Lance Armstrong
Lance clearly hasn't thought through all the positive benefits of giving up. For now though, while pain might not be our middle name, we've certainly toyed with the idea of using it as a way of getting out of painting the fence.
The Band
After task #1 "Taking leave of my senses", the next job was to find the other 75% of the walking team. Hollywood provided the necessary inspiration ...
The Magnificent Seven : Bald bloke uses charisma to assemble crack team, most of whom die before the end
The Dirty Dozen : Bald bloke uses charisma to assemble crack team, most of whom die before the end
The Trail Of Bread Four : Greying bloke uses pathetic whiny pleading to assemble cack team, most of whom die before the end (but don't tell them).
The requirement was for three highly tuned walkers, in peak physical condition and with unbelievable commitment and sang froid. It wasn't easy. In fact it was impossible. Still, they're happy to get the beers in, and at least one of them knows the way to A&E, so they get my vote.
Like the aforementioned Magnificent 7 and Dirty 12, each member has their own special skills and abilities. We like to think of ourselves as being a bit like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, sort of Middle-Age Mutant Ninja Tortoises.
Pete "The Trolley" Munro : Fundraising, communications [trail snack : pies]
Derek "Washington" Chalmers : Safe-cracking, logistics, advanced survival [trail snack : fruit and nut]
Matt "Shiny" Lamming : Electronics, first-aid [trail snack : jelly beans]
The Road Crew
It's probably fair to say this is the blister on our Achilles heel. Various other halves can help to get us there (probably) and back (possibly), but what we don't have is a dedicated support crew. Unfortunately without a back-up team this noble and ludicrous venture is doomed.
The walkers are actually the least important cogs in this rusty machine. Anyone can keep plonking one foot in front of the other for 30 hours. It's just walking right?
What takes real commitment.... is to sit in the dark with a pile of spare socks waiting for the Flab Four to wheeze into view.
What takes real skill .... is to raise team spirit and morale when it's been left behind in a monsoon on the South Downs.
What takes real imagination .... is to honestly believe that you can help to get this bunch of muppets across the finish line.
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| THIS COULD BE YOU! TEMPTING ISN'T IT? |
Even more important than the TRÄILÖFBREAD road crew, without whom we couldn't do this, are the folks without whom we wouldn't have signed up; the wonderful Oxfam staff and the people whose lives they are trying to improve. The slightly (actually, the very) depressing thing is that if we were a little bit more careful and nations were a bit more considerate, Oxfam wouldn't need to exist and we wouldn't need to take part in Trailwalker just to look like extras from The Road. However, until people stop throwing food away, flying everywhere and buying flat screen TVs for rooms they never use, the good people at Oxfam will need to help those caught by famine, climate change and natural disasters, and to make tough lives just a bit more bearable.
When you have to walk 2 hours every time you want water and that water comes from a dirty polluted river, a new water pump in your village must seem like a miracle. That's just one of the things that Oxfam can do and it's how 13 year old Erkeni can now go to school.
While it's probably fair to say that we are doing this a bit to see whether we can, there's also the possibility that we might give some people water pumps, or books, or medicine that could change their lives.
Now we just have to find out how far we can go!
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