Vittoria’s Secret and the Cold Hand Gang

Club Run, Saturday 30^thJanuary, 2016

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 100 km/62 miles with 1,156 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 4 hours 28 minutes

Average Speed: 22.3 km/h

Group size: 14 riders, no FNG’s

Temperature: 5°C

Weather in a word or two: Bright, blowy, brisk

Main topic of conversation at the start:

When G-Dawg rolled up wearing what looked like over-sized oven gloves and a muffler made of thick, carpet underfelt, we knew we were in for a cold, cold ride.

Crazy Legs was next in, lamenting that supplies of strawberry jam in his household were wholly depleted so breakfast had been a minor disappointment. As a consequence, and without its sugary boost, he declared his ride was probably doomed before it had even started. How fragile we are.

He’d already conducted his patented ice-test however, wandering out, into the road and finding a puddle to dip his finger into before declaring it safe to ride. I suggested he should just have jumped into the puddle, if it splashed everywhere then all was good, if he slipped and fell on his arse then a degree of caution needed to be exercised.

He said this was impractical as he wasn’t fully dressed at this point and during this exchange we discovered we both had an inimical hatred of slippers. Perhaps both of us thought that footwear that’s soft, fluffy, brightly patterned and utterly shapeless is the clearest indicator yet that you’d taken the first step (or shuffle) toward terminal decline and dotage, a road that all too easily leads to baggy, zip-up nylon cardigans, a complete wardrobe makeover to ensure all your clothes are the same dingy shade of beige or pale blue and a world where wing-backed La-z-boy chairs seem like a good idea.

We differed only in our solutions to this issue, he opts for a kind of hybrid sports slipper or plimsoll, while my choice are kung-fu shoes. Yes, we are officially weird.

What I presume was a mother and daughter approached us to ask if we knew where Bulman House, or some such place was. As we dithered, Taffy Steve popped up out of nowhere to display an encyclopaedic grasp of the local area that would shame “The Knowledge” of a competent cab driver. Even more startling, he’s “not from around these parts” and doesn’t actually live anywhere close to our meeting point.

He proceeded to confidently and assuredly issue precise, step-by-step instructions and the couple disappeared in the indicated direction.

As the woman returned sans daughter, Crazy Legs cheerily asked if she’d found the building, then as she passed archly suggested that the daughter was stealthily working her way around behind us and didn’t want to be caught and have to admit we’d suckered her into going in completely the wrong direction.

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop:

Carlton declared this was officially a Cold Hand Day – his unique measuring system for defining exact ride temperature, so now we knew we were operating somewhere between a Frozen Toes Day and a Frost-bitten Face Day.

Goose recalled having a steel-framed Peugeot which would be classed as a vintage bike nowadays and we briefly discussed the provenance of my winter bike, a (fairly) modern, aluminium framed Peugeot. These had only been available for one year before seemingly disappearing without trace as Peugeot re-entered the bike market, then just as quickly abandoned it again.

The cold had obviously addled our brains because Goose then asked if Peugeot still made cars and I have to admit I had to think really long and hard about it, before unconvincingly confirming they did.

One of OGL’s long-term acquaintances was at the café when we arrived and he kept us hugely entertained with a series of anecdotes of spurious origin, all wickedly laced with the type of language that might make Chubby Brown blush. In that instant my Teacake Haiku inspired dream of a cadre of sensitive, poetry writing cyclists, staring thoughtfully out of the café window before illuminating their experiences in contemplative verse, died a quick and horrible death.

At some point in our ride, Crazy Legs had wandered off for adventures on his own and entered the café late to tell us how he’d ran into the back of a car that had stopped suddenly as the driver dithered and changed their mind when approaching a junction. When Crazy Legs clambered off and approached the driver to apologise for the tyre sized groove he’d left imprinted in the rear bumper, she’d taken fright and bolted.

Discussion about the inability to stop a fixie quite so unexpectedly inevitably led to the issue of disk brakes. Crazy Legs informed us he was very impressed with the brakes on his new mountain bike but felt the “cockpit” (as the trade magazines like to call the handlebar area) was incredibly cluttered and restrictive. He demonstrated this by wiggling outstretched fingers and flapping his elbows in and out, doing a fair approximation of the funky chicken.

G-Dawg dryly queried if this wasn’t more akin to a demonstration of one-man-band skills rather than bike-handling and wondered whether Crazy Legs preferred cymbals or a horn under his arms.

The Waffle:

Isn’t the Internet a strange and wonderful thing? Not only because my witless meanderings find an audience, who amazingly seemed to appreciate and, even more astonishingly, occasionally ask for more. There also seems to be quite a refreshingly friendly community amongst bloggers, who all provide slightly different perspectives, read each other’s work, contribute with insightful or amusing comments and promote competitor blogs to their own readers.

This week I was able to offer a tiny modicum of help to a club mate who’s undertaking the rather daunting and Herculean task of building a searchable database of all the grand tour stage winners, complete with their nationalities, ages, teams, bikes et al. For an esoteric take on cycling stats and an eclectic mix of pro cycling insights, try SiCycle.

Sur La Jante also got a name check in a blog entry from the The Lonely Cyclist who provides a completely different perspective on British cycling and cycling clubs, not surprising really as the Lonely Cyclist is neither male, middle-aged, cynical, sardonic nor quite as jaded as this old blogger. Hmm, now I think of it, old blogger sounds somewhat pejorative, if not quite as bad as arse hat.

Then, either inspired by my teacake haiku, or alternatively wholly embarrassed by my putrid efforts, Ragtime Cyclist responded with a haiku of his own:

What is riding for?
If not the mid-ride teacake.
Helps to shut up legs.

For one, brief moment I had a clear, lofty vision of cycling clubs up and down the land immortalising their weekly rides in verse form, and presiding over a renaissance of British poetry … but the dream didn’t survive the hard reality of first contact with my fellow cyclists.

It’s well worth stopping by to see what the Ragtime Cyclist has to say, such as his take on Haribo abuse – it made me laugh and I can’t think of a better endorsement than that.

This week I was also proud to learn I’m a Vittorian. Somewhere along the line my appreciation of Vittoria tyres has seen my details captured in a random database and now I receive periodic copies of their newsletter; The Vittorian. This is obviously a thoroughly gripping (no pun intended) read, dedicated to all things tyre-related and doubtless ripe for parody on Have I Got News for You.

Through this less than august journal, I found out their secret for the new season – tyres reinforced with graphene, the wonder-substance that’s a 100 times stronger than steel. I wonder how long it will be before we’ll all be lusting after exquisitely light, super-strong and shockingly expensive graphene frames and our love affair with all things carbon will be dead and buried.

We’ll still be going no faster, but the bike manufacturers will be rubbing their hands with glee. This also makes we worry about what we’ll do with all the useless discarded carbon frames that are all but indestructible and non-biodegradable.

Anyway, I digress wildly. Feeling much, much better than last week I was looking forward to another club run, despite the temperature which would struggle to reach a heady 5°C and gusting westerly winds predicted to hit 45 mph.

Just in case of any lingering ice, I eased down the hill slowly and immediately turned to greet this wind head-on for a slow grind to cross the river. Here I could enjoy a brief respite with added tailwind benefits before I had to clamber out of the valley again.

I had just about found the right gear and cadence to battle my way into the wind when, seemingly out of nowhere, a black clad, ninja cyclist cruised past, greeted me with the universal and UCI approved, “How do?” and invited me onto his wheel. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, I latched on behind and had a couple of miles of relative shelter until I decided his pace was slightly too high, too early in the ride.

NOVATEK CAMERA — My mystery benefactor, providing shelter from the wind

As I dropped off and turned to cross the river he disappeared up the road, pounding away into the headwind that seemed to be having no appreciable effect on his speed and effortless riding.

14 lads and lasses eventually gathered at our rendezvous point, where surprisingly there was no mention of ride etiquette, mechanical or wardrobe faux pas or overdue club fees. We pushed off, clipped in and rode out, looking for routes that might give a modicum of shelter and some small relief from a gusting wind.

We were warned however to be on our best behaviour at the café, as OGL was meeting some journalist from Cycling Weekly – presumably for a forthcoming feature on the Cyclone Festival of Cycling™.

As we rode out I immediately dropped to the back of the group, my usual position, but more imperative on a day like this when I didn’t really fancy sticking my nose into the wind.

Here I found Mad Colin, riding with us mere mortals, whilst bemoaning age and responsibility and we were soon discussing daughters, body building, structured training, proper rest, drugs and Lance Armstrong. He revealed how he felt that, even before Jon Tiernan-Locke registered his breakthrough wins on the Continent, racing against him was a somewhat, err shall we say, other-worldly experience.

First OGL, then Crazy Legs, Red Max, G-Dawg, Taffy Steve and Carlton all took turns at the front as, pummelled by the incessant wind, we started to track 3 riders in the far distance. I felt sooner or later their lack of numbers would tell and we’d catch them, but we weren’t rotating off the front often enough to keep our pace really high.

With the other group dangling annoyingly in front of us for what seemed miles, Mad Colin finally took a hand, rode to the front and with Crazy Legs pushed the pace up a notch higher. We closed in, finding much to everyone’s disbelief one of them riding in shorts and his raw, angry legs looked the colour and texture of corned beef. Luckily we were soon past and leaving this uncomfortable sight behind.

shadows2 — Despite the cold it was a very bright, very breezy day

As we made the turn for the café, I dropped back to check on Taffy Steve who was starting to feel the effects of prolonged efforts riding on the front. Then, as we battered up the Quarry Climb, he became slightly detached with OGL and cresting the climb they found themselves stuck behind a huge, slow-moving tractor and trailer at the precise moment that the Red Max launched a Forlorn Hope attack.

Max quickly gained about 100 to 150 metres lead with Goose stuck firmly to his wheel and Carlton queried whether we shouldn’t be chasing them down. I told him to wait and explained that it was still far too early.

We duly held formation until the road began to rise and Max’s efforts began to get a bit ragged, then a quick injection of pace had the group reforming before the road kicked down again. Meanwhile, further behind, Taffy Steve having failed to convince OGL to join the chase, finally overtook the tractor and began a madcap pursuit on his own, closing fast, but ultimately running out of road.

On the next descent and aided by some daredevil cornering, Max attacked again and again managed to open up a sizeable lead only for Mad Colin, G-Dawg and Son of G-Dawg to quickly overhaul him as once more the road kicked up.

With the strong riders pulling away up front, I dragged myself through the last junction slightly distanced from a group that included Goose, Red Max and Shouty. I pressed harder on the pedals to pick up speed and with glacial slowness the gap started to close. I made contact and decided to keep going, swinging over onto the other side of the road and sliding past down the outside of the group.

I’d just eased past Max when we hit the approach to the Snake Bends and braking sharply we zipped and switched our way through and into the final run to the café.

We left OGL at the café staring morosely into a second and now empty cup of coffee and still waiting for his contact from Cycling Weekly to show, as we piled out and saddled up for an uneventful ride home. The group split and we entered the Mad Mile, where the pace was kicked up I slipped slowly backwards through the group.

As everyone else zipped left, I swung to the right, then right again until I was pointed directly into a headwind that I suspect had been waiting for this precise moment to amp up its intensity. As I started the long drag uphill I quickly ran through the gears, trying to find something that I could spin relatively easy but still feel like I was making some headway.

I settled into the grind, watching the fog of my breathing starting to coalesce in the cold air as the temperature noticeably dropped. A stinging shower of ice-hail-snow was swept horizontally down the road to needle my face numb for the last few miles, until I could once again cross the river and ride the tailwind home.

YTD Totals: 392 km /244 miles with 3,855 metres of climbing

The Teacake Haiku (Destry Rides Again)

Club Run, Saturday 23^rd January, 2016

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 102 km/63 miles with 968 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 4 hours 36 minutes

Average Speed: 22.0 km/h

Group size: 34 riders, 1 FNG

Temperature: 10°C

Weather in a word or two: Typically Tropical?

Main topic of conversation at the start:

Along with the latest FNG, I found myself being hugely entertained by one of Taffy Steve’s inspired rants at the meeting point. The target for his ire this time around was bike manufacturers who inflict narrow, hard and excruciatingly uncomfortable saddles on the uneducated, new bikers – who then accept them simply because they look “racy” – despite perching on them being akin to straddling the thin edge of a 2×4 piece of timber.

He concluded by suggesting that if the FNG was looking for more comfort he should perhaps look for a Specialized saddle as, “they’ve had years of experience catering to fat-ass Americans.”

It was at this point that Crazy Legs spun up and declared the weather was Typically Tropical©- self-inflicting his own savage ear-worm and instantly banishing the more credible, post-punk tune he’d earlier embedded into his brainbox.

As he vigorously hummed “Whoa, we’re going to Barbados” and waved his arms around with some exaggerated (and less than convincing) reggae-styling, he caught a whiff of his own gloves and recoiled in horror at their rancid staleness.

Part in shock, part in amazement he had a Spinal Tap moment and asked everyone to “smell the glove.” When I politely declined he tried to balance on one leg and lift his foot into my face, inviting me to sniff his boots instead.

