JMC Remembered

_ _ _

spot the difference

There been quite a lot happening recently in Europe. in the alpine regions there’s been torrential rain, which has transformed areas that are usually safely enjoying 35 degree heat into dangerous and waterlogged places. In the thick of it all the rothar.com Swiss correspondent has some photos and a rather good insight into the character of certain individuals:

From: Suzi
Subject: Remind you of Manchester?

I can imagine you and Chris being this stubborn somehow 🙂

More photos here

Swiss television has shown pictures of bridges that have collapsed, huge chunks of caved-in motorway, farms swept away by mudslides and people being evacuated by boat through normally busy city streets. Electricity was cut off and drinking water contaminated in several parts of the country and many villages were isolated as roads were swept away and railways stopped their services.

Meanwhile Portugal is being toasted by wildfires that are burning out of control and are decimating a country which despite normally having some of the highest average annual temperatures in Europe does not maintain any contingency plan for dealing with fires. Firefighting aircraft from France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy have all joined the efforts against the fires this week in answer to a call to help. Quite why Portugal does not maintain a fleet of water-carrying planes isn’t stated, but things aren’t looking good.

Meanwhile in the North:

From: MacPuppy
Subject: Groof woof yip gruff awooooooooooo !!!!

roughly translated : no I don’t fecking know when I’m going yet but the window of opporchancity to sneak in a last bivvi is closing as StuN will be sloping off to find some fruity trails in Sept and I might have been shipped out to the land of smellee cheez an onions by the time he returns. Ghostdog is also being exported – to the land of burning cottages so his time in the glorious North (no that’s the proper North) is also fading fast. Callum vanished without trace ages ago …. will he make it out to play ???

So a cunning plan has hatched – contraflow bivvi this friday night at Glentress.

Meet at the bottom car-park around 8pm … beyond that who knows but I’m thinking of stashing the bivvi gear in a car at the buzzards, riding light for the contraflow and then rendezvous’ing (note my command of the new tounge already) with buzzards before sloping off into the deep tree’s with our phones/hipflasks/cake – usual script.

Roll down to the hub in the morning for a full-on hubba bubba breakfast.

Who’s in and who’s satelliting ????

who have I missed ????

Mentalists. I of course have opted out of such lunacy (well this time anyway), but am fully expecting a whiskey fueled phone call in the middle of the night if they can get any reception. A bit more notice next time guys?

The singlespeed worlds have happened. Find out how the big event in Penn State went down over at Singletrack.

Finally read this and remember Jason McRoy. I’ve updated my page here.