Surly Long Haul Trucker

“It's you”, my wife said when we first set eyes on it. “It must be fate.  Just what you want and your name's written all over it”.  I had to agree to some extent: it was certainly my size, and the style I was looking for, but it was the name that really got me.  A transfer identifying the American manufacturer, Surly, had been fixed to the front tube and one saying, Long Haul Trucker to the crossbar. “Surly Long Haul Trucker”, giggled my wife. “It's you”.

The LHT, according to the internet site we were looking at, was one of the most popular and capable touring cycles you could buy and that was apparently what I wanted, a bike to go touring on. You see, my wife was planning a cycling holiday, a change, I suppose, from the usual lying on a crowded beach watching oil soaked blubber eat its way through the day. She had decided on something that would allow us to travel about a bit and see a few things. No sitting down all day looking at the world through a screen. Slow, also, so the countryside could be appreciated instead of whizzing through it on motorways and A roads.  We would go gliding down lanes and tracks away from other traffic, in quiet tranquillity; relaxed, avoiding all that confrontation while in complete harmony with all we would meet in the rural idyll.

I didn't like to disillusion her and tell her of the self-satisfying smiles and forced pleasantry you get from everyone you meet when venturing beyond the safety of the concrete landscape; that there would be animals everywhere, depositing goodness knows what all over the place, including the roads on which we would be cycling; and those pony club women stuffed into filthy jodhpurs; the smell.  Friendly fresh air? Give me the stern-faced, sweet smoke of the city any day of the week.  

“Me, Surly? I don't know what you mean”. I  protested.  “Long haul trucker I may be, but Surly...?”. I'd always considered myself pretty laid back, a listener, always reasonable and above all, considerate.  She looked at me sideways.  “What about the Ministry chap who was snooping round your cab looking for a speed detection equipment detector, thing”, my wife said.  “You were pretty surly with him by all accounts.  In fact, by your account, actually. Remember”?
Oh yes, I remember him, snooping around.


Surly Long Haul Trucker and a snooper from the Ministry.

It was just a normal road check, somewhere in West London, I think, on the North circular Road.  I had just left a factory estate in Park Royal and was heading south for the channel when I got pounced on by a police motorcyclist and told to pull into the next slip road. When I stopped, I got out of the cab to speak to another driver who was standing next to his truck smoking, while a man from The Ministry tapped out a familiar tune on the underside of the chassis. We were exchanging a few pleasantries when said musician emerged from under the vehicle holding aloft the headless shaft of a small hammer.
“The tops come off”, he said, through a broad smile.
“Why were you using it, if it was defective”? I said, straight faced.
“Well, I didn't know it was going to break, did I”. The smile had disappeared now, replaced by the dismayed look of the victim.
“When did you last check it”? I asked.
He didn't answer and strutted off to a small group of officials that were gathered round a couple of cars, idly chatting and drinking take-away coffee.

It was then I noticed that the passenger door of my cab was open and someone was standing on the top step looking in, the top half of his body obscured by the open door. I walked back to the truck and stood behind him. I could see the reflective jacket and clipboard with its pen attached, the coat and claws of the fault-finder
“What are you doing”? I asked.
“Just looking, driver”. He didn't climb down, just swivelled his head and upper body to face me.
“You should ask first”, I told him.
“We have the power to enter”.
“Not uninvited you don't.  You can't force me to let you into my cab”. I said, with false politeness. I pride myself on remaining calm in these situations.
“If you don't show me your records or the vehicle unit. 'The tachograph'”, he added, intending to show the teeth of his knowledge, but instead simply sounding smug. ''That's obstruction”. He wasn't budging, neither in his stance on looking in my cab, nor from the step.
“I can't. I said.
“Why not”?  The clipboard began to shake in anticipation
“You're obstructing me. I can't get in the cab”. I said.
He fixed me with a stern look for a few seconds, then smiled and suggested I go round and get in the driver's seat so that we could discuss the matter in comfort.  There's no point in crossing the line with officialdom, so I made my way round to the other side of the cab and climbed up.

The line in these matters being the stage where a government official can crawl back behind the cover of legislation.  It's always easier to destroy than create, that's true in all aspects of life: my truck took a lot of effort to put together, but it'll eventually corrode away all on its own; my business took years to build, but it could be destroyed in a day by any incident  serious enough. The right approach is to be in the right and not give anyone the chance to destroy. So, after he had inspected the tachograph and my records, and found nothing to report, and the wheel tappers had flattened a few more edges on the nuts and bolts that hold my truck together, I said that I wished to leave.  He, though, seemed to have other ideas and his eyes began to wander around the cab.

