Nut Screws Washers and Bolts

Club Run, Saturday 27^th August, 2016

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 115 km/71 miles with 977 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 4 hours 25 minutes

Average Speed: 26.1 km/h

Group size: 26 riders, 1 FNG

Temperature: 21°C

Weather in a word or two: Just about perfect

The Ride:

Ride Profile

Saturday morning and I’m up at my usual time and shovelling down my usual pre-ride breakfast, sitting at my usual seat at the dining table and surfing all the usual websites as I go.

I then start to collect my gear. In the right-hand pocket of my jersey (always) goes a spare tube to supplement the two I carry in a tool tub in my bottle cage, a mini-pump, two tyre levers and a multi-tool.

In the left-hand pocket (always) goes my wallet containing money and rather ancient, cracked and thankfully never needed tyre patches – just in case three tubes isn’t quite enough (it always is) – my mobile phone with the free Road Id tracking app already enabled and running and an emergency gel for, well emergencies and potential catastrophic body failures.

In the middle pocket (always) goes my rain jacket, unless it’s already raining, in which case I’ll be wearing it. Occasionally, on very rare “Ribble Days*” I’ll leave the jacket behind, but the middle pocket is still always reserved for spare items of clothing – gloves, caps, arm warmers, knee warmers etc.

* Ribble Days – those with absolutely zero chance of precipitation – i.e. the kind of day when Crazy Legs is willing to take his much cossetted Ribble out of its hermetically-sealed storage pod and, rather daringly expose it to the vicissitudes of the weather.

I’ll then leave the house at roughly the same time each week and follow the exact same-route to the meeting point where I’ll usually find, in amongst an ever-changing cast of extras, the same dozen or so “Usual Suspects” – those whose absence from a club ride is more noteworthy than their actual appearance at one.

It struck me as I began to carefully load up my jersey pockets that the whole thing has become very routine and predictable. Of course, there are obvious benefits too – knowing precisely what goes in each jersey pocket helps me remember to take everything I need and I know what I can comfortably carry and where it needs be stored, while taking the same route ensures I should always arrive predictably on time.

There are other times though when change would be welcome, which could explain why we occasionally pay to ride local sportive events and traverse the same roads we could ride for free on club runs.

It also means that doing something just a little bit different on a ride can elevate it from good to great. What would today’s ride bring?

It was quite chilly early on, but promised to be dry, so the middle jersey pocket was empty, but available for when the arm warmers were no longer needed. The ride across to the meeting point was rather uneventful, although I did find myself hunting down another cyclist as I clambered out of the valley, which is foolish, but who can resist?

At the meeting point it was good to see Crazy Legs on his Ribble and have it confirmed we were in for a dry day.

Main topic of conversation at the start:

OGL rolled up trying to brake and steer while carrying a cup of coffee in one hand, successfully slopping coffee onto his new, pristinely-white bar tape and down his newly polished frame. No doubt a cleaning job for his cadre of trained monkey minions when he gets back.

Crazy Legs described how he’d nearly “done a Prof” (or even a Kristina Vogel) and jettisoned his saddle halfway round a ride, after one of its retaining bolts worked loose and dropped away.

He had a brief exchange with OGL and they agreed how difficult it was to source replacement seat post bolts, even when you run your own bike shop. OGL did suggest a local ironmonger where you could potentially buy all sorts of nuts, screws, washers and bolts. This in turn reminded him of a hoary old joke and he was still cackling to himself when Crazy Legs cut him off before the punchline to describe his personal epiphany as, after an extensive search of his entire house, he’d found the exact bolt he needed as part of his sons Ikea bed.

Crazy Legs has now firmly secured his saddle to his bike, while we await the news of the imminent collapse of the sons bed.

As a footnote, Kristina Vogel did make me laugh with her mealy-mouthed, cowardly comments about the successes of British Olympic cycling, “I don’t want to accuse anyone of anything but it is all very questionable” – she said accusingly – a statement uttered with not the slightest hint of irony after she beat British athletes into second and third place.

It was phrased exactly the same way as one of those disrespectful statements that always begins “I don’t want to appear disrespectful, but…” or the belief you can say anything you want as long as you tag allegedly onto the end. Allegedly. Honestly, if she suspects foul play why not say it, instead of hiding behind crass insinuation?

