This morning a delivery van drew up. A very large flat box, nearly six feet long, was wheeled up to the front door.

Since we were not expecting anything we had no idea what it was. The garage was empty because the cars were out in the drive so we asked the driver to put it there.

I fetched the Stanley knife and cut the parcel tapes and opened up the box to find a bike, partly unassembled, in a green and black livery. The maker was Cannondale.

There were instructions about unpacking and preparing the bike which I was studying when the phone rang.

It was Jamie. “The thing on your doorstep is a surprise delivery from me…I am sending someone to assemble it for you. He’ll give you some maintenance tips as well.”

He had been tracking it.

“I want you to learn to ride a mountain bike and be ready to ride the Great Divide Trail with me next June.” He paused. “Start training…. Set it up, take a ride, and I’ll tell you about some of the features. It’s a cool bike.  Jerome Clementz just won the Enduro World Series on that bike.”

I checked the model. It was also very expensive. Over €5000 at list price.

I called Mikey later in the day to find out more and he said it had been Jamie’s idea but he put some money in too. “Did you know he had Yelp stock options which vested at the IPO? The stock is going great – up to $64 from the IPO price of $15.The boy is getting quite rich.”

I remember him working for Yelp, though Jamie hardly mentions the places he is working most of the time, just the technology projects he is working on.

I hadn’t even heard of the Great Divide Mountain Bike route. Now I know it runs all the way from Banff in Alberta along the spine of the Rockies to New Mexico. The whole trail normally takes between 90 and 100 days. Wow! Could I handle that? I started reading some of the accounts of trail runners and found a film about it.

Jamie was the only one of our children who wanted to do technical hikes with me. He was the one who took it seriously, made sure he had the right gear, learned to navigate.

One time we got lost in the Muskoka region of Canada and just walked on a bearing for nearly five hours through trackless forests until we hit a road.

The time I remember best was when we mountaineered on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. One day we chose a little tarn, one of hundreds in the centre of the island, to test our navigation skills (it was before the days of GPS). After climbing up from the coast road through the drenching rain and the sucking turf, we popped right up on the lip of the tarn two hours later. What a pleasure! High fives.

We opened our rucksacks and drank hot coffee from our flasks sitting on rocks on the edge of the tarn. I love thinking about that moment.

Father and son. Companions.

I will have to train. I’m looking at a cycle training programme recommended by the British Heart Foundation….

Jamie texted me. “Did you get the joke? The thing on your doorstep?

“No”.

“The H.P Lovecraft story.”

“I’ll look it up.”

Maureen keeps playing the song Retrograde by James Blake, from the album that just won the Mercury Prize in the UK. She loves that song.