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Confession time! While the hardy hardcore were enjoying the Bou Show in Sheffield, David Knight banging heads at Tong and Ryan Villopoto running away and hiding in the Angel Stadium in sunny California, I was holed up at home all toasty warm and snug as a bug.

 

It's not that I didn't want to be at any of 'em – Sheffield's a mega night out, the Fast Eddy was always going to be a cracker and as for Anaheim 1, well, that's a complete no-brainer – but it was more a case of other commitments keeping me elsewhere.

 

Following some pretty full-on caffeine loading (thanks Jamie Coppins@Monster) I was confident I was going to be able to stay up until the AMA SX kicked off online at 3am courtesy of JustinTV but, unfortunately, the previous five days of Dirt Bike Rider deadline week caught up with me and it was lights out in Lancaster long before the lights came on in LA.

 

Luckily for me we live in a pretty wondrous age...

 

My eight-year-old daughter Hazel (the aforementioned other commitment) takes new-fangled technology like the internet totally for granted, but just a handful of years ago things like live streaming and YouTube uploads were, well, pie in the sky.

 

In fact, I'd go as far as saying they were inconceivable to all but the most brilliant visionaries.

 

Sure, 20-years ago I may have been headbanging to Nirvana while wondering how long it would be before I could ride a hoverbike to work. But a computer no bigger than the Yellow Pages that I could carry under my arm and access worldwide info on at the touch of a button?

 

Get out of here...

 

So first thing Sunday morning, while ‘DK' was getting ready to lay waste to a world-class field in Yorkshire, I was propped up in bed drinking coffee and watching Villopoto get his SX title defence off to a winning start.

 

Then I hooked up to some incredible footage from Sheffield including Toni Bou's amazing ride through the skip section complete with audacious fakie. 

 

By the evening clips from Tong were starting to be uploaded showing Knighter nailing some scarily balls-out ditch jumps.

 

In this day and age things are more or less instant.

 

How many of you remember scrambling for T+MX first thing on a Friday morning to see how Lampkin – that's Mart, not Dougie – or Noycey had got on the previous Sunday? Because (believe it or not anyone under 25 years of age reading this) short of calling the T+MX office for a Monday morning heads-up – and lots of people did – that was just about the only way to find out.

 

Nowadays we can see James Stewart hitting the eject button thousands of miles away live on our PC screens. Obviously, that does depend on whether or not we're awake at the time...

 

This weekend I'm definitely going to be giving the Monster a big ole swerve so I can get an early night in on Saturday and be up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in plenty of time for the trip to Nantmawr Quarry for the annual team outing to ‘The Tough One' extreme enduro.

 

Since more or less The Tough One Mk1 WOR organiser, Steve Ireland, has been telling me how it's going to be the last year at Nantmawr, that the next year T1 would be moving to a bigger, better location and then finally – in 2011 – the whole shooting match did indeed up sticks and relocate 80-odd miles to the north east at Back Cowm Quarry, near Rochdale.

 

But this year it's back at its birth place and bloody good show too I reckon.

 

Back Cowm was a great venue as far as terrain went – and I bumped into my old friend Brian Ingham there for the first time in 25-years, which was a big bonus – but personally I felt last year's race lacked the atmosphere of previous events.

 

To me the course was too spread out and, as bizarre as this may sound, I reckon the quarry was a bit too rough-arse for an event like The Tough One. 

 

After all, this is Britain's number one stand-alone extreme enduro and as such needs to have some glamour attached to it and that's in short supply on those moors above Rochdale.

 

Nantmawr on the other hand with its steep walls and natural amphitheatre setting provides the perfect self-contained venue.

 

To my mind it's verging on iconic. I know parking can be a problem but I honestly reckon the location's a big factor behind the Tough One's success. Not only that, just down the road in Oswestry is perhaps the country's finest Little Thief, sorry, Chef...

 

Okay, that's just about your lot for another week. I'm still headbanging to Nirvana but these days I wonder about how long it'll be until someone invents a time machine.

 

Then I'll be heading back to 1980 to begin work on effective monoshock suspension for off-road bikes and I reckon an idea of mine I'm going to call ‘water cooling' could also have legs. 

 

And while I'm at it I may even invent the internet n'all...Guest columnist Sean Lawless looks at how the world has changed since the advent of home PCs and the internet...

