This arrived in my Inbox this morning. I need to post my long and rambling event report, although having seen this picture, maybe I should save myself the thousand words 🙂
From my friend Brad. A man who knows all about crashing. He’s seen me do it often enough 😉
That’s a picture of Jason, a hardy antipodean perennial showing his delight at finding warm mud in Swinley Forest. The joy of spring if you will**
That’s not what this is about though. Our buyers will be moving into this house in about four weeks. We have nowhere to move to. The option was to stay and lose the house sale or pack all our belongings in a cardboard box, and decamp to a bridge under the M4.
A compromise solution is a complex double move involving men with proper jobs sweatingly transferring most of our stuff into crates and a few much loved objects – including at least three MTB’s! – to a short term rental somewhere in Herefordshire. Assuming the legal issues ever get resolved before a) the kids leaving home or b) us running out of money to pay solicitors, we’re still keen to move to cabbage-land.
Failing that, we’ll be cash buyers with an ever decreasing time budget before the mortgage offer expires.
The bridge seems to offer a far simpler solution but apparently the kids have to go to school. And me to work. In Birmingham. Crikey.
Hopefully the local – and new to me – trails will be fast and dry when we finally rock up to our temporary home. Ian – I’m looking forward to a ride and a long chat about potential sites for the scorpion pit. I have about four sheets of closely written names who are deserving of a deadly spider experience.
* too easy to even ask the question. Ah I loved the Clash. But it was so long ago, I still had hair.
** Spring as in Springing in the air as in words linking to photo as in clever interplay between media. No, thought not.
Pitching up like an infrequent but frequently amusing old friend. Sticking around long enough for a whole bunch of silly fun, before buggering off leaving you with hankering for a little bit more and a whole lot of mess to clear up.
That’s snow in April folks. Eight hours after braving sub zero temperatures to capture a snowy Buckinghamshire, the snow has gone but the cold remains.
Sufficient time to build a snowman, engage in a massive snowball fight and perfect the little known winter sports derivative known as organic sledging. Take a hillside covered with rapidly melting snow, install a ski trousered child at the start gate, perform a bob sleigh welly lifting start and collect shrieking child from the bottom of the slope.
A choice between this and a wintry odyssey through contingency houses was really no choice at all. Plus, all that riding has brought home the unpleasant realisation that I can no longer even burn the candle at one end.
Still nothing wrong with an afternoon snooze, blanketed by Sunday paper mountain is there?
Like a perfect 10, except for slack people. For the last week, my arse has been firmly rammed in the saddle* for at least an hour a day, regardless of the moaning of the wind. It could be heard for miles: “bloody hell, my legs hurt, this isn’t fair, can I stop now please.. and on… and on”
As for the wind – vegetables are the bellows of the Devil so I cannot be held responsible for unleashing something so nasally irresponsible. The bowels of hell if you will.
The balmy weather of Friday evening was a first swallow to summer prelude of the barmy weather now hailing at my window. So I mosied out resplendent in just a single layer of everything to spend two hours carrying my bike over muddy fields. A nice walk spoiled by a bicycle.
Forget those expensive WWII Normandy trips, just find a bridleway in the Chilterns and be transported back to Flanders. And while it may lack the authenticity of incoming shells and body parts, the local landowners are generally happy to oblige with shotguns and border repelling ‘Oi, get off my land‘
While all my favorite trails were closed for fun, the pub was both open and serving a rather lovely pint. Tomorrow we’re going for a tremendously dull day house hunting in the sleet and snow. Following that I shall replace riding with checking the forecasts for Perpignan and trying not to injure myself before flying there.
I tried that last time and it was rubbish.
* Keen to do another Max Mosely joke. Keen not to get sued.
Muddy Cove, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.
Grab yourself a lentil and relax, as grassmud-hopper here enlightens you to the ways of karma. If one wishes to achieve meteorological karmic balance, one must first seek out the sub zero land of trench-knob, journey through the muddy foothills of component destruction and genuflect to the great God chain suck. Only then shall the trails of the righteous be paved with sun, dust and occasional sprinklings of cold beer.
And because the world is nothing more than an infinite flange of laziness, many of these footsteps of the cold, wet and un-initiated are being trod by yours bloody truly. You can keep your sheep-swool base layers – I have everything I need here with my hair shirt.
