Many thanks for Triathlon Scotland who promoted our book ‘TwinBikeRun’ this Christmas. If you didn’t get a copy for Christmas then you can still get a copy here.

.

Every year I download an info-graphic of my Strava training stats from https://veloviewer.com/infographic

You can see last years here

This year my aim was to do more than 2021….

I was pleased to get over 4000 miles. I reached the Alaskan town of Juneau. Which is one of the only cities on Earth which can not be reached by road due to being surrounded by sea and mountain. It is sort of apt that the place I reached by swimming, biking and running is one of the few places were those three skills are required to get there!

The aim for the year was Celtman. You can read about it here https://twinbikerun.com/?s=celtman or watch the video

My strangest (sporting) experience of the year was attempting to use St Andrews Swimming pool.

“Hello St. Andrew’s swimming pool, what time do you close?”

– 1430 but not if you want to swim. The tills close at 1330. You can’t swim after that.

“I don’t want to swim. I want a shower. Is that ok?”

– The tills close at 1330. You cant have a shower either.

“But the pool is open until 1430?”

– Yes that’s correct.

I arrive at 1300. The receptionist sees me and says:

– your not expecting to swim are you?

“No, just a shower. “

– That’s fine. We close the tills at 1330

“Yes – I know !”

I head through to the showers. The life guard comes over to speak to me

– I hope your not swimming!

“Is this to do with the tills?”

– Yes they close at 1330

Why does the pool not want me to swim ??! What happens when the tills close that mean I can’t go near their water ? Why is it open until 1430 if I can’t do anything ?

I don’t think I’ll ever know the answer.

This year also saw what would be my final match of squash. After 15 years of playing once a week against the same man, he emigrated to Stranraer! Which might as well be Australia, as it’s so far away.

In this time we have played nearly 500 matches and I won the grand total of 20. So to anyone who says it’s not the winning, it’s the taking part that counts… what a load of twaddle. It’s brutal losing every week. good riddance to him!

Just kidding. squash was one of the highlights of my week. I’ve started playing badminton instead but its not the same.

Overall, I got through the year happy and I can’t ask more than that.

Happy New Year Everyone.

My eyesight isn’t very good. It’s not as bad as Al Pacino’s vision in Scent Of a Woman but it is getting towards a Mr Magoo level of poorness. Thankfully, I’ve not crashed my car… yet!

I suspect anyone reading this who understands either of these references is also old enough to be experiencing similar vision related problems.

My vision has deteriorated to the point where I am unable to read a book at night. The low light level means my eyes struggle to focus on the letters on a page.

I tried every fix I could think of – turning on all the lights, using a Kindle, reading whilst wearing a head-torch. None of them helped. After a few minutes the words would go out of focus and I’d have to stop reading.

So I threw money at the problem. I decided to spend more money on one lamp than I have spent on all the lamps I have ever bought in my life. A serious problem needed a serious solution so I bought a serious reader lamp – https://www.seriousreaders.com/

And all I can say is that is worth every penny I paid for it because for the first time in years I can now read in the evening. I can read for hours without any eye strain or issues. It is life changing. I can now read properly again in the evening.

Books I enjoyed – Blood, Sweat, and Pixels is the story behind a number of hit computer games. If you’ve ever thought it would be great to write games for a living then read this. It will put you off for ever. Writing games is very difficult and often not much fun.

The Runner: Four Years Living and Running in the Wilderness annoyed me as he didn’t live and run in the wilderness. He would pop into his local town if he needed anything. It should have been called “The Runner: Four years of hard living but thankfully lots of friends visited and I was close enough to civilization that I didn’t feel I was missing out on anything.” but that would have been harder to market.

The Final Empire is written by Bryan Sanderson. I’ve only just started it but its great so far. I bought it after reading that Bryan had created the most successful Kickstarter campaign of all time. He raised nearly $15million dollars in the first 24 hours of launch. If that many people like his books then it must be worth a try….

