Monday, January 24, 2011

Chapter 5: It's All Down(s)hill From Here

- Rodney Collin

Nothing could really follow in the footsteps of a weekend like that. The Summer was never going to be a constant upward mental march to a glorious triumphant peak but, rather, a haphazard mix of peaks and plateaus, flavoured by the random series of events and opportunities of which nobody in their right mind could predict. Such is life. I was confident, however, that so long as I stuck to the game plan, it wouldn’t be long before the next peak.

And I was right. After the extravagance and excellence of the birthday weekend, the waiting game for the next Yes commenced. It lasted all of two days. I spent those days at work wondering only about where the next weekend would take me. On a related note, work and other things which were usually grudgingly done now seemed much more manageable, stress-free now my life was. On the second day of work, I received a text:

ARE U UP FOR GOING UP TO WATCH THE BIKING AT FORT WILLIAM THIS WEEKEND? SHOULD BE A BELTER!

The next opportunity had presented itself. It was another one of these invitations that would most definitely have been turned down by the anxious introvert that used to live inside me. But this was no time to let him back in – not today, not any day. Time to grab the bull by the horns and see where it took me.

I have been into mountain biking since I was around 12, where I miraculously lost the fear of hurting myself (also closely correlated to the discovery of alcohol) and have always preferred two wheels to four. This was perhaps also the fault of my uncle (although that is in no way meant to big him up), who could cycle before he could walk, runs his own bike courier company and still to this day (at the borderline OAP age of 40 (ish)) goes out biking every weekend. Did I mention he looks like a chubby milky bar kid?

Anyway, I went online and booked the tickets straight away. The annual event at the Nevis Range in Fort William is the flagship stop of the mountain bike downhill world cup, and, at 2.8km and a drop in altitude of 555m, is the longest and generally regarded as the most difficult course on the circuit Running over the course of a weekend, it consists of practice runs, qualifiers and finals for both the men’s and woman’s downhill, as well as short-course mountain bike cross (where 4 riders race at one time) and various other things around the range to busy yourself with.

Jack and I would drive up and camp wherever we could find space, and Caz and Simo would drive up and stay at a camp site. Only trouble was, we could only stay for the Saturday night and to beat the queues on the Saturday morning you need to be there mega early. I asked my Maw if I could borrow the car for the weekend (which, amazingly, she granted without question – in retrospect probably because she didn’t want my newly road-legal little brother driving it) and got ready.

At 4am on a Saturday morning (normally around the time I would be returning from the pub) I left Lanark and drove to Glasgow to collect Jack, managing to make it to Partick in a (suspected) world record time of 27 minutes. The heat of the Summer was already apparent as we left the Friendly City and we were on the A82 in no time.

The drive was a remarkable one. From Dumbarton to Fort William we must have saw 20 cars at the most. You tend to forget when you are a lowlander what a ridiculously beautiful country you live in. I can honestly say that speeding across Rannoch Moor at 125mph at 7am with the windows down and system up  (listening to Snoop Dogg and Gorrliaz like the wannabe pimps we were) was the most alive I have ever felt. Well, sober anyway. And yet, I had only left my house a mere 3 hours before. Normally, myself and Jack wouldn’t even be thinking of getting up yet, dreaming away for another x hours before waking up to another beige day full of procrastination. And yet here we were, hurtling towards the Cairngorms with a reckless abandon for life not heard of since Thelma and Louise.




We arrived in Fort William at 8am, starving, to find no shops open yet. This was not as pressing a concern as trying to find somewhere that we could actually sleep for the night, so we resolved to do that first. Driving into the main car park at the foot of Ben Nevis, the Wee Guide Guy informed us that we could technically pitch our tents anywhere as the land was owned by the forestry commission. We were also advised to get a midge net, a suggestion which we did not take heed of and one which was to come back and bite us in the arse and, for that matter, the rest of our bodies, later. From the car park to the arena was about a 15 minute walk and at some point down this walk we found a field which, to our amazement, was empty. Flabbergasted, we set up our tent, the first of what would surely be many – this was a prime position!

