My Twenty Eighth Week as a Budding Author

This week’s Countryfile weather forecast foretold of a brief parting of the clouds and some potentially clement weather to the west of Great Britain. This coincided nicely with my plan to tidy up the Welsh section of the book with some riding smattered with photography. I rounded up the majority of my cycling paraphernalia, gathered some light reading material, cleared Co-op’s shelves of Pot Noodles and in no time at all was paying the exorbitant entrance fee on the west side of the Severn Bridge.

Two rides were planned, both should probably be rebadged as climbs given the ascent required to complete them. On Tuesday I fought my way around the first, which included an unplanned diversion to a Welsh Post Office in order to satisfy a major coca-cola craving. That evening I collapsed into the van and tried to do some writing. I failed, completely and utterly shattered I reached for some reading material to divert me from the lactic acid burns coursing through my muscles.

The nearest thing to hand was a mountain bike magazine. I opened it, turned to the lead article and within minutes my face was covered in phlegm. Actually, that last bit was a metaphor. It would be dead clever if magazine articles really could spit at you, but would put me off digging out my old “Punk’s not dead” magazines from the attic. You see the author of the article was having a right old rant about mountain biking. It started out with a bit of a dig at those who don’t ride as much as they should, quoting stupid domestic issues that get in the way such as dealing with the responsibilities of procreation and earning enough to stay alive. I yawned my way through this as the author vitriolically [not sure that’s a word Dave. Ed.] spat his opinion 6 inches from my face..and was almost prepared to let it go as a poor bit of mountain biking Clarksonising [not sure about that one either Dave. Ed]. But then I read a sentence that proposed the following; every road riding mountain biker is a mountain biker ruined.

This caught my attention. Am I a mountain biker ruined? Actually, I think anyone looking at me riding a mountain bike would coin that phrase regardless of the deviation into road riding. But seriously, does road riding ruin mountain bikers? has it taken me away from the joys of riding off road and the challenges that present themselves?

And so I began to list all of the aspects of mountain biking that I loved and tried to work out whether these could possibly apply to road riding. The list would have been physical, but the only paper I had to hand was the previous day’s newspaper and I’d attempted the sudoko. Every single area of whitespace had numbers scrawled in blue biro. The sudoku had three great big blue lines through it, a tear and the phrase “Oh f***king hell” scraped across it.

Luckily, I can just about remember the list which went something like this:-

• sense of adventure, going places other people don’t
• technical challenge
• being out there in the scenery
• coming home with a good story to tell
• communing with nature
• spending money I can’t afford on things that make no rational sense..but are lovely
• companionship and banter

That’s not a bad list to start with and on face value it looks like Mr “Metaphorical Spitter” was right and road riding would never live up to this set of values. But then I thought back to Tuesday’s ride and something didn’t feel right. As I parted the curtains of fatigue and looked back at it, his hypothesis began to disassemble itself right in front of my face.

Let’s take this snippet of mapping as a starter for ten. The eagle eyed roadies out there will have their hand up in the air immediately. “Dave, it’s The Tumble”, they’ll say, “I’ve ridden that during [insert sportive or road race here]...however, we carried on along the B road and didn’t turn right like your route does?”. And that’s because no sensible event organiser would ever take a thousand riders down that road. Look at it, it’s tiny and yellow and has DASHES either side. The Ordnance Survey key tells you that this means “Desperately small road, probably knackered don’t go here you might meet a fierce tractor”.

But I couldn’t resist it. My sense of ruined-but-was-once-a-mountainbiker dragged me down that road and to be perfectly frank the experience was as good as any mountain bike descent I’ve ever survived. It was steep as hell, it wound all over the place, the surface was dodgy which required realtime decision making on line choice and it was littered with hazards including potholes, a farmer, a lost tourist in a VW and a very dark section in trees designed to thwart those wearing sunglasses. Any sensible cyclist would have stopped, ridden back up and taken the proper route down from the mountain. I did completely the opposite, I sped up, swerved round as much as I could and held on for dear life for the rest. At the bottom I slammed on the brakes, narrowly avoided colliding with traffic on the A4042, leant back...and laughed.

This is exactly what I do and how I feel when mountain biking. I love looking at maps and wondering what would happen if I rode down that bridleway? Usually the answer is a sleepless night due to an overdose of stinging nettles, but sometimes I find a hidden gem. And now I’m doing exactly the same thing on the road. Granted the bike is a bit different and the clothes look a little tighter on me, but I look a mess in whatever I wear so you’re not going to get me on that.

Ok, adventure and technical challenge ticked off. In my case both apply to both disciplines, we’ll move on to scenery. There’s absolutely no question that the right mountain bike ride takes you right into the heart of some of the most beautiful parts of our green and pleasant land. I’ve ridden up mountains, through valleys, in more woods than a serial dogger, over, along and through many water features and on one occasion that we will keep quiet about..a tower block. But to be fair, the road riding list is almost the same (putting aside the tower block), it’s just that the aspect is different. On the mountain bike you are in it, sometimes fighting it but often looking out, with the road bike you’re an outsider looking in.

