“ALL IN A DAY’S WORK!”
I’d just checked over and wheeled the liveried bike out of the Exeter based storage unit, having put my own RT/P in its place; reset the unit’s alarm and locked up. I stood quietly contemplating the afternoon ahead and gave the BMW another quick wipe down of the paintwork – it needed a wash, really, but there wasn’t time for that right now. I was scheduled to meet with Rob, my Team Manager, and join him to ride on to a nearby church group meeting where he would deliver his well practiced and polished presentation detailing who and what “Blood Bikes” are and - more importantly- who and what the South West Blood Bikes charity is and does. I say I was “scheduled to meet” but we hadn’t actually made specific time-and-place arrangements so I wanted to try to “intercept” him at a mutually convenient point so that we could arrive at the destination together – a brace of blood bikes is always a more impressive sight than individual arrivals. As it transpired, my phone call, and any potential meet-up plans, were cut short when Rob answered and said “Hello, Adrian. Have you seen the message on the despatch group? Looks like you’re going to be on a shout so I won’t expect to meet you today! Give Control a ring and see what’s happening.”
At that precise moment, I couldn’t quite work out whether I was pleased or disappointed – or, perhaps, somehow, simultaneously both! Probably the latter, in truth. Much as I like to be part of the presentation ‘gig’ and meet people who probably have little concept or knowledge of what blood bikers are and do, getting an active, “operational” task is, deep down, where the real pleasure lies, for me, however small or seemingly mundane that task might transpire to be. Even the relatively ‘commonplace’ - almost daily - task of carrying a few samples from a local Dialysis Unit to the main hospital laboratories carries a weight of responsibility and importance that far transcends the potential mundanity of the familiar 20 mile journey and, of course, as far as the anonymous patient on behalf of whom I’m making that journey is concerned, my task and the weight of that task is never insignificant or unimportant. But all of that was just “background noise” as I waited to be connected to my Controller. “Hi Adrian. I have a job for you – it’s North West London – is that OK?” I suspect the brief, silence in response might have registered as either my shock or my reluctance to do a run of such unusual distance but I was as keen and quick as I could be to dispel any doubt. “Yeah, sure, that’s fine. I’ll make my way to RD&E, can you message me with full address and post code, please?”
“Yes – details on the way. I’ll try for a relay but where and what time?” the Controller said. I tried to think through the advantages and disadvantages of motorway interchanges and/or the benefits of going via the A303 and M3 so working in the idea of a relay meet and trying to predict a time and place revolved around in my befudddled brain until I resigned myself to a snap decision to use the A303/M3 route and suggested a meet ‘at Stonehenge’. I knew I’d need to provide much more detail and accuracy but that was beyond my very limited abilities at that moment in time and, as I had 10 minutes journey time to RD&E, I thought I could give it more thought on the way. One thing that did enter my geriatric head almost immediately I got underway was the fact that I’d pulled B15 out of the storage unit rather than B5. Both are modern. (liquid cooled) BMW R1200 RTs but I’d made this choice on the basis that (in my humble opinion) B15 represents a much more “imposing” machine having a top box the size of a small apartment with single-bedroom-sized side panniers to complement the accommodation analogy!! It is BIG with a capital B!! This, of course, would impress no end the Church Group members that I’d originally expected to meet – and rightly so! It IS a very imposing machine and the fact that it’s ridden by a ‘little auld fella’ struggling to claim an optimistic (and unrealistic!) 5ft 6 in height simply underlines and emphasises its physical size and stature – and, I suppose, this particular rider’s lack thereof! . I’ve experienced - more than once - the somewhat harrowing task of “filtering” between two lines of stationary traffic on this bike and it wasn’t fun. The bike’s size and ‘heft’ are pretty much unnoticeable when on the move and/or at any speed, but at slow speeds they demand a lot of effort and concentration – not to mention a very keen eye for the width of a gap compared to the width of those two ‘single bedroom’ panniers!! I knew that any delivery to anywhere in ‘London’ almost certainly presupposed the inevitability of encountering significant amounts of stationary or very slow moving traffic so using B15 seemed wholly counter to my normal choice of using B15’s stablemate B5 – a similar model bike with one hugely significant difference in its build specification in that it has the “Police spec.” narrow profile side panniers and no back box. These differences have a huge impact on the physical and notional “bulk” of the bike as well as making a significant difference in overall weight, so B5 is noticeably easier to manhandle and steer, especially at slow speeds or in confined spaces. The fact that, unlike B15, B5 doesn’t have the espresso machine or mini fridge in an enormous back box, has, usually, no influence on my choice ……….
