

So the Company wondered what on earth it could do with itself. Who on earth would want a 6.5 horse power engine?

The General Manager, a guy called Franz Josef Popp, knew exactly what to do with a 6.5 horse power engine. He did what any self-respecting engineer would do - he stuck it in a frame and added a couple of wheels. The first BMW motorbike, called the R32, was born.

It's funny how one thing leads on to another. The peace treaty of Versailles in 1919 arguably caused the Second World War. Without the peace treaty, there would have been no BMW motorbikes or cars - they'd have been making aeroplane engines.

So this got me to thinking. The leading engine in aircraft in the world today is Rolls Royce. Like BMW, they also make cars of great quality. I wonder what a Rolls Royce bike would be like. Imagine a gold-plated, diamond-encrusted, oak-panelled Rolls Royce enduro bike with full leather trim being chucked round a field on a Sunday. Now that would be fun.

A guy called Ted McIntyre did exactly this. An Allison Rolls Royce gas turbine inside a motorcycle frame. You can read it here. This thing idles at 20,000 rpm and travels at more than 300mph. Now that is fast - the take-off speed for a fully-loaded Boeing 747 jumbo jet is 200mph. If it had wings, it would fly.

Been learning a lot about engines today, and what size the holes would need to be in order to bore out the AJP PR3 to be 270cc. Or is the XR400 a better bet? Chris Evans (representative of ASO in the UK) goes on and on about the bike you need to build to do Dakar. With each passing day, I am starting to appreciate what this means.

My ageing friend was over tonight, going over bizz-ness stuff and proposals and all sorts of bits and pieces like that. Normally meek and mild, he got all huffy and puffy and blow-your-house-down when I suggested that he may actually not know how a 2-stroke engine works. The boy doth protest too much - his previous convictions for brake caliper bolts stand as everlasting testimony to his mechanical abilities. That one is going to run and run - it's not often that I get the chance to kick his nuts and, boy, am I making sure I get my money's worth.

Syringe Engineering

I got a great email from Martin which was a copy of a thread in the AJP newsgroups (a thread is a conversation - where people have sent messages, replies to the messages, replies to the replies etc).

There was debate about how you could take the new AJP PR3 and make it much, much faster. Apparently, some guy was claiming (and the guy seemed to have an awful lot of knowledge about AJP engineering) it is possible to increase the capacity by 35% - from 200cc to 270cc.

This wouldn't automatically translate into a 35% increase in power, but would definitely make a huge difference. The top speed of the bike would go up into the 80mph+ mark, and the torque (the amount of power you have at very low speeds for getting up hills and/or out of sand) would also go up.

You do this by boring out the cylinder. Since I know that some of you aren't really into the detailed engine stuff, I'll avoiding engine geekery. But you need to think about how an engine works, so let me use a really simple analogy.

Imagine a syringe with a plunger in it (no needle). You have the syringe itself, the round barrel part, and you have the plunger (the part that moves). The syringe has got numbers on it telling you how much of a particular thing you have in it. The maximum amount of stuff you can fit in the syringe, when the plunger is all the way back, is its maximum capacity - measured in CC.

Imagine you stick the end of your syringe in some petrol, and you start pulling the plunger back - the syringe starts to fill with petrol. Then you remove the syringe from the petrol and pull the plunger back some more. The syringe will now contain both petrol and air. Give a little shake to mix them up a bit, put your finger over the end of the syringe and push the plunger in. You'll feel pressure on your finger as the stuff in the syringe gets all compressed. Just when you can't compress it any more and your finger is about to fall off, you create a little spark inside the syringe - this causes a mini explosion because of the petrol and the air that is in there.

This explosion makes the plunger shoot all the way back and go POP! out of the end of the syringe. It was such great fun that you do it again. And again. This is exactly what an engine does: suck --> squeeze --> bang --> blow.

The bit moving up and down (with the pointy bit at the top) is the piston. The bit where the colours change from orange through blue is the chamber. Each step is numbered:

1. Suck: Suck fuel and air into the chamber
   
   
2. Squeeze: Compress this little lot to make it explode better
   
   
3. Bang: Spark plug sparks, creating an explosion - the piston gets pushed all the way down because of the explosion, and this is what turns the engine
   
   
4. Blow: Get rid of all the smoke and nasty bits left after the xplosion. This comes out of the exhaust

So you can see, it's just like a big syringe.