“What are you looking for”? I said.
“We're clamping down on speed enforcement detection equipment”, he said. “Do you have any such  devices”?
“What defines 'such devices'”? I said.
“Such things that allow you to tell if your speed is being checked”.
“Like the mirrors”, I said.
“What”?
“Well, if I look in the mirrors and there's a police car behind, I check the speedo to make sure I'm not speeding”.
“No, you know what I mean”. He was becoming a bit tetchy, I noticed. “Devices that detect police radar, and that sort of thing”.
“I've got a GPS, I think that gives camera positions.  But that's perfectly legal”.
“Ah, but not in France”, he said, triumphantly.
“But we're not in France”, I said.
“Look, it's perfectly natural for the police to enforce the speed limit, and for them not to want to be detected”.  He became a little more animated now, his hands jutting to and fro as he warmed to the theme. “Otherwise drivers would have an unfair advantage”.
“What's natural, as you come to mention it”, I said, doing my best to sound logical and not too mocking. “Is that predators have eyes in the front of their heads, so they have 3-D vision which enables them to judge speed and distance.  That way they know when to pounce.  Prey have eyes on the each side of the head, so they have all round vision and can see the predators coming from any angle. That way the prey stay ever vigilant, and respectful of the rules that govern their behaviour”.
“Erm, well … . I don't see...”.
‘‘If I'm driving along and I see a speed limit sign, I look at the speedo to ensure my speed's appropriate for that road.  It's the same if I see a camera or police car.  All the while I'm checking my speed to make sure I'm within the rules.  It would be the same if I had any other type of detector, which, by the way, I don't.  It's all good for safety, the more people check their speed, the better”.


We eventually went on our cycling holiday, me and the wife.  It was a bum breaking, leg aching, damp affair spent dodging lunatic tractor drivers and oblivious country folk in their four wheel drives. On the last day, as we turned from a busy B road and into a lane close to our home, a truck driver, obviously frustrated by our presence, wound down his window and yelled, “Get off the f*****g road”.  I, of course, gave him a thumbs up.

Lands of Rock and Roll

The Earth rotates on an axis through its Poles. The Moon travels above, in an orbit, a continuous curve dictated by its speed and the force of gravity. The Earth's winds and tides are effected by gravity and rotation - the forces of the Earth's turning and the gravities of both Earth and Moon. The Earth itself is fluid. Plates that support continents shift due to forces created by heat, but they are also dragged by the force of the Earth's rotation and pulled by its gravity. The Earth is a dynamic thing because of force.

In the North there are two lands formed from crushed earth and molten rock. Lands forced into being by gravity.  Once joined they now stand on two sides of the North Sea.  These lands are Norway and Shetland.

A Scania rounds a bend in the Norwegian hills, its loaded with rock, heavy but low. The forces that press the rock to the Earth hold the Scania to the road. A side force created by the truck's weight and speed as it travels through the bend pulls on the rock and the truck drifts out. The trailer swings slightly before straightening and the truck continues its journey.

A Scania rounds a bend in the Hills of Shetland. It's a concrete mixer and the  load is fluid, high and to one side, as the drum rotates. The forces that press the concrete to the Earth hold the Scania to the road.  A side force created by the truck's weight and speed as it travels through the bend pulls on the concrete, and the truck rolls over.

The Earth rotates on its axis through the poles, and the moon orbits above, in a continuous curve, and at such a speed that it is held in place by the force of gravity.      

       

Danish Mikael

Danish Mikael emerges from his small tent holding two plastic bottles, each containing a yellow fluid. “It saves me having to get out in the night”, he says. His bicycle lies nearby next to a small trailer. This is Danish Mikael's life: cycling around Denmark and this part of northern Germany looking at history, living in a tent.

Danish Mikael tells us that he's never fitted in with those around him. He's an intelligent, communicative person, but at the same time a loner. He remembers his childhood and the fights between his parents. Danish Mikael describes his father as a 'strong man'. He often visits the past.

Danish Mikael has diminishing assets. He exists on savings and state benefits. His world is shrinking, a result of all the personal difficulty locked into his life. Danish Mikael no longer has a job and colleagues. No close neighbours. No family. He has a small tent, a bicycle and a trailer.

