Hardly a weekend has passed in the last five years when I’ve not cheerfully abandoned my family to seek a “ frankly pervy – sweaty and muddy outdoors experience with a lycra clad flange of middle aged blokes.

Somewhere in this period, I carelessly crossed the line between a hobby and a mental illness which opened up a black hole, into which I willingly plunged money, blood, time and a few post crash whimpers.

So an unbroken run of eight weekends without trailering a bike and heading off to fill a couple of circular hours before the pubs opened, grooved an ominous record which suggested DIY and bigger trousers lie in wait.

Better go riding then because the option was a continuing approach to life based on the grumpy bastard” scenario, which offered much misery and probable rolling pin based injuries in the near future.

Traditionally, I don’t ride in the Chilterns much between November and March because the entire area is twinned with Flanders. Yesterday, I lost first my sunglasses and then most of my gears as we slogged through never ending mud and slime for three and a half painful hours. Uphill was a trudge for traction, the flat sections were a constant battle against deep trenches full of slime and the downhills were either pedally boredom or a terrifying plunge through a mud slick with no obvious methods of steering or braking. Options at this point involved instantly falling off in a comedy heap or surfing towards spikey shrubbery using your face as an emergency brake.

I did both. It should have been dreadful. But you know what? It was bloody fantastic to the power of two working lungs. Starting off nervous, with a pounding fear that the first climb would confirm some unnamed permanent damage to my lungs, the day just got better and better as the conditions went the other way. Normally I’d hate riding in mid winter gloop with its pleasure killing slime and component destroying grit. But now today, although I’ll not be a rush to go back until some public spirited soul has been out with a hairdryer.

It took me only the remainder of the day to rebuild the battered husk of the transmission and a few more beers to dull the horror of the grit stripped paintwork. Still it’s only money and the financial disaster that is my credit card deals with the detritus and I can go riding again. I have some catching up to do.

Forty miles down the road offers up sand instead of chalk as the subsoil structure so thigh deep mud was replaced with fast, dry trails interspersed with thick wheel gripping gloop which’d happily punt the unwary into a waiting tree. All part of the fun, apparently.

So it appears I got my lung back although in keeping with someone pursuing a one man quest to undertake every possible diagnostic test on the NHS, it’s not all beer and skittles just yet. Well it’s certainly missing the skittles.

Anyway, I’m sure you’ve got the point and even if you haven’t, this seems a good time to stop especially as I’m eagerly anticipating a short but intense relationship with a warm chicken.

Nothing wrong with that in the comfort of your own home.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m BACK 🙂

I joked a little about recycling old unpublished stuff. And mostly that’s true but in this case it really isn’t. Coming up four years ago, my friend Russ Pinder has a massive crash on a brutal descent in Wales. The outcome was a “T4” which means he is paralysed from the chest down. But he’s doing ok and that’s almost entirely due to his mental strength, refusal to succumb to misery and the love and support of his family. He’s an inspiration to everyone but his survival is due – at least for the first days – the air ambulance.

The “hour of life” which differentiates those dying in inaccessible mountains and those being cared for in hospital is often down to the charity funded yellow helicopters. You can read more about a foundation Russ and his friends started to support them here. If you’ve got a spare quid, there are far worse places to spend it.

Anyway here’s the article written in March 2003. It was too raw to publish after the accident and I’m only doing it now in the hope that at least one of you who occasionally find the hedgehog amusing may like to donate to a fantastic cause.

I have a friend called Russ. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not some schoolyard pal or a soulmate whose take on life complements mine. He’s just a bloke I’ve been riding with, on and off, for the last eighteen months. He’s fast everywhere; uphill, downhill, over technical challenges and on the road. He’s passionate about our sport to the point of being a little intense. He’s a bike per genre kind of guy with a lightweight hardtail, a pimpy full-suss and a FR/DH bike. Sometimes he’s a bit condescending and his competitive gland is scarily overactive but all in all, he’s a generous, warm hearted, committed mountain biker.

