Bosh, Arctic Circle, Thank You Very Much

One problem with voicing an opinion is realising that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Before you set out your stall you have to be reasonably confident that your opinion isn’t going to show you up, like a child might, out of the blue and in full public view. Unfortunately this happens to me quite a lot, with both children and ideas.

Two of my ideas/proposals have shown me up recently, I should have taken them down to the lake in a sack, and lobbed them in with a couple of bricks but no matter. However hard I promise myself not to get stuff wrong, it still happens. If only I could screw my eyes up and concentrate really hard to make things right, but it doesn’t work that way, goddamit.

The only thing worse than being wrong about something is not being able to have an opinion at all, for fear of being wrong. And, heck, with many things right and wrong is only a matter of perspective. Unfortunate for me that the things I was wrong about are not subject to interpretation. Bugger. Anyhow, you have to ‘fess up and get on, it doesn’t do to be too defensive or egotistical about being wrong, that way you’ll never learn a thing.

What was I wrong about, then? Fuck off, I’m not telling.

I do have some interesting news though, about the Black Bullet. A year ago I was determined to take her up to the Arctic Circle – it was a crazy idea, ill thought out and expensive to execute. I fancied taking the old girl up to Frazerburgh in NE Scotland and imagined talking our way onto a trawler headed for Iceland. I can see it now, waves crashing on deck, swirling around the bike, I know, idiotic is the word. The best part of the plan was that it looked like a quick scoot up the east coast of Iceland from that Sneezlefjordur place to the northernmost tip and then bosh, Arctic Circle, thank you very much.

What I didn’t realise at the time...er, among all the important things I didn’t appreciate at the time was that there was a stand-off going on between the Icelanders and the Scots over quotas and fishing rights. There was even a mini blockade at one point so you can see how ridiculous anyone asking for a lift, quayside, would have been.

I guess it would have made a good story, though, they probably all needed a laugh up there. Lucky for me the Biking Viking stepped in and popped my bubble. “There are no blacktop roads to the Arctic Circle,” he said. Basically, bring a trail bike or get ready to fall off in a faraway place where you’ll find neither parts nor sympathetic rescue.

So, there are things to be wrong about, like how to fix a car, or mixing up two different Hitchins’, and there is freezing to death on a rain blasted rock in the middle of the North Atlantic because you went ill-prepared for the conditions. Oh bugger, now you know.


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