Jamie Rhodes - Professional Triathlete

PARTHENAY RACE ADVENTURE: Part1

This one is a bit on a longy, so I’ve decided to split it up for you all. And since this is the first part of the story, I have decided to call this:

PARTHENAY RACE ADVENTURE : Part 1

It was decided early last week that on the upcoming Sunday that we would travel as a threesome to race the Parthenay Triathlon, which is about 3 and a half hours from Bourges. Not long after we had decided to do so, Johnny P had decided that he would travel from Aix to come and stay with us in Bourges for a couple of days and also come along to race on the Sunday.

And even that our Beast (the ’97 Renault Clio) is only a touch smaller than Keaysy’s head, the chances of fitting 4 bikes, 4 bags and 4 humans inside was near on impossible. This left us with a little bit of a dilemma…

The next few days were spent trying to organise a suitable vehicle for our journey but as hard as we tried, we came up empty handed. It was not until on Friday that Jono had the idea that we borrow Shazza and Tezza’s Renault Twingo and take both cars for the ride. The Twingo is  in fact quite a deal smaller than Keaysy’s head, and as I sit typing this blog on my double bed it would be safe to say that the car would fit comfortably inside the confines of my mattress.

Nonetheless, we now had two cars to travel in which was by far the cheapest and hopefully easiest way to make the journey. With only two occupants in each car, we would have enough room to fit both bikes and all of our bags, along with a few travel goodies to keep us well fuelled as well as interested along the way. We were set to go.

The race was not until 4 in the afternoon, so we had plenty of time to get there and had scheduled our departure time for about 10am the morning of the race. The morning had not started off to well with the internet deciding that it would not work. Little did we know it, but this was to be the least of out problems for the day, a day which would see us finally arrive back into our apartment in Bourges early the following morning.

The first and possible my most devastating occurrence for the whole day was discovered when we stopped for a widdle after about an hour or so of travel. After having a little wee on the side of the road I decided that I was ready for a lucky dip into my bag of goodies. Only to find that in order to have a lucky dip from the bag itself, I had to take the bag off the table from our living room. Shattered…

So after a brief bit of cursing and yelling at the cows on the side of the road, I hungrily and now somewhat grumpily made my way back into the car for the remainder of the journey. Little did I know that soon after we would be stopping again and that I could then have a grab at the Johnny and Nicko’s bag of goodies.

A little way down the road and only about 30 minutes after we had previously stopped, Jono observed Nick and Johnny in the Clio falling behind after passing a car in the overtaking lane. Once we made it over a small rise and the others did not we pulled over to the side to wait for them to catch. After a few minutes of waiting, it was obvious that the boys weren’t coming. “Surely, they don’t need to go to the toilet again”, Jono said to me so we turned around and went back to see the Clio sitting on the side of the road and Nicko having a little tickle in the grass. If this were the only reason for the stop we would have been stoked, however the fact that the accelerator cable had snapped off the accelerator pedal meant that Nicko having a wee in the grass meant that he was wasting time and this made us angry.

After raiding the boys goodie bag for a few minutes, we finally decided that something needed to be done. We then had to decide what it would be that we would do. Hmmmm

In order to take part in the brainstorming session, it was necessary for me to have a few more lucky dips into the goodie bag, which I did and then we decided on the plan of attack. We now had 4 humans, 4 bikes and lots of bags to take in a car no bigger than one of my spoon thumbs (which although I have been told are enormous, are not really that big). The fact that the larger of the two cars had broken down, made little difference to our situation as the chances of the 4 of us making it the remaining 130km to Parthenay in the Twingo were as good as Owen trying not to get stuck in the trap that is “his ex-girlfriend”. Ahhhhhhh!!!! 

After a short discussion, it was decided by myself that we would remove the cable from it’s casing and as it was still connected to the engine to drive the car. By simply tying the cable to an Octopus strap we could pull the cable through the window of the driver’s side as by pulling on the cable with the left hand (the steering wheel is on the other side over here) you would be able accelerate and use the other pedals to perform the medial tasks of braking and changing gears. Genius!! (photos to come) 

And as nobody else was game enough to try, I was left with the task of getting the car to Parthenay. My co-driver, now Johnny P was a great deal of help throughout the next 25km as he screamed and carried on like a little girl. I mean, all we were doing was driving a car at 120kph using a piece of wire through a window. Easy. The only problem was changing gears, as with one hand steering and the other working the throttle there were no hands left use the stick. After Johnny had contained himself and I thought that he were in a position to handle the responsibility I left him in charge of gears. This worked well for the first few goes until Johnny decided that he would change gears when he wasn’t supposed to skyrocketing the engine to about 5 million revs and scaring the absolute shit out of both of us.

This process continued as I said earlier for around 25km until my hand started to get sore and we thought it best to stop for a rest. I had hope for a new co-driver but after stopping and giving me a few more dips into the goodie bag it was decided that this was probably not the safest was to continue on.

Our new plan of attack from this point on was that we would leave Jono with the car and he could call the roadside assistance. This was the case as Jono is the only French speaking person of the four of us and therefore the only one who could get it fixed. The onky problem was that it was a Sunday and we were pretty sure that there was no way that after the car was towed to the nearest garage that the car would be fixed until the Monday.

The next 15 minutes we spent strategically packing the pint-size Twingo with Johnny, Nicko and my bikes, bags and bodies. Simply fitting the gear in the back of this car was a mission, let alone fitting three bodies into the front, or cockpit as we like to call it. I had nominated myself as the driver as I was the tallest, but I also knew that the other two wanted to spend some quality time together in the passenger seat. With the driver seat so close to the pedals that I could drive them with my hands (haha) and my knees around my ears we took up with first Nicko sitting on Johhny’s lap. (photos to come).

100km and almost as many position changes later, we arrived into Parthenay to get ready to race. We all took turns in straightening out each others limbs and then made our way to the registration area where we realised that Johnny had left his wallet (with race licence) in the other car. Luckily for us the woman who helped us spoke English and we were let through without a hassle. This is an extremely rare occurrence in French Triathlon racing.        

Part 2

9:57 AM, 1/9/2008 .. Posted by Keaysie

Hurry up.....

Untitled Comment

8:36 PM, 4/9/2008 .. Posted by Anonymous

Compared with the BMW, rubbish,....even my bike would go faster!!!! Take Care