Like I say I’ve got a friend called Russ. He’s lying in a hospital bed paralysed from the chest down. He wanted to be the perfect mountain biker, straining for the pinnacle of his sport and yet for all he has put in, the rest of his life stretches away in a chasm of paralysis that his wheelchair can never cross.

It’s a week since it happened but details are still sketchy. Whilst my downhill medium was snow and skis, a bunch of the usual suspects had taken advantage of the unseasonably dry weather to tackle the famed Tal-Y-Bont loop. Last year, I’d done the same and been blown away by the pace and the mountains. It was a pretty intimidating ride on all counts but Russ was in his element “ fast and confident, excelling in his chosen sport. This time out, the world schismed and we’ll probably never know why. But on the descent from the Gap, Fate tipped the balance delivering a partial sacrifice to an uncaring God. It’s a brute of a descent “ steep, scary and unforgiving at the top tending to stupidly fast whilst retaining it’s rocky backbone toward the bottom. I vividly recall Russ blowing by me last year “Gulfstream to Cessna “ accelerating to Motocross speed with only a light plastic compound helmet as protection against a fall.

I’m working off eye witness accounts swayed by aftershock and grounded in guilt. ˜What else could we have done?’ his riding companions plaintively ask. Probably nothing but the spectre of passiveness in the face of nebulous evidence will haunt them for a long time. Maybe for ever. No one actually saw the accident but empirical evidence from the aftermath is compelling “ the front wheel 50 yards behind the battered frame, itself lying beyond the trail boundary fence, equidistantly bisected by a permanently damaged and limp Russ, lying motionless on the unyielding rocks which broke his fall and broke his back.

His riding friends were magnificent. They kept him warm, took a GPS reading and urgently called an air ambulance. This in the light of Russ’ helmet being nothing more than polycarbonate shards and the man himself crying ˜I can’t feel my legs’. I just don’t know who to start feeling sorry for first.

Helicopters, hospitals, logistics and worrying ate up the next 6 hours as Heather (Russ’ wife) is driven from Didcot in Oxfordshire while his riding buddies crowd into the ward waiting for news. There wasn’t much and none of it was good “ rumour and introspection are not happy bedfellows.

Fast forward a day. He’s due at the Spinal Injuries ward in Stoke Mandeville hospital. That’s good “ it’s the premier institution in the UK for such injuries and it’s only five miles from my house. A friend of I go to see what’s happening. No Russ as yet but the ward is still terrifying “ not the nurses who are kind and calm, but the distress of the patients and the signs on the wall accentuate the long term hell for anyone that passes through these doors on a trolley. It’s hard to look at a noticeboard displaying a rota for bladder training and not lose the plot completely.

A marker here – I hate hospitals. Irrational and stupid but I still do. I’m shaking as we leave and it gets worse. Outside the entrance to the spinal ward is a bloke our age in a wheelchair apparently paralysed from the neck down. He’s talking earnestly to his seven year old daughter who looks on with wide eyes and no understanding. The chair reminds me unpleasantly of Davros of Dr Who fame and I can’t shed the image of a restless body confined to 5{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of the movement it was born with. This is real and it’s scary shit.

Click fast forward again. The MTB forums are aflame with questions, updates and messages of goodwill. They ring hollow in my head: Get well soon and back on the bike Russ?. Yeah right like that’s going to happen. I’m angry now, the piousness and hypocrisy is cloying “ I know I should be touched by the core of their sentiments but I’m not. Later I chill out a bit “ maybe the threads are a little naïve but they’re heartfelt and now I’m proud of our little community. We really care for our own.

It’s been a week. The tape wind forwards but not much changes. No visits except the family made up of Russ’s brother, wife and two kids both under 10. Heather is hanging in there by all accounts but what can she tell the kids? They’ve only known daddy as a sporty, athletic can-do-anything kind of guy and now they’re facing a major readjustment.