This then reminded him of the bizarre time Dave Le Taxi innocently asked if anyone else’s cycling shoes ever smelled of cat’s pee. The rather obvious response – apart from the sea of uncomprehending and blank looks – “Oh, so have you got a cat then, Dave?”

I learned the club annual dinner and awards event had gone down a storm and Taffy Steve had won the accolade of “Most Improved Rider”. There was some discussion about whether he should have this engraved on his frame and if there was an accompanying jersey for the year ahead followed by some coloured bands for cuff and collar that could be worn in perpetuity.

I’m sure that solely to avoid disappointing my expectations, OGL then reminded everyone that club fees were now due.

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop:

One of the waitresses approached our table and enquired if anyone had ordered the teacake. One of our number somehow misheard this simple request and thought she’d asked if anyone had ordered a haiku. Unfortunately, we were all too leg weary and brain battered to come up with a suitable, short Japanese ode to teacakes.

We decided that the indomitable, indestructible G-Dawg was our own version of Jens “Shut Up Legs!” Voigt. It was suggested that he didn’t suffer road rash when he fell off, but the tarmac wore the signs of G-Dawg rash for weeks afterwards.

With all the other family combos in the club, you could trace a trajectory to when the still improving, maturing son would supplant the ageing, slowing father. We saw it happen with beZ and the Prof, and for all the Red Max’s denials, evil machinations, deceptions and manipulations I think he’s just delaying the inevitable day when the Monkey Butler Boy regularly whups his ass.

You wonder though if Son of G-Dawg will ever face a day when he doesn’t have to fight tooth, nail and claw to get one over on his Pa. I likened this to Prince Charles’s attitude to the Queen, desperate for her to abdicate so he could take over before falling into useless senility (as opposed to his current state of useless cogency).

Not of course that G-Dawg in anyway resembles “Her Madgeness” (despite similar hairstyles) … nor does Son of G-Dawg remind me of Prince Charles for that matter.

Goose related discovering a posh, custom-build bike shop on a recent trip to London and with a few minutes to spare did that thing that all cyclists do, went to sate his more voyeuristic instincts on some suitably over-priced, but shiny, shiny bike porn.

He found the door to said establishment firmly barred however and had to wait for someone to unlock and unbolt it before he was allowed to even peek over the threshold. Interrogated as to precisely what he wanted, he lamely mumbled something about, “Just wanting to look around.” This was met with stony silence and a mighty frown, until things became so uncomfortable that he was discouraged from investigating further and fled the scene.

He rather satisfyingly reported that he’d since heard the shop had closed. Doesn’t sound like a great loss to me.

As we were finishing up, beZ returned along with other members Demon Cult of the Racing Snakes to report that they’d been delayed when the Cow Ranger somehow destroyed his front mech with what turned out to be a less than simple gear change.

This opened up a whole new discussion about completely contrasting riding styles and how some are sympathetic and perhaps empathetic to their bikes mechanical limitations, while others take a, shall we say, more direct and agricultural approach. Interesting.

Finally, in a fit of overwhelming juvenility we decided “arse hat” was a suitably disparaging, underutilised profanity that deserves greater recognition. We even had cause to test it out on several brain-dead drivers on the return home.

The Waffle:

For three whole weeks, twenty-one entire days I’ve been out of action with a bad chest infection which had filled my lungs to overflowing with a claggy, slightly radioactive and luminous industrial gunge and left me with all the aerobic capacity of an asthmatic gerbil.

Recovery has to start somewhere however, and working on the principle that riding a bike is … well, like riding a bike, something you don’t forget, I embarked on two straight days of light testing, commuting en vélo.

Having just about survived this, I tentatively set off for the rough and tumble of a first club run in what seemed an absolute age, not sure how well I’d manage, but certain it was going to hurt. Destry rides again?

Mother Nature had continued to roll around in my enforced absence, so at least it was near daylight as I checked over the bike one last time and pushed off for the meeting point.

For a winters day it was also surprisingly mild, so no chance of any ice and the forecast was for it to remain dry throughout. Sounded like too good an opportunity to miss.

It was still early enough for the roads to be relatively quiet, although the peacefulness was brutally shattered at one point by a van with a slipping fan belt that managed to sound like a barrel of cats being drowned in scalding water.

Despite this audible assault, I made it to the rendezvous point with plenty of time to spare and in not too bad a shape. There I found Taffy Steve complaining he was over heating in just a Gore winter jacket and short sleeved base layer and threatening to confine the jacket to the back of his wardrobe until at least October next year.

juliana — G-Dawg again asserts his authority over Son of G-Dawg (second from the left)

I was far from being alone in deciding the weather was too good an opportunity to miss and a large pack of 34 lads and lasses were soon clustered along the pavement. By some bizarre coincidence an appreciable number of us had turned up in matching red jackets, so that it appeared as if the Red Max was fielding a full team of personal domestiques.

As we pushed off, clipped in and set out I noticed that, rather tellingly, and in contrast to the “red wedge”, only 3 riders in this large group were wearing the official (and officially lurid) club jersey that nobody likes, but we seem stuck with.

I drifted to the back of the group where I had a long chat with the Prof, who predictably wanted a wee stop minutes after we set out. How refreshing to learn that nothing had changed in my absence.

I found going along the flat to be generally fine, but was struggling on the hills and panting like a crazed, over-excited phone pest as I tried to force air into less than optimal lungs. Stepping up off the pedals and climbing in a bigger than usual gear seemed marginally less demanding aerobically, but I knew the likely trade-off was more quickly sapping whatever leg strength I still possessed.

We finally stopped to allow the Prof some much needed relief and split the group. I slowly and quietly edged toward the amblers, intent on taking the slightly more direct route to the café, but I wasn’t sneaky enough and was spotted and called out.

I tried to look suitably ill and enfeebled, even throwing in a dramatic hacking cough as I pointed weakly at my chest and gasped loudly, but it wasn’t going to wash. Taffy Steve however promised I wouldn’t be left too far behind and since it would obviously be churlish to spurn an offer of assistance from the clubs most improved rider, I shuffled back into line, hoping I wouldn’t regret the decision too much.

The next split saw us lose the Demon Cult of the Racing Snakes as they switched into full self-flagellation mode. When Zardoz then took an impromptu left (later claiming voices in his head made him do it) I gladly followed him and half a dozen others to make the longer, harder, faster ride slightly shorter, slower and easier by cutting out the ascent of Middleton Bank.

With Taffy Steve as point man, lead out, wheel to follow, wind foil and general protector, we skilfully negotiated a small hunt and their horses, road surfaces cratered like a lunar landscape and several huge pools of water as I clung onto his back wheel.

gas mask — Desperate measures are called for to combat burning clutches

I managed to stay in touch as the pace wound up and we dropped through Milestone Woods to crest the rollers, before dropping back on the final long drag uphill, completely oblivious to any sprint that may have been going on in the distance ahead of me.

I arrived at the café to find it mobbed with other cyclists and the general public, or as they’re more commonly referred to, normal people.

Luckily it was just about warm enough to get away with sitting outside as long as we huddled together and eked out our body warmth, so half a dozen of us decamped to the garden

As I wrestled with my tray in the wind outside, I noticed that someone had thoughtfully placed a large section of discarded mudguard on one of the benches, obviously in the expectation that whoever it belonged to might return to claim it.

A nice gesture, but I felt sure that with mudguards being so inexpensive it would be far easier and much more effective to just go out and buy a complete new set, rather than try to jury rig something using cast off pieces.

One benefit of sitting outside was that we didn’t have the struggle of leaving the warm sanctuary of the café, and with no incentive to hang around we finished our mandatory refills quite briskly and set out for home before the others.

I rode at the front with Taffy Steve and we seemed to be clipping along at a fairly reasonable pace, despite a growing headwind. As we approached his turn for home, I remarked how surprised I was that the other group hadn’t caught and passed us, waved him away and pressed on.

I’d gone no more than a few pedal strokes into the Mad Mile, when G-Dawg and Son of G-Dawg whipped past as they wound up their personal race for home and first use of a hot shower. All the other riders from the café then whistled past, including zeB, who, no doubt under explicit instructions from the Prof, now carried the discarded piece of mudguard from the café precariously balanced across his handlebars.

I couldn’t help but laugh, only the Prof would want to reclaim such a cast-off bit of kit, with no doubt grand plans to turn it into some semi-functional, eccentric, Heath Robinson, gimcrack something-or-other in his secret laboratory/workshop/lair.

As the last few riders passed, I dropped my own pace feeling my legs were now totally and completely empty and as I made the turn for home the last dozen miles were starting to look like a real challenge.

The drag into a headwind, up past the golf course proved a real grind, but things eased after that. I don’t think I’ve ever climbed the Heinous Hill quite so slowly (in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever climbed any hill quite so slowly)

My assault on its lower slopes definitely wasn’t helped by having to breathe through the acrid, all pervasive, lingering and uniquely rank stench of some arse hat driver burning up his clutch, but I somehow survived and made it home.

how_to_walk_like_john_wayne — … or alternatively, just cycle for 3 days in a row after a long absence

Hopefully the ensuing sore throat doesn’t mark the re-emergence of the illness, but is just a consequence of having to forcefully drag rasping, cold air down into malfunctioning lungs.

After 3 weeks of enforced inactivity I expected the difficulty breathing, the tired, heavy legs and all the associated hurt. I wasn’t however prepared for how quickly my posterior had become sensitised and how much it would object to having to perch for long periods on a saddle again.

In recovery, I don’t much resemble Jimmy Stewart in Destry Rides Again, but I have developed the buttock clenched, stiff-kneed, bow-legged and awkward gait of a Shootist-era John Wayne.

Right, I’m off to google Specialized saddles.

The Teacake Haiku

To ride pale winter light

Promises a rich reward, then

Hot, toasted teacake.

YTD Totals: 252 km /157 miles with 2016 metres of climbing

Braking Bad

Club Run, Saturday 2^nd January, 2016

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 110 km/68 miles with 528 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 4 hours 41 minutes

Average Speed: 23.4 km/h

Group size: 14 riders, no FNG’s

Temperature: 8°C

Weather in a word or two: Cold and wet

Main topic of conversation at the start:

OGL emerged from the gloom of the car park having heroically struggled through to us to cry off with what he was claiming was a severe bout of man flu (# cough # hangover).

He stayed long enough to remind us that club fees are now due and warn us of both an impending hurricane and the sudden appearance of mutant ice. This ice has allegedly adapted and is now capable of spontaneously forming at temperatures up to and including 5°C.

Taffy Steve appeared with twin, syncopated disco strobes illuminating the dark underbelly of the clouds, an attempt perhaps to induce fits and seizures in random passing motorists?

We had to persuade him to turn at least one of the lights off before we could even bear to look at him. Despite being all lit up like the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree and using lights with the intensity of a Blitz searchlight, he still reported a few too many SMIDSY* encounters with the traffic.

I’m pretty certain this isn’t going to be the last edict issued to remind us that club fees are now due –the massive £10 a year seems a paltry amount for 52 weeks of fun and frivolity, but apparently there are a large proportion of club members who begrudge paying even this token amount.

*SMIDSY – Sorry mate, I didn’t see you

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop:

With our regular haunt closed for the day, we had to make the annual pilgrimage to our alternative café. This was prominently adorned with notices warning of local encounters with the Bolam Lake beast, a monster depicted on the posters as a rather large, mature Silverback gorilla.

Everyone looked at the picture, then at the Taffy Steve, and then back to the picture, and he was forced to admit that he had indeed been seen around the Bolam Lake area, funnily enough almost a year ago to the day.

We were unable to ascertain if this coincided with the last sighting of “The Beast” or whether it has ever been spotted sitting smartly astride a velocipede.

The Red Max pointed to one of the white children’s high chairs and giggled that at least Plumose Pappus would have somewhere to sit if he decided to join us.

Half way through my coffee the BFG and Crazy Legs finally joined us after the purgatory of puncture repair duty. G-Dawg remarked how the BFG’s face was so dirty he looked like he’d just completed a 10 hour shift down a coal mine. BFG complained his “tyres were really filthy…”

“So you rubbed them clean on your face?” G-Dawg asked, not unreasonably.

The BFG again drew attention to his fallible eye-sight which he’d amply demonstrated on several previous occasions (see “The Texas Chainring Massacre and the Road to Cheescake”, Club Run, 31^st October 2015) by failing to identify brown sugar cubes and asking Crazy Legs if he always put dry roasted peanuts in his coffee.

Crazy Legs bemoaned not having the services of Taffy Steve’s mighty frame pump and having to use the molto piccolo, Blackburn Airstick. At this point Carlton dipped into his backpack, pulled out something and started flipping down hinges, tightening ratchets, pulling out telescopic extensions and uncoiling a long rubber hose as he revealed a semi-compact track pump.

“That’s not a real pump” he drawled, “This is a real pump”

We couldn’t help but happily reminisce about the time Szell suffered an explosive puncture and, by all accounts bent the barrel of his frame pump into a perfect right angle trying to force air into the newly repaired tyre through a stuck valve.

