My Fiftieth Week as a Budding Author
Anyone who has ever been involved in planning anything will know that there are two types of plan. Tactical and strategic. Tactical plans are supposed to be about dealing with the “now”. In reality they should really be classed as documentation because they are usually a case of writing down the things you are doing today that you should have done ages ago. Strategic plans are done by people with useless jobs who deliver nothing. These muppets sit in their offices and pronounce that in the future we should all be doing things “like this”. Yes, you’ve guessed it, I’ve had the word “Strategy” in many a job title.
These pronouncements are based upon evidence gathered at highly expensive conferences paid for by their companies and populated by a similar vein of useless guessing future pundit. The speakers rattle on in a visionary manner describing a future where we’ll all have cars that fly, but this future is never delivered. I watched every single episode of Tomorrow’s World and nothing proposed is now in my house. You may argue that the CD is, but Kieren Prendiville spread jam on one and it worked, not in my CD player it doesn’t. (This may be because he used a Bee Gees CD that would sound the same regardless).
So given that strategic planning is only done by useless layabouts you will now have a complete lack of surprise to know that I’ve been doing some. Specifically I’ve been cogitating next year. There will eventually come a time when I’ve finished writing this book and I will need to look for my next writing project. Admittedly that time may well coincide with the delivery of my state pension, but that’s what strategic planning is all about. It’s important to prepare for the future no matter how far away.
In the brainstorming session of one, we wiped the whiteboard clean and the chairman asked for some themes for the next writing project. All assembled looked at each other blankly for a while, until one brave soul approached the whiteboard and wrote “Cycling”. A collective sigh of despair was heard and we had a long debate around alternative subjects. Subjects such as “tropical climates”, “Clare Grogan”, “luxury hotels”, “classic train journeys” and “wankle engined cars” were mooted, but all discounted by either cost or lack of availability. One bright spark suggested “learning to fly” but was assured in no uncertain terms that whilst Helen would probably have a severe problem with Clare Grogan as the study matter, she’d tear the whiteboard into a thousand pieces and hide the savings account book if “flying lessons” were to be proposed.
Therefore, “Cycling” was unanimously agreed and we then moved on to specifics. Another long and turgid debate ensued with a certain individual continually trying to bring Clare Grogan back into the frame. The others laughed at his suggestions of combining this wee Scottish lass with two wheeled shenanigans. This is not really in the spirit of brainstorming where every idea should be allowed its say. Eventually we were in agreement and I can now proudly announce that the next project.....is a secret. But I will state that it’s got much harder rides in it, will take more than a year to write and will not be done full time or maybe even as a book.
Now that we’d agreed on the principle, we started on the plan which led to a list of things I need to ride next year. One of them is a twenty four hour mountain bike race and I am required to ride it alone. My friend, Russ, knows this already and he face palmed himself as he remembered the epic that was our last twenty four hour race. I’ll spare you the detail, but it ended up with me sulking behind a bush waiting for the whole thing to end.
Clearly I need to toughen up a little and another friend called Nicky knows this as well. She had read one of my recent blogs where I was moaning on about my lot on the bike and how hard it was. To shut me up, Nicky mailed me a little gift.
You’ll probably not be able to make out the inscription. It reads “Toughen the Fuck Up”. Now I know I said I would try to swear less in these blogs, but Nicky made me do it. And she’s right. I need to TTFU a hell of a lot more if I’m going to complete a 24 on my own.
Consequently, I’ve resolved to ride my bike all the way through winter. Thus ensuring that I arrive in 2012 with a good base level of fitness and a complete absence of chocolate around the waist. This is not as easy as it sounds when the country is being assaulted by hurricanes. Hurricane Bawbag put paid to my Scotland trip and hurricane Barse is doing everything it can to stop me training down south. Bike rides have to be done when opportunity presents.
At the weekend I was down to marshall at a cyclocross race twenty five miles from home. I could have driven to it, but Nicky’s bracelet screamed “TTFU” and so I decided to bike it instead. Looking at the map, the roads wound their way to the race but a huge great byway forged a direct line from close to my house to the event. I rummaged through the garage for a suitable bike and popped out armed with a singlespeed cyclocross bike, last seen at the Three Peaks race. I was a bit worried by the lack of gears, but the TTFU mantra shouted me down and off I gurned to the race.
The problem with maps is they’re so neat. Look at the picture below. Nice orderly byway marked in green, like an off road motorway ready to speed the progress of an idiot singlespeeding cross rider. Actually, an idiot, singlespeeding, hungover cross rider who failed to refuse wine and champagne at a party the previous evening. When planning the route I did not envisage that the local farmer would have ploughed this byway with his tractor’s great big wheels. I had no idea that the subsequent ruts would be filled to brimming with cold, dung laced water. I’d also missed the contours and forgotten that the non-mud bits were chalk devoid of any kind of friction whatsoever.
