The wrong shape…
Lungs burning, legs screaming, sweat pouring – kind of sums up most of my early Mountain Biking days. Trying desperately to keep up with my club mates – it didn’t work. The Saturday spin leader, who’s frustration with my pace was about to bubble over, once said “why don’t you wait here, we’ll be back in 20 mins.” A hour later they returned in time to roll down to the car park. In fairness they were all a bit hard-core, but even on the much peer-pressured ‘no one gets dropped social spins', they were gone on the first climb and never looked back – the frustration, the anger!
Survival in Svalbard.
I’m in Longyearbyen, Svalbard – 1,200 km north of the Arctic Circle. We are about to set off on a two-day expedition to the abandoned Russian mining town of Pyramiden. With all the grace of a beached walrus, I throw my leg over the snowmobile for the very first time. Ahead of me lie 200 kms of Svalbard tundra. I can’t help wondering if this time I really have bitten off more than I can chew!
The Polar Bears of Greenland’s Forbidden Coast.
Two days before I’m due to land in Iceland, a brief email from the skipper simply reads:
“There’s a storm brewing in the Denmark Strait, the forecast from Sunday to Tuesday is crap, so to get ahead of it, we’re leaving 24 hours early.”
Panic! Change flights. Cancel meetings. Pack bags. Kiss wife.
“SRAM muck” …pffft!
There’s probably a touch of Flann O’Brien in all us bikers – ‘part man, part bicycle’ - and as we all know, a mountain bike, like many things in life, is far greater than the sum of its parts.
Moral Panic…
When out shooting mountain bike events, not only do I need to haul myself around the mountains chasing riders, I also need to carry around 20kg of expensive camera gear. For a couple of seasons before the eMTB revolution, I dabbled with off-road motorbikes. The first of which was a 125cc pit-bike, which was a great giggle. I looked absolutely ridiculous on it, but who cares.
Mining for spies in the High Arctic.
I’ve only managed to travel south of the equator once (so far) - that was back in 2009 when I sailed through the Beagle Channel and around Cape Horn on Skip Novak’s ‘Pelagic Australis’. That expedition started and finished in the Chilean Naval town of Puerto Williams on Isla Navarino, the southernmost permanent settlement in the world at 54º 56’ South - just over 2,000 nautical miles from the South Pole. Ever since then (and probably because of mild OCD) I’ve always felt the need to complete the set and visit its northernmost equivalent – in 2017, I was fortunate enough to do just that.
