How Deep is Your Mud?

Club Run, Saturday 23rd February 2019

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance:	104km/65 miles with 1,057m climbing
Riding Time:	4 hours 0 minutes
Average Speed:	25.9 km/h
Group Size:	28 riders, 0 FNG’s
Temperature:	13°C
Weather in a word or two:	Cool

As we approached the weekend, it was Aether’s turn to post up our route for Saturday’s club run, with the weather forecast looked like holding mild and dry for the second weekend in a row.

“I smell carbon,” Jimmy Mac’s message flashed back almost immediately.

And so he could.

And, ye verily, so it was to be…

I suspected there would be few winter bikes out and I was more than happy to join in with the masses, lifting the Holdsworth out of its cotton-wool wrappings, polishing up it’s bright, garish and shiny surfaces and topping up the tyres

Time to join the fun.

Saturday wasn’t quite as warm as I expected. Having sweltered on my commute from work on Friday in a long sleeved journey, bibtights and a base layer, I’d gone for a short-sleeved jersey, arm warmers and legwarmers and found its disappointingly chilly first thing.

It was cold enough for me to pull on a windproof jacket for the jaunt across to the meeting point and I really noticed the difference in swapping winter boots for ruby red slippers – I could have done with some Belgian Booties as, for the first time all winter my toes were cold.

Still, the ride across was a pleasure and I enjoyed the different kind of feel even a modest, carbon-framed bike gives. I won’t describe it in detail, I did that last year and, rather embarrassingly, found I’d written pretty much the exact same thing the year before that. But, if you don’t regularly ride a winter bike, you may never appreciate this change – it’s a life-affirming moment and a bit like getting a new bike every year.

Anyway, suffice to say that both bike and rider appeared at the meeting point in good time and in good order and one of them was wearing a stupid, seemingly permanent grin.

Main Topics of Conversation at the Meeting Point:

Having been absent a couple of weeks with an ingrown toenail, the Monkey Butler Boy was back with us. I sidled up to him, put my cleat over the toe of his shoe and pressed down.

“What ya deeing, man?” he wondered and then, when he realised exactly what I was doing, “Ha-ha, wrong foot.”

I might have been forgiven, but my apparently dirty cleat left a barely discernible impression on his newly restored, gleaming white shoe.

This sent the Monkey Butler Boy scurrying to his tool tub, from which he extracted a dubbin-impregnated cloth and proceeded to polish his shoes to clean of my offending marks.

While the Monkey Butler Boy was distracted, one of his mini-me’s turned up and started jabbering away at him enthusiastically. I listened intently to the discourse, but all I heard was a strange chittering interspersed with a series of high-pitched squeaks and chirrups, like a dolphin on helium.

“I didn’t understand a word of that,” I admitted resignedly to Crazy Legs.

“No, neither did I, but it does seem to have attracted the attention of all the dogs in a 50 metre radius,” he replied.

Meanwhile, the Monkey Butler Boy seemed to have no issue understanding and conversing with the youngster, while I looked on, still befuddled. I felt like I was watching a younger version of Father Ted’s Monkey Priest.

Aether briefed in the route, we split into two and G-Dawg led the first group out.

I counted them off as they bumped down the kerb one by one. For once we seemed to have the split just about right.

“In the second group, on your good bike?” Crazy Legs enquired, somewhat surprised.

He was right, this was a wasted opportunity, a few moments more prevarication and then it was my turn to bump down the kerb, accelerate smartly toward our front group … and haul on the anchors as the traffic lights changed to red and they slipped away.

The rest of the second group caught me up, while I stood waiting for the lights to change.

“Well, that must be the first time someone’s actually been dropped in the bus station,” Taffy Steve announced drolly.

The light finally changed to green and Benedict shot away, seemingly intent on catching the first group too. I dived onto his wheel and we began our mad pursuit, even though I had a horrible vision of being caught in limbo, between group 1 and 2.

As we hit the Broadway, I nudged onto the front. Andeven’s blinking rear light finally materialised in front of us, at least we now had sight of our quarry and could see we were visibly closing. Encouraged, we pressed harder and as the front group started to slow for more traffic lights, Benedict surged across the gap and towed me onto the back.

Well, that’s an interesting way to start a group ride, but at least it warmed me up a little. I hung at the back trying to recover from the effort as we pushed on and out into the countryside.

I took the opportunity of the first real climb to move forward in the group and found myself riding along beside Goose, whose ever fulminating brain was working out how he could fit a gyroscope inside his wheel hub. The idea was this would somehow be charged up while riding and come into play whenever you stopped, keeping the bike upright without all the faffing of trying to do a track-stand, or the ultimate embarrassment of failing to do a track stand and toppling slowly over.

We passed a pair of cyclists as Rab Dee and the Colossus finally swung off the front after a sterling first stint and I thought nothing more of it as our front pair drifted past me and latched onto the back.

A few more changes at the front and a few more miles under or wheels, then Goose was calling a halt for a mechanical, after a strange metallic rattling started to emanate from the rear of his bike. We stopped and he found that, unlike normal bikes, his touring, steel behemoth had two spare spokes in a little holder on his chainstay. One of these spokes had worked loose and it was this that was causing the rattle.

Rather than trying to fit the spoke back into its holder, or throw it away in a hedge, Goose decided to stick the errant spoke in his back pocket, seemingly unfazed by our concern that, should he come off, he could end up skewered on his own spoke – possibly the cycling equivalent to being hoist by your own petard.

