What’s in a name? The Exocet

The Exocet ...the Flying Fish! That’s all. A recent email from Dave (the Boss) prompted me to take a look at TriTalk’s forum and a recent topic on the very subject.
http://www.tritalk.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=64758
It would seem we’ve upset a few people. An insight into how we arrived at the name might help!

(Yet) another of Planet X’s crisis meetings had to be convened in early December when we realised we’d already missed the deadline for the 2010 CTT handbook ad. The team met at a plush design studio in Sheffield ... a million miles away from Planet X’s HQ at Carcroft (not in distance but in it’s professional and organised attitude and approach to business ... something neither Dave or I are familiar with, so we were taken by surprise and knocked a bit off balance straight away ... ok?).

When we arrived, Planet X’s professional Ironman athlete Thomas Hellreigal from Germany was already there discussing a new clothing range with Tim Hubbard (the vastly overpaid ... but very nice nonetheless!! ... design consultant). Managing to amalgamate a dozen different meetings into one is something Dave is a master at. To this day I still haven’t sussed out whether this is planned (because he is one of those annoying sods who can do a dozen things at once and still not miss a trick) or if he’s really as disorganised as it seems (unlikely ... although it certainly keeps crossing my mind that that might be the case!), but within the space of 20 minutes we’d managed to sort out the new clothing range, draft out 12 pages for the CTT ad, discuss the possibility of doing some sort of deal with Paul and Kathy (take a look at this www.active-vacances.com) AND agree on the new TT frame’s name ... which left plenty of time to grab a nice line in cream cheese salad baguettes and a few Guinness’s at the local hostelry before catching the train home.

But I digress ... the name of the frame! Thomas was sat with Nick (almost as overpaid as Tim) at a computer trying to agree on some colour-ways for his new bike, disc and deep rimmed wheels. It suddenly dawned on us that although we planned to ‘introduce’ the new frameset to the eagerly awaiting British time trialling community in the handbook ad we hadn’t actually decided on its name yet. Thomas suggested ‘Milram’ ... (or something similar ... a well known wind in the Canaries ... apparently!). ‘Mistral’ ... ‘Blowing like a hoolly’ ... and a number of other possibilities were raised ...and ... dismissed.

Then someone said "Welcome to Planet X’s new frameset. Not just any old frameset but the XO set." ( OK...it was me!). I honestly thought XO was the internationally recognised abbreviation for aero (it’s CX ... isn’t it?). Before we knew it, Nick and Tim had drafted the handbook ad and put Exocet ... not XOset ... CXset ... get set go ... train set ... but Exocet!

When we realised what had happened, our joint IQ in the teens figured it wasn’t as bad as it first appeared and Dave’s knowledge of aquatics quickly pointed out that an Exocet was a flying fish ... which although not ideal would probably be ok for the new frame if time trialling and global warming continues into the next millennium. He also said he liked the name because it was the same as his favourite take-away down Ecclesall Road (see pic). In any event ... we were ‘screwed’ because the ad had already been approved and passed to the printers!

In view of the recent furore on the TriTalk forum, Dave has considered reviewing the name. Whether we resort to another of Thomas’s suggestions (wind related again) Father Time...erm...(schoolboy humour here!) Varter Zeit ...

1 January 2009