Danish Mikael cooks, eats and sleeps in his tent. He doesn't join us in the camping site's communal kitchen. In the world of his tent, Danish Mikael looks within himself, and writes. He asks me to read a short piece he's written. It describes a woman living in a castle. She has all the material things anyone could wish for, but she sees no one. She is well fed and comfortable. She roams the castle finding rooms that give her pleasure, soothing tranquil places and dark sinister dungeons that terrify but at the same time excite her. She can go anywhere within the castle, the choice is hers. But one day she manages to see beyond the limits of its walls. She sees a world so different from her own that she longs for a life beyond the confines of the grey stone. The outside is full of life; there's a horizon.

A light rain has set in and Danish Mikael waves us off in the drizzle. He'll stay another day, he says. 

Active/Passive

It's a point made very bravely by Brian Weatherly in the opening paragraphs of his article, Plotting Pilot Error (Truck & Driver, June 2013), that most truck accidents are squarely down to the driver. It doesn't make comfortable reading, especially when you read on and find he backs up his assertion with statistics. The fact is irrefutable: when it comes to accidents it's not just a reckless few, we are all the weakest link.

But it really shouldn't be a surprise. Manufacturers like Volvo don't spend millions of pounds in the research and development of safety systems for no reason. As far as the truck itself goes, safety systems add nothing to productivity. Operated within the laws of physics, a truck will always be safe on a road. A well maintained vehicle can never be dangerous; a road is a static lump of tarmac, to describe one as dangerous is non nonsensical. Brian is right, there's a common problem in all this, one we've known about all along but have never wanted to recognise. Unlike the people at Volvo.

The bottom line is that where the human brain fails to react or act quickly enough, ECU's are so much better, and faster. And where enforcement fails to control all drivers, all of the time, active electronic systems will one day control all vehicles. More and more, active intervention is being used in vehicle safety, gradually removing the driver from the decision making process. Brian makes a kind, if not redeeming gesture in his final paragraph, quoting Volvo as saying that some aspects of safety will always be left to the driver, seatbelt use, for example, he says. But this fails to imagine the result of total control: that passive systems, like seatbelts, become superfluous. Sadly, so do the wonderful skills of the long lost craft of lorry driving.

It's a Matter of Time

Time (t)

t=s/v

Distance (s) Speed (v) acceleration (a)

s=vt v=s/t a=v/t

A Grand Prix motorcycle circles the track. After level pegging for most of the race, its average lap time is compared with the other competitors and found to be 0.2 seconds quicker than the next fastest. With a top speed recorded on the longest straight of 100 metres per second (m/s) - that's over 200mph - it's right up there with the best, but it's still not primo top-speed. But the bike is winning – so, it must be going quicker through the bends. If it carries on like this, by the time the race finishes in five laps time, the motorcycle will have won by a margin of one second. It covers the final lap in 50 seconds, winning with an average speed of 50m/s (during this lap). This means that the track is 2500 metres in length. As the machine in second place is 0.2 seconds slower over this distance, its average speed, therefore, is 49.98m/s. Prediction, calculation and evaluation; all possible because of time.

Time: the only proper constant in the world we understand. While everything we can see and touch can vary, time is the truly independent ingredient. Time gives the fixed marker posts of change; a uniform grid over which all that happens in life is laid. Unlike anything else in our everyday perception of the world, it never varies. Everything you can physically see changes at differing rates, because of time, and are only quantifiable because time is unvarying and constant. Time is both the base and the dimension that provides the measure of life. Without time there would be no comparison of events – change would be unquantifiable and unpredictable. Our deterministic world could not function without the concept of time.

Time is sometimes referred to as the fourth dimension because to find meaning in the words, faster, slower, quicker, a perceptible but intangible benchmark is required, one that exists outside the world we see. Imagine you have no recognition of time. A truck overtakes you on the motorway, he's in front of you, so he will arrive before you. How do you arrive first? Your truck must get in front of his, but how do you get the front of your truck ahead? The simple answer is to increase speed. But time doesn't exist, so neither does speed.

