BEFORE LEAVING FOR the Tour Divide I told Andy Spellman and North One that I wasn’t making decisions about any future TV work until I got back. If I wasn’t halfway through filming a programme, like I was with some of the Speed series, everything was put off, because I didn’t know if it was going to change my attitude towards the job. The telly stuff I do seems to go down well and folk want me to make more of it, but I still turn a lot down. I do enjoy making the programmes now. I never watch them – I doubt many people who are on telly watch themselves, but perhaps they do. I’d love it if I could just make the programmes and they were never shown, because I enjoy the process, the people I work with and the folk I meet in the course of it all. The main thing I have a bit of a problem with is the attention it brings, but living where I do and how I do, not going out much and not living in a big city, it isn’t too bad. I came back from America thinking that I’ve got the balance about right. Trucks, telly, motorbikes, biking, doing a few barrow jobs for mates, when they need help, like skimming a car cylinder head or porting bike cylinder heads. One thing it really made me realise was that I should have given up racing motorbikes earlier than I did. I’m writing this a few days after getting back, and I’m not sure how much the experience has changed me, but that was the big thing, the light bulb going on.
Riding the Tour Divide couldn’t have been further away from the Isle of Man TT, both physically and mentally. It reminded me that most people are genuinely nice, when I was beginning to think that a lot of them were rude. I was getting the feeling that people had seen me on telly and only wanted to talk to me to tell someone else that they’d talked to me, and not because they were into what I was into or they had something interesting to say. America made me realise that it’s not all like that. The people I met on the Tour Divide didn’t know I’d been on telly a few times – they just wanted to help the person they’d just met, even though I smelt like a dead badger. They’d open their shop early, invite me in for a hot drink or fire the grill back up, even though they were just heading home, because they’re nice people and they want to help other people. I’ve got manners and I ask for things politely – I think I’m a nice person, and I like it when other people are.
I worked out that, as an amateur racer, which is what I’ve always been, I can’t do better than I’ve already done. To do it properly would mean me returning from the Tour Divide, racing in all the remaining 2016 British Superbike rounds, then doing all the rounds at the beginning of next year, to give me the best start into the TT. But I can accept that I haven’t won a TT, because I didn’t dedicate my whole existence to it. In the same way, I know that if I want to set a record at the Tour Divide I have to dedicate my life to it, and I don’t want to do that. There’s other stuff I want to do, and I’m happy knowing that I won’t set the Tour Divide record or win a TT.
The only way I’ll go back to the TT is if they let me race something oddball. They allowed Bruce Anstey to race Padgett’s Honda RCV213V-S in 2016, they let the Norton and the Suter 500 two-stroke race as well, all oddball stuff that, I think, makes the race more interesting. If they’ll let me ride something I build in my shed I’ll go back and try to get in the top 20, but if they don’t I’m not bothered.
The 2016 TT was a bad year for deaths, but that didn’t make any difference one way or the other to the way I thought about it. I knew Paul Shoesmith a bit. They reckon his front tyre blew out on Sulby Straight, one of the fastest sections of the track. There’s not a lot you can do to avoid that happening, and there’s nothing you can do to save it if it happens to you.
Another racer I really liked, Billy Redmayne, died after crashing at Scarborough in the 2016 Spring Cup National. I’d met Billy and his mates at Wanganui, the last time I was out in New Zealand, and we’d talked about all sorts of daft conspiracy theories. He was a nice bloke. These deaths don’t affect my choice to continue on the roads, and they’re going to happen, now and then, whether I’m racing or not, but it’s one more thing in the negative column. If I’m not enjoying it, and people are dying, then you really do have to ask yourself, Why am I doing this?
John McGuinness was quoted on the internet as saying he’d rather stick live wasps up his arse than ride 2,745 miles on a pushbike. He said, ‘I just can’t get why anyone would want to do a bicycle race instead of the TT.’ He also reckoned I was getting money for the Tour Divide, which, you’ll know by now, is wrong. It ended up costing me thousands and not earning me anything, and I knew that before I set off. I work hard. I like going to Moody’s on a Saturday morning and thinking, I’m on time and a half here, and I like buying stuff, CNC machines, daft cars, new pushbike bits, but I’m not motivated by money. I’m motivated by job satisfaction. I don’t do stuff that I don’t want to do, no matter how much it’s going to pay. And the Tour Divide was nothing about money at all. It never was.
My dare to the lads at the sharp end of the TT would be: You do what I’ve done, not necessarily a mountain-bike race, but something that would push you in another way, and then come back and tell me I’m mad for missing the TT. They’re operating on autopilot. Every year is the same, the build-up with the North West 200, the TT, then the same run down to the Ulster. At the NEC show they start talking about what they’re going to do next season, then the build-up again beginning in the spring with all the testing in Spain and Ireland, tyre testing at Castle Combe. And they say I’m mad for missing the TT? If they did what I’ve done they might realise there is more to life. As good as the TT was, and what an event, why was I doing it? Why? My dad raced bikes, so I raced bikes. I loved it and it opened a load of doors. I got alright at road racing so the natural thing was to race the TT. Then that’s it, you’re in and the blinkers are on. The only time you get out of that vicious circle is if you get shit and no one wants you any more. Then what do you do? What Steve Parrish, James Whitham and Neil Hodgson do, which is talk about it. Racing hasn’t retired me, I’ve retired from racing. Perhaps they’re all trying to avoid getting a real job, and if that’s what they want, great. But I love my job, and I was looking forward to coming back to work on the trucks. I got on the earliest flight I could from Arizona so I could get back to it.
So, I’ve had it with motorbike racing. I’ve realised that I maybe should have stopped three years earlier. It was only not racing at all in 2016 that made me realise I wasn’t enjoying it and I didn’t miss it.
As soon as I got back from the Tour Divide the Tyco TAS BMW team were already asking if I wanted a ride at Kirkistown. Lovely lads, who I really like spending time with, but what’s the point in riding a bike I know at Kirkistown, somewhere I’ve done hundreds of laps around? What am I going to learn? Sod all.
Another thing I thought was that I’d never want to see a pushbike again, but by the end of the Tour Divide I was thinking, I’ve got all this fitness, I don’t want to waste it. So I got home and tried to enter the Salzkammergut Trophy, a mountain-bike race in Austria, but the entries had closed. It was just as well because I need to concentrate on getting my turbo bike ready instead.
I won’t ride the Tour Divide bike again. I retired it and it’s sat in Louth Cycle Centre. I bought almost all the bits for the bike, £2,400 worth – hubs, bags, charging gear – and Hope gave me brakes and crankset. I might take some bits out of it and build another bike. If I was going to do something like the Tour Divide again I’d start with a proper mountain bike. There was a lot more mountain biking than I’d thought there’d be, and it would be lighter than the Salsa.
A few days after getting back from America I was in at work, and Belty was snorting up phlegm, making a horrible noise that was getting right on my nerves. I asked him to stop, but he kept doing it. Then I warned him not to do it, but he kept at it. The next thing I know, I’ve got him by the throat. I couldn’t understand why at first. All I can think is that being on my own, with no one asking me anything, no one relying on me and no one to deal with, gave me a very short fuse. And that short fuse was there when I had to go back and deal with people. Maybe I need another big ride.
I want to cycle to Magadan, on the far side of Russia. That would be something to aim for, wouldn’t it?