As we were leaving the café the Prof declared that it was, “impossible for lobsters to pick up worms.” An insight that left me with a very strange mental image and knowledge I’m sure I’ll be eternally grateful for…

The Waffle:

Following last week’s stunning sunrise and bright skies, this week I rolled out to low, leaden cloud, a curtain of rain and what seemed like perpetual twilight. These crepuscular conditions never brightened much throughout the entire day and encouraged everyone to keep their lights burning for the duration of the ride.

It was still mild though and despite OGL’s direst warnings there wasn’t the merest trace of ice to worry about.

In an attempt to combat the incessant rain and at least try and stay dry, I topped my winter jersey with a light waterproof jacket, hoping the outer layer would keep me dry, while the inner one would help control my temperature and wick moisture away from my base layer.

This seemed to work well and I finished the ride comfortably dry apart from a noticeable damp patch on my forearms. The rest of me wasn’t so lucky, and everything else, tights, socks, overshoes, shoes, gloves and helmet were thoroughly soaked through and waterlogged.

As an added benefit the outer jacket took the brunt of the huge volumes of mud, dirt, debris, disintegrating plant life, general crud and who knows what else that sprayed up from the roads and was relatively easy to sponge clean afterwards.

There was plenty of true grit in evidence … punishment comes one way or another

Around 14 lads and lasses pushed off, clipped in and rode out, but our numbers really were a moveable feast as late-comers tagged on while others dropped away or took alternative routes. We even had a rare appearance from Dave Le Taxi, getting his annual club ride over and done with early this year, although you’d have to say he could have chosen a better day.

The wet and filthy roads conspired to coat everything in a layer of grit that got everywhere. And I mean everywhere – halfway through the ride I could bite down and feel it grinding between my teeth, and when I tried to delicately re-arrange my helmet hair in the café, my scalp got an unexpected exfoliation which would probably have cost a small fortune in some upscale beauty spa.

The grit also served to turn brake blocks into whetstones. You could hear – and almost visualise rims being viciously ground away whenever we had to slow and braking was so seriously impaired that stopping quickly became a bit of a lottery.

Having put off replacing my brake blocks for one week too long, I became intimately acquainted with the inner workings of my brake levers which gaped open to an alarming degree every time I needed to stop, hauling down so hard the ends of the levers were in danger of smacking off the bars.

If I had it bad, others had it worse. The Prof started to hang about 100 yards off the back of the group so he had plenty of time to stop. Only a portion of this can be attributed to his ancient reflexes and less than nimble reactions, so the impaired braking we were all suffering must have played a part.

Dave Le Taxi bemoaned the cantilever brakes on his winter bike, which he said were a continual source of frustration and bad stopping power, while Carlton was castigating himself that he hadn’t chosen to ride his disk-brake equipped bike.

At one point dropping into Stamfordham village he swept serenely inside me and through a junction in a long, graceful glide, only to admit he was scared witless, had tried to stop and couldn’t.

When we called a quick halt, beZ discovered part of his problem was that he’d lost half of one of his brake pads somewhere along the way. We naturally sent him to retrace his steps and try and find it.

not a knife — That’s not a ~~knife~~ pump, this is a ~~knife~~ pump

None of us had managed to sink quite as low as, the perhaps thankfully absent, Moose Bumps however, who not only regularly rides without bar tape, bar end plugs or adequate cold weather clothing, but was discovered a few weeks ago to have worn his pads down to the metal.

As well as the potential danger, I would have thought this produces a deeply disconcerting audible assault and probably sparks when he hauls the anchors on and must be tearing through his wheel rims at an alarming rate. I can’t help feel he’s taking the poor student shtick a bit too far and perhaps the need for club brakes we mooted last week is more urgent than we thought.

With no OGL to bark at everyone, Crazy Legs invented a surrogate OGL, the “Proxy Peter”. This proved far too cultured, with proxy messages being passed from the rear up to the front of the group to politely request a change of pace. I must admit I missed the creative over-use of the f-word in the UCI approved ratio of 2:1 – two eff’s, effing’s or effer’s to accompany every other word (including any additional swearing required).

Knowing he wouldn’t be able to resist, I asked Crazy Legs if we should: “Pass the proxy ‘pon de left-hand side?” instantly inflicting a vicious ear-worm on him and eliciting a startling tribute to Musical Youth through the medium of song. For the second time in as many weeks this earned me a (surely unwarranted), “Bastard!” epithet.

Somewhere along the way we lost Shouty and Plumose Pappus, but picked up the Cow Ranger. He wasn’t aware our usual café was closed, so we were able to save him from whining and scratching futilely at its door and scaring the owners with his deranged howling.

BFG kindly highlighted all the potholes, mainly by planting his front wheel squarely into them. It took longer than I expected, but he eventually managed to puncture, just as we were gathering pace for the run to the café. Crazy Legs stopped to help him and they soon had the matter in hand and waved the rest of us on.

The Red Max celebrated the New Year with his first Forlorn Hope attack of 2016, but this died as we turned away from the usual café route and climbed the rollers in reverse. Shoeless and Son of G-Dawg led the charge upwards, and along with G-Dawg I just about managed to hang onto the wheels.

50a2657256864cea631c31e0586604eb — It really wasn’t the day for the BFG’s white jacket

There was a bit of a scramble to wring out and dump wet gear on the radiators in the café, which might have turned a bit competitive until we discovered the radiators weren’t actually on.

With no way to meaningfully dry or warm up all the sodden outer layers, we just had to grin and bear it, pulling on wet gear for the ride home. Well, all except for Max who smugly pulled a spare jacket and dry gloves from his ever expanding backpack.

On the way back the Red Max and Taffy Steve took an alternative route to avoid the climb of Berwick Hill, then Dave Le Taxi dropped off the pace. I was going to ride back with him as he too lives south of the river, but he was soon completely out of sight and it was too cold and miserable to hang around.

I suspect he was more than happy to make his way homeward at his own pace anyway. Alternatively he might have learned a hard lesson and dropped completely out of sight before calling for motorised assistance.

As we approached Berwick Hill, Carlton too dropped off the pace, still concerned by his lack of braking and more comfortable on his own. Shoeless and the Cow Ranger stepped up the pace on the front and tucking in I reached my turn off in seemingly no time at all and began to work my way down to the river and home.

So, brand new year, same shit weather – 2016 here we go…

YTD Totals: 110 km /68 miles with 528 metres of climbing

Ride of the Long Shadows

Club Run, Sunday 27^th December, 2015

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 111 km/69 miles with 987 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 4 hours 28 minutes

Group size: 16 riders, no FNG’s, 1 guest

Weather in a word or two: Bright and chilly

Main topic of conversation at the start: Thoughts turned to the fixie gaucho and whether we should invest in a set of club brakes that we could loan out to those in need, much like the fabled, semi-mythical club rollers.

Talk of the fabled, semi-mythical club rollers brought us round to where they were now and whether Dave le Taxi still has them, which in turn led to Crazy Legs explaining to Suds how Davey Pat became Dave le Taxi – a shameful, sordid tale of reaching the café with “tired legs” and, without even bothering to concoct a faked mechanical or family emergency, blatantly calling the missus for a lift home. A deep and indelible, black mark that can never be scoured away.

We had a guest with us for the ride, a girl from a club in Cambridge who was up for the holidays visiting parents and actually looking forward to riding some hills! She went around all of us in turn asking if we were OGL and, like Spartacus in reverse, we all denied it.

We patiently explained that since it was only 9.25 and we weren’t scheduled to leave until 9.30, then OGL was unlikely to put in an appearance anytime before 9.38. She seemed somewhat bemused by our strange time-keeping ways, which would suggest that this actually isn’t normal amongst cycling clubs. Who’d have thought it?

She also wanted to know what signals we used while riding in a group, and like one of those supremely disinterested attendants you sometimes get on Ryan Air flight, I gave her the shortened version, pointing desultorily at the ground: “pothole” jerking a thumb over my shoulder: “car back” and pointing ahead: “car up”.

I also explained that in some parts of the country I understood that “car up” actually means there’s a car behind and she told me this was the case with their fast group … but not their slow group, and this did cause occasional confusion when fast riders dropped down to the slower group. Ha! And I thought we were weird?

She then did that bent arm thing behind her back and asked if we “do that bent arm thing behind the back” to warn the rider behind we were approaching an obstruction and needed to pull out. I assured her that we did indeed do that bent arm thing behind the back, concluding lamely that I’m sure she’d be fine and it wasn’t exactly rocket science, although as Suds noted dryly we do, somehow manage to over-complicate everything and indeed turn it into rocket science.

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop: Crazy Legs pondered if putting rollers on a slope would mimic riding uphill, but didn’t get a decent answer as OGL went off on one about the GB track team and their ramp tests.

Halfway through the ramble Crazy Legs was distracted as rows of tiny lights seemed to periodically sweep over us and he started looking around to try and find out who’d installed a disco mirrorball in the café and where it was.

We finally concluded the lights were just the low sun reflecting off watches, plates or cutlery, although we couldn’t determine the exact source. Having a disco mirrorball in the cafe is, for now, just a pleasant but wholly unfulfilled fantasy.

The guest from Cambridge got a tiny thimble-full of espresso which she pretty much downed in one and started to pull her gear on to leave. It appears her club view café stops as nothing more than a quick transition between riding out and turning round to ride back, and you get extra kudos the quicker you are.

Ours is, thankfully a much more relaxed affair as we exorcise our inner demons through the incessant, gloriously incoherent, babble of chatter and offer up coffee and cakes to appease the gods of cycling.

Crazy Legs wanted to know when the Cambridge riders ever had time to talk, to which the answer was that they “talk while they ride”. He sat back looking astounded and shaking his head in wonder – “Why haven’t we thought of that?” he asked, somehow, unbelievably managing to convey not even slightest trace of sarcasm.

The Waffle:

The Sunday start, half an hour later meant that at least darkness had pretty much retreated as I dropped into the valley and set off toward the rendezvous point. I rode toward a huge full moon hanging low over the trees and houses and slowly turning from brass, to pale gold, to bone white as the sun clawed its way up behind me.

The sky had been washed clean of clouds by last night’s rain and scoured and polished a brilliant blue by the high winds. It was chilly, but bright and clear up to the heavens, as perfect a cycling day as you’re going to get in northern England in the midst of winter.

I arrived fairly early at the meeting point, so got into a prolonged “what to expect” discussion with our guest for the day, a girl from Cambridge Cycling Club, which even got as far as her telling me where I could find her ICE contact details in the event of a catastrophic accident!

Luckily Princess Fiona and Mini Miss eventually turned up so she wasn’t cast loose into a pack of hairy-arsed male riders incapable of discussing anything more culturally relevant than Sharknado 3, Fallout 4, Star Wars 7, a re-hashed Shimano vs. Campagnolo debate, or whether Yeats’s “A Dialogue of Self and Soul” can be read as the poet arguing that our existence is inexorably tied to the intrinsic difficulty of life itself.

Some 15 minutes after our scheduled start-time, around 16 lads and lasses were able to push off, clip in and roll out for a ride to blow away all the Christmas cobwebs and start slowly paring away some of the festive excess.

Although continuously bright the sun never did rise much above eye-level, casting long shadows that were a constant accompaniment, rotating slowly around us as we wove our way out into a rather bleak and water-logged countryside.

Despite numerous flooded fields I didn’t realise just how much water the landscape had absorbed until we stopped to split the group and I stepped onto the grass verge and cold water instantly enveloped my foot and raced through the holes in my shoes to soak my socks.

As we split into two groups, our guest still hadn’t seen enough testing hills, so was encouraged to go with the longer, harder, faster group. Within a few miles though we hit the climb up Cobbler’s Lane and she was gasping like a fish out of water and dropping off the back.

We regrouped, climbed and then regrouped again, until hitting a long, straight and gradual descent where, for some inexplicable reason, our guest rider seemed to have a rush of blood to the head, or perhaps more accurately the legs and attacked.

The Red Max was having none of this and accelerated in pursuit, as whatever order we had instantly exploded. I found myself riding off the front, tucked in behind Crazy Legs and Ovis as they churned away at high speed.

The three of us were beginning to feel a little heavy legged at this point, so Crazy Legs suggested a slightly longer, more rolling route to the café, but crucially one that missed out the stiff climb up to the Quarry, which would have been an extra effort for Ovis and him on their fixies.

Course plotted and agreed, we scorched straight-ahead at the next junction, where a quick look over the shoulder confirmed we were all alone with everyone else turning for the Quarry.

The two upfront continued to drive on, keeping their momentum going over each small rise, while I had the luxury of dropping down a gear or two, dropping back and spinning up at a more leisurely pace, which was about all the legs could cope with.

Cycle-wet1 — Almost inevitably, there was yet more of this …

At one point we ripped through a flooded section of the road, once again the water level topping overshoe height and leaving us with water-logged socks. Then we were up to the junction and turning to head down to the Snake Bends.

Crazy Legs led the charge and, when he reached terminal velocity on his fixie, his upper body began to rock like Charlie Carolli on a wonky-wheeled mini-bike.