Breath is the type of book that would be much better if it was a long magazine article. Its worth a read but like a lot of science books it goes on well past the point it needs to.

and lastly the worst book of the year was Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office and You Can, Too!

Don’t read anything written by anyone who uses an exclamation mark! They must be a moron!

Last year I wrote “The best thing that can be said about movies in 2021 is that it was a better year than 2020. “

Unfortunately this year wasn’t much better. Due to covid restrictions less films were made in 2021 and the ones that did should have stayed restricted.

The biggest disappointment was The Northman. A film that had great actors, a great director and a viking setting that you rarely see on film but the end result was a very boring film. One man at my screening turned to his friend at the end and said “A good review in The Guardian is not a recommendation, its a warning!” I think, even Guardian readers would have struggled to enjoy it.

The best documentary of the year came out in 2021 but I only saw it this year. The Rescue is the story of the Thai cave rescue. The plot is so unbelievable that if it was a film you’d say it was too unrealistic. But its all true. Later in the year it came out as a film starring Colin Farrell. Don’t bother with it, the documentary is much better.

The worst film of the year was Elvis. Tom Hanks starred as Widow Twanky from the pantomime…wait a sec. I’ve just read he’s supposed to be Elvis’s manager Colonel Tom. His performance was atrocious. His accent visited more countries than a Coldplay world tour. One minute he was dutch, then french, then woody from Toy Story. A truly terrible film. If the King wasn’t alive then he’d turn in his grave. Elvis is alive. Right?

Best joint film of the year is Everything, Everywhere All at Once. A film that reminds you that love is why we are all here. If you don’t cry at the bit with the inanimate rocks then you are a emotionless robot! Which I have been accused of. All I have to say to that is – “Syntax error – does not compute.”

And equally as good is The Banshees Of Inshireen,which asks the question what do you give up to do something you love and is it worth it? A question apt to anyone who spends there days training for races.

Years’ ago, I paid a small fortune for two tickets to see Adele in concert. I gave them to my wife for her birthday, assuming I’d get invited. That the unwritten rule… right? If I buy two tickets as a present then I get to go too. Everyone knows that… except my wife.

She took one look at my exceedingly expensive purchase and said “My friend will love this!” She immediately phoned her friend and told her the good news that they were going to sit on very expensive seats whilst listening to Adele perform.

Did I mention just how expensive these tickets were?

But I’m not bitter… maybe just a little bitter.

I share my Spotify account with my wife. Which is my excuse for why Adele features on my most played in 2022 list.

In this list, only James are someone I actually listened to.

2022 was not a great year for music. Lots of albums came out but most suffered from the modern problem of good single, crap album.

The art of making a coherent interesting album seems to have been lost.

Here’s three examples of songs I enjoyed in Albums that disappointed.

In 2004 a friend and I tried to to drive from Plymouth to Dakar in a car bought for £100. In August 2022, Livejournal sent me an email to congratulate me on my 18 anniversary of starting a journal with them. When I checked the link I discovered they still had all my old online journal (not called a blog then!) entries. I thought would be fun to publish them again.

18 December 2004 – Team Smokey Bandit in ruin/Rouan…

Despite emergency repairs on the side of a french motorway, our car is experiancing major transmission problems. It and us may not be going much further as both the Chrysler garage in Rouan and our very helpful contact at Chrysler in London are doubtful that our automatic gearbox will survive for much longer.

We are discussing options and will let you know what happens next.

A major thank you to Team Leak who stuck by us last night and made sure that our car reached Rouan.

19 December 2004 – The end of the road?

Beauty, our Chrysler Town and Country, was officially pronounced dead late on saturday. She has now been scrapped. We can’t explain how gutted we feel to lose her – we’ve been planning for this for more than 6 months, and to think that this could be the end of the road is incredibly hard to take.

