Club Run, Saturday 30th March 2019
My Ride (according to Strava)
| Total Distance: | 111 km/69 miles with 1,211 m of climbing |
| Riding Time: | 4 hours 11 minutes |
| Average Speed: | 26.5km/h |
| Group Size: | 30 riders, 2 FNG’s |
| Temperature: | 15℃ |
| Weather in a word or two: | Rinse and repeat? |
In terms of the weather, it was almost like a rinse and repeat of last Saturday, dry, bright, but bitterly cold. Ideal conditions, especially if you could survive that first hour or so until the chill burned off. To help in this regard, I pulled my super-lightweight, Galibier Ventultra windproof over everything and away we went.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
I arrived at the meeting point in what I thought was good order.
“New jacket?” Crazy Legs enquired?” looking at me somewhat askance. I told him it wasn’t, it had accompanied us to the Pyrenees last year and I’d worn it several times since. He was still looking at me in an oddly disapproving way though.
“Did you dress in a hurry?” he asked, tilting his head to one side to take me in from a different angle.
“Err, no…”
“You look like the village idiot, ” he finally decided, your zip’s all twisted and off centre.”
“It’s a design feature … apparently,” I told him, although, I must admit, without a great deal of conviction. To quote from the manufacturer’s website: “we have chosen an offset zip as it will be worn over an ‘centered’ jersey zipper, thus avoiding doubled up zips, on top of each other.” I have to admit I didn’t realise doubled up zips on top of each other was a particular problem until I read that.
“It still makes you look like the village idiot,” he concluded, then …
“You’d better not crash,” he warned, “If the paramedics see that they’ll probably think your back’s been twisted and snap your neck trying to realign it again.”
Ha ha. I took the jacket off, bundled it into a tight fist, like a magician preparing and endless hankie gag and dropped it into my back pocket.
It had served it’s purpose. Besides which, I didn’t want to encourage any paramedics to snap my neck to align it with an off-kilter zip in the event of an accident.
The Garrulous Kid took issue with last week’s blerg, insisting he had actually gone down the Ryals, but had left before the two groups had met and merged. Despite leaving at a different time, riding solo and taking a completely different route to everyone else, he claimed he had, without doubt, won the sprint to the cafe and beaten us all fair and square.
The Garrulous Kid then stripped off his teeny-tiny track mitts, insisting they were making his hands too hot. It reminded Jimmy Mac of a Family Guy episode, when Peter defended driving gloves with an open back because of that well known family trait of “sweaty knuckles.”
“Anyway, you should be wearing shorts,” the Garrulous Kid insisted.
“I am,” I told him.
He looked at me with blank incomprehension.
“Eh?”
I twanged the hem of my shorts where they ended over my knee warmers, “It’s just that I’m also wearing knee warmers.”
“Well, what’s the point of those?” the Garrulous Kid demanded to know.
Beside me, Jimmy Mac sighed heavily, “Even my six-year old was able to work out the purpose of knee warmers,” he suggested, “Just from the name alone.”
We’d had one of our regular social nights on Thursday evening, trying a brand new bar that at least gave us another watering-hole option. OGL expressed concern that it had been quite quiet for an opening extravaganza, before suggesting it was perhaps intentional and “they’d had a bit of a soft opening.”
“Doesn’t everyone like a soft opening?” I ventured.
Ah look, I’m not proud of myself, but it was an open goal, who could have resisted.
Crazy Legs outlined the route which would include a descent “down Curlicue Hill, or whatever it’s called” (the name seems to have stuck) and then a quick turnaround before riding back up the Trench. He then said we were going to be taking the Magic Road before Middleton Bank, a route only a select few have ever ridden and many of us weren’t even aware existed.
He called for a split into two groups, with a rendezvous at Dyke Neuk for realignment and split into shorter and longer groups. Everything seemed clear, until he announced he wanted to do the longer ride and was looking to form a slower-longer group to supplement the usual faster-longer and slower-shorter splinters. Eh?
No one has asked yet for a faster-shorter group, but it’ll come and I’m already confused …
Then, like a bolt from the blue and to all round stunned silence, a mere 121 days after declaring he would organise one “soon” – months beyond the promised date and officially 7 or 8 years late , OGL voluntarily mentioned a soon to be realised date for a club AGM.
OMG! OGL GRC AGM! WTF?
(SMH TBH …)
With that particularly shocking rifle-shot still resounding, we pushed off, clipped in and rode out. I found myself at the back of a 15 strong front group as, for once in living memory, we’d actually conspired to split our numbers exactly into two. What is going on? All the little certainties in my carefully ordered world have just been turned upside down.
The front group was seemingly intent on getting to the rendezvous in super-fast time and we made good progress, with Caracol, the Garrulous Kid, Monkey Butler Boy and Rab Dee in particular driving along the pace. It was so fast and so contained, that when when we reached the top of Bell’s Hill and looked back to pick up stragglers, there were none.