As we made our way from pavement to road, young Mellford and the X11 bus to Blyth started vying to occupy the exact same space at the exact same time. He was forced to turn sharply and ride along the kerb parallel to the bus as it slid to a halt in front of him and he was directly opposite the doors as they hissed open. With nowhere else to go, for an instant I thought he was going to bunny-hop straight on-board a la Eduardo Sepulveda, but he somehow managed to slip around the front of the bus and escape an unwanted journey to the coast.

As we left the meeting point I dropped in alongside Sneaky Pete, who’d been missing the past few weeks on doctor’s orders, but now appeared to have recovered and was keen to make up for lost time.

I also had a chat with Keel who between his work in a call-centre and taking in guests for Airbnb had in short order managed to plumb the depths of social boorishness, rudeness, selfishness, discourtesy and impatience – from the kind of people you hope only exist amongst the worst kind of trolls in the febrile, disconnected world of social media and on rabid Internet forum’s. Apparently however they walk (or drive) among us too.

We’d just turned off the main road onto a narrow lane with houses and parked cars down one side and open fields on the other, a road so narrow that it would be dangerous to try and overtake and where such rashness is actively discouraged by a series of 7 or 8 rather savage speed bumps.

We were however directly impeding an aged RIM in his bright red Hyundai, who announced his presence and displeasure behind us by leaning long and hard on his horn. How dare we delay him on his vital journey by blocking his road and not immediately pulling over to wave him and his tutting harridan of a wife through.

NOVATEK CAMERA — Spot the Arse Hat – I’ve added colour highlights to help

Half way along the lane his impatience got the better of him and he managed to overtake a few back-markers before a parked car on the opposite side of the road blocked his progress and he had to brake hard and swing back, forcing his way into the long line of cyclists.

He tried again and this time his progress was curtailed by an approaching car and once again he swung dangerously back into our group, seemingly oblivious to just how much damage even his tinny little car could do to a load of skinny lads, lasses and kids on plastic bikes.

Finally, the road opened up, he was able to accelerate hard, crash through a few gears and once again lean hard on his horn as he overtook and then pulled sharply across the front of our group.

Naturally we all gave him our biggest, friendliest, cheesiest waves. I’m ridden with guilt that we delayed him those precious 60 seconds or so, but he’s a big, brave and considerate human being so I’m sure he’ll get over it. Arse hat.

The ride progressed smoothly and without incident, until Sneaky Pete looked behind and realised he was last in line having been beaten at his own game – an entire bunch had dropped off the back and sneaked away to the café unannounced.

And then, because change can be a good thing, we rode straight past the place on the route where we usually stop and split into different groups. Obviously already unnerved by being at the very back of the group, Sneaky Pete decided this was too much and sneaked away to the café by himself.

Around one bend we were waved to slow down by a very concerned dog walker who seemed insistent we didn’t disturb her Labrador mid-dump. I’m not an expert on these things so I can only assume the highly-strung animal would suffer dire psychological consequences if disturbed au toilette, which seems rather strange for an animal which has such an interest in sticking its nose into all manner of faeces.

We clawed our way up toward a crossroads, where two or three took the opportunity for a faster, longer, harder ride, while the rest of us worked our way to the café via a route that avoided our usual assault on Middleton Bank or the Quarry climb.

On the hill out from Stamfordham, I took the chance to move from the back to the front of the group, skipping up the outside and earning a growl of “keep in pairs!” as I passed OGL who was doing the exact same thing I was, only a lot slower.

The pace started to pick up as we closed on the café – but at the junction to the road which would lead us down to the Snake Bends, Crazy Legs spotted another of our group, Big Dunc barrelling down toward us at high speed on a completely different re-entry vector. Crazy Legs called out a warning, but a few slipped dangerously across the road anyway, seemingly oblivious to the fast approaching rider.

Big Dunc managed to pull some smart evasive manoeuvres and catastrophe was averted, a situation he would later refer to rather phlegmatically as “a bit chaotic!”

The rest of us now exited the junction and gave chase to the first group and I pulled us all across the gap to Keel’s back wheel. Somewhere ahead Son of G-Dawg nipped off the front to steal the sprint, but just like last week everyone was more or less together in a mass hurtle as we eased for the Snake Bends.

With the speed still high and everyone bunched together we swept into the café car park like (according to the Prof) a “herd of rampaging stallions.” I suggested more like a herd of stampeding bison and the Prof wondered aloud what the difference was between a bison and a buffalo.

