Month: August 2014

Bear!

On By AlexIn Other stuff, PhotographyLeave a comment

Canada Holiday 2014 - Vancouver IslandCanada is full of amazing things. Of which 140,000 of them roam pretty much free range in the vast expanses of forest, coastline and the occasional town. We saw exactly four bears, which as a percentage lacks statistical significance, but from a first person perspective was more than enough. With the semantic emphasis firmly on more.

Not this fella. He’s chowing down on a tidal buffet of crab, fresh water fish and anything else washed up under those rocks. We’re separated by 30 meters of open water, and further buttressed from any potential maul-age by the shotgun toting boat skipper.

And the bear isn’t even mildly interested in us. He’s more ‘Two Crabs please, shell on, hold the salad‘ which dovetails nicely with written advice thrust upon any and every visitor to the national park. Dog eared laminated sheets reassure and frighten in around equal amounts. One of my favourites, handed out by a bored looking receptionist, explained ‘if you spot a bear or a fire, there’s a number you can call’ .

“What‘ I enquired in the spirit of pedantry ‘if there’s is a BEAR and it’s ON FIRE?‘. She laughed briefly before assuring us that hardly anyone had been mauled, disfigured, eviscerated or eaten since she’d started her shift some 3 hours before.

Appropriately reassured we headed out to a stunning sand fronted lake framing a perfect view of the Rockies, and sparsely populated by those irritatingly outdoor types javelin launching kayaks and nonchalantly swallow diving into the paddling seat*

Carol and I sat contentedly on the beach ignoring the kids strident pleadings for us to join them in the chilly water. Instead I struck out for a mooch around the local environs – checking out this one-track town, born and abandoned by the railway. A peramble behind the changing rooms put me in sight of the tree line, into which I peered for items of further interest.

And a bear peered right back. Emerging from the undergrowth with an elegance entirely unbefitting to a 300lb quadruped, he paused briefly to check out my threat status. Clearly unintimidated he padded ever closer while my I remained frozen to the spot wondering what was between me and me being eaten.**

Ohshit ohshit oshit it’s time to remember all that laminated advice… what was the first point.. hang on.. yes that’s it ‘The bear is far more scared of you than you are of it‘. Really? Fucking Really? That bear could audition for the part of the Fonz in Happy Days such is his nonchalance, while I’m clearly shitting myself. That’s not helping at all, what’s next?

‘It’s important to identify the type of bear, black bears can climb trees but brown bears do not. However they are better swimmers. It may be helpful to note that some brown bears look black in sunlight‘. No that’s not bloody helpful either. I’m torn between climbing a tree or throwing myself into the lake. Either of which may well be closely followed by a pawful of sharp claws and a snoutful of hungry teeth. Firstly tho I must squint hard at the oncoming bear to ascertain his exact shade. Looks black to me – possible hint of brown, or is that just what’s in my shorts?

Okay, okay don’t panic what’s next? ‘if the bear continues to approach, DO NOT TURN YOUR BACK ON HIM. Wave your arms and make ‘shooing’ sounds‘ Oh PERLEASE.. Hang on there’s more ‘unless it’s a black bear, then don’t make any sounds as he’s likely to take it as an aggressive response and may attack‘

It’s fair to say at this point I was both terrified and confused. Should I sprint for the nearest tree, or dive headlong into a body of water? Would backing away making coo-ing noises be the best cause of action, or maybe a violent waving of every limb in the manner of a man recently electrocuted? Or possibly hedge my bets and distract him with a one man performance of YMCA?

Ignoring advice has served me well in forty seven years so I reverted to type, gave the big fella a stern ‘don’t fuck with me look‘ before turning my back and covering the two hundred metres back to the beach in a time somewhere just under Lightspeed.

I passed Carol – still accelerating – and launched myself into the cold water like a human jet-ski cutting up recreational swimmers in a frenzy of waterborne terror. All while shouting over my shoulder ‘BEAR, BEAR, FUCKING BEAR’. My anti-being-savaged tactics had nothing to do whatsoever with correct identification of the Genus Ursus, but absolutely everything to a brief audit of the many chubby people who were clearly going to be slower swimmers than me.