Regardless of the mental machinations I was struggling to resolve, it was clearly going to take another 20 to 30 minutes to swap over the two bikes so I quickly resigned myself to sticking with Mr. Big and getting underway to RD&E as quickly as possible.
With my samples collected and the post code entered into the bike’s sat nav I informed my Controller of my proposed route and departure and got the update that I’d been more than half expecting insomuch as it was going to be “all the way, today” as no relay arrangements were possible. That was neither a surprise nor, to be honest, a disappointment – it was an URGENT sample and it was somewhere that I hadn’t been to before so I was happy to accept the “challenge”. I rather hoped it wouldn’t be a challenge, as such, but navigating to and around “norff west larndun” wasn’t exactly what I’d expected to be doing on a 2nd rider duty day so challenge seemed an appropriate term.
My journey started as most of them seem to do – the grind of navigating out of the city traffic and onto something more free flowing. The sat nav complained bitterly about me not agreeing to use its choice of route and kept trying to steer me back to the motorway network, but I held my nerve and, once onto the A30 and into more open country, it eventually reneged and told me I was in this for the long haul with some 186 miles to go to reach my destination. I decided not to look at or even think about the potential time of arrival – I knew that would be pretty much irrelevant and meaningless and would depend entirely on the volume of traffic on London’s endlessly traffic clogged arterial routes and streets. I had no intention of voluntarily stopping so I ignored completely the estimated time of arrival. It wasn’t relevant at that point in time though, in a sense, it did turn out to be.
The dull, overcast, November day meant that some rain or drizzle was always likely and that came as I crossed the cold and bleak expanse of the Salisbury Plain. Luckily it was brief and light and didn’t obscure Stonehenge’s dark grey megaliths which stood broodingly silent and deserted in the gloom of a November gloaming as the BMW purred gracefully past, heated grips working comfortingly against the slowly falling temperature. My personal discomfort about riding a big BMW in traffic-busy, city streets was, of course, even more pronounced for riding through London where, it seemed, even police cars on ‘blues and twos’ seemed to struggle to get through, while hordes of twist-and-go scooters delivering fast “food” in enormous black boxes seem capable of weaving successfully through the very worst of four wheeled ‘log jams’ and disappearing in double quick time!
The stop-start, crawl’n’dash around the M25, North Circular and then down into Hampstead seemed endless but I eventually found my destination and, having retrieved the package from the Daniel’s Box, had to double check the address. The place was obviously correct – the NHS sign plate on the building’s frontage declared it to be a Blood Cancer Laboratory- but it was in complete darkness; the door was locked and there wasn’t a single vehicle in the vicinity. It was, by now, well after 18:00 but I had – at least sub-consciously – expected at least one lab technician to be there as they almost invariably are for the overwhelming majority of the many hundreds of samples we transport and deliver. The Laboratory is part of a large hospital, though I’d parked the bike in a narrow access road in front of this small, unassuming, self contained building hemmed in by a car park on one side and what appeared to be multi-story, terraced houses or shops on the other. The Royal Free Hospital, to which the Laboratory is associated, stood brightly lit a few hundred yards away and I was tempted to walk around to it to see if the package’s destination was actually within the hospital itself but I felt certain that the full address details on the envelope and the actual building I was at were one and the same and so I wasted no further time but called the Duty Controller and relayed my predicament. I wasn’t happy to simply post the package through the letter box at the main entrance door, though the package did say that a drop box was available. Pam, the Duty Controller answered immediately when I rang and outlined my concerns. She then obviously set to work quickly tracking down the contact at RD&E and confirming the instructions that the package could be left in the drop box and the receiving organisation would be notified of its confirmed delivery status and so, if necessary, arrange immediate attention to it. At least the 40 or so minutes delay enabled me to stretch my legs a bit and even provide some brief details about the bike and its purpose to a random but obviously interested member of the public! Always nice to talk about what we do and why we do it!
