“What the...?” Dave exclaimed to the empty house.

It’s probably a glitch with the HRM or the software. After all when Chris had asked him to start monitoring the girls with the devices he had mentioned the recording units weren’t the usual commercially available things. Maybe reloading the data will sort it?

He slipped his daughters unit back into the download interface, pulled up the relevant screen on the laptop and hit ‘upload’. It took less than thirty seconds to make the transfer and a couple of keystrokes later the results appeared in graph form. A scroll across the data, if you knew what you were looking at you could just about map last night’s ride from rise and fall of the BPM alone.

But there it was again, so not a glitch, a clear jump from the mid one fifties to almost one eighty where it stayed for a couple of minutes before spiking to one eight five, well above the VO² max BC had recorded in Manchester. Not only that but the recovery period looked quite long – oh it dropped back to the ‘active normal’ level but compared to Mand’s graph, significantly longer than expected. There’s something not right here, is she suffering some infection? Illness will often push the numbers upwards but Sunday’s figures looked pretty normal and she’s not mentioned any illness.

“I'm back!” Jen called out.
“In the office.”
“Tea?”
“Please, Gab said anything about feeling off colour?”
There was a pause, well Mrs Bond was putting the kettle on before going through to the office, “She’s not said anything to me, why?”
“Have a look at this,” Dave twisted the computer around so his wife could see the screen.
“Heart rates?”
“Yeah,” Dave confirmed, “top’s Gab, Manda on the bottom.”
“So what am I looking at?”
“Well look, they mirror each other most of the time,” he traced the line, “the climb up to Maria Laach, down the other side and so on.”
“Okay,” Jen allowed as the kettle announced reaching a boil in the kitchen.
“They go the same all the way until this last bit.”
“Gab took off like a scalded cat for the Daun sign,” Jen pointed out.
“Mand’s numbers go up too,” he traced the line, “but then she recovers quickly see?”
“But Gabs stays high,” his wife noted.
“Not just high, it spikes at the point Manda’s starts to lower.”
“You think there’s something wrong, Dave?” Jen asked with concern.
“I don’t know, she’s not said anything to you?”
“Ut uh. You think we should get her checked out?”
“Let’s not get carried away, I'll ring Chris in Manchester, see what he thinks.”
“I'll make that tea.”

“I'm not the expert,” Chris Toynbee admitted, “but it does sound like something that needs investigating. You at home?”
“For the next hour but I'll have my mobile,” Dave agreed.
“Can you email the file over, I'll have a word with the data crunchers, see what they think and I'll get back to you.”
“Okay.”
“Speak to you later,” Toynbee stated before hanging up.

“So?” Jen enquired, setting a mug of tea on the desk for her hubby.
“He’s going to do some digging with the number crunchers, he’ll ring back in a bit,” Dave pressed send, the data disappearing into the digital world of the WWW.
“She was a bit quiet last night,” Jen observed.
“They both were, they aren’t used to riding like that outside of a race situation, they could do with more of it.”
“Well you know they can join us,” Jen stated, “at least when we’re here.”
“Let’s get to the bottom of this before start getting ahead of ourselves.”

“It’s certainly a good spot,” Freddy Bayermann agreed passing each of the young women before him a cup of coffee.
“We think so,” the smaller girl stated.

It had been the immaculately dressed blonde who’d done most of the talking, there was a degree of confidence not often seen in youngsters, Freddy guessed his ‘clients’ were both perhaps in their late teens.

“So what can the Tourist Service do to help?”
“Well we were hoping to do some flyers and that you’d have them in the offices?”
“We don’t usually promote individual businesses,” he told them.
“I know it would be sort of advertising, I thought we could put in a discount voucher for visitors and maybe have a sort of tourist info board at the kiosk.”
‘This young woman will go far,’ Freddy thought to himself.

To be fair there weren’t actually any rules regarding promoting local businesses. a look on the rack outside would reveal lots of private enterprise but it was all ‘tourist experiences’ both near and far but why not promote local eateries, after all they did that for accommodation. The valley is hardly full of big tourist attractions, anything that encourages more visitors has got to be good for business.