I clicked down a gear, nudged out of his slipstream and eased past, nonchalantly whistling “The March of the Clowns.”

This earned me his deepest respect and the highest of accolades, which if I recall correctly he forcefully expressed in just a few, short words: “You utter bastard!”

article-1383606-0BE7A37A00000578-642_468x470 — Yat-dat-daddle, didlle-yat-dat-da-da

We regrouped just before the Bends and pressed on to the café, arriving comfortably before those who’d taken in the Quarry climb.

The ride home was pleasant enough for Crazy Legs to declare this as the best, most successful, post-Christmas holiday ride we’d had, as even ripping through the flooded road sections was better than grappling with ice and the pace had been hard enough, for long enough, to hurt.

Even his rendition of “Disco Duck” failed to spoil the ride, and it was with more weary resignation than actual ire that I remonstrated with a B52 style BUFF in a pick-up truck who cut me up as I tried to cross the river.

Potentially the last ride of the year (unless I can sneak something else in) has left me 57 miles short of 4,000 for the year and 2 metres shy of topping 70,000 metres of climbing. Not a bad effort and a decent target to try and surpass next year.

YTD Totals: 6,345 km / 3,943 miles with 69,998 metres of climbing

Christmas Cracker turns Crash-Tacular

Club Run, Saturday 19^th December, 2015

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 100 km/62 miles with 851 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 4 hours 13 minutes

Group size: 24 riders, no FNG’s

Weather in a word or two: Balmy (and quite barmy)

Main topic of conversation at the start: Crazy Legs discovered one drawback of wearing a Christmas jumper over his club jersey: the rear pockets were now inaccessible behind a thick barrier of wool. This led to a collective realisation that there is a serious gap in the market for Christmas-themed cycling apparel.

We thought Rapha were most likely to rise to this challenge with a range of super-tasteful, pure-wool, merino Christmas jumpers -in black perhaps, replete with a dropped-tail, reflective trim, the traditional three back pockets and subtly featuring tiny, tiny turkeys.

We then discussed what would happen if it rained on all the non-lycra wool jumpers, how big they’d be likely to grow and just how heavy they’d be when wet.

Thoughts turned to some crazy gaucho who’d been stalking our forum and Faecesbook page and threatening to come and ride with us on his fixie. OGL had told him firmly not to bother unless he fitted a brake to his bike, as no matter how in control he was, or how accomplished a bike handler there’s the issue of the other 20 or so riders around him.

When the gaucho failed to turn up we assumed he didn’t want to dilute the “purity” of riding a fixie by fitting brakes and had taken umbrage at the restriction. Who knows though, I may be doing him a great disservice and he may be sitting home alone, still struggling to cope with such horribly unfamiliar technology as callipers and cables.

The Prof didn’t have a Christmas jumper, but wore his traditional festive bobble-hat, designed to look like a very sorry, misshapen Christmas pudding with (naturally?) a big pom-pom on the top to match the one on Crazy Legs’ jumper.

In a scene with all the searing, suppressed homo-eroticism of Alan Bates and Oliver Reed wrestling nude in the “Women in Love” film, the Prof and Crazy Legs stood nose-to-nose, gazing lovingly at each other, while taking turns to fondle each others pom-poms. It was only a shame no one had a clown’s horn to punctuate each convulsive squeeze.

It was perhaps as well that we left quickly after that, or we’d have needed to throw a bucket of cold water over the pair to separate them.

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop: Along with Goose I eyed up what sounded like the perfect fusion of Bakewell Tart combined with Festive Mince Pie – a Bakewell Mince Slice. Genius!

Well almost, theoretically this revolutionary new confection should have been a synergistic blend of the best bits of a beloved staple of the cyclists café stop, combined with a uniquely novel and seasonal twist. Sadly we were both left disappointed, a clear case of one plus one equalling … err … one.

OGL’s Christmas jumper featured a homely Yule time scene of a roaring fire, decorated mantelpiece, Christmas tree and a sack for all the presents. Someone wondered aloud if the single sack was symbolic of OGL’s intimate encounter with a Cinelli stem (see: Stems, Scrotums and the Melancholy, Winking Dog Ride, Club Run, 27^th June). I couldn’t help worrying that for the third week in a row we were forging links, no matter how tenuous, to despotic leaders with a penchant for eastward facing territorial aggrandisement.

Our travails of the day reminded us of Dabman’s first hard encounter with the tarmac to start the year with a bang, or more accurately a dull thump and crack. We again wondered how we still weren’t expecting any ice on the road after we’d stopped to push a stranded car out of a ditch only minutes beforehand.

Crazy Legs said he’d forbidden Dabman to ride again until at least May and related that in the NHS had agreed to let the broken collar bone heal “naturally”, so Dabman would probably spent the rest of his life looking somewhat unbalanced – unless of course he can contrive to fall and break something on the other side.

It was also agreed that he probably shouldn’t risk a trip to Paris or hang around Île de la Cité, in case he stirs up an unfriendly pitchfork wielding, torch carrying mob.

I was somewhat conscious of an elderly couple at the adjacent table, who were now surrounded by a mob of voluble, over-excited, gibbering and hooting club cyclists and hoped they weren’t going to be too offended. As they got up to leave however they told us they were England tandem champions in the 50’s and had thoroughly enjoyed listening to our endless, mindless banter. Well, that was unexpected.

The Waffle:

For the second time this year I set out in near dark, just as dawn was slowly leaking a pale light and some wan colour into the sky. The difference this time though was the temperature was already an exceptionally mild, totally unseasonable 12°C and rising.

Despite all the forecasts aligning like some modern-day Delphic Oracle, I didn’t quite trust their prophecies after last week’s “winter howling” and had my pockets loaded down with spare bits of kit that I never got to use including a gilet, spare gloves, a skullcap, toe covers and a buff. What is going on with the weather?

As it was I felt somewhat over-dressed in a long-sleeved base layer, windproof jacket, shorts and legwarmers.

Despite a club wide directive, I was not however wearing a Christmas jumper because:

I’m a miserable curmudgeon. Bah, humbug!
I ride an hour on my own either way to our meeting point, and thought I’d look even sadder plodding home alone in festive attire.
I don’t actually own a Christmas jumper.
I think there’s a time and place for Christmas jumpers, but this definitely wasn’t the time and I’ve yet to discover the place.
Did I mention I was a curmudgeon?

Hey, maybe next year.

As I dropped down into the valley and made my way along to the river crossing, entire sets of street lights would blink out suddenly as I approached them and it felt like I was riding a wave of impenetrable darkness. Just a case of bad timing I guess, but it did feel rather strange.

Despite this I was able to revel a little in the warm temperature and utterly quiet, early morning roads as, after a week bereft of any cycling commutes I stretched my legs for the first time in what felt like an age.

I positively flew along to the meeting place and was the first there to see the arrival of all the festive funsters. G-Dawg and Son of G-Dawg put on a splendid show, riding up in formation and resplendent in matching red and blue Christmas jumpers.

Son of… then admitted he’d borrowed his from his Dad. Just for the record I think it’s worth pausing and considering the fact that the granite hard, indomitable iron-man, G-Dawg has two Christmas jumpers.

Crazy Legs was the next to roll up, in a bright red jumper emblazoned with a large Rudolph head, replete with a massive pom-pom for a nose. Crazy Legs’ approach was very circumspect and tentative and you got the feeling he was ready to turn round and high-tail it home if he appeared to be the only one festively attired.

27f1a0a7fed46a073a57b364ead57288 — Enflamed by thoughts of the Prof’s pom-pom, Crazy Legs has to resort to a cold shower to cool his ardour.

OGL’s jumper featured a fireplace complete with a sack for presents, the Prof wore a Christmas pudding hat and beZ disappointed by not wearing the threatened snowman onesie, but somewhat made up for this wearing a penguin jumper, complete with a hood featuring eyes and a beak.

The Red Max was one of the riders who took the opportunity of the ridiculously warm weather to wear shorts and a summer jersey, but had at least made the effort to decorate his top tube in tinsel (red of course). I reckoned this wasn’t particularly aerodynamic, but probably made him invisible to German radar.

Shoeless was dressed as an Elf, Laurelan wore a Christmas jumper and had attached some jingling bells and baubles to her stem, while Arnold I think had on some designer fashion-knitwear in luxury cashmere.

b168ab206815c6d74021973b11b306ac — The Prof got a little too excited as well.

All in all a very good effort, although I couldn’t help thinking Josher misunderstood the concept of a “Christmas jumper” and decided to just wear something his Granddad might once have received as an unwanted Christmas present.

I didn’t get a good look at this, but got the impression of a Bri-Nylon cardigan of an indeterminate, nondescript colour, complete with leatherette elbow patches, a chunky zipper with big ring-pull and baggy pockets to store your pipe and baccy in. Très chic (well, in the late 50’s anyway).

So it was that a suitable Advent group of 24 lads and lasses pushed off, clipped in and rode out, none of us quite believing just how mild the weather was.

03efc79ac8a3dae462e69a9674acf26f — Early Gallic version of the Christmas Jumper Ride

It was turning into a very pleasant, uneventful and relaxed ride, although everyone seemed to be having trouble with just how warm it was and soon gloves were being discarded, jackets unzipped or unshipped and belted around waists and the sleeves of all the Christmas jumpers were being rolled up.

We turned up a narrow country lane and found ourselves having to slow and single out to pass large groups of riders, finding yet more coming up behind us, and the roadsides nose-to-tail with 4×4’s and horse boxes.

We were riding through the middle of what seemed to be a massive organised hunt, although as I didn’t see any hounds around and everyone was in tweed rather than “pinks” or colours, I assume this was a Hunter Trial or some other obscure equestrian gathering.

We got lots of very cheery “Good morning’s” as we carefully threaded our way through the massed ranks of the Northumbrian landed gentry, all astride their monster horses (ok, they all look big to me) and our Christmas jumpers raised a smile or two and were declared “fraytfully amusing.”

xmas tree — Next year I’ll take a leaf out of this guys book and ride with a complete Christmas tree

Arnold gagged on a cloud of, no doubt excruciatingly expensive perfume, as he passed one of the female riders and suggested any hounds might have some trouble picking up a scent with her around. I thought that perhaps she was the intended quarry and had overdone the perfume only to be able to leave an easily detectable trail.

I then rode past OGL who declared, “That’s a big hunt,” which I thought was quite uncharitable. I’m still not quite sure which individual he was referring to…

We finally cleared the traffic and ran up the Quarry Climb to turn for the café. As we were just shaking ourselves out for the final run in a large farm truck passed on the other side of the road. I’m not sure what happened next, but think there was a touch of wheels somewhere behind me, Laurelan came down hard and Red Max came down harder still and unfortunately right on top of her.

Behind them Cowin’ Bovril jammed on his disk brakes which stopped him so fiercely and unexpectedly he too toppled over before he could pull his cleats clear of the pedals.

As I turned around to ride back all I could see was Laurelan lying prone and totally unmoving on the wet tarmac, with much murmuring about broken hips and collar bones. Now everyone had an excuse to discard the jackets and jumpers they were overheating in and our downed rider was soon engulfed in all the excess clothing.

10906005_10154968167360548_6669386691393511417_n — Just prior to Dabmans tumble … pushing this car out of a ditch should have been all the warning we needed that the roads were icy

As we tried to get a signal and call for an ambulance, Laurelan started moving and climbed slowly and gingerly to her feet, carefully testing out her limbs and feeling her various injuries. I suggested if she was going to ride on to the café she might as well keep all the spare clothing on and would likely just bounce if she came down again.

As it was she seemed to have recovered with remarkable resilience and was soon ready to ride again, battered, bruised and scraped but apparently not suffering any major injury, although the back of her helmet was badly cracked.

I guess we’ll never know if the helmet saved her from a more serious injury, but at the risk of offending the anti-helmet brigade, I’m inclined to believe anything that lessens the impact of a clout to the back of the head can only be a good thing.

The Prof and Shouty pressed on as everyone regrouped, then G-Dawg and Son of G-Dawg set off too. I wheeled around the group and took off in pursuit, trusting everyone behind would finally sort themselves out and follow on.

I caught up and slotted in behind the G-Dawg pack as we slalomed our way between numerous potholes and deep fissures cratering the road surface, slowly building up speed.

At the point when G-Dawg’s whirring fixie reached maximum velocity, Son of G-Dawg accelerated in pursuit of the Prof and Shouty and I pressed on, before slowing before the Snake Bends when I was caught by Red Max, Captain Black, Goose and G-Dawg for the final push to the café.

In the café, Laurelan was able to inspect the damage more closely and was given some wet wipes to try and scour the dirt and grit from her abraded elbows. Now that’s got to sting every time.

As we were leaving the café, Plumose Papuss stripped to the waist as he tried to lose a base-layer. The Red Max informed us we were lucky to be wearing dark glasses, preventing serious eye injury as even the weak sun was shatteringly bright as it bounced directly off pale, pale skin.