When the plunger is all the way back in the syringe, and you've got it as full of petrol and air as you possibly can without the plunger falling out the end, that is the maximum amount of stuff that the syringe can hold. It is measured in cubic centimetres (cc). If you need more cc, then you need a bigger syringe.

Sticking with this for a second, the syringe is like the cylinder in the engine (basically just a round pipe). The plunger in the syringe is the piston (the bit that moves). The seal between the cylinder and the piston is airtight, just like the syringe. At the top of the pipe, where the needle would be on the syringe, is the spark plug. Just like the syringe - the total amount of air that the cylinder can hold when the piston is all the way out is the capacity of the engine. Just like the syringe, it's measured in cc.

When the piston goes all the way back, fuel and air is sucked in. The piston comes up to squeee this little lot. The spark plug creates a spark, which causes the bang and the piston shoots all the way back (which is ultimately what turns the engine). The smoke from the xplosion is blown out of the exhaust. Lots of times a second.

So, a 200cc engine basically means that the amount of fuel and air you can fit inside the cylinder when the piston is all the way out is 200cc. A 200cc engine is really just a big syringe without a needle.

The more fuel and air you can fit in the engine (i.e. the more cc), the bigger the explosion and the more power you get.

You get a huge drill, and you drill the cylinder out so that it is a much much bigger hole. Then you get a much much bigger piston (because it needs to be airtigh for it to work). The size of the hole you can drill really depends on the size of the engine itself - you have to leave enough of the engine to make sure that the sides of the cylinder are thick enough to handle the explosions.

So, by increasing the size of the cylinder and piston, you are dong exactly the same thing as getting a bigger syringe - all you're doing is creating a much bigger chamber in which to explode fuel (more fuel means bigger explosion means more power).

Martin, who has been dismantling engines since he was still wearing shorts to school, thinks that 270cc may well be possible but he's got some doubts about whether the cylinder head (top part of the engine) is big enough to allow the hole to be this big. If anybody can do it, Martin can.

The best thing about doing it this way is that you keep the original engine. This means that the frame of the bike (and suspension and stuff) isn't having to cope with carrying a shape and size of engine that it wasn't designed for.

AJP have spent an awful lot of time, money and skill engineering the PR3 and some very clever engineers have done some very hard sums to make sure that all of the bits can cope with all of the stress and strain of carrying all of the other bits. Not replacing their well-engineered bits
with other bits makes sure that you are staying within the tolerance levels of their sums.

Simply put, this gives much less chance of breaking the bike (apart from falling off, which I do rather a lot of). Which means more chance of making it to Dakar.

It also keeps the weight at that simply elegant 89kg. Lighter bike. Better fuel consumption. We've done this already.

It's also going to be much more fun to bore out the 200cc engine into something much faster than it will be to just replace it with a bigger one.

The AJP PR3 is going to be available in December. I have been a very good boy and have already written a letter to Santa saying so.

Letters After The Name

I got a lift up to Bahnstormer yesterday from my ageing friend to go and pick up Rosie. We arrived just before closing time, and all of the bikes had been brought inside. Some lovely bikes too. There were little tickets on them and it looked like the tickets had the phone numbers of the person to call about the bike. Closer inspection revealed that it was the price tag.

Still, I saved a packet of money - I didn't buy an X-challenge, despite the best efforts (delivered with great humour) of Alistair. We did speak about the new 450 enduro - to be launched in Many - and the specs are still very hush hush.

I am told that it is around the 125 kilo mark - no contest with the 89 kilo AJP PR3. That 35 kilo difference is a tank full of fuel, all the Dakar electrics you need, and an a fairly big proportion of the rider.

Cleverly, BMW have built a power limiter into the 450 enduro, which keeps the power output to about 50 brake horsepower. If you want more (up to 80 horsepower I believe) then you need to simply cut a single wire and off you go.

The type of people who'd want to do this are people who race the bikes. Bikes that are raced take a lot of punishment. BMW bikes come with a warranty, and raced bikes would cost BMW a lot of money in warranty repairs.

So what they do is invalidate the warranty if you cut this little wire. Since it is pretty much guaranteed that anybody racing a bike wold cut the wire, they save a lot of money on warranty repairs. Very clever. Nothing happens for nothing.

So out came Rosie, all sparkling and clean and fixed. I was so pleased to get her back, that I pulled a wheelie in the forecourt riding straight towards my ageing friend (who then aged a little more due to 200kg of BMW bearing down on him front wheel in the air). OK, so he's got a very shiny fast car, but let's see it do that ...