We knew, before we even bought the car, that there was one risk we could not mitigate – Beauty was an automatic, and while we were confident that we could fix anything else that went wrong with her, we knew that if the automatic transmission went there was next to nothing that could be done. And there was nothing either we, or the guys at Chrysler could do in advance to protect against it. The gamble we took was that it would hold. Our luck ended on the side of a miserable french motorway late at night.

So what now? Well, we’ve made our way back to Paris. Andrew is going to stay in Paris for the time being, while Gav is making his way back to London, to see whether or not we can get a new car and start again – we’re only 3 days behind everyone else, so it’s not unrealistic that we could catch up. The trouble is actually likely to be the paperwork – it took us months to put all the insurance, visas, ownership and export documents in place, to try and turn all of that around in a day may just be asking too much. We’re hopeful, but at the same time it’s a tall order.

Thank you to everyone who has helped us so far – we’ll try not to let you down. Even if we can’t get back on the road to Dakar, we’ll do something else, so keep checking back to see what happens.

27 December 2004 – Fitness freaks

We’re getting over the disappointment of not being able to complete the Plymouth – Dakar challenge by throwing ourselves into our new challenge – the Edinburgh Bicycle Co-operative’s New Year’s Day Triathlon.

It’s fair to say that in the run up to the start of the Rally our preparations didn’t allow us much time for anything – including going to the gym. No swimming. No cycling. No running. Fortunately we did have time for a fair amount of Christmas eating and drinking though.

So from the time we got back and got accepted for the triathlon we have just 10 days to get ourselves fit enough to take part in the triathlon – swimming 500 metres, cycling 20 kilometres then running 5 kilometres. With no stopping in between. We get out of the water, jump on our bikes. We get off our bikes and start running straight away.

So there were no seconds of christmas dinner (well, ok, a very small plate of seconds). We can’t have too much to drink on new year’s eve.

The big question of course is – who is going to win? The Bandit has more triathlon experience, and its fair to say is the better swimmer. However Arbroath Smokey is a pretty good runner, competing in marathons and half marathons on a regular basis. We reckon it’s going to be a pretty close thing – keep following us for training updates, and the all important results!

[2022 Comment – This was the final report and the first time I’d ever though of taking part in a triathlon. But it would be a few years later before I actually entered my first race as I couldn’t get through to Edinburgh to take part as I didn’t have a car and I hadn’t realised that trains didn’t run on New Year’s Day. D’oh!]

In 2004 a friend and I tried to to drive from Plymouth to Dakar in a car bought for £100. In August 2022, Livejournal sent me an email to congratulate me on my 18 anniversary of starting a journal with them. When I checked the link I discovered they still had all my old online journal (not called a blog then!) entries. I thought would be fun to publish them again.

16 December 2004 – An impending sense of … something

What is this funny butterfly feeling in my stomach? Is it nerves? Excitment? Fear? Panic? Or just that Chinese from last night?

This time tomorrow Team Bandit will be well on their way, hopefully arriving at Dover awaiting the ferry that will transport them on towards their adventure.

Asked how they were feeling about the big trip now looming less than 24 hours ahead of them, The Bandit replied “Sorry, can’t talk now, too much work to finish before we leave.” Arbroath Smokey was more forthcoming however: “What do you mean 24 hours? We’ve got loads of time, we’re not leaving till December. What do you mean it’s December already..?”

17 December 2004 – Smoke Signals Part 1

If its London and its December it must be dull, grey and raining heavily. Despite that, preparations are underway for a 11am departure to Dover – which is you know pretty close (we think) to Plymouth. Well, almost as close as Banjul is to Dakar.

We’ve spent the last few hours ensuring that the car is fully “pimped” with logos and graphics (Check out http://www.crash.net and http://www.rollonfriday.com for pictures later today) and we’ve now moved on to the all important “have you seen my passport?n I’m sure I left it around here somewhere…” loading of the car.

