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The Intrepid Crew
Their mission was to tour and explore the vast
expanse of Scottish motorways and carriageways. The directive, issued
by Her Majesty the Queen, would permit these brave explorers to travel
swiftly and with impunity through the territory to assess the state of
the roads, the pubs and inns. From the beginning the weather was
unusually cooperative. The bright blue sky traced with wispy clouds
would give many a local cause to lower the brim of their cap in order to
shield his eyes from the unfamiliar and furious sun. The crew took
this as a divine omen that the mission was destined to be a success.
These are the men of that intrepid crew and this is their story.
The team, composed of six riders and their faithful
sherpa set out from points across the United Kingdom and America.
The crew, chosen by the Queen's Committee for Unexplored Frontiers,
was assembled of men who, in the wisdom of the committee, would stand the
greatest chance of success of enduring an entire fortnight during the notoriously
inhospitable Scottish Summer.
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 Their
journey was the culmination of months of vigorous planning and preparing.
No man dared to venture into the hostile Scottish countryside ill prepared.
There were two brothers who had been chosen because of their navigational
prowess and their willingness to probe the dark bends before the rest of
the team with an abandon uncommon to most mortals. The two were as one
in every conceivable way from the machines (Honda VTR 1000) they had chosen for the journey
to the queer dispatch jackets they donned in lieu of the more traditional
and certainly more manly leathers. The rest of the crew, however,
respected their decisions because when either of the brothers fired up
their machines or (gasp!) if they fired them up at the same time all the
crew and anyone in the vicinity would feel as if they had been directly
transported to some primeval swamp. The phlegmy gurgles and profound
slurps that emanated from their exhausts would render images in one's mind
of a fantastic monster who dwells deep within a mucky moor. It was
from this primal connection to the Swamp Monster that the two brothers
drew their power and courage to lead the crew 'round the myriad bends they
would encounter.
This map (big file 287KB)which outlines the journey
was drawn up by master Scottish cartographers at the express request of
Her Majesty the Queen. Since she had begrudgingly agreed to fund
such a dangerous mission Her Royal Highness demanded that it be a success
and that no expense be spared in the preparation.
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 The
London contingent contributed the two aforementioned brothers and
one notorious rider known in all northern ports (read pubs and petrol stations)
as the "Racing Snake." He would be their gastronomical guinea pig
for the potentially dodgy foodstuffs that they were likely to encounter
along the route. You see the Snake was infamous throughout the capital
and as far north as Broad Hinton for his ability to ingest an imbibe
copious quantities of gruel and grog without regard for quality nor vintage.
Legend has it that he once survived for eight straight days on nothing
but plates of kippers and snifters of blended scotch!
The snake would prove to be a valuable asset to the team in this capacity
even if his stamina left a bit to be desired. In training for the
mission ahead one of the brothers and the RS spent a considerable portion
of the evening before their departure in a London pub where they had discussed
strategy and prepared themselves mentally. The next evening when
they rendezvoused with the American at an inn near Kirby Lonsdale (Yorkshire) just short of
the Scottish frontier the
toll of the prior evening's concentration was evident in their determined,
red eyes.
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 From
the south came a man of many tools. The chap from Royal Tunbridge Wells
would tend to the machines in the evening while the rest of the team dined,
relaxed and talked strategy for the following day. Peter was so dedicated
to his job that he would nightly stay in the stables with the machines
where he would have fallen asleep during the tedious job of fine tuning
the bikes for optimal performance. He was chosen by the committee
once word of last summer's mission to Wales had spread to the palace at
Buckingham. The story is told, and by all accounts it is undeniable
fact, that this man of many tools and fingers like ball peen hammers had
run the length and breadth of Wales on a Norton of ancient vintage without
a functioning clutch and by throttling the machine using not a twist grip
but by rolling his fist, around which the throttle cable had been secured,
back and forth along the handle bar. Any other man would have certainly
lost a finger or even his entire hand at the wrist, but not our man from
Tunbridge Wells. He later reported that "if you're going to pilot
a Norton you've got to enjoy the pain." He has been seen engrossed
in conversation with dedicated Harley riders of a similar mentality when
on holiday to the USA.