With my concerns allayed and the package delivered, I confirmed my departure and set my sights – and the sat nav – firmly on the journey home. At this time of the evening and with a journey of over 180 miles and at least 3 ½ hours ahead of me I was eager to get out of the madness of the city and onto the motorway for the boring but practical ride home. The bike’s tank was half full but a supermarket fuel station en route tempted me to stop and top up, just to be certain. I had it in mind that I didn’t want to stop at all once I was underway and out of the madness of the megalopolis. If only I’d known ……
The inevitable crawl around the north west quadrant of the North circular was a frustrating distraction to my goal but, it was as nothing compared to the chaos that greeted me as I accelerated up the slip road onto the M4 west bound ……….
I had mentally prepared myself for a “speed sensitive moving insertion manouevre” into four lanes of fast moving traffic but I wasn’t at all prepared for those four lanes - plus the on-slip traffic - being coned into one lane! One lane! It was absolute chaos – perhaps made even worse by the fact that it was obviously going to be overnight work that was still in the process of being set up so all the signs were reading lane closures while a large number of vehicles were still racing to get to a stop-go choke point which was a moving feast at some point in the unseen distance! As a famous song once had it “Ain’t no love, in the heart of the city…….” There was certainly no obvious sign of love amongst my fellow motorists in this particular part of the city…………
Although it was now well into the evening – somewhere around 20:00 – traffic was still very heavy. I get the impression that, like most big, modern cities, traffic is rarely anything other than heavy especially in comparison to the relatively low volumes of even the larger towns and cities of the South West. It was a zoo and a chaotic one at that. The traffic volume and the moving road block were, of course, the antithesis of what I’d hoped for and, I suppose, expected in choosing the M4; M5 route homewards and there seemed to be comparatively few drivers of any vehicle type in that queue that were willing to provide ANY kind of concession in space or time to even a brightly liveried bike. The chaos probably added an extra 15 or 20 minutes to my journey time and, by the time I reached the M5 southbound I was well into the seventh hour of this task and still had at least another hour to add to get me home. I made the choice to keep going rather than stop for a drink or comfort break – the equation for me is not just one of time in the saddle or the time on the clock. I wanted to be home and in my own space and time to wind down and relax rather than break the journey, break the momentum and, perhaps, break the monotony, only for all those broken pieces to be put temporarily back together for a restart after one brief respite.
I’d fully expected that any London destination would be a significant time eater and had been thankful for the comfort (and the heater!) of the RT’s seat. Nevertheless, 3 or more hours sitting in that single space was making even the RT’s seat feel like a park bench and my ‘sit bones’ were telling me exactly that. Ischial bursitis or ischial boredom? Who knows? Who cares? Not me! Some leg stretching and peg-standing eased things for short spells but the discomfort was never going to fully disappear until I was back at home and off the bike and, thankfully, I was wheeling the bike backwards into my garage at just before midnight. I patted the seat to show my gratitude for the safety, comfort and certainty it had given me but I was also very thankful to switch off the garage light, and get myself a late night hot drink to ease the ringing in my ears and the itching on my scalp! I’d covered around 370 miles and had spent in the region of 8 hours in the saddle. We’d bonded.
Sleep came quickly and washed gently over me as I lay in the comforting, electrically heated arms of a metaphorical Morpheus…………
I was awake quite early the following morning – not quite early enough to say that I was compos mentis, awake and full alert in time for the 0700 start of my 1st rider duty shift but not that far off, either. Fortunately, there was no early morning call so I’d had a leisurely breakfast and then wheeled the BMW out of the garage into the flat, dull greyness of another November day ready to give the bike a quick wash and brush up in gratitude for its sterling service the day before. The bike had a brief wash down and then blow dried - it at very least, looked a little better and a lot more presentable for having had most, if not quite all of the road dirt and insect detritus scrubbed off its voluminous body. Wish I could say the same for the rider but - despite a very welcome hot shower and leisurely breakfast, alas ………………….