 

Confession time! While the hardy hardcore were enjoying the Bou Show in Sheffield, David Knight banging heads at Tong and Ryan Villopoto running away and hiding in the Angel Stadium in sunny California, I was holed up at home all toasty warm and snug as a bug.

 

It's not that I didn't want to be at any of 'em – Sheffield's a mega night out, the Fast Eddy was always going to be a cracker and as for Anaheim 1, well, that's a complete no-brainer – but it was more a case of other commitments keeping me elsewhere.

 

Following some pretty full-on caffeine loading (thanks Jamie Coppins@Monster) I was confident I was going to be able to stay up until the AMA SX kicked off online at 3am courtesy of JustinTV but, unfortunately, the previous five days of Dirt Bike Rider deadline week caught up with me and it was lights out in Lancaster long before the lights came on in LA.

 

Luckily for me we live in a pretty wondrous age...

 

My eight-year-old daughter Hazel (the aforementioned other commitment) takes new-fangled technology like the internet totally for granted, but just a handful of years ago things like live streaming and YouTube uploads were, well, pie in the sky.

 

In fact, I'd go as far as saying they were inconceivable to all but the most brilliant visionaries.

 

Sure, 20-years ago I may have been headbanging to Nirvana while wondering how long it would be before I could ride a hoverbike to work. But a computer no bigger than the Yellow Pages that I could carry under my arm and access worldwide info on at the touch of a button?

 

Get out of here...

 

So first thing Sunday morning, while ‘DK' was getting ready to lay waste to a world-class field in Yorkshire, I was propped up in bed drinking coffee and watching Villopoto get his SX title defence off to a winning start.

 

Then I hooked up to some incredible footage from Sheffield including Toni Bou's amazing ride through the skip section complete with audacious fakie. 

 

By the evening clips from Tong were starting to be uploaded showing Knighter nailing some scarily balls-out ditch jumps.

 

In this day and age things are more or less instant.

 

How many of you remember scrambling for T+MX first thing on a Friday morning to see how Lampkin – that's Mart, not Dougie – or Noycey had got on the previous Sunday? Because (believe it or not anyone under 25 years of age reading this) short of calling the T+MX office for a Monday morning heads-up – and lots of people did – that was just about the only way to find out.

 

Nowadays we can see James Stewart hitting the eject button thousands of miles away live on our PC screens. Obviously, that does depend on whether or not we're awake at the time...

 

This weekend I'm definitely going to be giving the Monster a big ole swerve so I can get an early night in on Saturday and be up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in plenty of time for the trip to Nantmawr Quarry for the annual team outing to ‘The Tough One' extreme enduro.

 

Since more or less The Tough One Mk1 WOR organiser, Steve Ireland, has been telling me how it's going to be the last year at Nantmawr, that the next year T1 would be moving to a bigger, better location and then finally – in 2011 – the whole shooting match did indeed up sticks and relocate 80-odd miles to the north east at Back Cowm Quarry, near Rochdale.

 

But this year it's back at its birth place and bloody good show too I reckon.

 

Back Cowm was a great venue as far as terrain went – and I bumped into my old friend Brian Ingham there for the first time in 25-years, which was a big bonus – but personally I felt last year's race lacked the atmosphere of previous events.

 

To me the course was too spread out and, as bizarre as this may sound, I reckon the quarry was a bit too rough-arse for an event like The Tough One. 

 

After all, this is Britain's number one stand-alone extreme enduro and as such needs to have some glamour attached to it and that's in short supply on those moors above Rochdale.

 

Nantmawr on the other hand with its steep walls and natural amphitheatre setting provides the perfect self-contained venue.

 

To my mind it's verging on iconic. I know parking can be a problem but I honestly reckon the location's a big factor behind the Tough One's success. Not only that, just down the road in Oswestry is perhaps the country's finest Little Thief, sorry, Chef...

 

Okay, that's just about your lot for another week. I'm still headbanging to Nirvana but these days I wonder about how long it'll be until someone invents a time machine.

 

Then I'll be heading back to 1980 to begin work on effective monoshock suspension for off-road bikes and I reckon an idea of mine I'm going to call ‘water cooling' could also have legs. 

 

And while I'm at it I may even invent the internet n'all...