“I know,” Bydand Fecht volunteered, “An Australian can’t wash his hands in a buffalo.”

Groan.

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop:

Once again the weather was good enough for us to sit out in the garden and once again we taunted the wasps by carelessly flaunting numerous pots of jam. Will we never learn?

Ovis tried hiding his jam under a napkin, but the wasps just laughed at his foolishness, while the Monkey Butler Boy circled the table endlessly, hoping to present a moving target to discourage their attentions. He then sat down just long enough to pour a can of Coke down his jersey, an act as foolish as stirring blood and chum into shark infested waters. He couldn’t circle the table quickly enough after this mishap.

We discovered that he was not only scared of wasps but spiders as well and didn’t take well to Crazy Legs’s suggestion that he needed to embrace his fear and let himself get stung a few times.

Being manly and brave, Son of G-Dawg related wrestling with and capturing a massive hairy spider in his bare hands, going to throw it out the window and being surprised when he found it had just vanished without trace. Crazy Legs said there was a website for disappearing spiders, while I earned worst joke of the day honours by suggesting that surely all spiders had a website. Obviously no one else at the table had heard Bydand Fecht’s buffalo comment.

Szell was then distracted by a tiny, red spider mite that was whizzing round and round his saucer in perfect synchronous orbit with the Monkey Butler Boy. Going for a hat-trick of groans, I said it was probably racing for the cup, but luckily no one heard … or I’d sunk so low that this time that they’d all chosen to ignore me.

Szell was amazed at how fast the mite was running and wondered what it would look like if it was scaled up. (Probably the Monkey Butler Boy’s worst nightmare.) “Have you seen the acceleration!” he called, while Red Max commented that he was surprised Szell even knew what acceleration looked like. Ouch.

Luckily we were distracted by Sneaky Pete sneaking off home early and then we fed Szell two or three dubious lines about spouts, rims and curtains and let him lose himself in a blizzard of single-entendres.

The ride home was suitably civilised, all the lights were in my favour and the traffic was sparse. Perfect conditions and a bit of a different route all helped make it another great ride and there can’t be too many of them left for this year.

YTD Totals: 4,772 km / 2,965 miles with 47,235 metres of climbing

Pulling a Whitey

Club Run, Saturday 4^th June, 2016

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 117 km / 73 miles with 1,109 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 4 hours 40 minutes

Average Speed: 25.1 km/h

Group size: 24 riders, 2 FNG’s

Temperature: 17°C

Weather in a word or two: Cool grey

Main topic of conversation at the start:

The Red Max arrived early so he could sit on the wall and admire his new Ultegra groupset from afar. He disclosed how he’d taken advantage of Mrs. Max travelling back from Edinburgh on Friday night to fit the groupset in the comfort of his own living room, although I don’t know how far to believe his assertion that he did the work while wearing nothing but his cycling helmet and baggy Y-fronts, with all the windows open and bellowing along to music played at maximum volume.

He managed to finish the work and tidy up before his better half arrived home and somehow was able to convince her that the errant cable-outer clippings must have fallen off the sofa and the odd stray spacer must have been something the cats dragged in.

OGL declared he needed a volunteer with a van to help pick up and distribute the 6,000 bananas and 6,000 energy gels needed for the Cyclone events later this month. Since no one could quite visualise what 6,000 bananas would actually look like, whether they would even fit into a van and how much physical labour was involved, there was a distinct shortage of volunteers.

Meanwhile Cushty confessed he wouldn’t be riding the Cyclone this year as he was due to start a night-shift on the day of the ride and bemoaned not having some kind of goal to work toward. Rab Dee suggested there was always the club hill climb, although this seemed a long time off. He was then left wondering why we always ran these events when the weather started to turn cold and we followed a bizarre ritual of riding hard for an hour to get there well warmed up, only to then have to hang around for half an hour slowly freezing and stiffening up before hurling yourself bodily into the event.

I asked G-Dawg if he’d entered the Cyclone yet, but both he and Son of G-Dawg were indulging in their traditional, eBay sniping – waiting until the very last minute before entering. I couldn’t quite determine if this was an attempt to make OGL’s head explode, or to crash the server with an unprecedented late surge in demand. Well, I say server, but I’ve got an inkling it’s just OGL’s ancient 386 PC sitting churning away in some darkened corner of his living room, occasionally emitting random beeps and bursts of flatulent steam and static.

