.. and it is only a matter of time before my inauguration as supreme ruler of the planet, every citizen of earth shall be forced to wrap up their working week by riding a mountain bike quickly and then drinking beer a little faster. Trust me on this, world domination through the structured agenda may appear slightly less raffish than the movie bred mad media barons with their cackling laughs, but it is going to happen.

So if you are a traffic warden, a Chiltern Railways employee or the person who invented the automated call director, the world is soon to become a far harder and more painful place. With more scorpions arranged in a pit ensemble. May I just be allowed a small cackle at this point and some deranged exclamation marks? !!! Thanks, that feels good.

But not as good as riding two gears faster than two weeks ago on a local loop much loved for its secret singletrack, yet less appreciated for its nine months descent into gloopy hell. It’s generally unridable much before May as clay subsoil and winter rain turn fast summer curves into wheel locking ciphers. Even dried by a rain shy March, it tempted us fourteen days back but still rolled out the muddy, leg sucking carpet for around half its length. We nodded as wise trail sages and cautioned a few weeks delay before trying again.

But we slipped back tonight under cover of a sustained dry period of dry weather and found hard baked trails broken with enough cracks to make a fast bowler smile. Seventeen miles and a little over ninety minutes later, we too wore the dusty grins of men not quite sure how we got so lucky. Friday the 13th it may well have been but the only bad luck we suffered was the death rattle of an empty beer barrel at rides end and that was simply circumvented with a simple “pint of anything else then and throw in a few whelks for our trouble”

The trails are back pummeling dry as identified by me and another change of bike, after last weekend when my approach to happy gravity could only be called riding because I couldn’t remember how to spell portaging. Today back on familiar trails with my nutty hardtail and a style best described as “non braking bar death grip“, we shimmied between gasping trees and ducked under springy branches. I worried less about falling off and more about staying positive except for two incidents which triggered a Kryton like “Panic Circuits Engaged“.

Didn’t crash tho which as world dictator incarnate seems about right. I mean what kind of leader of the free world falls off his mountain bike? Well apart from George Bush but since he has been almost fatally injured attempting to digest a terrorist pretzel, I think we can agree he is a special case. As in special needs.

The last trail was a insanely fast dusty descent, tyres whumming on a six inch ribbon of joy banked in by an imposing hillside. I had almost forgotten how much I love riding mountain bikes faster than I should but slower than I can, then stretching the post ride glow with a couple of cold beers. If I could bottle that feeling and spread it out over a week, almost everyone I meet would have a somewhat nicer experience. And that’s important if you’re going to have four billion employees – you need to be a people person.

Right I have some European boundary planning to attend to. If you’re interested in being the “Duke Of Good Cheese and Smelly Frenchman“, drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do.