When speed increases or decreases, it simply means the distance travelled changes in a fixed period of time. When we accelerate or decelerate, the distance travelled in a fixed period of time changes in a fixed period of time. Using the standard (SI) units of time and space, metres and seconds, a truck travelling at a speed of 13m/s, travels 13 metres every second. If it accelerates at a rate of 2 metres per second, per second (m/s/s), its speed will increase by 2 metres per second every second. So, if a truck travelling at 13 m/s accelerates at a rate of 2 m/s/s, after 1 second it will be travelling at 15 m/s, after 2 seconds, its speed will have increased to 17 m/s.

Time permits change in the physical world; speed, acceleration and interest on savings are all changes in things we can touch. Time makes change relative. When you next overtake another truck on the motorway, think about it. A 16.5 metre artic attempts to pass another. The distance needed from the front of the overtaking vehicle passing the rear of the other, to its rear passing the front of the other, is 33 metres. This is an absolute minimum and takes no account of the extra distance required to turn back to the lane in front of the overtaken truck. You are averaging 56mph, he's averaging 55mph. The difference is about 0.5m/s. The time needed is 66 seconds, just over a minute. In that time you will have travelled over 1650 metres, a little more than a mile.

So, by overtaking, you gain just over 30 metres for every mile travelled, and it takes about a minute. At 56mph, a 200 mile journey will take 3 hours 34 minutes. Or, 3 hours and 38 minutes had you sat behind the other lorry. Four minutes: a motorcycle on an A road would cover 4 miles – at 60mph; a mile a minute. Roger Bannister could change position by a mile. A Grand Prix motorcycle, travelling at over 200mph would have overtaken your truck in just under a second. (As the comparison is between your truck and the motorcycle, the relative change in distance is 16.5 metres, plus 2 metres for the length of the bike.) And, at 200mph, the race bike would arrive at the end of the 200 mile journey no less than two and a half hours before your truck (had you both started in the same place and, of course, at the same time). That's enough time for a serious athlete to run a marathon. It's all a matter of time.         

Spotted

We're driving along a quiet coast road that's also bordered by a railway line. My good lady spots a group of men in anoraks, all fondling binoculars and notebooks. They're waiting for something; hoping that whatever it is will soon appear and make their lives just a little more complete, on this day at least. “Stop”, she yells. It's a command I cannot ignore. We pull over and she rushes back along the road to the group, not even remembering to close the car door such is her concentration, her devotion, her passion. My wife, you see, is a birder. Is this is a twitch she just can't ignore? Is it an unfortunate sea bird blown in from some far away shore; a poor creature who should by rights never touch English sand? No. In no time at all she slumps back into the passenger seat beside me. “Train spotters” she exclaims. “Train spotters”, she repeats, incredulously. “Train spotters”. There it is again, only now she's shaking her head in disbelief. “What is the point?” She says, as we drive off leaving the anoraks staring along the rails; happy, oblivious.

Meet Roger, he collects small pieces of paper no bigger than a postage stamps. Well, that's because they are postage stamps, if they weren't they would be just small pieces of paper no bigger than postage stamps, and who would collect those? Well, I bet someone would. But what would be the point, at least stamps represent something: far off places, travel, history, great people, important events from a particular time and place. Collecting small pieces of paper could be nice, though. You could divide them into different categories: colours and materials, for example, glossy, newsprint and so on. And put them into binders labelled, 'Small pieces of paper, waste bin, European, 2010 onwards'. Used stamps are themselves just old small pieces of paper, they're useless, they no longer serve any purpose. Except that it's nice to collect them.

Alan is obsessed with Eddie Stobart. He not only collects models of the famous fleet of trucks, he buys anything related to the company. Alan has a room in his home dedicated to Stobart, it's filled with posters, books and even toys bearing the 'Stobart' logo. He is particularly keen to acquire the names the company gives to each of its vehicles. He's often seen standing on motorway bridges close to where he lives, hoping to photograph a passing Stobart lorry; hoping to write down another name. Holidays are spent in part travelling the country's motorways from service station to service station, lorry park to lorry park in the heady anticipation of seeing and recording. Alan is so dedicated to the pursuit of all things Eddie Stobart, you would think his life depended on on it.

I think, over the years, I've accumulated tools for just about every conceivable job you could come across in a truck workshop. I've even got Whitworth sockets. There are quarter, three-eights, half inch, and three-quarter drive ratchets; and spanners of all sorts, too many to mention. They're good kit too, Smap-on and Britool, and I literally love them all. I keep them in tool chests that take up half a wall at one end of the shop; chests that cost an arm and a leg. And I know where every tool is, what shelf, in which drawer. They are all clean and oiled, and laid out neatly. I'm very particular about that: I don't like disorder and I don't like corrosion of any kind. With my tools I can deal with anything that comes along; complete any job; put food on the table.