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 From
America came a young man about whom most of the team knew little
save his reputation for having little or no money in his pocket while still
managing to acquire a new and seemingly more advanced machine (Honda VFR 800) with each
passing year. He also seemed to have a rather strange relationship
with the hired sherpa and was often spotted conversing with the
simple old man at odd times. Many would later speculate the the little
man was bargaining with the sherpa. The team later agreed that the
sherpa had, through some type of sordid family ties, become indebted to
the young man and was trying slowly over a period of what seemed like decades
to repay his debt and be rid of the insatiable fellow. The
young man was chosen by the Committee for his modest skill with languages
and for his ability to tackle tight curves with the utmost grace and agility
while never scraping a single valuable foot peg on the asphalt.
He was seen as a cautious man, but a searcher nonetheless. The Committee
believed that he would be able to befriend whatever Scottish thugs the
team might encounter with his considerable negotiation skills and his knowledge
of Spanish, which the committee believed would be similar to whatever heathen
dialect was spoken in such a barren land by the primitive Scots.
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 To
ensure success the Queen insisted that a Scotsman be taken along
with the team in order to interpret the customs and to help the Two Brothers
with navigating the terrain. Fortunately Peter of Many Tools knew
a Scotsman that he believed could be trusted and arranged to have him join
the group in Edinburgh once they were well inside the Scottish border.
He was to meet the crew in the city of the great castle on the Firth and
Peter would be with him. Thus, the intrepid explorers, who had had
no occasion to meet this man, whiled away the first few days of their journey
to the land of the Scots speculating about the nature of this man and what
his contribution to the team might be. The doctor was an enigma from
the beginning. He was an Irishman though he lived in Edinburgh.
He had recently changed machines (Triumph Sprint) lest he be recognized by ill-intentioned
localers. No one knew exactly where in the city he lived and the
lodging that he had arranged for the team was so well ensconced within
the maze of avenues and alleyways of Edinburgh that the team had great difficulty
locating it, and nearly aborted
the mission for lack of a place to stay. Early on the team
learned that he was a man of medicine and were instantly put off by this
for all in the group had experienced a strong leeching before and had since
grown understandably wary of physicians. However, they were encouraged
in that the Doctor had studied pharmacology and therefore would likely
be able to render a poison should the need for a stealth assault on a group
of unsuspecting pub-goers prove warranted. His name, though, was kept
secret. From the beginning the group referred to the doctor by way
a a variety of pseudonyms in order to conceal his identity from other spying
Scots who might endanger the doctor by passing word of his involvement
in the mission to the north before the team had the chance to rendezvous
with him and move westward. It was not long before the team, tired
from the strain of travelling, had forgotten the doctor's true christian
name. Darren McTwain, Devan Mctavish, Dilly McCracken and Donald
McBothy were just some of the pseudonyms that the team endeavored to employ
in the interest of secrecy. The latter name was reputed to be representative
of the time that the young Doctor had spent residing in an actual bothy
during his early years of medical school.
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This was the crew who, selected for their aforementioned
skills and abilities by Hers and Her Royal Committee for Unexplored Frontiers to survey the carriageways
of North North England (AKA Scotland), finally converged in the clandestine
room of a dock front pub in Edinburgh on one dramatically windswept evening
in July.
Because of the nature of their mission and the authority on which
is was commissioned the team was not subject to the normal laws of the
road. Thus they were able to cover a vast breadth of highway and
return swiftly to report their discoveries on the conditions of the roadways
and the nature of the folk who inhabit such a barbarous land.
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And none of it would have been possible were it not for their faithful
sherpa.
 They
called him "semi-colon" in honor of his newly acquired mastery of
our language. The brave porter, a master of four wheels, maneuvered
his bright Renault Laguna heavily laden with the supplies that we required for
a journey across the harsh Scottish countryside. He met the team
at crossroads where they shared lunch and a kind word with the poor fellow.
The men often wondered in private how he could be surviving on the meager
rations we had provided for him. It was not until their triumphant
return when they learned that the old man had been squirreling away portions
of Branston pickle and a most malodorous cheese which he would not give
up without a furious round of fisticuffs.
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