Apart from my complete failure to remember to bring my flat keys – Iain, make sure your in the flat when I get back! – we’re all set to start the Plymouth (now Dover) to Dakar (now Banjul) Challenge!

[2022 Spoiler warning – we weren’t!]

In 2004 a friend and I tried to to drive from Plymouth to Dakar in a car bought for £100. In August 2022, Livejournal sent me an email to congratulate me on my 18 anniversary of starting a journal with them. When I checked the link I discovered they still had all my old online journal (not called a blog then!) entries. I thought it would be fun to publish them again.

7 November 2004 – Mr Smokey’s Orientation 101

So they drive Plymouth to Banjul via Dakar. 

It all sounds so easy. First they go to France then Spain then Morocco. They take a quick trip across the desert by passing through Mauritania before ending up with a short ride through the Gambia to reach Senegal.

Easy.

Or at least that’s what they thought.

Turns out, these countries are slightly bigger than they anticipated. It turns out that some of the signposts (that’s if they’re lucky enough to actually see any signposts) might not even be in English. Worst of all under cross examination Mr Smokey had to concede that he didn’t actually know where Senegal was.

“Africa”, He said, “On the coast, I think”

So Team Bandit bought maps. Loads of maps. Road maps of Western Africa. Individual maps for each country. Such detailed and highly precise maps that even Mr Smokey must surely know where Team Bandit is going.

We were wrong.

“Africa” He said. “Down the coast, I think.”

Mr Bandit despairs, he really does…

8 November 2004 – Bandit Jones’ Diary

Sunday 7 November 2004

Number of finger nails with oil under them: 10
Number of minor injuries: 2
Number of new spark plugs on Beauty: 4
Number of swear words used: too [bleep]ing many
How absolutely useless are Halfords: very

A productive weekend for Team Bandit as we continued to prep Beauty for her holiday in the sun. The Bandit earned his mechanical stripes, putting to good use the brand new shiny red box of tools we bought last week. Beauty had a mini service: new spark plugs, engine oil and oil filter, replaced the leaky coolant hose, and probably most important of all put the Chrysler hood ornament (a five pointed star) up there at the front of the bonnet.

We also scored a major success on ebay (the auction website where we bought Beauty in the first place), procuring some all important sand waffles for a knock-down price, of which more later.

15 November 2022 – They’re Waffely Versatile!

Our sand waffles arrived safely at the end of last week, causing a great amount of excitement at the Bandit’s flat. Well, ok, truth be told only the Bandit was really excited – Karly, and Ian (the Bandit’s flatmate) were pretty non-plussed.

Right about now you’re probably wondering (with good reason) just what the heck sand waffles are. You’ve heard of belgian waffles, which are often eaten at breakfast time with whipped cream and a strawberry conserve. You might even have heard of potato waffles, which come from the freezer section and they go great with eggs, burgers, fish, fingers – fish fingers… you know the rest of the song.

Fortunately sand waffles are not a member of any of the food groups. For a start they’re too big to fit in your freezer, and would be too filling to eat for breakfast. 

Rather, they are made of glass reinforced plastic, are about a metre long, 30 centimetres wide and 5 centimetres deep. You place them under the wheels of the car when you get stuck in sand and can’t get out, and they form a little bridge to help you get out of the sand and get moving. The theory is that once you’ve got some momentum up you can keep going, and as long as you keep a bit of speed up you shouldn’t get stuck in the sand again. And a top tip from the Bandit’s brother – Andrew “Ray Mears Survival Expert” McGinty – tie the sand waffles to the back of the car with a long bit of rope so that you don’t have to stop to pick them up and get stuck in the sand again.

They’re pretty essential then when you consider that we’ll be spending days crossing a desert in a car which, quite frankly, can’t even cope with a daytrip to the beach.

They were another wonder of ebay hunting, and Gav won them, quite literally, by beating the other bidders in the auction by 70 pence with 4 seconds left to go. If that sort of luck stays with us, the trip should be a breeze!