The most positive spin I can place upon yesterday’s ride was it was a small improvement on the week before. Not much, because the weather Gods have failed to flick the ‘Spring‘ lever leaving us with snow, hail, rain and freezing drizzle*. The car park was strewn with mud splats of portent, every car was brown as was every returning mountain biker. Except for a few which were blue and – apparently – unbreathing.
Three hours later I was a broken man but still alive. Those following the narrative may remember me citing a positive in a previous paragraph. That’s it. Both my riding chums – Nick and Dean – had apparently broken nothing, not even a light sweat. It is fair to say they are both fitter than me but, if one were being scrupulous in the use of ‘Fair’, so are almost all of my friends. Even those who have passed on to a better place.
Not the greatest accolade ever presented is it? ‘Cheers for the ride fellas, thanks for not leaving me to die, oh, and you’re both far healthier than some dead people I once knew’. A week ago Sunday, 90 minutes dispatched me to the same dark and hollow place, this time I managed twice that although not without some physical and mental consternation.
But I am going to keep at it; commuting through winterspring(tm), tossing myself recklessly** into pools of deep mud and spending a long weekend trudging up alpine climbs with only thin air for company***
But soon, I shall emerge from winters’ chrysalis and flaunt my faux fitness on trails which aren’t trying to consume you from the wheels up. Although looking at the long range weather forecast, what I am actually doing – right now – is practising for much, much more of the same.
I like to whinge about the weather. It makes me feel all patriotic and English.
* This is not the same as hail. As cold but lacking the viscosity to keep it from running into your previously warmed crevices.
** Which doesn’t bode well for the eyesight.
*** I may be underselling our Pyrenees trip in April. However, any fitness gained will be lost to the power of my willpower once the bar opens.
Barcelona is a fantastic city. So good, in fact, they don’t like to let you leave. Our Olympic standard lurking at the airport was finally terminated by the most surreal announcement I have ever heard. “Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to apologise for the delay to this flight from Barcelona to London Heathrow. This entirely due to the fact that it is snowing in Stockholm”
I kid you not.
Now while anyone with a beard and a serious expression can convince me that the flapping of a butterfly wing in remotest Chile ripples the space-time continuum such that it begins hailing buffalo in Croydon, BA are clearly talking nonsense.
They weren’t alone. In a three day period, I was assured an evenings entertainment with my peers would be jolly fun (it really wasn’t), the trip back to the airport would take between seven and ten days (it didn’t) and the conference we were attending would be *edited for reasons of job security* (As my German friends would say “This is a joke, Ja?“
It‘s been a while since I’ve thrown myself to the wolves of a technology conference. And it’ll be a while before I do so again. Hotel rooms too hot, dinners too long, willpower too short, people too dull, flying too shit, Alex too old and cynical.
There were upsides. Grudgingly I learned a little, talked a lot and found many people who wanted to drag a difficult project from the abyss of possibly disciplinary action. I also managed to rush out -“ while others were snout down in the free bar -“ and take some pictures.
Like I said, it’s a great city. It would be great to come back swapping work for my wife, a big camera and a hotel room not superheated directly from the Earths core.
Yes I know I am an ungrateful bugger. No, I don’t really care.
* Remember the song? Okay that’s not an actual lyric (but a gold star to anyone who can tell me from which Queen track it was from) but close enough.
I can only assume that this weather is some kind of cosmic joke. A meteorological slap down to my electronic worship of ceaseless blue sky images plastered all over the flickr homepage. We reluctantly left Auckland under sunny skies clothed only in shorts and sun cream, arriving back at Heathrow similarly dressed, but much colder.
A brief prod of the soft news underbelly – poked by a refreshing fast and free Internet connection – revealed that England is still rubbish and sport but that hardly mattered since the entire island was about to be carted off to the North Pole by a bastard winter storm.
Such is the insanity of long haul that a mere 30 hours separates the lingering end of a long, hot summer and having your face ripped off by icy rain. My first response to all this sudden weather was to layer myself in ever more fleecy clothes, my second was to start peeling which just shows the human body is clearly fooled by aeroplanes.
In more ways than one. My jetlag is on the irritating side of properly funny with bipolar perambulations between madly wide awake at 4am and falling asleep at my desk just after lunch. To be honest, no one noticed much difference other than I Was harder to wake. The rest of the family seem to have conveniently ignored that it’s 4am in the morning most of the time, except for little Random who is suffering a few head/food interfaces.
