My Twenty Third Week as a Budding Author

There’s an old cycling adage which goes something like:-

“Before you set out to ride a series of long hard routes it is important to smash your knee repeatedly against a rock until it bleeds”

Ok, I lied. There is no such saying, but can somebody please explain to me exactly why I insist on following it to the letter? This week I threw everything I own into the van and headed off up to Scotland. The plan was to complete the Scottish section of the book within a single trip. This requires a significant amount of road riding but inexplicably my mountain bike and all of the associated gubbins sneaked into the van as well.

My first stop was Glentrool, however, the sat nav was in league with the mountain bike and directed the van to pass tantilisingly close to the Dalbeattie mountain bike trails. Like a failed alcoholic passing an off license, I stopped for a cheeky blast round the trails. What could go wrong? I’d brought my knee pads and the trail was graded red, well within my capabilities.

The car park at Dalbeattie was empty and in a schoolboyesque display of impatience I was out of the van and riding within fifteen minutes of arrival. Any true mountain biker knows that this is ridiculous. At least forty five minutes of faffing are required before a mountain bike can be properly mounted. Kit needs to be found, turned inside-out, have the mud shaken off it, packed, and then unpacked when it is realised that the spanner needed to adjust the saddle is at the bottom of the bag. Shock pressures, tyre pressures, gears, brakes, cleat tension and saddle height must be dicked about with for at least thirty minutes until they are returned to the settings as measured on arrival. Then every other biker in the car park must be questioned endlessly as to the trail conditions, length, grading, height gain and tyre requirements.

I threw all of this to the wind and rode off up the trail. A sign labelled “skills loop” beckoned me over and a further sign announced that the next section was “black” grade and entirely unsuitable for Dave’s. Being a sensible sort of fellow coupled with the fact that I had forgotten to put my knee pads on, I rode down it. Well, that’s if you define “rode” as rolled the front wheel onto some rocks, shat myself, stopped, failed to unclip from pedals and then fell sideways onto said rocks.

At this point I decided to take an irrational dislike to Mr Pavlov. Sod his dogs and their stimulus/response learning, I was going to forget the pain and go round for another go. Sadly the rocks were not prepared to play the same game and as I rolled over the lip they shouted “boo”, I shat myself, fell off and damaged the knees further.

Lying on the ground I cursed my luck, mountain biking ability and thought back to the other trials this week has presented me with.

Firstly, there was my van insurance company. It was time for renewal and they had sent me the usual letter asking me for four times the premium of last year just in case I forgot to shop around a little. So I phoned them for a little chat and they miraculously halved the quote by unticking the box labelled “Lazy idiot with too much money”. The operator asked me if any of my circumstances were different from last year and then I made the second greatest error of the week. I told them that I was now self employed and working as an author. The lady immediately put me on hold.

I then spent five minutes listening to a computer called Enya singing about “Sail Away” or something. Eventually the insurance lady returned and sheepishly informed me that they would not insure my van. I asked her why? She told me that it was due to my change in employment.

At this point I lost it.

“So young lady”, I patronised her, “you are telling me that when I was an IT Director working 60 hours plus most weeks, driving hundreds of miles whilst ranting into a hands free mobile phone you were happy to insure me. But now that I live the life of Riley, casually flitting from town to town at my own pace and driving much slower now I’m footing the bill, that I”m a higher risk?”

“It’s not me it’s the underwriters.” she responded, “I’ll give them another call”.

Before I could stop her, she switched the computer singing lady back on and I spent many more minutes on hold. The response was no different, IT Directors “yes”, self employed writers “sod off”.

Oh bollocks, a five minute call to renew a policy had now morphed into half a days worth of information gathering and messing about upon insurance websites. It turns out that Equity Star are not the only company who discriminate against authors and the search was elongated further as I attempted to find a company that understood that we don’t spend all day smoking opium, quaffing hemlock and answering every question with “forsooth”. It took me nearly a day to come up with a reasonable quote which meant our kitchen looked a bit like this as my van packing was delayed. Luckily my wife is used to this as it looks like that before most of my mountain bike rides anyway.

After the van insurance issue I had to buy food for the trip. What could possibly go wrong there? Simply go to Sainsburys, pile beer, doughnuts, Mars bars and beef burgers into a trolley then pay for it. Sorted. Well, there is now a significant complication that I have to deal with. You may recall that I recently went for a health check. On the day all of my scores were acceptable for a man of my age, but I was to wait for my cholesterol reading as this takes a while to process. Recently I received a letter from the doctor with some bad news, my readings are higher than average.

I nearly phoned them back for a long rant as to how this was impossible as I have a toast rack for a chest and cycle over two hundred miles a week. But then I thought about it. The large volume of exercise has caused me to fall into the “I can eat and drink whatever I like trap” and the trap gets wider at the end of each cycle ride. I get home and binge eat whatever I can find, biscuits, cakes, cheese, ice cream, crisps and half the contents of the refrigerator. I never pass up the offer of something unhealthy as I can always “cycle it off” tomorrow and usually I do.

But some of this crap must still be hanging around even after a two hour interval session. So I’ve resolved to turn over a new leaf and cut all of the crap from my diet. This has added hours to my pre-trip shopping as every single item I would have taken is graded “fat bastard”. Modern food labelling has been incredibly helpful in denying me access to anything that tastes remotely nice. Basically all I have packed are grapes, fish fingers and lettuce. I’m not convinced that this will sustain a working cyclist, but I’m determined to get top marks at the next visit to the doctors.

Then I had to deal with my route planning. Well actually I didn’t because a workman went “hammer drill happy” in Old Town Swindon and cut off our power for an entire morning. I immediately lost all of the routes I was working on and was unable to console myself with an episode of Bargain Hunt or a game on the Wii. I abandoned the house and went shopping instead, but that was out of the question as the shops were all broken as well. Traffic was chaos with the traffic lights shut down and I hate to think why the woman was stood outside of the local massage parlour having a fag. What electrical thing does she need to continue her trade?

Another half a day lost and to be frank I’m amazed that I made it up here at all. Scotland was clearly pleased to see me as it sent out a welcome committee of approximately three hundred million.........midges. For once I was ready for them and had covered all exposed flesh in a variety of repellants, but midge number 10334467 remained undeterred. In a heroic act of selfless courage she flew up my shorts and entered the underpant zone. With no regards for her own safety she bravely bit me in the “nether” region. This is after said region had remained unwashed after many hours driving and mountain biking. I doubt she made it back out, but she can die knowing that her legacy lives on in the discomfort I am currently suffering. (I hope all the Insectologists reading this note well my efforts to keep this blog factually accurate by correctly sexing the midge).

Tired and almost defeated I set out from Glentrool Holiday park for ride number one of this series. The rain and wind held off as did the traffic. It was eighty miles of pure self-indulgence as I raved into the dictaphone about the roads, scenery and situation. Sat here typing this, all of the week’s trials are forgotten. It’s amazing how a bike ride can do this, it seems to reset the soul to the default position of “Well pleased with being alive”. Although I do face my final trial later due to the notice below pinned up in the showers.

Dave

10th June 2011

WEEK 24 >>>>>>>>