14 December 2004 – They’re Flashy! They’re Bouncy! They’re Flashing Bouncy Balls!

Being popular is a difficult business. 

But if you have something to offer, something that people like about you, then soon you’ll be the coolest kid on the block. But what if you have nothing? What do you do then?

Team Smokey Bandit have no fears on this front, as thanks to Pinsent Masons the team go fully stocked with a box full of fluorescent coloured flashing bouncy balls! Roughly the size of a golf ball, when dropped these things bounce straight back up to you (Wow indeed!). But that’s not the real magic – the clincher is that the bouncing action sets off some crazy disco-party lights! 

Yes, it’s certain that we will be the most popular team when we start handing out the coolest christmas presents in town. Border guards will open gates, desert bandits will wave us through as, once Mr Smokey and Mr Bandit set all the lights going, they will become Africa’s first mobile discoteque!

15 December 2004 – Flu? No, they drove there by car…

In HG Well’s War of the Worlds the evil Martian invaders are defeated by none other than the common cold.

Though these Martian’s had heat rays and tripods and interplanetary crafts, “intelligences greater than man” and “mathematical learning… far in excess of ours” they didn’t have Strepsils or Soothers or lemon flavored lempsip.

Now, Mr Smokey has all these things (plus a bright red nose from two days of constant sniffling) and, he, unlike those lily livered Martians, isn’t going to let a last minute bout of the cold get in the way of preparations for the rally.

With a flight to London booked on Thursday night, Mr Smokey is confident that his umpteen injections for everything Africa can throw at him (surely they must be good for something as simple as the cold?!?) will show this cold what what and ensure Mr Smokey is fighting fit for Friday’s rally.

The common cold?!? The cold’s nothing! Why, in Africa they don’t know the meaning of the word “cold”…

In 2004 a friend and I tried to to drive from Plymouth to Dakar in a car bought for £100. In August 2022, Livejournal sent me an email to congratulate me on my 18 anniversary of starting a journal with them. When I checked the link I discovered they still had all my old online journal (not called a blog then!) entries. I thought it would be fun to publish them again.

11 October 2004 – Falling at the first hurdle…

Sharon, the most patient person in the world, has for the last couple of months kindly been letting us store Beauty in the garage beneath her flat. In doing so she has risked inciting hatred from her neighbours and ridicule from her friends. We’re extremely grateful.

This week, however, Beauty needed to find a new home, as Sharon needs her space back. Not a problem, we thought, she can go out the back of Gav’s flat for a while. So Gav went round on Sunday morning to move her. Now Beauty hasn’t been driven in a few months, so she didn’t quite share Gav’s optimism that she would start first time…

After a bit of a push start, with the long-suffering Karly at the wheel, the engine caught on the second (third… fourth…) attempt. 

“Hmmm, I’m not sure she’s meant to sound like that.”
“Why is she revving so hard?” 
“Sounds like the accelerator pedal is stuck. Can you smell burning…?” 
“Ok, turn it off.”

A brief inspection under the hood later, and Gavin “The Car Doctor” McGinty offers a diagnosis. The accelerator cable is definitely jammed. If only we knew which one the accelerator cable was, and how to unjam it. Also, there appeared to be a mysterious green liquid leaking from one of the hoses. Looks like coolant. Or Limeade. If the car has an automatic Limeade dispenser it’ll be mighty handy, but we’ve yet to find it.

We put a call in to the RAC (who I suspect are going to get to know this car quite well between now and Christmas). A short time later our mechanic, Emma, turns up. She agrees with Gav’s diagnosis, but fortunately she also has the skills to heal Beauty. Actually, within 2 minutes, she’s got her purring like a kitten again, and has fixed the leaky coolant hose. Hmmm, I’m sure we could have done that if we really put our mind to it. As first tests go, then, maybe we should have done better… there won’t be an Emma in the middle of the desert (unless we kidnap her).