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop:

Someone suggested that the café sprints had the same ultimate effect as one of our hill climb events and gave participants the look of “pulling a whitey” – apparently drug slang for the moment just before you faint away, when all the blood rushes from your face and leaves you looking distinctly pale and ill. It sounds horribly appropriate.

Sneaky Pete sneaked onto our table and was pleased to report he’d found the original “Sneaky Pete” mentioned in a book that postulated that 1971 was the greatest year ever (no hyperbole there, then) for rock music. That’s not my assertion though, so don’t shoot the messenger. Apparently an accomplished and much sought after pedal steel session musician, Sneaky Pete Kleinow got a mention in the book for being a member of The Flying Burrito Brothers alongside Gram Parsons.

I suggested the new Cyclone C Ride – a new 90-mile route that encompasses both the Ryals and Winter’s Gibbet climbs – was originally Sneaky Pete’s idea, so should be renamed the Sneaky Pete Memorial Ride in honour of its progenitor.

Sneaky Pete was having none of this, even though I pointed out how cool it would be to participate in your own memorial ride – sort of like attending your own funeral and hearing what people actually thought of you … although perhaps that’s not such a good idea after all. Taffy Steve suggested it would be worthwhile just for the chance to declaim, Mark Twain-style: “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated!”

A discussion about the astonishing qualities of modern sports fabrics led to talk of how good merino wool is, if for nothing else than reducing human ponginess. Taffy Steve wistfully suggested its odour inhibiting properties would have been useful when inter-railing with a 6’4” friend whose armpit just happened to be level with his nose. Not pleasant when crammed sardine like into hot, crowded and noisy Central European trains for days on end.

For some reason this led to a talk about New Zealand, which morphed into a discussion about tea tree oil and whether it came from the same plant as tea, the stuff we drink. I’ve checked. It doesn’t.

Taffy Steve had a grand vision of the great tea plantations of Yorkshire rising up towards Barnsley on terraced hillsides above the sweeping paddy fields along the River Dearne, home to Yorkshire Tea and as a by-product, barrel upon barrel of tea tree oil which is good for nothing, but has been sold on the premise that it can cure anything from fungal nail infections to rampant stagflation in third world countries. I have to be honest and admit his grip on both reality and geography at this point was bordering on tenuous at best.

We discussed how my recent holiday was punctuated by odd shopping sprees with both daughter#1 and daughter#2 buying odd and very random mugs. We now have a cupboard in the kitchen devoted entirely to this motley collection of eclectic drinking vessels all made of different materials and in all shapes, sizes and colours. Taffy Steve recognised the “odds and sods” cupboard from his own experiences, having one at home jammed full of mismatched Tupperware: pots and boxes, jars and bottles of random coloured plastic without lids and all sorts of lids without boxes, all tidily poised to avalanche onto the floor as soon as you so much as touch the cupboard door.

Ride Profile

The Waffle:

Saturday dawned grey and murky, low cloud smothering the top of the hill in a fug of mist and fine water droplets, the perfect insulation against any potential warmth that could perhaps be coaxed out of a well-shrouded and reluctant sun. The drop down the hill was so chilly I was almost convinced to turn back and add more layers, but I gambled my rain jacket would suffice until the mist burned off and things warmed up.

Having spent a week of complete and total indolence and the daily indulgence in cake, rich food and too much wine, I was packing an additional 2-3lbs of dead-weight and wondering how much my inactivity would cost me, although I was slightly re-assured by making decent time on the run to the meeting point.

24 lads and lasses collected at the start, including two or three FNG’s – a decent total as we had a fairly large contingent off doing the Haydon Hundred Sportive. After the usual round of gossip and nonsense and one or two “official” club announcements, we pushed off, clipped in and rode out.

The very odd feller who likes to ride without a saddle was out with us again, reprising his appearance from last October (From Pillow to Post and Riding with Marley’s Ghost) although this time he’d upped his game by swapping pit boots and flatties for cycling shoes and clipless pedals.