Another aspect of road bike riding is in scenery volume. Illustrated by Tuesday’s ride. On the mountain bike I’d have been able to do about forty miles of the loop off-road, taking in two of the mountains and a bit of the farmland as well. On the road bike I covered 90 miles, saw the Brecons, both mountains, valleys, farmland, hills, more hills, even bloody more fecking hills, some sod off great big hills I wasn’t expecting and an amazing little road that wound between two striking great mounds of green. With mountain biking you can sip the scenery but physical ability prevents getting completely pissed on it. Road biking’s like drinking lager, you can take bloody great quaffs of scenery in a single ride. Nine pints is possible if you’re up for a big session but you’re going to feel rough the next day.

Right, it’s a one-all-draw on scenery. Can stories or encounters with nature tip the balance either way? Frankly, no. Again, I refer you to Tuesday’s ride. I stated above that my mission included photography, which given that it is a solo mission, means pictures of me. This in turn meant a little subterfuge to steer my eventual reader away from the fact that many of the pictures are the author. To that end, I purchased a red cycling top and planned to take photos without helmet (we’ll discuss that another time) and using different glasses. The red top was size medium, bought in haste and not properly tried on. Sadly I’m now size small.

Us ruined-mountain-biking cyclists put stuff in the rear pockets of our cycling top. So you can guess what happened when I loaded the already too big red top with sandwich, tools, tube, phone and camera. It sagged, a lot. The fecking thing went nearly down to my knees and of course I discovered this just as I was about to set off. The only answer was to don a gillet (bad move really hot day) and use it to stuff the excess baggage up the back. From the rear I looked like an upside down Dawn French in a wonderbra, and I rode like her, constantly having to stuff my wayward back breasts back up into their container. See, there's a story. It's not Harry Potter, but you cannot deny that wry things happen on the road as well.

Stories done, we move onto nature, or more specifically animals. On Tuesday’s ride I had another revelation, in the past six months I’ve become a connoisseur of sheep. They are flaming well everywhere, it’s not just Wales, they’re all over the country and riding on the road brings you into contact with many and varied varieties. In fact I’ve seen so many that I’ve found myself critiquing them, marking them out of ten for size, shape, wool style and hygiene, head gear and bleat. I even talk to some of them, this may be a sort of madness that afflicts those riding long mileages, but often you get a weird sheep stare that warrants a retort. It’s usually something along the lines of “Who the f**k are you staring at mint sauce?”. Completely lacking in finesse or originality but strangely satisfying knowing that the fence prevents any retaliatory action from the sheep. Road biking brings you as close to nature as mountain biking does, with the added bonus of a fence as a safety net.

I can quickly skip over spending money as my wife Helen will affirm. I waste money in equal measure across my entire fleet of bicycles. No steed receives special measure, each are equally spoiled.

Let’s finish then on companionship. I’ve met many good friends through riding off road there’s no question of that. Out on rides, we tend to hoon down something, stop have a chat, hoon down something else, fall off, laugh at each other and occasionally repair to the pub where the falling over and laughing continues. The road experience is a different one, these days I meet people as they’re just tapping along. They’ll catch me up or I’ll catch up with them. We’ll chat about the route, the day, the weather, our bikes whatever as we’re riding. In fact on Tuesday I met a guy called “Mike” on The Tumble. I passed him actually as I weigh about Kate Moss whilst he was normal. I could have ridden apace to the top and snarkily waved at him as he struggled behind. But instead I waited and we rode over the top together.

On reflection, this was the best part of the day as we discussed our riding, our plans and why we were out doing it in the first place. Mike is training for a sportive, bloody good luck to him, I hope he has a great day out. I enjoyed connecting with another cyclist for a brief few minutes and it wouldn’t have happened if I really was a ruined mountain biker. Because I am not.

You see what I am is a mountain biker who’s taken all they love about the sport and applied it to the road. And I honestly feel that in my case it fits. Mr “Metaphorical Spitter” may have set out to decry my dabblings with the tarmac, but what he has actually done is reaffirm them. Somewhere in all this bollocks I write, I winged on about finding a “voice” for the book. Mr “Metaphorical Spitter” has helped me towards that voice and I’m now energised with a new passion to remove the dryness, boredom, unfriendliness and lack of adventure so often implied by riding on the road. 

Even better than that is that I’ve found my perfect customer. Please let me introduce Alex, he takes the piss....of me ... a lot. Alex has me down as a cycling cross dresser who’s now moved to the full sex change. He’s a die hard mountain biker, but has had the odd dabble himself (bi-curious we call it). Alex recently wrote in jest that he’d not buy my book because it is focused on the road. He’s a bloody liar though as the true reason is that, coming from Yorkshire, his wallet has been passed down the family unopened for generations. Like a vintage wine they’re too scared to open it in case the contents turn foul.

If I can get Alex to buy my book I’ve succeeded on two fronts. I’ve extracted money from a northerner, but more importantly I’ve convinced a child of the baggies that their thrills can also be had on road.

Dave

15th July 2011

WEEK 29>>>>>