23 October 2004 – A Very Bandit Christmas

Countering years of popular belief, Historians have today announced that the date of birth of Jesus, commonly thought to be 25 December, is in fact wrong. They have revised previous schedules and announced that the correct date is in fact closer to 23 October, bringing the popular feast of Christmas forward by some two months.

Or, at least, that’s the way things are in the McGinty household today, we’re taking a rare opportunity that we’re together to have christmas dinner, as Gav will probably be somewhere south of Casablanca on Christmas day.

Merry Christmas, one and all!

24 October 2004 – Does Beauty know what you have planned for her?

A copy of Mr Smokey’s email to the Bandit tonight. Beauty won’t know what’s about to hit her.

“Howdy,
And now a guide to what we need to do to the car courtesy of my paranoia about breaking down in the middle of the Sahara: 
1. Beauty needs to be in sound mechanical order i.e. engine, cooling system, fuel system, suspension, gearbox, transfer box, clutch (or whatever the automatic equivalent is), brakes, steering etc. This is what the garage should do.

2. Drive beauty repeatedly and for long trips to see if she’s up for the journey. 

3. Add bash plate to protect sump and gearbox and cover the tie rods. 

4. Add new springs and shock absorbers.

5. Check battery.

6. New all terrain tires all round. Keep two of the old ones as spares.

7. Have 2-3 spares inner tubes for the tires

8. Miscellaneous equipment: High lift jack, sand ladders, towing strap, shovel or sand spade, spare engine oil, brake oil, warning triangles (these are compulsory in some countries but not sure if it applies to our ones), foot pump, tyre repair kit, block of wood to place under jack, pressure gauge to check tyre pressure when adjusting it for different terrain

Not much really!”

25 October 2004 –

A reply

And now for the Bandit’s response:

“That all seems to make sense Mr T, and good to have it in a list form. Some
comments per your numbering.

1. Hopefully we’ll get a garage to do all this stuff, Alan is going to chase his
guys today, and we’ll see where that takes us, otherwise I’ll start to push on with that.

2. I do need to get Beauty out and about more than she is, alhtough in part I’m reluctant to do so due to lack of MOT / Tax, and the consequences that getting caught could have on my licence… So 2 maybe has to come after 1, and we’ve got her an MOT. I was thinking about a long trip up to Glasgow one weekend, to give us an opportunity to do some scottish PR work.

3. This will either be done as part of 1, or alternatively we’ll sort out the
parts we need and then get it done in Morocco. The cost of a day’s labour from a mechanic down there is £5…

4. This would be nice, is perhaps more of a Could have than a Must have, but if we can get them as part of 1 then all the better.

5. The battery is strong, but it wouldn’t hurt to get a new one, or at least to
carry a spare.

6. Yep, that would be good too, we might need to get onto some kwik-fit style people and start begging 🙂

7. Inner tubes is a good idea, the other thing we’ll try and get is some instant foam sealant stuff, in case we get really stuck.

8. High lift jack (got) 
sand ladders (need to get – though would prefer some sand waffles – their about £70 a pair)
towing strap (need to get)
shovel or sand spade (need to get, will get a snowboarding one that I’ll buy
myself, and then probably an ex-army folding one)
spare engine oil, brake oil (also need spare air filter (at least one) spare oil
filter, and petrol treatment (the further we go the lower the octane rating
gets, and you get a lot of very watered down petrol, we need to keep her running sweet 🙂
warning triangles (we’ll need for France, and useful to have anyway), 
foot pump (got), 
tyre repair kit (need to get) 
block of wood to place under the jack (got), 
pressure gauge to check tyre pressure when adjusting it for different terrain
(is a part of the foot pump).
Also need a decent tool kit.

A lot of this stuff is relatively cheap and easy to buy, but I’m keen that we
get some corporate sponsorship to help us out with this.”

And how many weeks are there to go again…?