“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes, we’ll take your flyers and I'll look at what we can do with you at the kiosk.”
“Cool! I mean, excellent thank you.”
“So when are you opening?”
“A week Monday, we’ll have a special guest for the grand opening.”
“Anyone we know?”
“That’d be telling,” the tiny blonde observed, “of course you’re invited, I'll send you the details through next week.”
“It’s a date,” Freddy agreed.

“Grand opening? special guest? What are you on about Bond?” Connie demanded once they were back outside.
“Er I was just erm winging it.”
“But now oojimawotsit is expecting some grand do and some sort of celebrity,” Con noted.
“I'll sort something,” I offered with more confidence than I actually have.
“We’d best tell my parents.”
“Er yeah.”
“And we need to get some flyers printed as well.”
“There’s that print shop at the far end of Ahrhut’ , we should go down now.”
“It’s your feet,” Con observed.
“Come on. I need some lippy anyway.”
“Whatever.”

“Bond.”
“Dave? Chris at BC.”
“Oh hi, Chris, so?”
“Well I've had words with the number crunchers and our doctor, neither of them think there’s any cause for panic as a one off event.”
“That’s a relief,” Bond senior allowed.
“However if there’s any sign of repeat...”
“I'll be keeping a close eye.”
“The doc did suggest asking her if she felt off or anything during the episode.”
“I can do that, they have any ideas why it might spike like that?”
“Not really, maybe one day we’ll be able to gather more info out in the field which might tell us but for now...”
“Okay, leave it with me.”
“Thanks for keeping us in the loop, Dave – oh by the way, would you be up for fielding a team in the Ryedale three day over Spring Bank?”
“Apollinaris?”
“Uh huh, can probably get some help with expenses.”
Dave flicked through the diary, “We’ve only got a chipper that weekend, can I get back to you?”
“I'll fax you over the details, keep me advised on the other.”
“Sure, speak soon.”

“A thousand zed fold full colour, a hundred and fifty euros,” Con offered as we waited for the Express back up to Dernau.
“Ouch, what about black and white?”
“Still a hundred, do we need like six pages?”
“Well if we want to include the menu and stuff.”
“I see what you mean but like we don’t have to list everything do we?”
“I guess not,” I allowed, a thought suddenly popping into my head, “give us the price list.”

Indeed the ‘Print Express’ flyer was the very thing we’d been discussing, a Z fold. I dug in my bag for my notepad then flattened the flyer out.

“What are you up to?”
“Aha, thought so, it’s A4.”
“And?” Con pressed.
“Hang on,” I scanned the price list, “A4 double side colour eighty five.”
“So?”
“Well if we got them unfolded we could do that ourselves and save like sixty five euros.”
“So it’s sixty five just for the folding? Geez, what a racket.”
“It gets better, we only have to have five hundred too.”
“Is that enough?”
“Well it’s an option at least.”
“We could put details of your mystery guest on it.” she opined.

Bum, forgot about that, wonder who I can get?

“Off out again?” Mum quested.
“Got to get the squad up to scratch for Saturday.”
“Saturday?”
“We’ve got a competition at Phantasialand?”
“Right.”
“We’re practising in the park at Altenahr then Kristin’s invited us for tea after.”
“So you won’t want dinner when you get back then?”
“Never said that,” I pouted.
“I'll keep you a plate by,” Mum advised.
“Did you want me for something?” I asked pulling my trainer socks a bit straighter.
“Did something happen on last night’s ride?”

My gut lurched, my face dropped.

“Why would you think that? You were there the whole way.”
“Your dad noticed something on your HRM data, when you went off for the town sign at Daun?”

Betrayed by technology.

“Er.”
“You’re not in trouble we’re just a bit concerned, you can tell me.”
“It was nothing really.”
“It was something,” Mum observed.

I'm gonna get slain, I know I am.

Maddy Bell © 06.02.17