RR: North Yorks Polaris (long)

Well, after coming last in the Isle of Man over Easter, it would have been
a shame not to have entered another Polaris, so myself and AMB's own Andy
Chequer entered another one, this time in the North York Moors. The hills
are less intimidating than the Manx ones, but there's more of them.
Chequer's car wasn't too well, so transport was on my shoulders, or rather
my parents, as my car is also not well. I headed East on the two hour
drive to Bristol, taking remarkably few attempts to find my teammate's
house.

Having loaded Chequer's kit, and stopping off in a nearby Halfords for a
new helmet for me (to replace the one sitting some 80 miles West of me at
that precise moment) we headed North. The journey was fairly uneventful,
apart from the first navigational cockup of the weekend. Chequer managed
to lose the M1. ****. We've not even got the bikes out of the back of
the car yet, and we're lost.

Anyway, about midnight-ish and we pulled onto the campsite, setup the tent
and cracked open the beer. Sleep was soon to follow, with myself and
Chequer both waking each other up with loud snoring and the usual whinge
of "How come I never wake up with a beautiful woman, only with you?" in
the morning. Registering found many people approaching us saying "Hey,
aren't you the guys who came last in Spring?". Wow. Fame.

Heading from the start, the first checkpoint was a nice easy one. 10
points in the bag and then a climb. No, this is far too early in the
morning. What the hell is this hill doing here? Still, there was a
checkpoint at the end of the climb, a flattish bimble across the head of
the valley and then a sharp plummet to the next checkpoint, the other side
of a level crossing, which caused some riders to be held up for several
minutes whilst they waited for a steam train to get out of the way.

Several unexciting checkpoints intervened before one which tested many
people, including Mr Chequer who managed to collapse in a muddy heap on
the floor. Fair play to him, I was already shouldering my bike by this
point. The advantage with being the navigator on an event like this
is that during the muddy sections, you don't have to worry about not
having a crud catcher on the front of your bike. The downside of this
being that several square miles of the area is now an undecipherable brown
smear on my map. Good job there's no checkpoints in that bit, I suppose.

The next couple of checkpoints take us down tracks that are signed as
bridleways. How this can possibly count as a bridleway is beyond me,
given that in most places it's hardly a shoulder's width across. I ride
on reflecting on how I'm sure that stinging nettles used to hurt far more
than this when I were a lad. After grabbing an easy 50 point check, we
sit down and discuss tactics. Probably for longer than was wise, but
Chequer needed to have a fag, just in case anybody got any strange ideas
about him being fit and healthy and all that.

We head off to another check, this time my navigation fails us and we go
hammering past the start of the track we wanted and down a large hill.
Why do I never discover my navigation errors until they involve a really
big climb to sort the mess out? We climb back up the hill and spot
someone who looks like he knows where he's going. We try to follow and
pretty soon lose our quarry, having to fall back on good old navigation
again. Once again, I mess up and we end up staring at a 6' high locked
gate. Fairly bad mistake, but not quite as bad as losing the M1, I say.

Time was getting on, and we had about 15 miles to get back to the start.
It was about this point that I ran out of water. Damn. After a few miles
I was feeling utterly crap. After what seemed like an eternity we stopped
at a petrol station to buy some bottled water and carried on with the slow
climb back up to the finish. The water didn't help much, and by the time
I got to the end I felt like death. Once again we'd managed to lose our
entire day's score by deft of our lateness.

Sitting back at the car (whilst Chequer cooked his Bacon Bhuna) we
discussed the plans for tomorrow. I was still feeling awful, and Binkie,
the pride of Chequer's life was having serious freehub ills. It seemed
that out of the team we had one working bike and one working rider.
Still, that meant we could get leathered that night.

A couple of pints of some interesting real ale, with some interesting
company, and soon the band wandered on. The band in question were
Monarchy, a Queen tribute band and the subject of much heckling given that
they were playing in front of several hundred mountain bikers and hadn't
bothered to learn "Bicycle Race".

The next morning we were up with all the people who hadn't wimped out as
it's somewhat hard to sleep on the Polaris campsite at the best of times.
We withdrew from the day's riding, packed the car and headed on the
marathon journey South again.