I suspected we were minutes ahead of the second group as we began the ascent up to the meeting point at Dyke Neuk. Everyone else attacked the climb and went romping away as I sat up and drifted backwards. We were going to stop and wait at the top, so I didn’t feel the need to flog myself to keep up.
As the steepest gradients bit, I was just behind a similarly soft-pedalling Colossus, when he tried to shift onto the inner ring and his chain just sighed and gave way without a fight.
I climbed to the top and begged a chain tool from the Cow Ranger, before rolling back down with G-Dawg to meet the Colossus walking upwards, pushing his broken bike. The Cow Ranger’s tool proved useless without an Allen key as a handle, but I remembered I probably had a multi-tool in my soft-case tool tub. I pulled this out of my bottle cage and unzipped it. Sure enough, there nestled between two spare tubes, two tyre levers and a mini pump was the probably unused, definitely forgotten about multi-tool, complete with a chain-tool attachment.
A bit of pin pushing and re-setting later, the Colossus had a workable, if potentially delicate chain that would see him home. We rejoined our group at the top, where we found them mingling with the Prof-led, Back Street Boys, in what the Cow Ranger would later dub a GRC-BSB mash-up. I understand the accompanying video is a surprise YouTube hit.
“The Boys” (if I may call them that without incurring the wrath of the Advertising Standards Authority) were planning on riding a similar route to us, so the Prof issued an open invitation for any of our group to join them.
Someone tried to persuade the Garrulous Kid to go and he asked me what I thought. I told him I thought the combination of him and the Prof riding together would be potentially lethal and G-Dawg suggested we’d need to issue a public safety warning before deciding to take things any further.
“Hur-hur, like Leeful Weapon,” the Garrulous Kid announced, but I think we’d done enough to dissuade him.
The Back Street Boys departed, possibly taking a few of our number with them, perhaps not. Thankfully, the Garrulous Kid was not among their number and we were soon reunited with our second group. Options were discussed, routes were agreed and new groups were formed before we set off again.
I found myself riding beside a very disgruntled Big Yin.
“The Trench,” he started, “Why’s it called the Trench? It’s not a trench, it doesn’t look like a trench and, as far as I know, there were no battles in the area that would have seen anyone needing to dig a trench.”
What can I say, I guess some people are more pragmatic than poetic.
As we pushed on toward the drop down “Curlicue Bank” I found myself alongside Zardoz’s daughter.
“Has that cruel old man made you ride with him again?”
She puffed out her cheeks in resignation, “Oh, he said, we’ll just go with the slower group and then it was, oh, we’ll just do the Trench. I think we’re along for the whole ride.”
Down we dropped, before a sharp left, quick scuttle along the valley floor, then another sharp left to begin climbing the Trench. As the slope bit, we were spread across the left hand lane and, I was following G-Dawgs’ wheel as we momentarily strayed over the white line to haul our way past some of the early stragglers.
A driver behind wasn’t very impressed, either with us clogging the inside lane, straying onto the other side of the road, or simply because of our general lack of form. Of course, the most constructive way of showing his displeasure was to lean heavily on his horn for a good half a minute or so, before driving slowly past, frothing, swearing and wildly gesticulating.
G-Dawg paid him back in kind and as the car slowed, I thought we were actually going to have some kind of physical confrontation, but the driver obviously did a quick headcount and realised the odds were 20 to 1 in our favour, so accelerated away.
He’d probably spent longer remonstrating with us than waiting to pass, but I guess the former is maybe more satisfying?
We followed our successful assault on the Trench with a swoop and burn down the dip and through Hartburn as we made our way toward the Magic Road and then Middleton Bank. There we passed a big bloke carrying an even bigger scythe.Hopefully just a local yokel and not a post-modern incarnation of the Grim Reaper dressed in beige corduroy trousers.
We were relying on G-Dawg now to find this mystical road and sadly, he wan’t up to the task. Insisting the road was somewhere on the left, he rejected the first candidate as being nothing more than a gravel strewn and heavily potholed farmers track. And then … well, and then there were no more options as we reached the turn-off proper to Middleton Bank.
Jimmy Mac and Caracol blasted away off the front, while I preferred a more leisurely approach to the climb, easing through the steepest section before starting to haul in the Garrulous Kid.
Over the top we coalesced into a small group as we joined Biden Fecht, Goose, the Garrulous Kid and a couple of others, accelerating toward the cafe.
When Biden Fecht pushed on at the front, I immediately followed, thinking we could get a bit of through and off working and see if we could close down those off the front. It wasn’t happening though and no one came through to take a turn.
Then Biden Fecht swung wide and jumped away and still no one came through for a pull, so I just kept plugging away at the front. I took the group past the junction to Bolam Lake and then I was done, sitting up and slowing, while trying to find some way of drag more air into oxygen-starved lungs.