Eventually I calmed down sufficiently to scuttle back on dry land where our youngest quizzed me on my useless grasp of bear anatomy. ‘Did it have a hump behind it’s neck? If so it’s a black bear‘ / ‘Is it? I didn’t really get much past it’s MASSIVE JAWS AND TEETH to be frank‘ and ‘Was it standing on it’s back legs‘ / ‘Possibly but by that time I was burning up the sand at 900 miles an hour’

The locals on the beach responded to my somewhat high-pitched warning with a rather insouciant shrug and a quietly muttered ‘bloody tourists‘. We never saw that bear again expect in my dreams where I’d sit bolt upright sweating while screaming ‘BEAR, BEAR, BEAR‘. I expect the memory will fade in a few years.

We loved Canada. It’s a brilliant place to visit. And I could ride Mountain Bikes there every day until I die. It’s huge and mostly unspoilt and full of lovely people. But it’s also full of bears. I’m not sure they mention that on the immigration forms.

* there’s a lot of this in Canada. But also a significant ratio of fat blubbers. This surprised me right up to the point when I ordered a rack of ribs. I believe my plate was a concatenation of around four healthy animals.

** a railway line. I remember thinking ‘maybe it’s like vampires not crossing water and those two half metre bits of metal will save me’. At this point I was already reasonably delusional.

Units of measurement

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsenseLeave a comment

It’s worth prefixing what follows with some context. That being the night after an extremely boozy birthday dinner leaving me with wobbly typing fingers, a head full of faux angst and an entirelysuperfluous glass of wine. Frankly it was days before I even remembered any events between staggering home and passing out. A edit in total sobriety saw the removal of many’fucks’ and words I didn’t even know I knew. Still the dictionary didn’t either. Even afterthat, it’s still marks me as a pretentious, self-absorbed twat of course. But I don’t feel I’m revealing anything new 😉

There’s an eyebrow raising ironyobserving Internet forums where some hapless poster receives advice in the vein of ‘this is probably a good time to have a sit down and considerwhere your life went wrong’*. Which – if you think about it for a minute – sounds like code for being judged by other peoples values. And value is a good word because of its close association with worth which tends to becounted in desperate steps towards anunreachable destination.

I have reached an age where lifehas impartedtwo immutabletruths; firstly everyone – absolutely everybody – is winging it on a daily basis, and your value to the planet is unlikely to be summed by all the stuff you own. Any further understandingof ‘how life works‘ is merely a continuum of ‘buggered if I know‘, butat least there isan emergingclarity about what’s important and how it might be measured. If you care about such stuff, which in my experience almost everybody does when it’s all about them. Outside of our personal orbit, not so much.

So here’s how it goes: I hit another birthday rituallysuggesting celebration but physically marking furthermental decline. 47 is close to the life expectancy a mere 100 yearsago,soan audit of what’s still working is more of a damage report: I’m not quite fiftyyet and that’s not a numbereven seen – because I’m missing my reading glasses and half-century baggage whiffs of welcoming beige, dinner parties, responsibility and all that shit into your world. Still they said that about hitting forty, and I’ve smashed that with aching limbs, slow repairing muscles, and fascial lines to the power of crevice.

At no point hasgravitas entered my life. I don’t feel wise, but blimeyI’ve failed to learn from a litanyof mistakes. I’m far less certain than thirty years ago becausewhat happens next stops being exciting and starts being scary. I’ve learned much about decay and how things end. I’ve been to funerals and pattered earth on hardwood where much loved soft bodies were encased. I’ve watched the tiny bodies of our DNA steeple beyond at least one of their parents and become something rather more than children. I’ve seen shit that’s not quite TannhauserGate, but nevertheless on the wrong side of mildlyperturbing.

Right enough of this pretension, let’s do the audit thing by considering how one values worth: is it the things you’ve done, the stuffyou’ve made or the toysyou own? Is the life equation a sum ofwhat you’ve acquired divided that by the years you’ve graced the planet? I really hope it isn’t because while my ratio may look mildly impressive, that’s a nonsense so far up its own arse I really want absolutely nothing to do with it.

So how else might one measure worth and value against a planet screwed up by greedand the short-termism?**. What I see is middle class angst against hacked out forests thousands of miles away missing a rather more pressing localprerogative of feeding a family. Protesting against wars that cannot hurt ussalves a moral conscience that maybe we should be doing something more. Not throwing a 50 pence piece into the hat of a homeless personon waterloo bridge because ‘it’ll just encourage laziness’ . We are way WAY better than that, and yet still feel the urge to measure ourselves against our peers, those whom we’re silently racing and whose artefacts loom large as we park our so-called executive car in our block paved drives perfectly sealed against rainwater collection.

