I'm hatching some plot, scheming some scheme

"There is no such thing as a new idea, it's all about the quality of the implementation".

Thank you Mark Cheshire. The rest of you better get this quick, because those courses in creativity? They don't really exist.

Yesterday was a case in point, a closed road sportive should be easy to organise, but alas and alack, it wasn't. Skip and Bunny, who is married, actually they both are, so am I, all to different people, have blogged highly effectively with all the detail:

http://monmarduman.blogspot.com/

http://www.thecyclingmayor.com/?m=201110

If you have read their accounts you will know that it was a fairly mediocre experience, and to top it all for me i got a puncture in that wheel I was worried about. But never mind, it didn't rain, and i enjoyed the Horseshoe pass, and even finished 381st out of 977, despite pretty much bimbling and coughing my way round. The weather held up, a bit of drizzle at times so that it looked like there was no line on the horizon on the tops of the mountains. But then I love a good mountain, me.

http://ridewithgps.com/trips/415352

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/120284373

Don't take the times and stuff too literally, my Cateye computer ran out of battery halfway round, and Charlie gave up the ghost on numerous occasions, I think I did a route of around about 90 miles, in just over 6 hours cycling time, with an offical time of 6-56-39.

But for me, despite all the shambolic events of the event itself, I must paraphrase Frederick Browning on this one. FB was a fascinating character who lived the kind of remarkable life that just doesn't seem possible nowadays. Married to a famous author, having courted her quite unconventionally, and then had an "unusual" marriage, a general in WW2, as well as the trenches in the Great War, and later looked after the royal household. Anyway, yesterday was a sportive too far, quite simply I'm worn out, so for me the season is over, and I'm off to large POC camp.

I watched "From the Sky down" last night (thanks Princess, didn't know it was on) a documentary at least partly inspired by the 20th anniversary of Achtung Baby, perhaps the greatest work of art ever produced. 20 years? Strike a light it feels like only yesterday I was buying it in WH Smith in Catford on the day it came out. A transformative experience, a re-invention.

To do it, they had to not only let go of the past, but to eradicate it, before they could construct the future. And in that space in between those two events, there is nothing, and you have to hold onto the faith and believe something will come.

So whilst I will be riding over the next few weeks, these pages are going to be silent. I am going to de-construct my cycling and everything connected with it (and who knows, maybe other stuff too) and then build something better. I don't know what that looks like yet so please don't ask, unless you want "I don't know" as an answer. I feel jaded and in need of a period of reflection, so yes we are all one, but on this occasion, we are very definitely not the same.

Mark was right all those years ago, it's just that I need to re-apply that piece of truth to myself for once.

See you in a few weeks.