Oh man… We’ve turned 3 years old and I basically missed my own Dirty Birthday!! Yes, 1 July is the official date of liberation, and when riding and adventure officially re-took its rightful place at the top in the hierarchy of life.

As I reflected on when the Dirtness turned 1 and then 2, not only has a lot changed, but a lot has happened. Perhaps not as much in the last 12 months as my all-or-nothing personality disorder would have liked, but when I hurriedly did the motherfucking montage in between packing for Europe, it did occur to me that its still been pretty rammed with radness in the last 12 months… With one notably exception of course!

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“The Beard made me do it… Yes, all of it…”

Two Euro EWS Rounds, Brissy mini mission, the whole Broken Neck scenario, the inevitable Road to Recovery II, getting married and that Dirty Stag ride, Trans NZ, Marlborough sounds and then the Bali Bike Park mini mission. Not a bad compilation on the Dirty road to turning 3.

Throw in the Welsh Assassin winning another National title, Das Wolf leaving the #cHub, about 10,000km’s of riding, some Rivet Racing action and a UK style crisis in confidence that saw the South American adventure scuttled quicker than you can Google Admiral Graf Spee, and its fair to say its been an eventful year of living Dirty.

I usually try and find something insightful to say on the Birthday posts, or perhaps just slightly less cunty and ranty than usual. But this year the pressures of life and general busyness have clouded my ability to bestow any form of suspect wisdom upon you. Which, when you think about it, is something to reflect on in itself.

As I commented recently, life does spend a reasonable amount of time trying to attack you or your GC crew and keep you from the beloved sport that in some way shape or form bonds us all loosely together. I’ve found over the last year more than ever that trying to ride how I want and then on top of that, wank about it on-line has been more challenging than ever. These are the times when your mates, passion for riding and new kit are what we need the most to keep it rocking. Well, maybe not the new kit part… But definitely the prospect of the next mission.

More than ever there is a range of things competing for your time and your cash… And I’m not just talking about your smart phone and anti-social media trying to rape your brain and attention span. I applaud those of you who realise this and continue to keep it real by planning ahead, rounding up your crew, scouting the next location and making those riding plans. Bravo for not letting life mount you and face fuck you the way it wants to when you decide to miss that morning ride to get into the officer early to clear e mails.

Hold the line, keep the variety, ride with good cunts and don’t over think shit are about the only philosophical things I can really come up with late on a Sunday and as a future post will outline, I am massively sucking ass on that last one!

The year ahead as we head to furious four? Some cool stuff in the pipeline, starting this coming week and some more rad stuff on the distant horizon. I have a list of shit I want to rock over the next 12 months, so as we say to a room full of drones in a work setting where we want to appeal to the lowest common denominator: “I hope you can come on the journey with me and the rest of the DN Global Collective.

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Somehow irrelevant and exceedingly relevant all at the same time

Thank you to everyone who has been part of the third year of living Dirty and for continuing to be a faithful and good cunt readership. Even when its hard to crank out material, or my proof reading is lazier than a drunken stiffy, or I’ve had an OCD that makes a story weirder than a grown man with a cat fetish, I appreciate you rad cunts being out there getting amongst my efforts to add to the pollution that is the internet.

And with that in mind, I’m off to bust out the Evoc and pack this beast up in its usual manner to commence getting our annual dose of EuroENDURO summer fever! Over to you if you want to give it a YAMAN or a YEOOOOOOW. Stay tuned for some Italian antics!

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Next stop Pila?

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