G-Dawg offered Plumose £20 if he’d ride home topless, like some deranged Elf in lycra Lederhosen, but luckily sense prevailed over monetary gain and we were spared further excesses of the flesh.

On the return trip up Berwick Hill I fell foul of one of the steel-tipped thorns we tend to grow in the hedgerows around here and dropped off the back with a rear wheel puncture. I was quite happy to wave everyone on, while I stopped to make repairs and start my lone trek for home a little early.

Even a sudden, sharp shower couldn’t dampen my spirits, although I did have a minor brain fart and spent 5 minutes trying to work out how to get the repaired wheel back into the bike – something I’ve done a hundred times and should be routine, but which left me momentarily flummoxed.

Finally resolving my unexpected dilemma, I happily struck out for home, ticking off the miles and wondering how long it would be until the next ride in such agreeable conditions.

Merry Christmas all.

YTD Totals: 6,234 km/ 3,873 miles with 69,011 metres of climbing.

Italian Mobster Shoots a Lobster

Club Run, Saturday 12^th December, 2015

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 99 km/62 miles with 602 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 4 hours 18 minutes

Group size: 22 riders, 1 maybe-FNG

Weather in a word or two: Benign to blizzard

Main topic of conversation at the start: For some utterly bizarre, unaccountable reason OGL rolled up to the meeting point bang on 9.00. When questioned, even he couldn’t give a rational explanation for actually arriving on time.

Crazy Legs told us about the rider who’d turned up in shorts for our very chilly Club Run a couple of weeks ago (A Winter’s Blast, Saturday 21^st November). Having taken pity on this criminally under-dressed rider (a bit of a shameful, recurring theme this week as well) Crazy Legs cut short his intended run to ride escort duty directly to the warm sanctuary of the café and avoid the potential onset of hypothermia.

Once there however the rapid change in temperature caused the riders exposed legs to erupt in swathes of itchy and vicious bright red chilblains, becoming so uncomfortable he was forced to take his coffee out into the garden in an attempt to cool down his super-heated skin and find some relief from the crazed itching.

As Crazy Legs described it, his skin had “erupted with loads of mini-Vesuvius’s” I queried whether the correct term shouldn’t be “Vesuvii” and while debating this fine, etymological point, Taffy Steve helpfully pointed out that, on the good authority of a Marine Biologist, the correct plural of octopus is in fact octopuses, not octopi, as the word is of Greek, not Latin origin.

For some bizarre reason we then ended up wondering what a Mafia-style octopus would look and sound like, given the national stereotype for Italian’s to talk with much exaggerated arm waving: “Bada-bing, badda boom!”

We also found common ground in our complete and utter disdain for Paloma Faith. Who? What? Why? When? How? Really?

3 of the girls turned up in formation wearing what looked like identical red jackets, and, as if on cue, parted to reveal the Red Max … wearing blue! Huh?

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop: The criminally under-dressed students huddled together as close to the fire as they could get, staring fixedly at nothing and trying to control their shivering, while we tucked into cake, supped wonderfully hot, bitter coffee and wondered aloud about the merits of being a young racing snake, devoid of that extra lardy layer of insulation you need to stay warm.

Of course, there’s no reason you can’t be both lean and mean and comfortably warm, but this requires careful wardrobe choices and a degree of common sense, which seems to be in short supply. Kids today, eh?

Carlton pondered aloud why we didn’t all move somewhere with a better, warmer and more benevolent climate, at which point the maybe-New Guy, originally from Galway in the far west of Ireland, piped up earnestly, “Well, that’s what I did.” Everyone paused long enough to perform a swift double take, checking out the horrendous weather through the window, before we were engulfed in gales of uncontrollable laughter.

Captain Black admitted joining the Hall of Shame, having lent his one and only spare inner tube to a fellow rider in need and being caught out when he later suffered a puncture himself. He thus earned himself a notorious black mark for becoming stranded at the side of the road with a simple mechanical that’s easily avoided.

Red Max didn’t really help, continually dipping into his magical, ever expanding backpack until he had half a dozen spare inner tubes lined up on the table.

The Waffle:

For the first time this year I set out for the meeting point in near darkness and had to use the lights while I waited for the sun to creep up and add at least a semblance of warm colour and daylight to the blanketing cloud cover.

Despite this it was, seemingly for the first time in weeks, benignly mild with, temperatures well above freezing and a barely noticeable wind. Given the BBC forecast was predicting frost and sub-zero temperatures at dawn I was pleasantly surprised. Even taking into account the light and possibly sleety intermittent showers due in the evening, it looked like being a great day for a ride.

I had dressed accordingly for the forecast, but strangely absent cold and predicted overnight frost: light and heavy long-sleeved base layers, winter jacket, buff, gilet, tights, thermolite socks and heavy overshoes. On my hands I went for a new pair of Planet X lobster mitts, which were incredibly warm, but felt a little odd and took some getting used to. I even remembered to pack a spare pair of gloves in the unlikely event these mitts somehow got soaked through.

bada bing — “Bada bing, bada boom!” – you don’t mess with Don Calamari

By the time I made it to the meeting point I was slightly overheated and beginning to regret dressing for near Arctic conditions as I stowed away the gilet and buff. If the fact that the BBC Weather got the predicted temperature so wrong was perhaps warning of more forecast unreliability to come, it went sadly unheeded.

Encouraged by the first spell of decent weather in a while, there was a good turnout of around 22 lads and lasses, our numbers bolstered by some of our students who had returned from University, most notably Chilly Willy and Plumose Papuss. As an indication of just how decent the weather looked, there was also a lone FNG sighting, or at least a maybe-FNG, someone I didn’t recognise from previous rides.

At exactly 9:20 we were ready to ride off in the absence of the Prof, who had earlier declared via Faecesbook that he would be out, but was apparently running late. Having been jilted and left behind by one of the Sunday runs starting bang on time, OGL was particularly – some might uncharitably suggest unusually – eager to cut the blather and set out smartly.

We hadn’t gone far when beZ caught and overhauled us to let us know his old man, the Prof was trailing behind and I heard OGL cackling hysterically with glee. We did slow enough for the Prof to catch on and ride up to the front to check-in with OGL and take his medicine like a man. Cue more maniacal laughter as vengeance was duly served.

The Prof’s sojourn with us didn’t last long however as he was soon stopped by a mechanical. We rode on a short way to find somewhere safe to pull over, and were waiting there when another club passed and relayed the message that the Prof’s mechanical was terminal and he was heading home. Apparently his wheel bearings had objected to the abuse of constant immersion in the floodwaters last week and were rattling like a hand full of marbles in a spin drier.

While the front of our bunch pulled away to resume the ride, those at the rear had to wait for yet another club to swish past before tagging onto the back. A little further on roadworks and traffic lights stopped everyone, and so it was the three clubs got compacted into one mass peloton of around 60 or 70 riders.

We now effectively, if unintentionally formed a massive rolling road-block, maybe 100 yards long, with me as tail-end Charlie, sitting right at the back with some of our youngsters.

From here I was in the perfect position to watch numerous, impatient and death-defying RIMs trying to force their way past us in the most insane places, including blind bends and hill brows. This was the cue for crazy, wild-driving accompanied by madly revving engines, wild evasive manoeuvres, flashing lights, braking, swerving, cursing and incessant horn leaning.

peloton — I’m not sure massive groups of cyclist ensure safety in numbers, or just encourage REALLY stupid driving

Miraculously no one came to grief, despite several heart-in-mouth moments as this pseudo-Demolition Derby come Wacky Races played out, but this was solely due to luck and not good driving abilities or instincts. Where are all these people dashing to that they have to risk life and limb (not always their own admittedly) to ensure they’re not a scintilla late?

It was while trying to keep at least half an eye on irrational, unpredictable motorists that I noted with incredulity that half the group we were stuck behind were riding in shorts! At least I was incredulous until Plumose Papuss cheerfully informed me they were from a triathlon club. Ah, that explained everything….

As we hit the long drag up Berwick Hill I could sense the triathletes dropping off the pace and I think the race honed instincts of beZ and Josher immediately took over. I was already accelerating in anticipation, as they surged around the slowing group, and was able to sit on their wheels for a tow up, as they easily bridged across to the front.

At the top of the hill and with the triathletes behind us, the other club swung off to the right and we reformed and pressed on, only until icy rain began to fall and we called a halt to don rain jackets.

Far from being one of the intermittent and passing “light rain showers” forecast for later in the day, it was soon raining in earnest, lashing down until everyone was soaked through and everything became a little grim as we pressed stolidly on.

We swung up the Quarry Climb, pretty much in formation, but at the top all bets were off and, despite OGL shrilly screaming for calm, the race to the café was on as the Red Max shot away with Plumose Papuss in close attendance.

I stuck with the front group as Max faded, hopping from wheel to wheel wherever I could and riding well within my limits. Swinging round the junction for the final run down to the Snake Bends Taffy Steve took off after Plumose Papuss to contest for honours, while I was contend to push along at a steady pace, somewhat surprisingly either holding off or passing G-Dawg, Son of G-Dawg, Captain Black and Crazy Legs along the way.

It was black bin bags all around in a remarkably quiet café, where our two students Plumose and Chilly sat in mute sympathy, huddled as close to the fire as they could squeeze with glassy, thousand yard stares, shivering intermittently as they tried to warm up and dry out. I’m not sure if they ever made it out of the café with the rest of us – for all I know they could still be there.

As we sat there at our leisure, talking trash (as opposed to trash talking, which is a completely different thing) the Prof rolled up, having been home to change one unfeasibly small-wheeled cycling contraption for another unfeasibly small-wheeled cycling contraption. Meanwhile the weather outside gradually worsened and the temperature started to dip alarmingly.

Nothing was either particularly dry, or particularly warm as we kitted up for the return journey, although I briefly felt some smugness pulling on my spare gloves. It was at this point we were subjected to one of the strangest sights ever, as the Prof decided to don his monstrous lobster mitts before his jacket, reasoning that this would provide the best seal between glove and sleeve. The only trouble with this plan was that the jacket sleeves were too tight and, as well as being too bulky to pass through them easily, the mitts were a clear impediment to his manual dexterity.

In desperation he somehow corralled, coaxed or bribed one of the waitresses to help and we were met with the unedifying scene of this young girl first having to drag and pull and heave each mitt through the sleeves, before zipping the Profs jacket up to his chin for him, while he stood around like a sullen infant being dressed by an over-protective mother for a sledging trip.

Finally all ready, we sidled out of the café, mounted up and tried to get arms, legs and brains all working again, and warm ourselves up despite the debilitating, leaching effect of the cold. We hadn’t made more than two or three miles before my smugness evaporated and the substitute gloves became completely soaked through with sleet and freezing road spray and my fingers turned numb.

As I split from the group and turned for home the sleet became very serious, very wet snow that started to lie on roads previously washed clean of all salt by the incessant and heavy rain.

I stopped to swap soaking wet gloves for equally as wet lobster mitts. After a bit of a struggle, I somehow managed to cram my cold, wet fingers uncomfortably into some semblance of the right holes. Despite the stream of cold water that was forced out every time I pulled on the brakes or gripped the handlebars too tightly I found they were considerably better and my fingers began to warm up again.

PXLGWL_P2 — Live long and prosper – with the impressive Planet X Crab Hand Winter Glove

Thankfully I was feeling a lot fresher than in previous weeks and cruised up the hill past the golf course still in the big ring. As I climbed higher and higher the snow got heavier and soon everything was coated in a soaking wet layer of white.

I had to discard the specs as the lenses became “all bogeyed up” (a technical expression learned from Daughter#2, who always seemed to have terrible trouble with swimming goggles) and the snow started to cling to my front and collect in the creases of my clothes, swiftly turning black to white.

Fittingly having last week descried megalomaniac despots and their ill-thought out invasions of Russia, this ordeal was swiftly beginning to remind me of Napoleon’s disastrous retreat from Moscow, as I tried to find the balance between covering any exposed flesh with my buff and retaining some ability to see through the thickening snowfall. I was though spared marauding Cossack hordes, presumably they were all Christmas shopping in the MetroCentre with everyone else.

cycling-in-snow — **Last weeks talk of invading Russia, was followed by the inevitable retreat with the onset of winter**

Luckily my skinny tyres were doing an effective job cutting through the fresh snow and down to the underlying road surface, so grip seemed better than some of the fish-tailing, wheel-spinning cars were experiencing. Nevertheless I took the long descent down to the river extremely gingerly, filthy brakes grating horribly on the wheel rims and a streamer of icy melt water squeezing out of my mitts.

Approaching the climb back out of the valley I found a combination of numb thumb, restrictive gloves and stiff STI lever was just too much and I had to stop at the side of the road to change down to the inner ring.

I finally reached the bottom of the Heinous Hill to find the traffic going up completely grid-locked and a large white BMW slipping down slowly, slipping down sideways toward me.

butkexsepia_clone — It’s always a good idea to dress … err … appropriately for the weather

I quickly realised that even if I could find any traction through the snow to climb upwards, I had no way of avoiding the out of control cars sliding down in the opposite direction toward me. I climbed off and took to the pavements, grateful that I swap road for mountain bike shoes during the winter, so I at least had some traction in a “two steps forward, one slip back” sort of way.