Worth is a nebulous quantity. It’s used by the chattering classes to keep score. If I have learned anything in forty seven years, it’s something like this; how you are perceived is nothing close to whoyou really are. What scares you is at worse pointless and at best transitory. Keeping score only matters if you have interest in playing the game. The people who you care about, you care about because you’ve shared stuff that has a cumulative value not an asset value.

So here’s my audit; my body is mostly intact – shorn of some mobility by injuries and a little bit more by age. I’m stiff in the morning and that’s not mainlining morning glory. Quite a few bits down’t work properly and some other bits not at all. 20{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of my right shoulder doesn’t articulate fronting up with an arthritic union with a left ankle and right elbow. I can’t read anything upstream of three feet without reading glasses, and despite my best efforts an increasing tyre of gluttony adorns my midriff. Risk evaluation is no longer a ‘fuck it it’ll be fine‘ and instead transcends shades of grey. The edge movesever closer which is slightly less irritating than my inability to accept my ever increasing cautiousness. And I find myself standing in front of the dishwasher or the fridge in a bit of a fug muttering ‘No, don’t tell me, there’s definitely something I came to do here, just don’t rush me‘

Well that all sounds pretty fucking compelling eh? And yet I’ve somehow managed to morph from shit-kicking northern nobody to a bloke who has somehow raised two great kids mostly because ofa fantastic partner who deals effortlessly with my inability to get interestedin grown up life. I’ve a shed full of fantastic mountain bikes which raise me to atheist gods on a weekly basis. Somehow I’ve conquered a chronic lung illness through a tough regime of stopping smoking Marlboro Lights and refusing the odd cheese plate.

So today I’m 47 years old. I don’t feel anywhere near that until that grizzled bastard, looking back at me from the shaving mirror, points out the almost lack of hair and infinite cast of lines . I don’t recognise that person. I certainly don’t know him. That’s a face of giving in and getting old and frankly fuck that. For a while at least.

Growing old is inevitable. Getting old less so. I’m done with excuses about exactly what stops me acting my age. I know these suited people with serious faces – almost debilitated by anxiety and terrified of stepping beyond rigid lines drawn by accepted societal norms – are winging it just like me. Time to walk across the line and see what’s on the other side.

*Generally when someone who has swapped dignity for attention-seeking blurts out amiddle class indiscretion around caravan ownership or stone cladding. To a crowd-sourced hive-mind fully invested with keyboard warriors, logic-freeutopianism and a stratospheric moral high ground. Good luck with that.

** And I’m very muchaware that much of the reason I’m sat behind a very nice Mac keyboard in our own house and not experiencing any type of poverty are gains from that system.

Rain does not stop play

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, PhotographyLeave a comment

It's not even as big as a wheel!
Mountain Biking is just not cricket. Although some trappings and traditions do cross over such as stopping for a nice lunch, and being inconvenienced by the occasional stump impact. Anyway, before the somewhat deceitful portrayal of my latest riding heroism, it’s worth a brief synopsis of what I’m calling ‘The Silence Of The Hedgehog’

Holidays, apathy, inability to sort through 2000 digital images, another birthday*, blank screen staring with cursor blinking on ‘Chapter 1‘ – that kind of thing. surprisingly it wasn’t just me that noticed although comments such as ‘Oh God don’t encourage him to write anything else‘ have hardly helped jump-start my muse. So here we are six weeks on, a bit rusty and creaky but winding out that same old stream of consciousness. Except for the terribly pretentious drivel composed on the day – or more accurately night – of my birthday, having staggered back into the house on a float of Merlot.

I’ve saved you from that. I’m hope you’re grateful. Carol had to read it and is still pointing and laughing now.

So returning from holiday and currently retired** after unsurprisingly stinting on absolutely nothing with particular gluttony reserved for (many) local beers, BBQ’d ribs and ice cream. This lamentable lack of self control has left me re-tyred with a midriff storing a couple of the additional kilos and the rest rounding off a pair of man boobs. No problem thought I, being essentially unemployed, every day is a riding day. Within weeks I’ll be a tanned and toned whippet beasting my youngers and betters whilst living healthily on berries and leaves and other things that don’t taste like Stilton.