At 8.30 the gates opened. We were front of the queue and I personally felt like some sort of weirdo – like a shopper waiting for the doors to open on Boxing Day, a Harry Potter enthusiast, in cloak, waiting on the book to be released at the chime of midnight, or like a geek waiting patiently outside the classroom on the first day of term. But feeling like that was worth it. First ones up the gondola, we got to the mountain cafĂ©, about 3 quarters of the way up Ben Nevis, just before 9am. The sun was starting to poke its way through the mountain mist, spraying across the horizon, paving the way for a view like no other; maybe it was the drive. Maybe it was the altitude. Maybe it was the fact it was 9am and I’d been up for 6 hours. But I felt drunk on cheese. And we hadn’t even watched any biking yet.



Now, I have done a fair wee bit of biking in my time, at an amateur level at best. And I’ve seen it on the telly and thought ‘I could do that, nae bother’. But seeing it up close is really something else. These guys and girls do shit with their bikes that at times seems superhuman, and at such speed that you are left in awe. We watched the morning’s practice and qualifying sessions on the way down the track, and met Caz and Simmo at the bottom to start drinking in the sunshine.

After watching a bit more of the practice sessions, we found ourselves a good spot up the hill where we could watch the four cross and get drunk. We were positioned directly behind a large jump and this resulted in the practice sessions consisting of some guys in the crowd persistently shouting to every rider who stopped ‘here mate, dae a trick!’, then laughing wildly at anyone who managed to fall. The same guys were also the ones who decided it would be a good idea to climb up 100ft high trees for a laugh. Heroes amongst men, some would say...




Hilarity aside, the 4x is a great spectator sport, and the men’s and woman’s events were won by Aussie Jared Graves and Jana Horakova of the Czech Republic respectively. Plenty pints were drunk, much skin was burnt and many gay pictures were taken throughout the afternoon.








It was then back to the tent to get ready for the night ahead in Fort William. Where we thought there would be hundreds of tents in the field we were camped, there still only a few which were pitched. As I annoyed Jack while he brushed his teeth (see video below), we were starting to see, or more accurately, feel why this was the case. As soon as the sun was out of sight, the midges became horrendous and inescapable.


We got into Fort William and toured a few pubs, got horrendously drunk and then went to a ceilidh. I have always been quite partial to a ceilidh, enjoying the drunken stupidity of dancing like an idiot with people you barely know, flinging girls round in your hands and such like – perhaps harking back to the good old days of the dreaded Christmas Dance. Braw. This ceilidh was a particularly large one, one which I, ahem, reveled in (I’m going to use the excuse of sunstroke before I tell you what – so I’m told – happened next).






There are times when you can’t do the sensible thing, when you can’t act like a responsible adult at all; you just have to do whatever insane thing comes into your head. When bad people do it they end up murderers, when good people do it they end up heroes, and when the rest of us do it we end up looking like total idiots. But when’s that ever stopped us?

Ceilidh dancing with a down’s syndrome sufferer was one of those times.




I don't remember taking that video, but apparently the boys were struggling to keep me still in one place throughout the night's festivities.

I awoke in the morning still drunk, adamant that we were going to catch the first run at 9am. What I was not prepared for was the fact that my face, arms and legs were alive with midges. I got out of the tent (ours was one of 3 in the field – now you see why) and tried my best to fend them off, but it was like being caught in some sort of midge-based nightmare: there was nothing that could be done. I tried to awake Jack from his slumber, but to no avail, so I took drastic action in the form of pulling his sleeping back out of the tent with him still in it. He did not in any way appreciate the hilarity of the situation and we had a bit of a fall-out. It was understandable – I would have been pretty annoyed if I was dragged from the comfort of sleep into Midge Hell.

We met Caz and Simo, who relayed to me the bad news of my behavior from the night before (Caz hadn't fared much better apparently - he was dancing with a guy in a wheelchair), and went up the gondola. On our way down the mountain, my hangover began to kick in. This would not normally have been a problem, but postponement in the form of alcohol was not an option as I had to drive back home that day. Nae luck.