About halfway up the hill my Garmin crapped out on me, overcome with the cold and wet, or perhaps going into auto-shutdown because I didn’t appear to be moving anymore.

I also noticed that my bike had collected a thick crust of snow in the areas most exposed to the wind. From the thickest deposits I was able to surmise that I would get the most benefit from a new aero-seatpost and that I had perhaps discovered an affordable DIY way for the average cyclist to indulge in a bit of wind-tunnel testing. Weather permitting. Assuming they don’t mind getting cold. Oh, and wet.

As a measure of how bad it was by the time I’d dragged my soaked and sorry ass home, not only was I allowed to bring the bike into the kitchen to dry off, but Mrs. SLJ actually suggested this drastic course of action and even gave my trusty Peugeot a quick rubdown while I was huddled in the shower trying to restore feeling to my extremities.

www.fastmail.com — The Ice-Giant certainly left its mark on our back garden – as captured by Daughter#2

As the bike sat their dripping quietly onto the tile floor, perfectly moulded sections of the compacted snow and ice caught under the mudguards worked loose and slipped out. I swear they resembled nothing more than the smooth, discarded toe-nail clippings of some mythological ice-giant, perhaps the very one that thought it would be fun to lure unwitting cyclists out with the promise of a relatively pleasant day, only to conjure up a snow storm to really test them.

I hope it gets bored and slinks back to its lair for next weekend.

YTD Totals: 6,134 km/ 3,811 miles with 68,154 metres of climbing.

Mid the steep sky’s commotion

Club Run, Saturday 5^th December, 2015

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 95 km/59 miles with 930 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 4 hours 12 minutes

Group size: 7 riders, no FNG’s

Weather in a word or two: Storm chasing…

Main topic of conversation at the start: Crazy Legs rolled up lacking his usual ebullience and by-passing all form of normal greeting, to darkly intone one dread word: “Hangover.”

He did however manage to rouse himself briefly for a spirited round of “wheel wars” – loosely based on the successful “thumb wars” model, but this week pitting his Continental Gatorskin shod Campagnolo wheels against my Fulcrum’s with Schwalbe Durano tyres. “One, two, three, four, I declare a wheel war!” was accompanied by him bashing repeatedly at my front wheel until our bikes became locked together in rampant combat like two rutting stags. Sadly, this was to be his only meaningful action on the day.

OGL pulled up in his automobile with much head-shaking, to check which idiots were intent on heading out into the storm, before he himself sought safety in the gym. In his best, “We’re all doomed” voice, he went on to outline a litany of cancelled events, postponed sporting fixtures and general catastrophes, as Storm Desmond, 80 mph winds and torrential rain continued to batter the North.

A quick conference concluded that we’d be pretty much heading straight to the café and home again, it certainly wasn’t the day for longer rides or routes unknown.

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop: It was black bin bags all round as we made it to the café completely soaked through and dripping relentlessly. Sitting on the bags kept the chairs nice and dry, but couldn’t stop the flow of water, which pooled and seeped and ran until we were all seated in the midst of a big puddle of water that expanded slowly but remorselessly across the tile floor. I have to admit the surprising amount of water I was able to wring out of my waterproof logged gloves didn’t help matters.

Still, as necessity (or, perhaps adversity in this case) is the mother of invention, at least it led to us designing a cyclist mangle – you feed wet riders in one end, turn the (Kranken) handle and pull slightly creased and flattened, but much drier cyclists out the other end. We’re convinced there’s a market for this one…

Never mind the aerodynamic benefits of a hard, clip on helmet shell, beZ declared a far better, much under-appreciated quality was that it kept your hair dry and neatly in place. The various manufacturers are obviously missing a huge marketing opportunity by not pushing this particular feature.

Another club was also in the café, en route to their Christmas get together and they helpfully added their own offerings to the expanding pool on the floor. In a vain attempt to dry out various bits of kit they also took up much of the space around the wood-burning stove with steaming piles of gloves, hats, helmets, scarfs and other bits and pieces.

The Prof resorted to trying to dry his gloves directly on the black iron top of the stove, where they started to steam and then smoke alarmingly, and were rescued by beZ before they completely melted and we were all overcome with noxious fumes.

True to form, the ever absent-minded Shoeless bemoaned forgetting his protective specs, as he blinked furiously, each time exfoliating his stinging eyeballs of one more layer of cells. The collected grit and road crap that had been washed into his eyes formed a rich abrasive paste which beauty companies would pay a small fortune for, if they could only bottle and sell it as an exotic facial scrub.

Midway through a normal series of SMS exchanges, the Prof received one that was displayed entirely in Chinese characters. In an attempt to decode it, beZ took control of his old man’s phone with the intent on running the text through Google translate or something similar, but he had to give up when the signal was too weak to get a connection.

Unfortunately while playing with the phone he unwittingly opened up the Emoji menu. “Hey” the Prof declared in surprised delight, “What are all these hieroglyphics?”

Realising his mistake and at our urging beZ quickly wrestled the phone away again and turned the keyboard back to display just normal characters – we have trouble interpreting the Prof’s text messages, social media interactions and forum postings as it is, without letting him loose with a whole new wave of characters and icons.

The Waffle:

Our Faecesbook page was surprisingly active first thing on Saturday morning, as Shoeless checked out the storm damage and weather forecast and posted up an interrogative, “Who’s riding today?” There were lots of negative responses, but seemingly enough affirmatives from the crazies to reassure him it was worth heading out.

I made my way to the meeting point through the collected debris of the night’s storm, fences, road signs, trees, bins and traffic cones all dragged down and scattered by the wind, while the roads were an obstacle course of broken branches and massive pools of standing water.

True to his word, Shoeless was there, waiting at the meeting point early, having decided even battling the elements in potentially dangerous conditions was better than the painful grind of another turbo-session.

A small nucleus of seven of us eventually pushed off, clipped in and headed out, the foreshortened roll of honour comprising: Shoeless, G-Dawg, Son of G-Dawg, The Prof, Crazy Legs, beZ and me.

The much hungover Crazy Legs – usually one of the first to ride on the front, drifted right to the back early on and made it to the first set of lights, maybe a mile up the road, before calling it a day and turning back for home, conquered either by the weather or last night’s alcoholic excesses. Everyone seemed surprised and not a little disappointed that he hadn’t at least drilled it a couple of mile on the front for us before abandoning.

We pressed on regardless, swapping the front riders frequently as we battered our way out into the wilds of Northumberland. Conditions weren’t too bad, the day was at least fairly mild and it would have been pleasant if it hadn’t been for the gales.

Pointing out obstacles to following riders became a bit of a gamble and an exercise in how quickly you could reach out, stab a finger down at the ground and then regain your death grip of the bars.

Turning left or right now came with the luxury of power-steering, sticking an arm out to signal gave the wind something to push against and almost automatically dragged the wheel in that direction.

We managed to eke out a little shelter from hedges, embankments and buildings as we trundled along, but we seemed to spend a lot of time riding inclined and leaning over at about a 10° angle.

Every gap in the hedges brought a sudden gust of capricious wind that would push or pull us sideways and every time this generated a chorus of maniacal and very nervous cackling. Just for a change of pace it also decided to rain and we were soon thoroughly doused and soaked through.

At some point we passed and exchanged a few words with a shooting party, who looked particularly miserable, perhaps because as soon as their beaters flushed a bird it rose up and was immediately snatched away at supersonic speed by the wind, making targeting it almost impossible.

Either side of the road leading to the Quarry climb was a desolate, water-logged landscape, and in one dip we hit a huge lake of surface water that stretched right across the road and the Prof swore he could see wind-whipped whitecaps ruffling its surface.

As beZ seemed to be the tallest , I suggested sending him through first to see if he could make the other side, which was just about visible through the driving rain. Throwing caution to the wind though, we barely slowed, ploughing on regardless and through water that easily topped our wheel hubs, and as a consequence, everyone’s overshoes.

934101d5b1a832bc3d475c725c6ec453 — The Prof keeps asking when I’ll run out of pictures of riders negotiating puddles …

We pushed on to the top of the Quarry climb, now with soaking feet, shoes and socks to add to our other woes. After some deliberation and a bit of confusion we turned left at the top, the highest and most exposed point of our ride, and straight into a punishing headwind that had everyone bent over their bikes and grinding slowly just to keep some sort of momentum.

Dropping down to the final junction, and keeping a wary eye out for the Prof torpedoing everyone as he “came in hot” with barely functioning brakes, we hit the final run to the café and the Tally Ho! cry went up.

The youngsters, Shoeless, beZ and Son of G-Dawg started the long burn for home, leaving us “elder statesmen” struggling behind. Sitting camped on G-Dawgs wheel, I was too late in realising he’d reached terminal velocity and his blurring legs just couldn’t whirr around any faster to drive his fixie across the gap.

I jumped around him, but couldn’t make it across either, as the front three slowly pulled away. Not wanting to languish in no-mans-land I cut my losses and sat up to try and recover a little. G-Dawg and the Prof passed me, and I upped the pace a little just to stay in touch.

As we hit the long, shallow descent down to the Snake Bends I pushed hard again, swept past the Prof, ducked down the inside of G-Dawg and piled it on, ripping through another flooded section of the road, before hauling on the anchors for the bends.

f72caee6e934860144be2a5c4dde61dc — The Prof knew he should have brought the bike with the rocket-pack attachment

Safely negotiating these, G-Dawg re-joined and we pushed on together for a very welcome stop, replete with copious amounts of reviving hot coffee and, of course, a much anticipated date with some cake.

Warming up a little and drying out just the tiniest bit, we watched out the window as the other club gathered themselves and all their slightly less chill, but still soaking gear to venture back out into the wild weather. We all knew stepping out across the threshold was going to be a real challenge after the comfortable and cosy sanctuary of the café and the brief respite it offered from the howling wind and driving rain.

Bizarrely the other group were heading off for a Christmas lunch and get-together somewhere in Whalton, which is only a further 4 miles up the road. This meant that not only did they get semi-dry and warm in the café before plunging outside again, but would have to repeat the process when they left their lunch venue. We couldn’t work out why they hadn’t pushed on and gone straight to Whalton, but perhaps it proves we weren’t the only crazy ones out on the day.

Even worse, one of their riders had a puncture and they seemed to spend an age milling about outside the café, getting cold and wet all over again while this was fixed.

Finally steeling ourselves to leave, we plodged through the puddle of our own making to hand the black, slightly damp bin bags back in at the counter. We then stacked up at the door like a well-drilled SWAT team about to breach and clear a hostile room, gathering together before we struck out to ensure we wouldn’t be hanging around waiting for anyone.

We dashed out to our bikes, only for beZ to discover that both of his tyres were suspiciously soft and squidgy. He was reluctant to stop for repairs though and decided to risk running with them, hoping to get home before all the air ran out.

If we were hoping for a helpful tailwind back we were sadly disappointed and found the same mix of gusting headwinds and vicious cross-winds along most of our route. On one corner in particular we were hit with a sudden buffeting and howling blast that had everyone crabbing sideways across the road and blew Son of G-Dawg out of his pedals and dangerously close to running into a field before he somehow recovered.

Geraint-Thomas-decking-it-still-taken-from-YouTube-video — Son of G-Dawg came bloody close to a Geraint Thomas “moment”

We stopped once for beZ to force some emergency air back into his tyres before pressing on. I split from the group at the earliest opportunity, cutting off a large corner by battling the vicious winds around the airport, before turning west directly into a gale and the long, exposed drag past the golf course. This section of my route home is fast becoming a bête noire to rival the Heinous Hill.

8d0312068a111e3d39b24134a3457813 — Hmm, can’t help feeling I’m missing a trick…

A weak, wintry sun briefly broke through, and combined with the constant tugging wind acting like a massive hair drier, I began to feel a little less wet and a bit more comfortable. The storm also seemed to have kept people in doors and suppressed the volume of traffic on the road, so I had a decent run for home and an immediate appointment with a hot shower.

YTD Totals: 5,996 km/ 3,726 miles with 67,064 metres of climbing.

God Speed You! Black Emperor

Club Run, Saturday 28^th November, 2015

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 98 km/61 miles with 952 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 4 hours 7 minutes

Group size: 16 riders, no FNG’s

Weather in a word or two: Challenging and changeable

Main topic of conversation at the start: OGL rolled up in his car to tell us he wouldn’t be riding today as he was travelling to Glasgow as a guest of honour at the Revolution Series track meet. Crazy Legs, lost in some internal song sequence, had largely tuned the conversation out, so only the words “revolution” and “guest of honour” actually registered. He took these quite literally and was left pondering if OGL’s Napoleon complex was rising to the fore, and if we’d soon be made to line up either side of the road and greet him with cries of “Vive l’Empereur!”

He then pondered aloud the folly of invading Russia, but I was able to convince him that although OGL might have a Russian wife, she hadn’t been claimed as the spoils of war and he was confusing our leader with some other megalomaniac despot, or despots.