Twenty five horror strewn miles later I made it to the race, covered from head to foot in clay, chalk, faeces and blood. A few competitors signing on looked at me in abject horror in the belief that I’d returned from a recce of the course. I’d lost the ability to speak and managed to mix grunts with sign language to indicate that I’d simply ridden to the race and was a marshall. Their worry moved from course based to that of supervising personnel.
I then stood for four hours in the freezing cold watching people ten times more mental than me try and survive a cyclocross race. Only one bloke smiled and he came last. I silently un-ticked cyclocross races from next year’s todo list. At around 4pm it was time to go home. It was raining hard now and the wind had picked up. Helen had texted offering a lift, two others at the race took pity as the lift offers began to flood in. But yet again, Nicky’s bracelet spoke, “TTFU Dave, TTFU”.
In the fading light I burnt my bridges, affixed lights and squared pedalled up the steep hill leading to the trail. Soon it was properly dark and I switched on the bar mounted torch bathing my wheel in a glorious light. That’s right, the wheel, the trail ahead was as dark as ever but the light fitting was not playing ball. Gravity pulled the light quickly to the floor and a new pedalling rhythm ensued. Pedal, pedal, pedal, dark, lift light up, adjust, pedal, pedal, pedal, dark....etc. To add to my problems it was really cold making me reluctant to remove my gloves which was necessary to properly adjust the light fitting velcro.
Stupidly I carried on like this for miles until I fell neatly into a ditch whilst adjusting the lights. Point taken, I removed my gloves, fixed the mount and then struggled to replace the gloves as my hands were so cold. By now the rain was properly beating upon my head and arms and legs and chest and arse and bike and camera (which subsequently expired). This wasn’t any rain, it was TTFU rain designed to test the limits of idiot riders stranded in the middle of nowhere in the dark on a singlespeed. It found it’s way to everywhere that is Dave, no crevices were spared and the only remedy was to remount and ride.
But now riding was an order of magnitude harder. The ruts and mess mentioned earlier were even worse in the dark. It was harder to anticipate which rut to choose, some led to mid-track-lakes, others closed in claustrophobically and one contained a huge rat that scared the bejesus out of me as it dived into my light. The GPS mileage countdown slowed to a crawl and I fought for every mile. My hands became inoperable, mercifully the bike was absent of gears and the brakes near useless in the wet and slime. Hands were not required only legs were in demand.
Hours later I forlornly knocked at the back door, well when I say “knocked” I flapped my hands against it in some sort of camp face slapping parody. Helen opened it with that age worn look of “You bloody idiot, what time do you call this and why on earth do you look like a recently dug carrot with a fetid rucksack on its back?”. We managed to extract me from my clothes, ruining the kitchen floor in the process and I was despatched to the shower to raise core temperature above freezing.
[ARTISTS IMPRESSION MINUS WATER, DARK AND FAECES]
As I dried myself I glanced at the TTFU bracelet. Maybe it had begun to work. That was without doubt one of the hardest rides of the year and all I’d set out to do was get myself to a race and back. I’ll be wearing it for the rest of winter, a stark reminder every time I begin to wane.
In other news, my career in media has now gone stellar. Ok, another exaggeration, I made it onto Radio Stoke for a few minutes on Wednesday interviewed about my interest in Tommy Godwin. The full piece is here you will need to fast forward to 2:09:34 where I butt in after “A Hard Day’s Night”.
The Tommy Godwin project has been crystallised further by all of the recent interest and the fact that another bloke has written a book about him. I knew this was happening, but he has done well to get his research done so quickly as it has taken me an age. I’d set out to document the Year Record in its entirety. But like Captain Scott I’ll be second to the pole which means I probably should wait to see what the other book is like before committing mine to print.
I guess this is a problem endemic in writing non-fiction, you can never be sure that someone somewhere isn’t tapping away at the same book as you. I was going to get all down about it but then Nicky’s bracelet told me to TTFU. The Year Record needs to be documented for the sake of cycling rather than Dave. I’ll carry on regardless with my research and the mad plan to ride a week of it. Let’s see where it goes but most importantly let’s tell as many people as we can about it in the process.
Dave
16th December 2011
ps. To the driver of WM10 TXS at Seagry on Thursday morning 11.30am. My gesture was “Get off the phone dearie you’re driving”, not “Hello, nice day isn’t it, please veer all over the road with an iphone glued to your ear, I’ve got nothing else better to do than be killed today” FFS
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