Well my friends it’s not quite worked out that way. Two main reasons; firstly after returning from a land with only cloudless blue skies, the UK is clearly harbouring every other countries wet making equipment and chucking out 17 degree horizontal rain on a daily basis. This is not motivating. Not motivating at all. Secondly I’m so bloody busy doing nothing. Well not nothing but not anything that pays any real hard cash. Instead I’ve thrown myself into an orgy of manual labour where a smarter cookie would have replaced 19th century agricultural engineering with something sporting a scoop, hydraulic rams and a big bloody engine. Instead it’s been me, a fork and a losing battle against a million bastard plants hell-bent on causing death by stinging.***

Bored of that and in somewhat physical distress, I hobbled to the shed of dreams to deploy some bicycling therapy. First off was a trip to the woods on the trusty hardtail. A woods normally ridden rather lumpily on my cross bike which I’ve had to conclude isn’t a lot of fun. The Solaris was better, but still some way off the dopamine hit of my normal riding. Some of this is because the trails are overgrown/a bit wet/not very interesting but more of it is my riding pals. Or lack of them. As the bastards have apparently better things to do than ride with their mate.

How selfish is that? ‘Sorry Al can’t come riding at 1pm. I’m at work‘. That’s not an excuse, that’s an insult. Total lack of ambition if you ask me. Which I did since there was nobody else to talk to. Oh we’ve been out weekends but that’s just normal stuff you fit round work. For them it’s a paycheck, for me it’s the prospect of two more hours with my new four pronged friend while dreaming of Napalm.

Twice I’ve ridden on the traditional Sunday. Twice it’s pissed down. The second time I was managing that disappointment with many additional issues to deal with – specifically a hangover sharp enough to shave with, a stomach keen to rid itself of last nights alcoholic poisoning, a brain that was a second slower than it needed to be and limbs another second behind that. I spent most of the morning alternatively trying not to crash or throw up.

Today I picked a perfect weather window – in that it was open to let the rain in – and motored off to another wood to try my luck at solo riding. It’s nearly as far as the Forest or the Malverns so been pretty well ignored for a few years. But taught my kids to ride off-road here so it has good memories. Sadly those fading memories fail to cartograph the trail network leading to much cursing and now familiar evisceration from moist waist high brambles.

Then I found an oft-ridden trail. From there a spiders-web of damp tracks came flooding back. And new trails built by others for whom this is clearly their local patch. Including that jump on a revived trail recently destroyed by logging. By this time it really was pissing it down and the ‘trousers of excuses‘ was fully upholstered with ‘no knee pads/slippy wood/damp landing patch/recently healed ribs‘ etc. And, of course, no mates to spur me on or capture my heroism/demise.

Ummed for a bit. Stood on the end. Convinced myself it was bloody tiny – which of course it was – gave it the ‘getting it done‘ nod to let the obstacle know a veteran of the mountain bike scene was about to grace it with his presence. Clipped in, pedaled – not hard enough – felt the tyres squirm a bit but carried on regardless if a little slowly. Sort of fell off the end in a manner most likely to break a collar bone. Somehow managed to convert not enough speed into just enough flight to land safely if rather heavily.

Bah. Rubbish. Go back and do it again I said out loud to no-one. The whisper of the wind and the rain through the trees sounded like hissing. No, it really did. Riding on your own messes with your mind. I love trees and woods and forests. I’m a big old tree hugger. But today it was all bloody Heart of Darkness and brooding stumps. No matter, stop pissing about and get your aged carcass off that tiny jump with a bit of bloody committment.

So I did and it was fine. More than fine in fact. Bloody lovely. Until I landed onto a recently dampened earth-patch which had the frictional quality of glass. The next couple of seconds were far more exciting that I’d been hoping for. I wonder if a middle aged man makes a fool of himself in a Forest and there is no one there to see it, does he still feel like an idiot? I don’t wonder actually because the answer is absolutely he does.

I didn’t fancy a third attempt so drove home just as the sun came out. Sulked a bit until I found cake. Still beats working even if I’ve started talking to my front mech. That’s normal right?

* 47. Forty-Bloody-Seven. And what did I do? I went out and drank like a 19 year old only with a better wine selection. On being asked the following morning how I felt, the answer was either ‘every year of my age and then some‘ or ‘Chunderful‘. With great age comes great wisdom? Someone else has got mine.

** At some point I’ll find another contract. Probably at the point when we’ve started stealing and boiling the neighbours shoes for food.

*** I’ve started talking to plants as well. But not in the traditional encouraging manner. No it’s more of a John-Cleese inspired rant while stabbing them with sharpened garden tools ‘Right you bastard, I warned you, I bloody warned you, come back out of that freshly turned soil and you’ll be getting the rough end of my pitch fork’.