OGL then went on to complain that he’d turned up at 9.31 last Sunday and everyone had already left. He’d even gone so far as to record his disgruntlement on the club forum, where his comments no doubt languish, largely unread amongst the dust, cobwebs and tumbleweed.

Far be it for me to claim any great skills of prescience, but I recall a slight degree of concern about the confusion likely to arise when he first announced that Sunday runs would now meet at 9.30 for a 9.30 start.

It’s ironic that OGL was “hoist by his own petard” – but I’m fairly certain he hasn’t been the first and is unlikely to be the last to miss out in this way. Oh hell, I might as well go for a full-house of clichés and offer some less than sage advice – “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Elsewhere, Richard of Flanders rode up, immediately dismounted, lifted his bike, spun the rear wheel and pressed his ear to the frame. He started muttering under his breath, leaving us suitably impressed that we were in the presence of a “Bike Whisperer”, but thoroughly bemused by what words of encouragement he might have been impressing on his machine.

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop: Having ridden fast and arrived earlier than usual, we had to dawdle through our café visit so that the G-Dawg collective wouldn’t arrive home too early and be confronted by one of those “Well, if you can get back at this time today, you can get back at this time every week” arguments. As it was they had a contingency plan that involved loitering around outside the house for twenty-minutes or so and hoping the neighbours weren’t in a curtain-twitching mode.

So, more time than usual this week for the unending, ceaseless cascade of drivel, banter and waffle that is hugely entertaining, but only to us…

Taffy Steve dropped his home-made purse/pouch onto the table, a formless lump of thick, much worn, creased and crumpled, pachyderm hide of uncertain age and origin. When Son of G-Dawg asked what the hell it was I guessed elephant foreskin, G-Dawg demurred though and suggested, given its age and general condition that mammoth foreskin was more likely.

Although no one seemed to have been tempted by Black Friday excesses there were several tales of acquiring TV sets bigger than rooms. Son of G-Dawg recollected buying one before he moved out that filled his bedroom and took up one entire wall. He could only take in the whole picture by sitting pressed up hard against the opposite wall and found it badly affected his Call of Duty game-play as he kept getting fragged by people creeping up on him outside his peripheral vision.

This was accompanied by reminiscing about the “good old days” when TV’s were deeper than they were wide and even the portable ones weighed about as much as an industrial washing machine.

Talk of Christmas meals prompted the Red Max to reveal that he’s the only source of culinary competence in the house as Mrs. Max manages to regularly burn even beans. If there’s any doubt about the provenance of a meal the kids won’t eat it before conducting a thorough parental interrogation to re-assure themselves that Max has actually prepared it.

Completely independent of Laura Trott’s Twitter posting of sweet potato cremation by microwave, the Red Max recounted how Mrs. Max had so completely incinerated a potato in the microwave that it looked like slag from a blast furnace and took 6 hours to cool down enough to be safely handled. She had then indignantly declared that she didn’t know what could possibly have gone wrong as she’d “pricked it beforehand!”

An imaginary chapeau was doffed to local legend, the septuagenarian veteran Ray Wetherall, still riding every week in all weathers, despite being regularly blasted with chemotherapy.

Ride Profile

The Waffle: Following last week’s sub-zero excursion, today felt positively balmy with the temperatures around 5-6° and no danger of ice. The wind was high and gusting however and everything was predicted to deteriorate as the day wore on with gales, lashing rain and sleet all forecast for later. It was more a case of when exactly the bad weather was due to arrive rather than if, and whether we would make it home before then.

potato — Laura Trott – following in the august footsteps of Mrs. Max

There was a decent turnout of 16 lads and lasses pushing off, clipping in and rolling out, bolstered by a couple of late arrivals who just caught the back of us disappearing up the road and managed tag on before we took a couple of less traveled routes out into the countryside.

I drifted around the back of the group as we set a fairly hard pace into the wind, catching up with the Red Max who had risen from his sick bed to ride, but seemed to be feeling pretty damn chipper. In between gasping for breath as we pounded up several hills at near maximum warp, we spent some time discussing super-skinny pros and how small and weedy they looked in real life.

Seen “in the flesh” even those we think of as big, hulking brutes like “The Gorilla” Andre Greipel probably wouldn’t give you pause if you encountered him alone in a dark alley (apart from the fact Herr Griepel seems like a perfect gentleman and all-round nice guy anyway).

I mentioned the photos of a Garmin-Slipstream Wiggins looking dangerously unhealthy and frighteningly malnourished during his 2009 Tour de France break-out ride, as if he’d just been rescued from the Burma Railroad. We decided such radical weight loss simply wasn’t healthy and how extremely unnatural it is to be a cyclist and deny yourself pizza and cake. We also pondered why none of the women pros looked quite so unattractively gaunt.

The conversation reminded me just how weak and puny we cyclists actually are, with no discernible upper body strength to speak of. Hell, I even have to get Mrs. SLJ or one of the kids to help open bags of crisps for me these days.

I remember watching one of those ageing, menopausal motorcycle gangs congregating opposite our meeting point last year, all brand new, shiny Harley’s in the hands of middle-aged, balding, white-collar professionals, strapped into identical black leather to support their low slung paunches. I wondered aloud if it might lead to a bit of a cyclist vs. biker turf war, or what the American’s rather strangely refer to as gang-banging (or at least they do in a world informed only by The Wire and NYPD Blue.)

Crazy Legs snorted in derision at my idle musings, suggesting it wouldn’t be much of a competition, a dozen or so “160 pound skinny guys in lycra-underwear” against eight or nine burly bikers dressed like extras from Mad Max. Sometimes the truth is harsh.

On recounting this discussion and its rather sobering conclusions to someone, the “ageing motorcycle gang” was misheard and morphed into an “Asian motorcycle gang” which somehow sounded much more exotic and threatening. Maybe I should stick to that version for future re-telling? I’m not sure who the bikers opposite us were, but they were most definitely not the Black Emperors.

e594468b05b9da03c7a2174d1442dda0 — Sometimes my mind makes connections I don’t quite understand. I wonder if I should be worried…

Meanwhile, back on the ride we eventually hit the Quarry climb at top speed and we split on the fly, most turning left at the top, but G-Dawg swinging right and declaring “an experiment” to see which route to the café was the quickest. The left-hand route is longer but has a long-straight downhill run to the Snake Bends, while momentum on the right-hand route is interrupted by several leg-sapping inclines, dodgy corners and blind road junctions.

e62de4f0e5e40f385835283455cfe02d — We enjoyed an extended cafe break – no doubt to the great delight of the other patrons.

I took the right-hand option with Son of G-Dawg and we were joined by the Red Max with, I think, a couple of others trailing in his wake. I tried to tell him what was going on, but all Max heard was “experiment” and “race” – this was enough for the red mist (appropriately) to descend and the competitive juices to kick in.

Max immediately engaged the turbo and hit the front, dragging us all along on his madcap venture to beat the other group. There then followed about 7km of balls to the wall, on the rivet, crazy-assed, pedal-pounding as everyone else tried to just hang on.

Throwing caution to the wind, Max barely slowed for junctions and was swinging wide, right across and onto the opposite side of the road to find the best line through the corners. As Taffy Steve remarked we would still have heard him giggling madly as he slammed into a car coming the opposite way, but luckily the roads were clear and he pulled out a sizeable gap on those with a more, shall we say “sober” approach.

max — Somehow, some way, Max survived some vertiginous cornering

I passed G-Dawg on the last downhill section as his legs reached terminal velocity on his fixie, slowed for the junction then tried to pull as hard as I could up the last drag. Son of G-Dawg jumped away to ultimately hunt down and overhaul Max, while I heard the metronomic, swish-swish-swish as G-Dawg ground past me, turning his massive gear in slow motion and with apparent ease. I ducked onto his rear wheel and just managed to cling there, on the limit with burning legs and lungs that felt short-changed of oxygen.

Behind us the other group, playing fox to our hare, could now see us and were in full-on pursuit with two of our young prodigies, Josher and beZ spearheading the chase. We were able to quickly re-gather the momentum lost at the last junction though and held on to prove the right hand route is quicker (but there’s not that much in it.)

The return from the café was a rather civilised, somewhat sedate affair, but the sky was growing increasingly dark as we pressed on. After a not-so-mad Mad Mile, I turned for home and straight into the teeth of a punishing headwind. The long drag up past the golf course saw me drop down to the inner ring and run quickly through the gears, searching in vain for something I could turn with ease.

I pressed on, with no company except the irregular, desultory rasping of my front mudguard, as an icy, wind started peppering me with stinging, frozen rain and the sky darkened further until it looked like late evening and all the cars were driving with full headlights.

As I made my long and somewhat torturous way up Heinous Hill I think I could have been overtaken by grannies pushing wheeled shopping bags, or mothers with pushchairs. Luckily though the wintry rain had driven everyone indoors and there were no witnesses to my embarrassingly slow, dragging crawl homeward.

aea20c8728b3f00cfb890cfd53c137b0 — Climbing slow enough to hinder pedestrians is never a good sign…

Another fun ride, but for the third week in a row I felt utterly drained, heavy-legged and exhausted by the end. I can’t decide if this is a result of the cold weather, the wind, the pace we’re riding at, lack of recovery time, the winter bike, some lingering, indiscernible ailment or just creeping age and decrepitude. Maybe it’s all of these combined?

Oh well, I’m obviously going to have to keep trying until things improve.

YTD Totals: 5,873 km/ 3,649 miles with 65,767 metres of climbing.

Winter’s Blast

Club Run, Saturday 21^st November, 2015

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 100 km/62 miles with 1,004 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 4 hours 12 minutes

Group size: 12 riders, no FNG’s

Weather in a word or two: Wintry

Main topic of conversation at the start: The Prof was bemoaning the breakdown of the padding and insulation in his aged lobster-mitts. He thought they still made him look like a large, benign, marine crustacean, but I suggested the resemblance was more Danny De Vito’s Penguin than something cute and cuddly from Spongebob Squarepants.

He then spotted the Cow Rangers gloves, massive unwieldy mittens that were secured with elastic bungee cords wrapped multiple times and tourniquet-tight around wrists and forearms, and queried what particular sport they were made for. I helpfully suggested boxing, cage fighting or Mixed Martial Arts. The Cow Ranger himself couldn’t clarify, but admitted that, although fantastically warm, they made braking and gear changes a bit of a lottery.

OGL declared we should all be sectioned for turning out on a day like this and for once no one disagreed. One of the guys then rolled up and instantly made everyone feel warmer as he was wearing just a short-sleeved jersey, arm warmers and shorts. Shorts! Now that’s true madness. It’s as if he helpfully wanted to prove that we weren’t the crazy ones, but that they are most definitely alive, riding bikes and living amongst us.

OGL then mused about how a Belgian-style lock-down here would impact on the Metro Centre and Eldon Square shopping. Personally I’m all for anything that shakes the excessive, mass feeding frenzy and orgy of shopping that now seems de rigueur at Christmas.

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop: OGL recommended the soup, which he suggested was delicious and warming and just right for a day like this. “Yeah,” Son of G-Dawg countered, “But it isn’t pie is it?” tucking into a massive slice of hot bacon and egg flan.

Meanwhile, at another table, a rival club were served up ridiculously healthy platefuls of grilled bananas on wholemeal toast, with green tea and super-skinny lattes all round. We quietly sniggered at these poor, deluded amateurs – don’t they know real cyclists are fuelled by cake?

We dissected one of last winter’s crashes on the lane just past the Snake Bends, where one of the girls started a domino effect sliding on the ice and bringing just about everyone around her down. G-Dawg and Son of G-Dawg were the only ones to survive, sailing carefully on while repeating the mantra – “Don’t stop, don’t look back, don’t brake, don’t even try to steer…”

We then discussed post-ride showers, how long it was possible to stay in the them before the family complained, the pain of blood returning to your extremities and at what point you felt warm enough to actually take some clothes off. The bad days are ones where this is only happens after huddling under the hot water for 15 minutes or so.

G-Dawg has had to give up Sunday rides because he’s committed to looking after two new additions to the family – a pair of young dogs that need constant exercise. Somewhere in the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind a thin candle of hope still flickers with the improbable idea that they are called G-Dog and Son of G-Dog.

Ride Profile

The Waffle: A storm passed through overnight with howling, gale-force winds, accompanied by driving snow and rapidly plunging temperatures. The morning was grey and bitterly cold with strong, capricious and freezing winds still whip-lashing around at irregular intervals.

Temperatures were bumping along just above freezing, but the polar gusts meant a wind-chill of around -2°C or -3°C and it felt like it. Perfect weather … for penguins. Speaking of which:

penguin — Lobster mitts – super-villain style

I dressed accordingly, long-sleeved summer base layer under a long-sleeved winter one, windproof jacket with a gilet over it, buff, headband to keep my ears warm but not overheat my noggin, bib tights, thermal socks and overshoes. On my hands I went for silk glove liners beneath winter weight gloves. I thought I might have overdone it, but just stepping out the door was enough to convince me I’d judged things about right.