The prognosis is bad. Russ has been told his spinal cord is shattered “ there is no cure “ he’ll be paralysed for the rest of his life. He is 38 years old. But he’s a fighter with a positive mental approach yet I can’t help thinking this must be too much too soon for anyone. One minute in your prime, confident and successful supported by a loving family and the next WHAM, you’re a cripple, a dependant, fighting daily embitterment and questioning always questioning ˜WHY ME?’ to a world that has branded you different. You must think of all the things you used to be able to do but now you’re an object of pity or ridicule defined and imprisoned by your wheeled cage. Christ it’s keeping me awake so how is Russ coping surrounded by the sterile hospital environment, lying awake with a broken back and broken dreams? All the time in the world to think and no physical ability to do.

We went for a ride. Many of the guys who’d witnessed the accident were aghast at the prospect of getting back on a mountain bike. But we had demons to exorcise. It’s strange because I was sure we’d take it easy “ maybe ponder the pointlessness of our sport or tell tall tales of our rides with Russ. But we didn’t. We nailed everything right on the razors edge pushing uncaring into the adrenal zone and loving the rush. Maybe that’s it “ it’s a risk and reward gig and even with Russ lying in hospital, that’s still not enough to make us stop.

Mountain biking is sometimes an exercise in not thinking. It strips away the social conventions that drive you to ˜do the right thing’. It reduces life to simple pleasures and binary decisions; left or right, slow or fast, spin or race. It makes you love it “ the lifestyle, the danger, the bullshit, the dopamine hit, the difference even when you think you’re hating it.

Don’t misunderstand me. Russ’s accident has shaken me to the core. I’m dreading walking into his hospital ward because I know he’ll see the truth in my eyes: ˜Sorry Mate, I’ll do whatever I can but THANK FUCK it’s you and not me’. I’m not proud of that neither am I alone in thinking it. And it scares me “ our sport is a drug “ yet I’ll never give it up until I’m too old, too scared or too damaged. And I know Russ would have done the same. He’s not a martyr and I’m not going to canonise him because we all embrace the danger and we have to live with the consequences. It’s not fair and it’s not right but it’s our choice. There is no middle ground.

Mountain Biking is in our blood. It’s like the Hotel California “ you can check out any time you like but you can never leave.

I’ve got a friend called Russ. It’s early days but I’ve got a feeling he’ll come good. In two years time, we’ll be cheering on the Mall as he races past in his wheelchair, arms pumping and race face in place, against the other heroes who we applaud but will never quite understand. I hope it’s not wishful thinking but I just know in my heart he’ll be fine. And if he isn’t, he’s going to have a whole community of like minded people who will never stop helping him be all he can.

I’ve got a friend called Russ. I’m proud to be his mate.

PS: I never got to see Russ race down the mall but he’s back on a 4 wheeled bike now and he is off skiing next month. Which is about as close to a happy ending as you could hope to get.

In the back of my mind was a slight niggle that the stuff I wrote about handbags in this post had been nicked from somewhere. And it had. From me. I wrote this about five (five! Bloody hell how did 60 months go past so fast?) years ago when I was clearly less grammatically lazy and possibly slightly more amusing.

Miss Hillary Yoghurt in seat 33d provided a fascinating insight into the oldest of Japanese arts – Feng Shui . Clearly attached to a somewhat bedraggled and whiffy holdall, she refused to file it in the overhead lockers where it would have probably eaten the other luggage. Rather, she spent the whole six hour flight rearranging items from her trivia bag via an extended transit to the table in front of her.

Root, Root, oh here’s a comb, clean off the suspicious discharge from the prongs, place it carefully on the side of the table, rotate it 15 degrees, sit back, frown, rotate it the other way 5 degrees, sit back, suck hair, furrow brows, delve back into bag and start again with a boiled sweet. I watched helplessly in some kind of sick admiration that anyone could be this dull as item after item was plucked from what I now thought of as the trivia tardis”, arranged, re-arranged and then if it for some reason didn’t pass muster dispatched unloved back into the hell-sack.

