Trail Bike Adventure Magazine

Small steps. December 28

Monday, 28 December 2009 16:11

I don't have a full report on Longest Day yet, but I've spoken to Mick Crutch. As I expected, Mick set the pace and distance over the traditional route, but still managed only 75km past Cameron Corner, about 75km short of last year's distance.

Mick said the roads were even better than in 2008 and the weather was excellent. He made brilliant time from Wanaaring to Tibooburra, but pulled up on a dune west of Cameron Corner and "just needed a beer". He and Pete headed back to Cameron Corner where a big contingent of Queenslanders awaited them, included Pom and his 950 Megabling from the Coast To Corner reader ride.

So another big effort from Mick. I'd expected Fredickton, NSW, rider, Sparks, to go the distance with Mick, but he elected to head north with Boris Everson (who left the group at Narrabri) on what was apparently a fabulous dualsport run. Maybe a good decision by Sparks.

I'll try and get the full story from Mick Crutch for issue #32 (I gave Mick a camera and asked to shoot as he went).

Meanwhile, I plonked on the surgeon's chair on Monday, only to have him put my new X-rays on the light box and show absolutely nothing had changed. There's still no continuous bone anywhere in my lower leg. By that I mean there's open space between the large, displaced shards of tibia. The pieces of bone are still floating around in there, not touching each other. The only thing holding my ankle away from knee is the pin (as the surgeon explained it). I as equally shocked when he showed me a pin, called a "nail" in this instance, and explained it was a $1500 length of Titanium, and that each screw was $100.

Crikey.

After my initial disappointmentment he said the leg looked just as he hoped it would, and the healing was going as he expected it to. That makes his target of 12- to 18 months look realistic and I can't pretend I'm too cheerful about that.

The good news is I've been allowed to put weight on the leg and have actually taken a few steps here and there. The leg swells up pretty quickly and it hurts like a bastard, but at least I'm recovering, so that's good news. I even managed to lap the yard a few times on the DR (then nearly sent everything to the shithouse trying to start the KTM with my left foot).

I'm hoping to get back to work properly tomorrow morning, but that will depend on how many others get back to work tomorrow as well. I need to grab hold of some people for pics and stories, and if they won't answer their phones there's not much I can do about it.

The video at the top of the page is a segment I put togeher for the next TBAM DVD. I've already run very quick, rough edits of the Seven Hills ride as individual days. Here's the final edit of the whole thing as a single piece.

I see we're all going to have a reduction in volume on competition bikes again. It makes me so frigging angry I can't even write about it for now. It's stupidity. What makes me angry is that I know it's stupidity, but I know that if we don't suck up to the political idiots who'll spend huge amounts on a talkfest in some European tourist destination and achieve nothing, there's a real possibility our sport will be jeopardised.

Raining here. I can only imagine how loamy and glorious the trails around home will be for the rest of this week.

TF