I’m all for individuality and doing things a little differently and I admire the strength of character and huge fitness requirements needed to pull off riding for hours on end without a saddle. It was obvious from watching him however that bike handling suffers as a consequence, in particular cornering, which was more like circumscribing a very wide and very loose icosagon around the apex of a bend –so wide in fact that it resembled orbiting more than cornering, with any hint of speed tending to invite a huge amount of dangerous straying into the opposite lane. Don’t believe me? Just try cornering at high speed without using your saddle and see how stable you feel and how quickly you can change direction in an emergency.

I’m always wary of anyone pulling stupid and unnecessary stunts when riding in a bunch – track stands, wheelies, donning or doffing clothing et al. Hell, I even get twitchy when someone jumps out of the saddle to climb a hill, as far too many unnecessarily stop mid-pedal while they transition and there’s a real danger of running into their back wheel. I was, naturally then very leery of our “bareback” companion and intent on keeping a safe distance.

Today was the day for far ranging discussions about life, the universe and everything. As we set off I spent time chatting with Carlton about house moves, the school run, Seal Sucker bike carriers, GoPro cameras and how you quickly lose all sense of masculine superiority when you’re regularly being whupped by the girls in the club.

He also relayed information gleaned from the BFG, who had attributed beetroot juice as the secret to his super-human strength. That was slightly reassuring as I’d previously thought “The Kurgan” carried around a litre of his own blood in a bottle. Or somebody else’s. I have to confess I don’t know which of those options I find the most disturbing.

After this I had a chat with the Red Max to find out how the upgrade from 105 to Ultegra was working out (fabulous) and how the Stranglers had ended up being named the greatest punk band of all time (preposterous).

Next up was Guido and the talk turned to surfing in Portugal and walking in the Lake District. Perhaps not as dissimilar as you might think. He seemed shockingly (and blissfully) unaware of my blog writing heroics. Sheesh.

He was followed by Taffy Steve with … Warning : Politics Alert – feel free to skip to the next paragraph… us both lamenting that the Brexit vote was too close to call and the League of Little Englander, auld farts could actually win and wrest power away from genuinely the best we can hope for – some faceless grey Euro-bureaucrat who might just be working on the principle of achieving the greatest good for the greatest number. I wouldn’t care, but they seem intent on then handing it over to some self-serving, publicly educated, corrupt, old establishment, uber-privileged, onanistic, disingenuous, career politician. Wake up folks – the EU didn’t steal our right to rule ourselves, we never had it in the first place.

And breathe – we’re back…

At this point we’d reached our usual stopping point, the place where we’d split the ride into amblers and a faster, harder longer group, but we sailed quietly past. You could feel the tension growing as we then slipped past the secondary, much less used split point – without even acknowledging it in passing.

Crazy Legs was now getting concerned by OGL’s casual flouting of his own rigid and conservative traditions and began to gesture that his head was in danger of exploding. We’ve not had this much excitement and controversy since G-Dawg changed his bartape from white to black.

The third opportunity to stop and split the group also came and went, provoking a growing feeling that perhaps OGL had succumbed to senility and we might just keep on riding until, one by one we dropped away from exhaustion.

Finally, much, much longer into the ride than usual a halt was called at a junction and plans made to split the group into two rides. G-Dawg, Crazy Legs and Sneaky Pete briefly conferred, worked out and quickly agreed a route for the longer, harder, faster group which we’d all bought into by the time OGL kindly interjected, telling us we should ride the exact route we’d already agreed.

At this point the Monkey Butler Boy plaintively asked his dad if he was carrying any food and looked crestfallen when he learned there was nothing edible to be had. We suggested he needed to use his helmet like a begging bowl and go round the group pleading for food, although it was recommended he did a quick tap-dance in his cleats to try and drum up a little interest and pity first.

His face broke into a beatific smile as one of the new girls offered up some Jelly Babies, but the smile quickly turned to an extreme moue of absolute distaste and disapproval as the Red Max announced they’d be going on the longer ride. I must remind him never to play poker.

We set off again and I found myself riding alongside Aveline and admiring the fresh chain ring tattoo she’d acquired on her calf that morning, a true cycling badge of honour. I suggested she had it inked in permanently and she thought a matching one on her bicep would work well, although I wasn’t sure what contortions she’d have to go through to acquire the template naturally.

At this point our conversation was interrupted by my bottle top bouncing off and rolling back down the road – the second time that’s happened to me this year. Is my upper body really so puny I can’t screw a cap on a bottle tightly enough for it not to work loose?

