Thursday 24 June 2010

And....Relax...

Well as you can see from my last post, I've been fairly busy. Many of you will know what with. And for those of you that don't, it was obviously mountain bike related (the clue is in the name!) Including a couple more rounds of the British Mountain Bike Series, which were pretty wet and miserable in all honesty. Even Margam, and it NEVER rains at Margam. Except when it does rain, and when it rains, boy does it rain!

I was also the Marshal Co-Ordinator on the UCI Cross-Country Mountain Bike World Cup in Dalby for the first time - or the "UCI XCO MTB WC" as 'they' like to call it. We just called it "Dalby", because that's what it was. It came, it went, it was hard work, but I did get a free week in a swanky hotel in Yorkshire. Can't complain I suppose.

May saw the first running of the 24 Hours of Exposure, the UK Solo 24 Hour Championships and okay, I might be a little biased as this was one of our, SIP Events, events, but it was way more fun and as usual I was as excited as a child on Christmas morning. So excited in fact that I managed to drop another bottle of Single Malt. This seems to be a common theme now, having dropped Deano's bottle of single malt at the Montane Kielder 100 last year, only to have it bounce off the flagstone floor and roll into the middle of the Kielder Castle courtyard totally unscathed. Lady Luck only shines her light on you once though and sadly the 24 hour bottle didn't make it, smashing to smithereens in the centre of Newcastleton at the rider sign on just before the race. So familiar am I with these kind of mishaps and cock ups that as I walked past the start area and the bottle fell out of the box, followed by a loud smash and a very pungent waft of peaty malt, I barely broke my stride and popped the now empty box through the open window of an event vehicle with a small shrug of my shoulders. S*%t happens.

Unfortunately some are now calling this 'Single Malt' event a tradition, even some sort of bizarre sacrifice to the event Gods. So the question now is, do I keep up the tradition of smashing, or attempting to smash a bottle of fine Scotch at every event to bring good luck, or do I chance it as I'm loathed to spend yet more money on excellent alcohol that nobody will get to drink. Discuss.