Still, none of that mattered now. It was another day, and it wasn’t very long before I got the almost inevitable call. It was a relatively straightforward job – RD&E to Bristol Royal Infirmary with URGENT blood samples and I was very soon kitted up and heading out on to the familiar roads down to the hospital. The journey up to Bristol was remarkably busy – heavy traffic almost all of the way and there may well have been some kind of motorway hold up as the sat nav routed me through Clifton and then in to the heart of the city. Once my precious cargo was delivered I decided to have a quick break and a caffeine surge in the Costa café on the ground floor of the city centre hospital building – the blood bike had been very kindly invited into the sub-building, guarded car park and was parked almost within reach of two security guards so I felt very comfortable with leaving it for an extra 15 minutes while I topped up the caffeine levels depleted by the previous day’s extended distance trip.
The brief but welcome restoration of some ‘sang into my froid’ via a strong black Americano allowed me to get comfortably back in the saddle and face the busy Bristol traffic back to the motorway way towards home near Tiverton. The journey back home was straightforward and I enjoyed a leisurely afternoon pottering around the house and garage, catching up on some of the minor tasks that had been outstanding. Until ……
My late afternoon meal proved to be a wise decision as it wasn’t really very long after it that I got the second call of the day winging its way down the virtual wires of the cell phone network! It was another run to Bristol but this time to the FILTON NHSBT centre. At least this meant I didn’t have to enter the city centre and access from and back to the M5 is relatively quick and simple. I’d guess this might shave 20 to 30 minutes off the overall start to end time for a job but that can be pretty much negated by traffic problems, motorway hold ups or just volume of traffic on any given trip. As it was, this one went OK and I’d completed the task and returned to home just after 23:00. As usual, I got myself a hot drink working as quietly as possible in a kitchen that’s immediately below the bedroom where my wife was soundly asleep. I ‘signed off’ the run and gratefully acknowledged the Controller’s brief valedictory comments on a good day’s “work” and returned her wishes for a good night’s sleep.
I was still rota’d first rider until 07:00 so it would be just me and “Floss the Floozie” sharing the already electrically warmed bed, but I’d be under the duvet while Floss (the cat, of course!!) would be on a her own woollen blanket on top of the duvet at the foot of the bed. My snoring clearly doesn’t bother her ……… though, on second thoughts, I have been awakened on more than one occasion by her pawing my head in the middle of the night, so perhaps she actually IS sometimes disturbed by my noisy apnoeaic (nope, no idea if that’s a real word!) habits?
As it was, my night’s sleep remained undisturbed and I was awakened at a not unreasonable hour by my feline alarm demanding my attention to her dietary needs. I felt deeply, immeasurably satisfied with what could, I suppose, be called my “good day’s work”. I made a rough calculation that my 48 hour duty saw me cover some 750 miles and spend over 16 hours in the saddle and I knew from the moment I got home and signed off that last run that I’d have willingly, eagerly and happily done the same – and more – all over again without a moment’s hesitation.
I’ve no doubt that there’ll be lots of touring riders out there smiling wryly and thinking “PAH!! PUSSY! I do those mileages - and more – for breakfast and lunch then come back again by suppertime!” and I’d neither doubt that or knock it. I’ve ridden far further and for far longer in the “touring days” of my past but, for a number of reasons, those days are almost certainly not going to be repeated by me any time soon! Bear in mind, too, that there’s some implicit and inherent “pressure” in the role – especially when you’re carrying something that could have potentially life changing importance to an anonymous, unknown and unseen patient awaiting the results and outcomes of tests on the samples being carried by a volunteer rider. However, I’d wager – quite confidently – that there’s little, if anything that can match the feeling of immeasurable satisfaction and pride that comes from riding those times and distances on Blood Bike duty rides. See, it’s “all in a day’s work” for us - but it’s all on behalf of others.