Most of the last week – before returning to the Devil’s weather experiments – was spent idly watching the sun climb over a wave-capped pacific from the vantage point of around 100 yards. The limit of my ambition were frequent visits to the double height beer fridge and watching the kids being dragged under by the rip tides.
To say this was mildly relaxing is a little like wondering if setting your trousers on fire would be slightly distracting. The whole Beach/Bach house thing would not work well in – say – Cleethorpes, but it is failure proof in a land of deserted beaches, jaw dropping scenery, cooling sea breezes and an endless array of beer and cake.
But while the weather has been busy, my solicitor has not. At this rate of progress, we will move in just before the kids leave home or this jetlag has finally worn off. It is, however, providing an excuse to put back my fitness kick for another couple of days as CLIC-24 hurtles ever closer.
21 days with 2 riding bikes and 20 quaffing calories in many interesting and varied ways added only 3lbs** to the svelteness of Al. But I appear to have grown breasts, so it’s tea instead of beer and the drudgery of sorting a 1000 photos assuming I can stay awake that long.
Oh, and to any of you kind hearted sods that sent me one of a thousand emails, I accidentally deleted the whole lot ten minutes ago. You know where to find me, I’ll still be asleep at my desk.
* Salad you see. Refer to last paragraph for more. I’ve always found jokes are so much better appreciated if you need to explain them.
** I refuse to go metric. I was born before 1971 and therefore exempt.
Rock Colours, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.
Hello from Auckland and goodbye to the funky bus. It’s been a faithful servant for 2,500 kilometres – over innumerable mountain passes, through hundreds of one horse towns**, and abandoned at every more raffish pavement angles. We’re going to miss it like an amusing but hyperactive relative. Two weeks cooped up with a similar amount of children in eighteen feet of mobile home has been a fantastic experience. But we’re ready to give it back before localised parental volcanic action will mirror that of these great islands.
Living with the motorhome is, – of course – living in it, and for all the positive experiences, there are a number of issues worth sharing. It’s only when you’ve been dispatched alone on some emergency shopping expedition that it becomes apparent how bloody big it is. Driving it is fine, reversing it less so without a willing helper or a man with a red flag.
But let us turn the eye of critique to the interior. For example take the ladder which acts as the gateway to Lucifer’a portal – or the over cab bedroom as labelled by traditionalists. It is a triumph of isolationist design working perfectly to shuttle children up and down into the roof space, while blocking off access to the indoor bog.
Well if you are more than about 6 inches wide which- ahem – at least one of us is. The resultant gap is, in fact, the exact width of my body minus the much loved wedding vegetables. So any attempted night-time entry is rewarded with an eye watering scrotal injury from the razor sharp door fittings.
However, the gas fired hob was always functional if a little slow. In fact, it would be quicker to travel back in time to pre-history and discover fire, rather than waiting for the kettle to boil in real time. The grill bucked this trend by carbonising toast in the nanosecond between the states of virgin bread and on fire***.
And the fly-screen lacks a certain winged bitey blocking efficacy. In truth the gap between door and van was such that anything in the bird family from a pterodactyl down would fly in unobstructed on a well known trade route to my tender parts****. At night, many of these blood bloated parasites would get trapped under the duvet and attempt to tunnel out through my ankle.
Joining up the multitude of throbbing bites in a dot to dot style would spell “scratch me now”and boy did we want to. Eventually this urge became too strong to ignore, generally during a dull spell of distance driving. Which was slightly perturbing as your spouse would suddenly disappear from view, except for a nonchalant finger resting lightly on the steering wheel.
The rest of her would be under the dashboard desperately scratching at the never ending itch. And that’s generally fine due to the total lack of traffic but occasionally a orgasmic ahhhhh would be firmly interrupted with a shriek of “CLIFF AHEAD” from the passenger seat.
Talking of gaps as we are, the floor to ceiling distance between Cab and Slab is around 5 feet. I am 6 feet, or at least I was. I am gradually being whittled down through attritional smacks round the back of the head. Over the last two weeks, my retreating summit has been glacially eroded to 5ft 7, and all my hair is falling out. Although the latter has been going on for some time, based on some recent and disturbing photo evidence.