When I got home after going on a fish and chips procurement mission, I had to push Rosie around my ageing friends shiny fast car in order to get her all parked up for the night. Pushing Rosie round my the car , I put her on the side stand and it wasn't down completely. Timber. She must be sick of lying down by now.

In true hubris fashion, I said to my ageing friend "and this is how you pick up 200kg of BMW" before proceeding to, em, completely fail to pick up 200kg of BMW. In the end, I needed a bit of help to do it. That's a little message from the universe about why a 89kg AJP is a Good Thing.

My ageing friend has more bizz-ness discussions today, but with somebody completely different. I was down at the university earlier in the week, meeting with a bunch of people who have a neat idea that they are trying to patent and to make a lot of money from. One of them was a professor (the idea is his) and the other two were bizz-ness people. They need somebody to write some software and, in true Yosser Hughes style, I said "I can do that".

So it's probably not a recommended job interview technique to be picking arguments with a Professor of Computer Science about how computers work. It's probably even less recommended to do this when he is wrong and you are right. Sat there with the head of Computer Science - this guy has had more stuff published than Einstein - and we're hotly debating whether such-and-such a thing is actually part of such-and-such a standard.

Remember Asterix? All of the characters in Asterix had names that ended in '-ix'. There was VitalStatistix - the chief - and Obelix (the one who carried boulders on his back). So I was thinking that if this guy was an Asertix character then he'd be called 'Academix'. A real professorial type, with a real strokey-chin type of pondering air.

Now over to my ageing friend to work out the commercials, if indeed there are commercials to be worked out. It would be nice. 3 months of well-paid work, mostly from home, but when I have to go into the office then it's only about 2 miles away from where I work.

Maybe whilst I'm there, I'll ask what's the chances of them giving me a University degree since I don't have one and it would be nice to have letters after my name.

Speaking of which, I remember reading once about a guy who couldn't afford a private number plate for his car. His name was "Mark Smith" (if I remember rightly) and he wanted the number plate "M4 RKS". In the end, he paid 50 quid to change his name by deed poll to "W322 MXY" (or whatever it was).

I sent a mail to the Anti Monkey Butt people, asking if they'd like to sponsor us by giving us some stuff for free, but still no response yet. I'll try again - it would be nice to have a picture of a monkey with a red arse on the bikes. Some bikes will be sponsored by Oil companies (Repsol, Total), a couple by fag companies (Gauloises), and then there will be our lot - monkeys with red arses.

My ITM went to Holyhead yesterday to pick up his bike, which has been in the process of being delivered for two months now. Hopefully it all went well and nobody had to get too cross about it. He has an 8-hour enduro on Saturday - his first - and will be riding alongside Philip Noone (akar 2008 entrant) who is also going to Morocco.

I got a lovely email from my ITMM (Irish Team Mate's Missus) yesterday too. She wont be going to Morocco - a conspiracy of not liking flying and Wee Yins to look after.

One week to go, and I have a whole bunch of Shippee going on about Morocco. We're all stocked up on Vaseline and the like and, as ever, I'll keep you posted.

Thanks for tuning in, and sticking with the rambling and randomness. Welcome to my world.

Make It Stop

Today is my wedding anniversary, in case you didn't realise from my previous blog.

On our wedding night, I recall saying to The Missus - "I wish we could bottle this". I knew what I meant, I knew how up-and-down I could be.

Today has been one of those brilliant sought-after days. I was bulletproof. I was unstoppable. I was quick-as-a-flash witty. I was everything that I was not two weeks ago - everything that I will not be a month from now.

Something on the TV? Bang bang bang - it fires off a million thoughts. Something I see whilst driving the car? Bang bang bang - fires off a million thoughts. There is no escape from this. On days like this, I see the world much more clearly than everybody else does. You get the picture.

The human brain works using things called synapses. Little switches that are triggered by electrical impulses, a lot like the indicators in your car. When you think of something the synapse responsible for it kind of lights up. By doing so, it kind of shines on the synapses next to it - warming them up if you like. This allows you to connect your thoughts.

This is why you can think of sequences of things like "Football" --> "David Beckham" --> "Manchester United" --> ""Alex Ferguson" --> "Scottish" --> "Kilt" --> "Skirt" -> "Short" --> "Legs" --> "female" --> "Long legs" --> "Yummy". And all of that happens in less than a millisecond. This is how memory and recall works.