We got down to the arena in time to see the top men’s qualifiers come down their final run. It was a hotly contested final, eventually won by Britain’s Gee Atherton (much to the crowd’s, and our own delight) in a track record time of 4 minutes 35.7 seconds. To see a full review of the event, click here and to see (actually good) videos here.






The drive back was the polar opposite of the one on the way – never before I have been so disinterested in scenery. I was glad to be back in the comforting, midge-free surroundings of home. That said, midges and bad dance partner choices aside, it was a good weekend – something a bit different rather than just pubs, clubs, chips and cheese. More importantly, it was another notch on the bedpost of Yes, another experience that I’m more glad than sad that I partook in. The cramps of conscience I had felt not all that long ago were starting to diminish: I could feel a new sort of life entering my body with every breath – a life where the barely feasible had become the entirely doable, where the can’t be bothered had become the go for it and, at the most basic and important level, the No had become the Yes.


NEXT WEEK: Insanity!

Monday, January 17, 2011

Chapter 4: INXS - Too Young to Grow Up, Too Old to Care

 “Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.”
-          Oscar Wilde
By the time my 22nd birthday arrived the following weekend, the Yes Locomotive was powering on full steam ahead. I am lucky in that my birthday falls in the last week of May, usually around the time when people have just finished their exams and are therefore looking for any old excuse to destroy their livers. This time around it would be a weekend special, but I was unaware exactly how special it would be, and how special I would be looking once it was finally over.

It was to be a three-pronged attack on the body and the mind. The Friday night was to consist of drinks at the flat followed by Moskito on Bath Street (our favourite pub). Those who were alive enough in the morning would go back to Lanark, play some vomit-inducing five-a-side then go on a pub crawl (to as many of Lanark fine drinking establishments as possible). The final push would then be back into Glasgow on the Sunday for our most beloved all-day beverage and mess-filled techno fest, Sunday Circus.

Before I start to describe what can only be described as absolute and utter carnage, I must point out that there are gaps in my knowledge, filled in only by pictorial evidence. I will supply an alternative, and much more articulated version of events (by one of my esteemed fellow bloggers – on whom I will be relying heavily in following chapters) at the bottom of this chapter. I can only tell of what I myself experienced and saw on that most fateful yet excellent of weekends back in May. 

It is safe to say that it was one of those rare weekends in Glasgow you realize you will point back to when reflecting during some mid-life crisis on whether you made the most of your youth or not. After what transpired, only a fool could conclude negatively.


Friday night came at last, and the boys and girls were looking ready for action. With a steely glint in their eyes, a care-free attitude and some cash in the backburner it was all systems go. Some people came up to The Matrix for a pre-start meeting consisting of beers, squeezy, vodka and, most notably, sambuca (herein referred to as Sammy). The Chat from everyone was good as always, but the bleach left me looking like a munchkin to whom puberty had been rather unfortunate.



Drinking began in earnest. El Sammy did flow. I must explain at this point what you will all know and no doubt have experienced at some point in your lives - the curse of the birthday boy/girl. Because, of course, it is your birthday on said night, and your friends have gone to the effort of coming out to see you for such an event, it will simply not be tolerated  by them if you are not the drunkest man in Scotland. This is the Scottish or, at the very least, the Glasgwegian way.  If you do not vomit, you are a disgrace – illogical though it may seem. If you do not spend any amount of time on your birthday with your head down a toilet wishing you had stayed in then, clearly, it is not your birthday at all. It would be hypocritical of me to say this is not how it should be done.

The way this worked in practice on the Friday night was that for every one shot of sambuca that everyone in a circle must drink, you must drink at least two: I could hardly say no.



It was a classic case of ‘I’ve peaked too early’. I say that, but it was still an awesome night. There’s something you learn to appreciate more when you’re older about being in a pub, rather than a club, with all your mates in the same place. Everyone in high spirits, drinking good booze (not watered down vodka) and generally having a laugh. Although I did end up with my head down a toilet, I didn’t say no to anything and, anyway, this was merely the calm before the storm – a practice session before the main event.