The Bounty of Mutiny

I look forward to Sundays, the relaxation and reflection, a big family meal; a sort of regrouping after the corporate life that otherwise dominates. It's really all about revolution and rebellion against those that dictate outside that important union we call Home. On Sundays I like to rewrite history. With those close to me always willing to listen, accepting my preferred view, I give a wholly prejudiced version of the life I lead during the week. The boss, colleagues: my accounts of their actions are all skewed to the way I wish them to be seen. And not only do my loved ones absorb these tales without question, no others will actually do for them. My story, it seems, is also their's. It's a mutiny that produces the bounty of enhanced self esteem and unity. Sunday is a day when all is made to appear right, and in this way the bit of land I call Home becomes the most right of all.

And on Sundays there are the papers, which, in line with my  own philosophy, as much as anything else, usually focus on family life and the home. There are gardens and beautiful properties to dream about, lifestyle articles and feelgood features to mull over. But this week's Sunday Times magazine also included a tale of rebellion - and some rewriting of history - in a piece that followed the last moments of a film prop, a full size replica of HMS Bounty, lost late in 2012 after being caught by hurricane Sandy. Built in the 1960s for a Hollywood account of the famous mutiny (starring Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard) the ship had since been used as some sort of tourist attraction. Her loss resulted in the tragic death of two people: the captain and a descendant of Fletcher Christian, the most remembered, and canonized mutineer.

The film, Mutiny on the Bounty, was pure fiction in the way it portrayed the ship's captain, William Bligh, and in doing so, capitalised on the myth that Bligh was a martinet. William Bligh suffered three rebellions in his life: the now famous Bounty mutiny; Spithead, when a whole fleet revolted; and an insurrection when he served as governor of New South Wales. Put into context, mutiny was not uncommon in Bligh's time and considering the attraction of life in the warm Pacific islands where everything seemed available and in abundance, including women, it's no wonder many of the Bounty's crew preferred to stay rather than return to England. In the film's rewritten history, a fictional Bligh has been created as a cruel and poor commander, and attributed with an arrogance that precluded proper leadership.  His conflict with Christian is made all the more fascinating, and profitable, by antics invented by the cinema. 

The truth is that Bligh, having served with Cook on his expeditions to the Pacific, understood men and the sea very well. Like Cook he used a three watch system, unlike many other captains in the Royal Navy, which gave his men more rest. He even understood the need for exercise on such a long voyage and ordered the crew to dance. He used corporal punishment sparingly by comparison with many of his contemporaries. Bligh's seamanship and judgement were proven by his navigation of the Bounty in her attempt to round Cape Horn, through storm force winds, and finally by his voyage of over 3,000 miles in an open boat after being removed from Bounty by Christian and his mutineers. Bligh lost one man on that incredible journey, the result of an attack by natives. Bligh and his achievements, both on the Bounty and afterwards in the open boat, are far more interesting than any American film-maker's portrayal of the mutiny.

History is rewritten time after time but the motive is sometimes more than to simply provide an entertaining story. There's the home audience to consider. American film directors, it would appear, spend a lot of time at home on Sundays. Ever since the United States won the Second World War single handed the achievements of other nations, and in particular the British, have been ignored. (Recently Hollywood implied to the world it was the US Navy and not the Royal Navy, as history has it, that captured the first German Enigma machine.) And now they've awarded themselves an Oscar for the film Argo, a cinematic untruth set in 1979 that claims that six escaping American hostages were turned away by the British in Tehran, before seeking refuge with the Canadians. In reality, and in a story far more exciting than the film tells, British embassy staff rescued the men, hiding them in several safe houses, until finally, they managed to leave the country. Once again, truth is far more entertaining than fiction. While the film has the CIA saving the day, the men were initially rescued by a few British embassy staff in an orange Austin Maxi motor car.

As an act of self inflation, on par with Idi Amin declaring himself King of Scotland, the Americans seem to have lost the plot, literally. In the piece in the Sunday Times magazine, the one about the replica Bounty, there's a photograph of her sailing under full canvas. It's a magnificent sight, but maybe one that can only be appreciated at home. The ship, of course, is a fiction: HMS Bounty in all her glory, a Stars and Stripes ensign fluttering in the breeze.