Dot-watching for Dads
I wasn’t properly asleep when the alarm went off at silly-o’clock, and I slipped out of the bedroom, hurriedly silencing my ‘phone to avoid being in any more trouble for disturbing our preparations to set off on our family holiday, than I already was.
Was he up and out yet?
We’d said up at 0400, wheels rolling by 0430. I sit down at the computer and refresh his location.
Oh for goodness’ sake, Son. Get on with it! A puncture like yesterday, a tangle with a pothole in the dark, or a mechanical, and this might not fly - but he has to leave with all his kit, too.
Finally, after goodness knows how many refreshes of the ‘Find My’ app on the computer, the dot breaks the gravitational hold of my cousin’s garden, begins to move over the A55 towards Bangor, and I relax just a fraction. From this point I’m not going to get replies to my messages, but I know they will be coming up on Thomas Ivor’s bike computer. If he makes it to the ferry and reaches Dublin at lunchtime, he’s got 90-odd miles to ride, to get to the orchard of the slightly random dairy farm whose co-ordinates he’s been given, as his camp spot for the night - such has been the challenge of finding anywhere in Ireland. The next 27 miles determine how he’s going to get to Scotland, and whether he will need to re-trace his steps along the Welsh coast, and hit the A6 corridor after all.
Through town. Good. Onto Telford’s Menai Bridge. We cycled that, going the other way, the better part of a decade ago. The little lad who last rode the A55 on 24” wheels, with his bikepacking bags holding his sandwiches, a spare inner tube and his rain jacket at most, was now getting a move on, through the dawn, and as much as I implicitly trust his experience and judgement on the road, and as much as I know that this trip is about him asserting his own capabilities on the bike, and as much as I’ve left him to it to tap out the miles so far, particularly on the first two big days, there’s a sense that I should just keep with him on this bit, like a Houston Capcom or a Formula One mechanic. He’s fatigued (and got up in the middle of the night, for him!). There isn’t much margin. The ferry was expensive and can only be re-booked for free, if I do it before departure time. Once I know he’s on it, I have another one to book for him, to get him to Cairnryan, before we set out for Scotland ourselves, for our family holiday, and ultimately, to pick him up at the end of the challenge. Who knew you need a letter from a parent, to cross into Ireland aged 17? How much attention, if any, would he garner at the usually oh-so-laid-back Dublin border kiosk? Let’s just get him on the boat, first.
Crossing the Menai Strait on Thomas Telford’s bridge, at dawn.
By now, I’ve opened the Strava route builder with the file I sent Thomas Ivor last night, to which he’s riding. As the dot moves forward, like a World War 2 ‘plotter’ I update his position on the route, removing the most recent part he’s ridden, to keep watching the three things I’d be watching if I was on the bike right now - the terrain, the distance to go; the time left until check-in.
Thomas Ivor appears to be warming to the task - the dot keeps relentlessly moving forward, only very occasionally ceasing to move before my eyes. Has he stopped? Is there a problem? No, it jumps forward again and I can tell he’s not mucking about, despite the late finish yesterday after one of those cheap TPU tubes he likes using, blew just East of Prestatyn. He’s on a brand new but untested front tyre and tube this morning. Neither of us has spoken of it but we both know the risk early on, but with every mile the diminishing likelihood that it will be a problem today.
I’m keeping the messages infrequent, and brief, so they read on his head unit’s screen without needing any key presses. Just the salient information, for now. I’m following the gradient profile and can see when he hits the climbs. As lonely as the old A55 across Anglesey will be at half five in the morning, I may as well be on the road with him.
We’ve dot-watched before, in our household. Epic, record-breaking End-to-End rides, Side-to-Sides, the Edinburgh-London tandem record where Rhoda and I mistimed our own tandem ride to go and watch, and arrived at the A1 just too late to see them pass! I’ve stood at the roadside to watch Mike Broadwith pass, in the middle of the night, with none other than Steve Abraham at my side; Thomas Ivor has followed from afar and tracked the progress of riders on a mission, as Sean Conway went round the coast, and Mark Beaumont went round the world. This? This is quite different. Only he and I know he’s there. I’m the only one watching the dot. And that particular dot, is my son.
As he reaches the outskirts of Holyhead, the dot stops, and I immediately see all the reply I need: a big ‘thumbs up’ emoji. We both know he’s as good as done it, and the contingency we’d allowed for the bike letting him down, or the wind doing something silly, becomes a chance to have a sneaky trip to Golden Arches for breakfast. What 17 year old lad would turn that down?
I remind him to grab some ‘happy snaps’ as he comes out onto the coast at the edge of town, and as the dot heads into the car park of the last junk food stop in North Wales, I realise that the best way to the port check-in desk is now via a different route, which I’d cycled myself last autumn. As he downs a well-earned breakfast, I quickly sketch it up in the Strava route planner, and send it to him. Nothing left to chance. Not until he’s on that ferry.
As I realise and contemplate the lunacy of having sat there in my underpants for the better part of three hours dot-watching, and consider whether to go back and try for an hour’s sleep, Thomas Ivor FaceTimes me - bright blue sky behind him but a note of tension in his voice. He’s ended up at the vehicle check-in by mistake, and doesn’t know where he’s going. I get him to hold the camera up and guide him to the desk, which is empty, annoying us both.
This ride is a rite of passage for both of us - a transmogrification of our particular parent/child roles as cyclists. I may now be reduced to watching the dot, but for the present, I still come in handy now and again; before I gets on the ferry, I send him a fresh copy of his ‘permission letter from Dad’ to enter Ireland, just to be sure.