The cars parked up around me still had a thick band of snow rimming the bottom of their windshields, like mini barchand dunes, suggesting at least the possibility of ice on the roads. I pushed off and began a very tentative descent of Heinous Hill, a little more confident once a car went past and I heard the reassuring tinny rattle of grit and rock salt bouncing off its undersides. At least the council had been out and treated the roads.

I battled my way across the river, mainly into a strong headwind, occasionally being buffeted from the sides and rear as the wind swirled around me. Any exposed flesh was instantly chilled and I became acutely conscious and a bit pre-occupied with a hairline gap between glove and cuff. Meanwhile, the tops of my thighs, lips, toes and thumbs burned with the cold as an unpleasant prelude to turning numb.

The last mile to the meeting point brought a sudden flurry of stinging, driving snow to slap me directly in the face and I was grateful to roll into the car park head down and find some shelter. A few were waiting already and more slowly trickled through in dribs and drabs.

snaey — Winter riding – a bit challenging

Impelled by a seeming need for symmetry, Crazy Legs was hoping we’d get an even dozen, but after waiting as long as we felt practical and watching the snow shower pass over, we were an odd eleven who pushed off, clipped in and set out.

At the last moment though, Richard of Flanders saved us, sailing through the traffic to join us and perfectly timing his arrival to minimise waiting time and exposure to the harsh elements. Now a Dirty Dozen formed up to ride.

We’ve reached an uneasy compromise with the Great North Road Cyclemaze and Death Trap, with the inside line of our pairs peeling off to carefully thread their way through the tank-trap like orcas and Rommelspargel, while the others only have to negotiate the much less hazardous surging traffic. Well, at least we use the Cyclemaze until the route throws you up onto the pavement to slalom around a bus stop and then drop back onto the road. It tends to get abandoned at this point.

We rotated the front pair more regularly than usual as the wind continued to batter away at us, finding the road conditions variable with many major roads strangely untreated while some of the minor ones had been gritted. There were occasional patches of ice and some thick deposits of melting snow in the gutters and along the verges, but nothing causing too much concern.

11d21267fdc0796cada331240bdb3fe5 — Perhaps we’re missing a trick when it comes to riding on ice?

Somewhere down the line a merciful Crazy Legs departed for a shorter route to the café, taking our under-dressed colleague with him in an attempt to beat the onset of hypothermia. I did my stint on the front with Richard of Flanders, finding the wind finally starting to drop and the going not quite so hard.

OGL complained of freezing feet and declared an urgent need to pee – I couldn’t tell if the two were somehow related and whether he wanted to stop to pee on his feet to try and warm things up a little. We prudently left him to his own devices, continuing on to the end of the road and the junction to sit and wait for him to re-join.

On re-grouping OGL and a couple of others turned directly for the café, sticking to the largely ice-free main road, but a half a dozen or so of us decided to risk pressing on for a slightly longer ride as the wind seemed to be dropping away, the clouds were breaking apart and a very low, very bright sun started to bounce blindingly and uncomfortably off the wet road.

We encountered a couple of dangerous patches of ice, and endured a couple of sketchy descents with the sun striking glaringly off the surface of the road so you were never quite sure if it was icy or just wet under the tyres. We pressed on fairly carefully and cautiously and there were no mishaps.

As we turned for the café, Son of G-Dawg suggested a sober, restrained run in to the finish with no sprinting heroics. I was more than happy to agree to a temporary cessation of hostilities, but noted the Cow Ranger was still with us and he would surely want to flex his muscles, so I doubted the truce would be binding.

We dragged ourselves up a steep climb and started to pick up the pace a little around the lake, only to pull up short. Ice hadn’t stopped us, the wind hadn’t stopped us, the cold hadn’t stopped us, the snow hadn’t stopped us. The massive uprooted tree lying across the road though, that was an entirely different matter.

Weaving our way through the blockade of seemingly abandoned service vehicles, we found the local version of Leatherface standing, mute chainsaw dangling uselessly in his gloves as he surveyed the fallen behemoth he had been sent to clear by hand.

Asking for his assessment of the situation and recommendations for how we should proceed were met with an incomprehensible grunt – I think he was struck dumb by the enormity of his task and close to tears.

Taking the initiative ourselves, we hauled our bikes over the fence and battled through thick, entangling undergrowth skirting the massive crater caused when the trees roots were ripped from the earth. Fighting, pushing, slipping and sliding, hauling, tugging and carrying our bikes, we circumvented the fallen giant, clambered over another fence and finally re-joined the road, mounted up and pressed on.

ebc08f70598ea593e4e1f3ed24ab57ce — Bikes and fences – never a good combination.

The pace picked up as we swept down through Milestone Woods and over the rollers. As we hit the final climb the Cow Ranger surprised everyone (no, honestly) with a completely predictable attack, the G-Dawgs bit hard and set off in pursuit, while I just eased back, relaxed and watched the chase unfold.

At the café we picked up young phenom Josher for the return ride. He was showing off his new cyclo-cross bike in a fetching shade of green which perfectly matched his phone case. I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d bought the bike to match his phone or vice-versa. Either way it’s an impressive show of dedication to colour co-ordination.

Once again as the pace wound for the Mad Mile before everyone split, I sat back and let them go, content to ride at my own speed as I picked my way carefully homeward.

A good ride, but like last week I felt somewhat heavy-legged toward the end and had an aching back and shoulders. I can’t decide if this was a consequence of some inner huddling to try and stay warm, or tensing up when encountering ice and slippery conditions. I think I’ll have to learn to relax more.

YTD Totals: 5,735 km/ 3,424 miles with 64,345 metres of climbing.

Banjaxed!

Club Run, Saturday 14^th November, 2015

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 119 km/72 miles with 1,270 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 5 hours 06 minutes

Group size: 22 riders, no FNG’s

Weather in a word or two: Chilly. Gusty.

Main topic of conversation at the start: We discussed the paradox of how – despite spending hours together and the almost endless stream of incessant chatter – we actually know so little about our fellow riders. Sometimes this knowledge consists of nothing more than a name, approximate age and a thoroughly murky and probably incorrect brief bio, which will include only the most rudimentary understanding of job and family circumstances.

To be honest even this is a best-case scenario and there are people I been riding with almost every weekend for years whose name I’m still uncertain of. Having said that, I can probably tell you in infinite detail about what sort of bike they ride and recognise them in a crowd with their back to me while wearing a helmet and dark glasses, even, or perhaps especially if they’re dressed from head to toe in lycra.

This naturally led to musings about what it is we do actually talk about, along with the realisation (no doubt highlighted by the meanderings of this blog) that while we always find it massively entertaining, it never rises much above pure escapism: the ephemera of life and bikes and popular culture. So it was that the incomprehensible, barbaric and despicable atrocities in Paris overnight barely got a mention, other than to note that we didn’t really talk about them much.

Ever reliable, the Prof roused us from any dark, philosophical musings by turning up and asking around to see if anyone could lend him, “Ein 8mm kranken handle.” Or at least we thought that’s what he was asking for. I’ve no idea if such a thing as a kranken handle actually exists, or what it could possibly be used for, but I’m fairly certain that if I ever write a novel about an evil Nazi he’ll bear the moniker of Dr. Kranken Handel…

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop: Crazy Legs took one look at my glazed eyes, corpse-like pallor and general state of complete and utter exhaustion and told me I looked like his granddad … who’d been dead several years.

We then discussed and tried to formalise plans to thwart one of our more annoying, inveterate wheel-suckers from ever winning the café sprint.

G-Dawg is doing some volunteering work for the National Trust that seems to involve chopping down and then up (into smaller pieces) very large trees. This brought us to the universal truth that no matter what saw you choose, at some point in the process it’s going to get stuck, the blade is going to bend spectacularly and your wavy cuts are going to look like something a skater would be proud to carve into the ice while performing the perfect double-salchow.

Ride Profile

The Waffle

The weather has taken on a decidedly chilly note, so thicker gloves, a skull cap and winter base layer were all added to the arsenal for the day. Things were however generally dry, a decidedly pleasant change from last week, with only an adversarial gusting wind to contend with.

While battling through the wind to the meeting point my ears were assaulted by the “thump-thumpa-thumpa-thump-thump” of a boy-racer, disco-car. Odd, I like to think I have a fairly wide taste in music, but have you noticed that whenever one of these cars passes you – and it’s by no means an uncommon event – you can never, ever identify the actual music they’re intent on mangling?

For this ride we were without OGL who was away representing the club at some British Cycling function, so it was left to some of the heads of state, G-Dawg, Crazy Legs, Red Max and Taffy Steve put their heads together and come up with a ride that wasn’t just one of our usual 4 iterations of the same old route.

Looking forward to a few new roads, another good turnout of around 22 lads and lasses gathered, before pushing off and clipping in. We followed the dark cabal of around a dozen or so of our Grogs onto the road, as they swept past intent on their own privately organised and exclusive ride.

I fell in with Sneaky Pete as we set out, sheltering at the back, catching up and learning all about his past misdemeanours and misadventures scaling mountain peaks, just for the hell of it.

This week it was Taffy Steve’s turn to test the sturdiness of one of his lights, gently releasing it from its handlebar clamp to see just how far it would bounce along the road before coming to a stop, at the same time checking it for impact resistance and durability.

We dropped the pace to await the successful conclusion of his retrieval mission, reformed and pressed on, carving a new, wide orbit around the Murder Path in order to avoid the Mur de Mitford climb.

As we dropped into and then climbed up out of the Trench, the bunch started to fracture and once we regrouped we decided to split, with maybe eight or nine of us convening for a longer ride, while the rest headed for a slightly shorter, but equally hilly alternate route to the café.

The Prof and G-Dawg briefly discussed possible routes, the Prof seemingly determined to circumnavigate the café to try and find a point where we’d have a full on tail-wind to push us home. Unfortunately this involved describing a massively wide, hilly circle all the way around the café to try and locate the precise vector where we would have the wind directly at our backs for the final run in.

Like some clichéd horror film, every time I turned around another rider seemed to have been picked off, disappearing one by one as they gave up on our ever widening gyre and turned inward to seek a more direct route to the café.

Finally I looked back to find the road behind was empty – it was just me and the Prof. I led up the hills, the Prof drilled it on the flat and we made decent time, but I failed to notice the needle of my internal fuel tank was ticking inexorably down toward empty.

glycol — Copped one in the old glycogen tank …

With maybe 15 miles and umpteen hills still to go I was struck by la fringale; the bonk, the hunger knock – in runner parlance I, “hit the wall” – a sad state of hypoglycaemia – where my legs were trying to draw down funds my body couldn’t cover. Call it what you will, the results are always the same – leaden, empty legs, total lack of power and a struggle just to turn the cranks.

The worst thing is I’ve no idea why this happened; it’s just one of those utterly unpredictable, inexplicable things we all love about cycling. I’d done nothing difficult during the week, my morning routine hadn’t varied and I’d had my usual breakfast. Once the groups had split I’d spent a little time on the front in the wind, but far less than many others, yet I was running on fumes.

Suffering mightily I gulped down the emergency gel I always carry and spent the last ten mile or so trying to stay glued to the improbably small rear wheel of the Prof’s eccentric cycling contraption.

A homemade mudflap of the less organic variety.

At least in this position I got to admire his hand-crafted, super-long mudflap which I believe he grew in his secret laboratory from a single, solitary cell. I only mention this because he was upset that it hadn’t merited at least a paragraph (his words, not mine) in last week’s blog.

Eventually drifting off the Prof’s wheel I reached the café last, utterly spent and only able to muster the most desultory salute to the shorter ride group who were already replete, rested and lining up to head home.

Utterly, completely and totally banjaxed!

I went for a double hit of cake (feeling crap has to have some benefits) and even went so far as to load my coffee with a couple of sugar lumps, hoping this would be enough fuel to get me back. After a brief rest I set out for home with the Double G-Dawgs, Crazy Legs and the Prof, sitting firmly at the back of this small group and trying to get as much shelter as possible.

Already running late for a trip away for the evening I modified my return route and split from the group early, jousting with some heavy traffic and testing the new tyres with a series of demanding detours along tow paths, pavements, cycle ways, car parks and woodland trails.

The new Schwalbes seemed to cope rather admirably with this rather unorthodox, often off-road journey and I dragged myself up the final climb to home, arriving only 5 minutes behind schedule and just about managing to escape the collective ire of the family.

Tiredness and familial expedience saw the Peugeot “ridden hard and put away wet” without its usual post-ride grooming. I hate to think what I might find when I finally pluck up the courage to open the shed door for our next adventure…

YTD Totals: 5,593 km/ 3,362 miles with 62,799 metres of climbing.

Sur La Jante

The Chronicles, Confessions and Idle Musings of a Club Cyclist

Category: Road Cycling

Vittoria’s Secret and the Cold Hand Gang

The Teacake Haiku (Destry Rides Again)

Braking Bad

Ride of the Long Shadows

Christmas Cracker turns Crash-Tacular

Italian Mobster Shoots a Lobster

Mid the steep sky’s commotion

God Speed You! Black Emperor

Winter’s Blast

Banjaxed!