Huw "Sunburned, dehydrated, but still happy" Pritchard

Huw Pritchard wrote:

Huw "Sunburned, dehydrated, but still happy" Pritchard

Excellent RR - highly amusing. How do you lose the M1, BTW?

On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 22:06:42 +0200, bomba did issue forth:

Excellent RR - highly amusing. How do you lose the M1, BTW?

I really don't know; I've not had much cause to go up that way before, it
was all Mr Chequer's fault. I told him how he should know his way around,
what with being a Northerner himself, but he just muttered something about
it being a "bloody large area".

Huw "I was just driving, I wasn't looking where I was going" Pritchard

Huw Pritchard wrote in message
news
Well, after coming last in the Isle of Man over Easter, it would have been
a shame not to have entered another Polaris, so myself and AMB's own Andy
Chequer entered another one, this time in the North York Moors. The hills
are less intimidating than the Manx ones, but there's more of them.
Chequer's car wasn't too well, so transport was on my shoulders, or rather
my parents, as my car is also not well. I headed East on the two hour
drive to Bristol, taking remarkably few attempts to find my teammate's
house.

yeah, I took some words away

The next morning we were up with all the people who hadn't wimped out as
it's somewhat hard to sleep on the Polaris campsite at the best of times.
We withdrew from the day's riding, packed the car and headed on the
marathon journey South again.

Huw "Sunburned, dehydrated, but still happy" Pritchard

You're a pair of nuts ya know? - Thanks ',;~}~



Shaun aRe - I found the M1 for you - it's in the post.

Shaun R says:

You're a pair of nuts ya know?

If you think Huw's RR is a load of balls, why not just say so?

;-P```````

Steve home with a tummy bug today

Stephen Baker wrote in message
...
Shaun R says:

You're a pair of nuts ya know?

If you think Huw's RR is a load of balls, why not just say so?

I said what I meant.

;-P```````

Steve home with a tummy bug today

If I had a gut like yours, it'd bug me too.

',;~P````

Shaun aRe

"Huw Pritchard" wrote in message
news
On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 22:06:42 +0200, bomba did issue forth:

Excellent RR - highly amusing. How do you lose the M1, BTW?

I really don't know; I've not had much cause to go up that way before, it
was all Mr Chequer's fault. I told him how he should know his way around,
what with being a Northerner himself, but he just muttered something about
it being a "bloody large area".

Huw "I was just driving, I wasn't looking where I was going" Pritchard

If we were in my car, that would never have happened. Knows where it's
going, that thing. Nowhere, that's where.

In answer to bomba's question, it sold us a dummy going north towards Leeds.
The swine.

Andy Chequer

Another great read Mr Huw, almost makes me want to have a go myself...

Steve.

Do it. The summer one's not too taxing (unless you're Welsh) and the party's
good afterwards.

Andy Chequer, AMB Summer Polaris 2004, anyone?

Andy Chequer wrote:
Another great read Mr Huw, almost makes me want to have a go myself...


Do it. The summer one's not too taxing (unless you're Welsh) and the party's
good afterwards.

Andy Chequer, AMB Summer Polaris 2004, anyone?

Hmm, maybe...

--
a.m-b FAQ: http://www.t-online.de/~jharris/ambfaq.htm

a.bmx FAQ: http://www.t-online.de/~jharris/bmx_faq.htm

Andy Chequer wrote:

"Huw Pritchard" wrote in message
news
On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 22:06:42 +0200, bomba did issue forth:

Excellent RR - highly amusing. How do you lose the M1, BTW?

I really don't know; I've not had much cause to go up that way before, it
was all Mr Chequer's fault. I told him how he should know his way around,
what with being a Northerner himself, but he just muttered something about
it being a "bloody large area".

Huw "I was just driving, I wasn't looking where I was going" Pritchard

If we were in my car, that would never have happened. Knows where it's
going, that thing. Nowhere, that's where.

In answer to bomba's question, it sold us a dummy going north towards Leeds.
The swine.

For local interest - If you'd looked over you left shoulder 1 mile
before where you should have turned off (to stay on the M1) one of the
houses on the top of the hill is mine.

Phil