So, on days like this, it's like every little synapse in my brain is already warmed up and glowing. It only takes the tiniest of things to have them all bursting into life like the lights on the Las Vegas strip. I am as powerless todo anything about it as I am powerless to stop myself blinking. I need to roll with it, go where it takes me.

Moe importantly, I need to use the energy it gives me to deal with the fallout of my shitty mood of two weeks ago. Welcome to my world.

Today, nothing is impossible. Nothing is too difficult. Everything is clear. Next week, it will be different.

As I said to The Missus on our wedding night, I wish I could bottle this. Then I could choose to let it out as and when I chose.

But these days, in this zone, is where I connect with genius. It makes it all worth it. It is the reason, and the price I pay, for being so smart.

Airy Fairy

Spoke to Bahnstormer today about Rosie.

Turns out the problem was the air filter. Somehow, it had dislodged itself and gotten sucked into the air intake of the carburettor. When I grabbed a handful of throttle, it got sucked in even harder and completely choked off the airflow, causing the engine to cut out.

When the engine cut out, the air filter got puked back out again and the engine bump started itself because the back wheel was spinning. Rinse and repeat.

Makes a lot of sense, and it is something I could have found and fixed on my own. Thing is though, I didn't know if would be a warranty repair or not - and there is no way I could have ridden in in that state.

All things considered, it was the best option to take. As it turned out, Bahnstormer replaced the air filter (at no charge) and just charged me for the labour of getting the job done. Since they done the work and not me, the bike is still under warranty (which wouldn't have been the case if I had taken a screwdriver to it).

Rosie is a BMW 650 GS Dakar. This model was produced by BMW to reflect the work done by the hardy BMW privateers, who modified the standard 650GS to make it Dakar-ready. BMW replicated the modifications these guys pioneered and made, and they produced the 650 GS Dakar.

I've been drawing pictures and sketches and stuff of the AJP PR3 Dakar (as it will now be known). With Martin's help, I am going to do with the AJP PR3 what people like Nick Plumb did with the 650 GS. I absolutely believe that the AJP could do it as well - they are most hardy bikes. In all of the races (and falls) I've had, I have only had to replace 1 footpeg and a brake caliper (and that was due to my ageing friend not knowing his own strength rather than any weakness of the AJP).

The beautiful irony here is that, being so light, I have a lot of flexibility about the bike I use - in much the same was as Muhammed Ali would never have been a Derby-winning jockey. I have probably a 30kg (or so) weight advantage on most of the Dakar entrants. Used wisely, this could be quite powerful.

And, looking at the map, North Africa is flat. So no silly downhills to worry about then.

Tell you what, the Wee Yin saved my life in a way that only the married amongst us will understand. I have had my head in software for the past few days (doing some good work as well) and generally not being too aware of what is going on around me.

In one of her many interruptions, the Wee Yin came up to me yesterday and announced that she was making me a card. For my anniversary tomorrow. Uh-oh. She said "tomorrow" - I thought it was several days away. Quick shake of the head to get back to reality, a bit of www.interflora.com, a thoughtful message, and testicles remain attached to my body for another year.

It wasn't that I forgot when our anniversary was, I just had no idea what date it was yesterday if that makes sense.

But God Bless the Wee Yin. The worst of Dakar is nothing compared to The Missus with a forgotten anniversary.

Speaking of Wee Yins and Dakar, have a look at this:

Dakar Vehicle

Does this mean that there is now a special infant category for Dakar? Can this thing go over sand dunes?

What Causes Crashes

Driving up to work this morning in my shiny hire car with the removable lid, it was quite cold and foggy. I didn't really miss being freezing on a bikein tis weather, but I did miss the nimbleness of the bike in the traffic.

So you've got somebody on a single-carriageway A-road who decides to drive at 30mph. He's got two articulated lorries (and a bunch of cars) behind him. This means that you'd need to overtake about 6 or 7 vehicles in order to get past him.

Meantime, Mr 30-mph is plodding along reciting to himself "I'm perfectly within my rights ...".

So I'm thinking to myself - "this is what causes crashes".

Except it's not, apparently. Have a look at the following video (it's only 30 seconds long). It's the last lap of a race, and the lead car suddenly spins out of control on the straight. The video then rewinds and - frame by frame - shows you why he crashed.



It was nothing to do with a 30 mph driver - it was far more basic than that.