Goose led the others through and I accelerated to latch onto the back, to try and recover a little in the wheels. In no time at all though, we hit the Rollers, so I attacked. Just because. I’d caught onto Biden Fecht’s rear wheel before the second crest and then just kept going, dragging everyone over the last bumps, through the downhill and around the corner for the last climb to the cafe.
Here the attacks came thick and fast, but I felt I’d done my bit, so just swung to the side of the road and made my way upwards at my own pace.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
We found the Red Max, comfortably ensconced in the cafe, feet up and enjoying some well deserved cake and a coffee, having taken a shorter-slower route, or, who knows, maybe a faster-longer route to the cafe.
As we came through the door he pointed a finger at the Garrulous Kid and announced, “I beat you!”
He saw me behind, pointed and repeated, “I beat you!”
Then Goose, “I beat you!”
Biden Fecht, “I beat you an’all!”
And finally, some little, grey-haired old lady, who’d just parked up and looked somewhat bewildered as the Red Max pointed an accusatory finger at her and loudly declared, “I beat you!”
I found a table in the back and was joined by the Garrulous Kid, seemingly enamoured by the vision of himself and the Prof as diametrically opposed, scofflaw, bike-riding, anglicised cop buddies in the vein of Riggs and Murtaugh.
“Hee-hee, Leeful Weapon!”
We were joined by Captain Black, slumping heavily down into his seat and suffering from a severe case of winterbikeitis. He was not enjoying being out on Treacle, the name he’s given to his winter bike – not out of any sense of affection, but “because it makes me feel like I’m riding through treacle.”
Taffy Steve and Crazy Legs filled in the corners of the table, with Crazy Legs remembering it was the same spot we’d occupied when a cantankerous old radgie (mad, lunatic, angry) gadgie (bloke, feller, man) took him to task for laughing too much and far too obviously enjoying himself!
I enquired about the Magic Road and learned that their group had found it, although apparently there had been no pot of gold at the end. Crazy Legs suggested it was like Brigadoon and only appears once every 100 years.
We discussed how interesting it would be to have 100 years of history pass for every day you lived, but the Garrulous Kid couldn’t see the attraction and thought the idea was rubbish. I’m pleased we got that sorted, anyway.
Talking about Plumose Pappus and his love of hills, the Garrulous Kid announced, “He reminds me of Jimmy Cricket.”
Though struggling with the actual comparison, Crazy Legs was quite impressed that the Garrulous Kid could remember the ancient, Irish comedian, best known for wearing wellies with a big R incised on the front of the left hand one and a big L on the right. (Yes folks, that was the acme, the very pinnacle of his humour.)
“I’m surprised you can recall him …” Crazy Legs started.
“Hold on, hold on,” I interrupted, “Do you mean the Irish comedian, or the Disney character?”
“The Disney character, you know that little ant feller.”
“Ant feller? You mean Jiminy Cricket,” Crazy Legs rebuked him, “He was a grasshopper, not an ant, you know – the clue’s in the name.”
“Kind of like knee-warmers,” I suggested.
Shrugging off his mistakes, the Garrulous Kid announced he’d worked out precisely when his last club run would be before he left to go to university and he demanded to know what we would do to mark the occasion.
“Celebrate?” I suggested.
“We could all line up and salute you with upraised mini-pumps,” Crazy Legs said, before deciding this would be a less than spectacular demonstration.
“Or, we could douse you with our water-bottles?” he decided.
“No, energy gels,” Taffy Steve amended, “We’ll anoint you with energy gels, like a cycling version of the Hindu festival of Holi, but using gels instead of paint. We’ll have plenty of time to find the most luridly colourful and disgusting ones, like Bilberry with added Caffeine.”
“Pink Grapefruit and Avocado,” I added.
Ladies and gentleman, I think we have a plan and, yea verily the anointing with gels shall come to pass. The fact that the Garrulous Kid’s last club ride coincides with a weekend where we typically see a massive increase in angry wasp activity and he’s going to be coated in sugary-sweet, sticky goo is just going to add to the fun.
We manged to escape the cafe without being accosted by any radgie-gadgies and set off for the ride home.
Once more I found myself at the back, where I had a chat with one of the Flippin’ New Guys, an Irish CX rider, more than strong and fit enough to keep up with our lot. As usual the pace kicked up as we stared up Berwick Hill and I clung to his wheel as we worked our way from the back of the group toward the front.
Over the crest and starting down the other side, we were still some way off the leading group, so I set off in pursuit. I’d managed to close the gap but wasn’t convinced I’d make it all the way over before the slope levelled out, then the Monkey Butler Boy blasted past on his TT-bike in full aero-tuck. I dived onto his back wheel and he dragged us across.
Somewhere along the way we picked up a couple of EMC riders and, with testosterone flowing freely, there presence probably contributed to the high speeds we attained as we pounded through Dinnington, hammered around the airport and I was unleashed into the Mad Mile to start my ride home.
YTD Totals: 1,984 km / 1,232 miles with 27,072 metres of climbing
Sur La Jante 
One thought on “Leeful Weapon”