After 3 hours, the table looked like the winner of the worst bric-a-brac stall at the village fate. My barks of laughter were covered hastily by phlegmy coughs but even without my impression of advanced TB, she would never have noticed as each item was subjected to a Krishna like chant delivered in a base grunt that would have had most of us calling the RSPCA, or gunning for the person doing something that sexually obtuse to a cat.

This is from a journal written to commemorate a wet, damp, painful and rather uplifting cycling trip to Ecuador raising money for Cancer relief. It’s a roller coaster of a novelette in 14 loquacious chapters and when I’m feeling lazy (so that’s ALL THE TIME then), I’ll post a few of the choicer bits.

Remember this?

And all my manly posturing on how easy it was on the new bike, and how all that was lacking in my mighty toolbox of skills was a little more style? Today, I tried it with a little more style and rather than receiving the plaudits of my peers, instead I received a helmet full of dirt and a full body battering.

But rewind a little. On a lovely winters day, full of the sunshine and light winds that have so forsaken the South East for the last month, we arrived in the middle of a body armour convention. I’ve never seen the place so rammed with play bikes of all description and a riding community ranging from young Gravity Dwarves to elder statesmen like myself.

The GD’s are born to ride in three dimensions launching small bikes over huge jumps while performing complex yoga moves, such as tapping a grubby ear with a Nike trainer while calmly flying at fifteen feet through the trees. Others of an indeterminable age but sporting ungrizzled stubble and motorbikes without engines were winding them up over the big jumps and drops that define the area. Well that and the air ambulances and broken bodies.

Trying to build on the previous festive ride of absolutely no style, I attempted to ape the skills of those who weren’t method acting a sack of potatoes velcro’d to a fridge door. The main aspect missing from my riding – other than the permanent absentees of bravery and commitment – was, and I’m writing this carefully, Hucking. To huck, one must perform a foolhardy firm compression of the bikes’ suspension to instigate a stylish, salmon like leap over the drop. This is best created by driving your body downwards and then allowing the bike to spring back by lightening the sprung weight. Which is this case means you and in my case is quite significant nowadays.

Now think about this – what we’re talking about is flying off a ledge with around twelve feet of thin air between you and the rather thicker ground while taking the weight off the pedals. There an integral part of what we mountain bikers call “the things that attach you to the bike and stop you getting horribly injured“. And yet, it was all going rather too well until, in a moment of unconsidered bravo, I attempted to go large.

As the ledge approached, I pushed vertically down – hard – with both hands and feet , feeling the tyres digging into the dirt. Then as the bike rebounded rather rapidly, I unweighted everything and flew gloriously into space. It was at this exact point that the total wrongness of style over substance overwhelmed me, as my feet and the pedals became pen pals. No longer were we connected by anything other than memory and as the bike landed hard on the downslope, I remember thinking “well I’m hucked now“.

Apparently you can ride this type of thing out. If you’re any good and don’t instantly stiffen up with the type of rigidity associated with rigor mortis. The “Leigh alternative” is to crash painfully down the slope, with feet acting as buffeted outriggers and bollocks bouncing on the top tube. And just when a small slither of survival gloating shafted low through the trees, my attempts to stay upright went sideways. The bike hit a lump and by the power of kinetic energy I exited sideways in a flat trajectory. Luckily, rather than a pleasant dirt surf down the slope unencumbered by stumps or pointy rock, my velocity was rapidly reduced by the shuddering impact of an earthen wall. The whole painful episode could be summed up with the simple phrase “Deceleration Trauma“.