Saturday morning was like any other Saturday morning in The Matrix: walk into the kitchen to find half-drunk bottles, half-eaten kebabs and half-dead humans. A quick tidy up and a hair of the dog and we were on our way back home to grudgingly attempt to play football. Of all those who were supposed to be staying, there was one notable absentee in the form of Cammy (pictured far left above). He was to make a miraculous reappearance later on.

On an unrelated note, it’s also a good laugh when you check your camera the next morning and find this staring at you:



They're not mine by the way.

The turnout for fitba was good – some of the Lanark lads who did not come to Moskito were there and were up for the pub crawl later on. Even Shitebag was there.  After adequately halving Shitebag as many times as was feasible, my hangover began to disappear.

We met at the Crown in Lanark at 7pm (early start) and were to drink a pint and a shot in every pub which, if we were to make all the pubs, should be done every 26 minutes by my own and Jamie’s calculations - a rule that was never going to be adhered to in reality. This wasn’t something that had been attempted in Lanark in living memory – the usual Saturday night consisting of Wotherspoon’s and/or Maisie’s then the mosh pit that is the Woody. The Crown went according to plan, we had about 20 folk with us, so it was onwards to the Wee Man’s, where an idea of an (even quicker) way of drinking Guinness was to be born, still used in the finest drinking establishments to this day.

The rules are as follows: you have 4 drinks to drink a pint of Guinness. If you have two swigs and you think you can finish the pint in the next swig, you must lift the pint up with your elbows and finish it that way. Each pint is a par 4, therefore finishing in 3 is a birdie and in 2 is an eagle. Makes for an interesting spectacle and, on this night, some blootert boys.


We made our way round all the classics: Maisie’s, the Horse and Jockey, Wotherspoon’s, the Cave and the Market Bar (where a group rendition of Phats n Small's Turn Around on kareoke was a particular highlight). It was at Wotherspoon’s where Cam caught up with us. He hadn’t slept yet and was looking like death. Introducing him to the Guinness game was the best thing we, as his friends, could do for him. Just notice the difference in him from the first to the fourth picture below. Also notice how his clothes have not changed since the previous night, thus rebuffing the authenticity of his story. Remarkable.






God only knows how many pints and shots were consumed that night, but when we finally got to the Woody, speech, balance and sight were becoming a major problem.


Myself and Dearie awoke in the morning after a few hours sleep still drunk. If this day was going to reach its full potential there were one thing I was going to have to grudgingly do, reserved only for occasions where full-blooded excess is the only option:

Yup, buckie. Wreck the hoose juice. Commotion lotion. Coatbridge table wine. Stingy pish. Whatever you want to call it, I was on it. It was the only way and, besides, the Yes Manifesto had to be adhered to at all costs. We got onto the train in earnest and headed into Glasgow for circus like the clowns we were. Making sure on the phone that everyone else was game - the sun was shining, I was drunk on a train to meet my mates and listen to techno and I was drinking Buckfast: nothing could ruin this mood.

That day will live long in my memory as one of the best I have ever had in Glasgow. My memories after the train journey are blurry at best, but at least I know that. What followed was 9 hours of Sunday Circus, 4 hours of an afterparty, then another 4 of an after afterparty, waking up on a petrol forecourt in the South Side of Glasgow, coming home, going out to the park, then to the pub. I got to my bed at midnight on Monday night. That’s the extreme short version. In order to make up for my lack of memory, I am going to entrust your understanding of events to both the pictures that were taken, and my esteemed colleague’s blog, which I highly recommend you read here.












I reiterate that this was one of, if not the, best day I have ever had in Glasgow. The will to keep going, to defeat moderation, had got me there, and by God I was grateful for it. I have never experienced a more affectionate atmosphere – everyone was in this together, each person cared as much for you as you did the next. In the words of Lady RaRa, “we were like one big, disgustingly wasted and worryingly over-affectionate family”. Couldn't have put it better myself.


Excess may be a foregone conclusion when you are bound by Yes, but nonetheless the weekend had taught me a valuable lesson. Sometimes, very very rarely, you experience a moment, a day, a weekend, where you realize just how much you value your friends, how much they care about you, and how great your life can really be if you just let it.

And then you forget about it and birdie a pint of Guinness.






NEXT EPISODE: The Fort William Adventure