We pressed on through Fenwick and Matfen and I found myself riding beside the Colossus, who pointed out to two cyclists up ahead. Apparently when he dropped off the front with Rab Dee, they’d inadvertently rejoined behind this pair, trapping them within or group and forcing them to travel wherever we wanted to go and at whatever speed we chose to set. They’d only managed to break free when we stopped for Goose’s mechanical, but now we were closing them down on a climb and there was a real danger they’d be swept up and carried away again.

Luckily we turned off toward the village of Ryal and they escaped to fight another day. We climbed up to the village and called a halt to regroup and let everyone berate the Garrulous Kid for having such a filthy bike. It was such a comprehensive beasting that we were still there 10 minutes later when the second group arrived for an unscheduled club reformation.

With no one tempted to head down and then back up the Ryals, we all set a course for the Quarry. At the top the plan was to swing left and then follow an additional loop toward Capheaton, where there was the opportunity to return to the main road, or follow a gated track toward the cafe.

The first deviation came at the top of the Quarry, when the Garrulous Kid announced he was going right, instead of left. He suggested his decision was forced by a badly creaking bottom-bracket, but to be honest, despite exemplary Teutonic engineering of the very highest order, his bike’s been making those kind of distressed, whimpering noises since early October.

What then would explain his strange and sudden defection, before he’d even had a chance to renew his sprinting battle with the Colossus?

It was at this point I noticed Goose still had his errant, naked spoke poking baldly up out of his jersey pocket and recalled Plumose Pappus’s suggestion last week, that we all gang up and dispatch the Garrulous Kid by impaling him on spokes. Had the Garrulous Kid seen Goose’s spoke and thought the plot was in motion? Had he taken both fright and flight so as not to end up being Kerplunked and abandoned at the side of the road?

“Et tu, Goose?” might he have asked, bleeding from more spoke holes than you’d find in a heavy duty touring rim.

We may never know.

At the top of our little extended loop everyone decided that the combination of good summer bikes and a gated farm track probably wasn’t a great idea, so we stuck to the road that would lead us back to the Snake Bends and the cafe.

I pushed on at the front and had started up Brandywell Bank, when I heard the distinctive swash, swash, swash behind me, as someone on carbon wheels came powering up the short, but horribly steep climb in a massive gear.

“Swash, swash, swash,” I said in response.

“Guess who?” G-Dawg asked.

Oh, hold on, let me think …

Still on the front I tried to provide a fast lead out for the sprint, hammering away over the drop toward the Snake Bends and managing to hold a reasonable, if modest pace until someone finally attacked and I could ease back.

I dropped back through the second group, before managing to recover slightly to lead home the also-rans.

Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:

After threatening last week, the promise was fulfilled this time and we escaped a crowded cafe to find seats outside in the garden. In February? It was cool, but not unpleasant.

Aether reported that he’d tried to join the motley ranks of angry (but warm handed) rockhoppers and invested in some Planet X lobster mitts. In fact, he told us, he now had two pairs as he didn’t know which size to get, the Large or Extra Large. The trouble was both were too small.

“Yeah, they are in fact identical,” the Colossus assured him, “the only difference is what size label they stick on them.”

Caracol had his own fair share of glove buying issues, having measured his hands following the instructions on one web site and found that lengthwise he was recommended to buy Extra Large, but the recommended width fitting was Small.

Talk turned to my crash last week and how it takes a particular kind of idiot to ride into a kerb, even when the kerb suddenly erupts with no reason out of a road surface. No excuses, guilty as charged, M’lud.

We once again had a discussion about the apparent lack of logic behind many cycling routes and how they seem to be designed by people who’ve never actually ridden a bike. Luckily Caracol was on hand to provide the necessary technical insight.

“You do know how to tell the difference between a cycle path and a cycle lane, don’t you?” he asked.

We didn’t.

“A cycle lane’s where you park your car, a cycle path’s where you walk the dog.”

Seems about right.

At some point in our sojourn dans l’herbe, Buster rolled up, being a complete slacker and having enjoyed a very relaxed morning in bed, before finally stirring to ride directly to the cafe. Given the minimal effort in getting there I’m not sure he deserved the giant sized portion of cake he was devouring.

He mentioned that just as I was falling off, not far from Pigdon last week (That? Again?) a 63 year old cyclist was found after being subjected to a nasty hit and run in the same area, with the police now appealing for witnesses.

Buster informed us the victim was an ex-racer, good friend and protege of OGL who’d apparently once ridden under the moniker of the Flying Pitman. Being a smart arse, I had to ask if this was before, or after his numerous appearances on Top of the Pops as part of an a capella group of dodgy looking miscreants. I think I actually managed to inflict an ear worm on G-Dawg, which was a bit of a surprise as I didn’t think he sang.

[I understand the cyclist is now out of critical condition and recovering, but suffered a major head injury and cannot remember anything about the incident.]

The Garrulous Kid wandered up and tried to persuade us he was fully house-trained, completely domesticated and would be perfectly capable of looking after himself once he cut mummy’s apron-strings. Seeking some substance to this claim, someone asked him how he would go about doing the ironing,

“Well, first I’d boil the kettle …”

“Eh? What for?”

“To fill the iron.”

“!!!”

“Would you turn on the toaster before doing some laundry?” the Colossus wondered.

I’m not sure he’s quite as prepared as he thinks he is.

A few were starting to pack up to leave and the Garrulous Kid made to go with them.

“When you get onto the lane to Ogle, call back and let us know how muddy it is,” G-Dawg asked him, thinking about protecting his bike from further abuse.