As observed in an earlier post, there are certain mechanical traits which smack of genius including an electrical system which operates on both 12v and 240v without exploding during the transition between the two, and a complex two tank water system which somehow fails to irrigate the road in your direction of travel. But some quick work with a calculator establishes that three tons of ventilated brick – driven mostly on full throttle – manages nearly 23 miles to the gallon. That’s not genius, that’s bloody magic.
Tomorrow we’re trading in the bus for a normal family sized car. This strange and small vehicle will transport us to the Coromandel where most of the family will spend in different rooms adjusting to a non motorised house. Except for this one who’ll be substituting “lying on a beachâ” with “ragging round a mountain bike trail”
Less than a week left. Tell me the UK has magically become warm, clean, inviting and deficient of about fifty million people.
* Random had transported some illegal hair termites into the country. Which means someone in her class has some explaining to do.
** Although in most cases, the horse had died of boredom.
*** This is known in academic circles as Schroedinger’s Crumpet
**** This did solve the nocturnal problem with needing a wee. I’m sure you can work it out.
The hedgehog truck has finally reached the East coast on our last full day in the South Island. We’ve just spent a couple of hours being taught how to swim by friendly seals. Although since a fur seal spends 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of it’s life sunbathing, fighting and shagging, there was also much comedy bobbing about in buoyant wetsuits waiting for them to go seaborne.
And because I am sure you really aren’t interested in what we did on our holidays, I am instead going to talk about the hierarchy of camper vans. But before that, it is worth explaining that Carol and I are just about mountain’d out. As we crested yet another spectacular mountain pass sheltering fathoms of perfectly formed azure lakes, glances were exchanged and a quiet nod confirmed that’d just about do, thanks.
Because when the superlative barrel is well and truly scraped and a million electrons slaved to capture the picture perfect*, a certain blase replaces the ground state of awe and wide mouthed pointing. When we’re stuck in traffic on a shitty late winter’s day back in the UK, we;ll laugh about that. Probably.
Anyway, Vans. On the South Island, every third vehicle is a truck** which- as they perambulate wildly at almost no speed – must really piss off the locals. About three companies corner a hugely profitable market with the rest forced to scrap it out with beaten up cheap vans or niche offerings.
I must admit to a spot of motor-home envy during the trip, a worthwhile discourse to be properly covered in a later post. Our happy bus is a big diesel Merc with the standard slabby body kit bolted on. The engine is well into its’ third century of kilometres and the interior design is only a couple of woodchip walls away from the whole seventies experience.
After calling the Vatican to confirm the Pope was still a Catholic, I hot-footed down to the bike hire store at Hanmer Springs and hired an “executive” MTB. For my extra $10, disc brakes accesorised a suspension fork that excelled at holding the front end up. It didn’t appear to offer any other damping functions other than emitting a howling click on encountering even the smallest bump.
On the upside, it was attached to a mountain bike and a morning of virgin, dustry trails – baked hard under a perfect blue sky – awaited my desperate-to-ride persona. For the next four hours, I was essentially lost – signage in NZ is generally fantastic due mainly to the fact there are only about 10 roads but the $1 map lacked a certain accuracy when measured against scale and terrain.
But the trails were mine alone and after some false starts, mappage faffage and a blatent “sorry, I’m a tourist” approach to some walking only routes, improvement was rapid. A couple of sketchy descents on commuter pedals only lightly gripped by knackered VANs, it became clear that stacking here would result in a slow lingering death by hungry sandfly.
So proceeding carefully in the manner of a man lacking both riding skills and spacial awareness, I was amazed to divine a dusty trail that smelt of woody singletrack. And for the next 7 kilometres it rolled out a bonaza of sculptered corners, rooty drops, a smattering of ohfuckme North Shore and limitless hand crafted berms.
The local MTB group has clearly put a huge amount of work in, so it seemed a bit mean to only ride it once. I pushed half way back up, scared myself a couple more times before having to choose between another attempt at full speed or a beer.
Well, OBVIOUSLY, I went for beer.
Some people may brand my posting an MTB blog while on holiday a bit obsessive. So for the purposes of balance, here are some pictures of lakes and glaciers encountered on a moist walk to the Franz Joseph Glacier.
Anyway I’m off to take the local spring waters follwed closely by taking rather more of the local hop waters. Tomorrow we’re off to swim with seals although Random insists we’ll be in the water with eels. She is not – as I sort of remember from what feels like far away corporate speak – with the programme 😉
PS. Sorry for piss poor spelling. Running out of internet time and $10 buys two beers!