“At least my friends didn’t see that” was my first thought as they ran over the hill to see if I’d trashed the bike. A short period of grunting followed while the full body systems check ran as a priority process. Aside from very sore ribs, a stiff neck and battered pride, the initial damage report was encouraging. Only later did I realise that the stabbing pain in my thigh was a perfect mirror of my car keys. These normally harmless items had burrowed deep into the limb in some kind of futuristic organic/mechanical fusion.

The bike was thankfully undamaged. Which gave me no excuse not to limp back on and ride the drop again. The Icy Hand Of Fear was clamped hard over my nether regions but it really had to be done. And it was, with no huck but a silent “thank fuck” as I landed happily still attached to the appropriate staying alive components.

I rode a bit more, but then it stared to hurt a lot more as befits an old bloke doing a young mans sport. So I quit whilst I still had a head but on driving home, my overwhelming emotion was of bloody annoyance that I’d failed to conquer this simple skill. And it never occurred to me until I began writing this that there will be a time when I break rather than bend. But that’s some way off I hope and through the power of Nurafen Plus, cold beer and hot baths, I’m already planning my triumphant return.

And this time, it’ll be so stylish even the GD’s will whisper “not bad Grandad, not bad“.

PS. Never again will I feel silly wearing leg/elbow pads and a full face helmet. They all took a proper bashing and without their protection, I would undoubtedly be enjoying an extended stay at Bedford hospital.

Our mini roadtrip consisted of 360 miles, one night in a bed and breakfast, one curry in the terrifying post apocalyptic horror that is Maesteg and various cakes, coffees and beers. Oh and an epic 14 miles riding. That works out about £3 a mile and you could run a Challenger tank on that.

There are mitigating circumstances. Firstly daylight is something that only happens in seasons other than winter. There is a counter argument which goes something like “well you have a set of very expensive lights you could use when it gets dark”. That’s all very well but a dark, cold Welsh forest in the middle of winter inhabited by things that may kill you or at least deliver a light mugging, is not my idea of fun when the option is warmth, light and beer.

Obviously we could have set off earlier but that would have removed one of my excuses for not wanting to ride more than once. MonoLung(tm) and heavy bikes mix as well as Relatives and Christmas. Uphill was actually ok as I’ve learnt to manage my lungs when Asthma strikes. Downhill, working hard to get the most out of the bike, left me breathless and stationary at the side of the trail.

Still it gave me time to wonder how the route could be so dry and so much fun. Man made trails are great in winter, they offer a consistency of experience regardless of the weather. There was plenty of grip and not many people which makes for great riding between desperate gasps for a lungful of clear air.

So once the man with the bike carrying van said no and the night plunged down the hill, we abandoned any thought of riding and instead dreamt of edible recompense for our awesome calorific efforts earlier. A sweep of the local offerings suggested no one in South Wales eats outside their own houses until March. We resorted to a meandering trip through the nearby ex-mining town of Maesteg, which told me everything I didn’t want to know about what happens when an industry dies. Streets full of thrift shops, boarded up buildings and really quite scary eyeballing young people.

Still we ate like kings for a tenner each and were burpingly joyful on returning to the car and finding it still had all the wheels attached. We talked long of a big day out tomorrow and slept the sleep of the worthy.

Unfortunately 8am brought Noah out looking for a lost giraffe.

We bought coffee and watched DVDs in the cafe and silently hoped neither of us really wanted to go out and drown. Eventually we abandoned any pretence of riding in Wales, perambulating in a ziggyzag fashion back to Oxford via other possible riding spots. All of which looked fantastic if your imagination could insert “dry, warm and summery” when your eyes reported “slippy, wet and bloody freezing”.

I felt a little guilty about the whole thing until it occurred to me what a great mood had now rolled over my previously miserable form. I didn’t feel any better physically but mentally the excesses of the holiday period had been properly cleansed.

It’s still cold outside but the rain has stopped and the wind died down to a point where I no longer fear for the fence. I think I’ll take monolung out for a gentle ride.