Double-Booked!

Peter Dukes writes:
Sunday: This is diary mismanagement night. Look at the month ahead first, and then week. Create time for important tasks, urgent tasks, and urgent and important tasks – and then juggle all those clashes. Get depressed when last week’s ‘didn’t get around to’s’ crowd out the coming days. Realisation: less than three weeks to go and I did no training at all last week, except for the Munich beer festival.
Monday:: Diary shock. Have double-booked interviews for Friday 24 January, the day that we travel to Basse for the start of the great ride. What to do?
Tuesday: Nana, Musa and I take a dawn spin down to Banjul and back. The potholes loom up fast and I have no front light. I ride mostly sandwiched between Nana and Musa: I am the flabby pale luncheon meat filling between two athletically wholesome slices of rye. For Nana has clearly cheated by training all through Christmas and Musa is nothing but ultra fit. As we return to the MRC gates, Nana satisfied concludes, ‘... an excellent pace!’ I think, ‘I’ll die.’
Wednesday: Recovered. So to Wiggle, the cyclists’ Internet store, for last-minute purchases, especially better lights. And, having discovered a previously unknown bodyplace called the perineum, for some exceedingly high-tech, moisture-dispersing ultra-padded lycra shorts. Am swept away by the thought of the ‘Top-level Tour Air Elastic Interface cycling pad from CyTech for serious sessions in the saddle’. With ‘Moisture management Field Sensor fabric’.... Phew, that’s what 400km in two days will need.
And to be doubly protective, a flash new saddle: the Selle Italia Max Flite Gel Flow. The name, with its sequence of must-have adjectives, evokes the image of a swift, sleek peloton, eating up the dusty miles. Am particularly taken by the promise of the ‘extra padding and specific soft-tissue-relief design that reduces the pressure where needed most. So many words without commas! But nice to know that manufacturers are so sympathetic to one’s most intimate cycling needs.
Thursday: Haven’t yet dealt with my diary malfunction. Stupid-boy thought: could I ride my bike to Basse through Friday night? Well, I do have the shorts and the saddle. Help!