Cabin Fever

My rally is usually like a cask-strength Macallan - savoured slowly and with a lot of water added. This year it was more like an Ardbeg Supervona - a smack in the throat with a blunt instrument. I mislaid anticipation and forward planning and have had to scrabble for LMs in the margins of everyday life. No week-long trip to Scotland - for the second year running - to ride under the pines, dodge the deer and get nibbled by the midgies. And I was thwarted in several attempts to get to Wales...

Have I become one of those people for whom riding can only happen when the demands of real life have been satisfied? For the rub there is that the demands of real life are infinite and hydra-headed, and if I allow it to take over there will be no time for frivolities like visiting Venta Silurum at dusk.

Still, better a rally of rags and patches than no rally at all. Admiring Panamaniac's photo albums at Conkers, I was amazed to find I've been doing this since 2003. Some people will see 6 years of landmark-bagging as little more than an astonishing waste of time and petrol, but (at the risk of sounding like REO Speedwagon) it's taken me to places that on my own I'd never find. It's made me a better rider - goat tracks and the Road of Baas would not have been attempted if there hadn't been points at the end of them. I've peturbed and baffled the locals. I've been to John O'Groats. I've stood on a plinth. And I've eaten too many of JD's bacon rolls.

This year was good, because there is no such thing as a bad ride. Next year will be better - because what's the future for if not to look forward to?

Sshhh...

My tolerance and patience are legendary, (as the woman I was forced to beat with a rolled up MCN for tutting too disapprovingly on the Northern Line will testify.) When I am King there is going to be one simple rule - if I can hear your music outside your house, it's TOO DAMN LOUD. (Actually, when I am King there are going to be some other rules too, but these are more complicated. The poles in Underground carriages are going to be wired so that if any body parts other than the hand for which it is intended rest upon it, your testicles will fall off. That should stop blokes leaning on them in order to leave both hands free for the newspaper. Also my subjects will be issued with a miracle of technology which, if pointed at someone using their mobile phone while driving, causes their heads to explode. I accept that there will be some initial FlashForward style carnage caused by headless motorists but I believe this would encourage rather more rapid compliance than any number of carefully-worded motorway signs. Also, given some of the standards of driving out there, I'm not sure we'll be able to tell the difference.)

So when Frank Melling was looking for feedback on his plans for the new improved Thundersprint Quiet Zone, somehow I sprang to mind....

Frank has a simple dilemma - how to keep two opposed sets of people happy. Those who think that 6am is best seen after 2am, 3am and 4am, standing by a large bonfire with a beer in one hand and a likely prospect in the other, and those who think that 6am is a bit bloody cruel as a starting time for scrutineering.

Like my credit card and a second-hand bookstore, it is wisest for these groups not to meet in the first place. So the plans for 2010 sound fantastic. The Quiet Campers will be on the football pitch at Witton Albion FC, and anyone going through the gate to set up behind the goal lines will have to acknowledge that they are heading into a curfew zone. The Happy Campers will be the other side of a high wall. Like Escape from New York, but the other way round.

I think it sounds great, but I was sold at the thought of camping on the pitch. PB dents my happiness by reminding me that the football players have to go home first.

New Bike...

Like El Diente, I am getting a new bike tomorrow. But Ruby and the Triumph can rest easy - in fact, hopefully a little more easily than is the case at the moment, as I have been forced into this purchase by the realisation that while weight creeps on quite easily, it doesn't seem willing to creep off again without effort.

So I have ordered an industrially well-sprung Pathfinder from the remarkable and Revolutionary Edinburgh Bicycle Co-Operative. If there was an Edinburgh Motorcycle Co-Operative I'd go and work for it, because this company loves two wheels and wants as many people as possible to see the light. I'm going to share a bit from their Autumn/Winter catalogue and pretend it's my kind of bike they're talking about:-

"Riding a bike is one of the best ways to feel truly alive any day of the week. Reasons to ride are well-rehearsed: fitness, swiftness, ecology, economy...I remember a better one today, which I think was attributed to a Zen monk. "I ride a bike so I can ride a bike." Our message this season is like the aristocracy: double barelled but simple. Keep riding this winter because life's better by bike.

Viva La Revolución!

Random fact of the day

My Triumph and I have covered 27 thousand miles, while Ruby and I have managed a mere 21,000.

Which if added together means I have ridden twice around the world.

It only took me 9 years....

Caught out at sunset