I stopped and waved everyone past, then waited for a car to follow before retrieving the errant cap and starting a long solo chase to re-join the group, on the drops, head down and pushing hard while the rather annoying theme tune from the kids’ TV programme, “The Adventures of Bottle Top Bill (and His Best Friend Corky)” looped endlessly through my brain.

I was slowly gaining on the group when they reached a junction and sat up to wait, allowing me to tag onto the back as we pushed on once again.

I was still loitering in the rear ranks as we hit Middleton Bank and watched Andeven glide effortlessly up and away. I hung with the group and by some minor miracle found I’d somehow stumbled upon the perfect gear and cadence. I didn’t even realise we’d hit the steepest part of the climb until people started jumping out the saddle to grind away, while I was able to remain seated and spin smoothly up the outside to lead everyone over the top.

We regrouped and pressed on and as we dipped through Milestone Wood I hit the front, pushing hard and driving over the first of the rollers. My speed slowly diminished across the second ramp and I was done by the third, when I pulled over and let everyone loose to hammer down the dip and contest the sprint up the final slopes to the café.

The weather was good enough for us to decamp into the garden, although I had to pause to pick my cake off the ground and then the ground off my cake, after it had launched itself out of my improvised helmet cake-caddy. Damn slippery those aero helmets.

Waiting in the garden we found, long estranged (and presumed MIA) Grover waiting for us, back from who knows where and managing to hugely offend Crazy Legs by flaunting a Pink Floyd jersey. We were also bestowed with a rare visit from Dave “Le Taxi” who’d missed us by mere minutes at the rendezvous point and had spent all morning vainly trying to chase us down.

Crazy Legs suggested a longer route home so half a dozen of us split from the main group, looping back westwards while they went east. I dropped in alongside Aveline at the front of the group for most of the ride back, learning about her daily commute and the potential terror of cows.

Cars and RIMs be damned, her route to and from work passes through the highly urbanised cows on the Town Moor and she swears they hunt in packs, can smell fear and are completely unafraid of cyclists.

I left the group as they turned off a long descent, managing to swap the long painful drag past the golf course for a couple of shorter, sharper climbs as I worked my way up to re-join my usual route home. Luckily there were no belligerent bovines to deal with, although I did have to take evasive action around two feckless youths who stepped obliviously into the road unaware I was silently bearing down on them.

Idiots avoided I was soon skipping across the river and up the hill to home, glad to be back into the swing of things and not feeling I’d suffered too much from a week of inactivity.

YTD Totals: 3,049 km / 1,894 miles with 29,279 metres of climbing

Wellie Tops and Collie Wobbles

Club Run, Saturday 23^rd April, 2016

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 113 km / 70 miles with 1,063 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 4 hours 24 minutes

Average Speed: 25.6 km/h

Group size: 34 riders, 3 FNG’s

Temperature: 13°C

Weather in a word or two: Beautifully bright, bitterly cold

Main topic of conversation at the start:

With a degree of mild, but surely misplaced approbation, OGL called out several riders he’d spotted out riding mid-week, as if they’d been caught doing something they shouldn’t have and were standing accused of getting in “unauthorised” secret miles.

The Prof once again rolled up on the Frankenbike, eliciting gasps of disbelief from those who hadn’t seen his progression from small-wheeled velocipede to a grown up bike last week. He gave me a special hug, ostensibly because I was well dressed and co-ordinated (Bertie Bassett rides again) -although I suspect the real reason was that Crazy Legs was late arriving and I was simply the nearest target for his latent, but still patently simmering homo-eroticism.

Crazy Legs did finally turn up and commended the group for a fine showing of club jerseys. A sotto voce commentary from Son of G-Dawg suggested that the 6 on show were about 75% of the total number who would wear the club jersey with any kind of regularity. I’m not sure whether or not he was double-counting G-Dawg who was actually wearing two – an official club gilet over a Grogs unofficial one.

OGL then took several of youngsters and no few elder statesmen to task for wearing shorts, declaring it was still much too cold for exposed knee joints. Many suggested they had packed away winter clothing for the year in boxes, in under bed stores, the loft or in old steamer trunks and it was too much hassle to revert now. It was also suggested that not everyone had the luxury of living in OGL manse, where entire rooms, if not complete wings are devoted to his vast collection of readily accessible and seasonally themed bicycling apparel.

OGL mentioned Shane Sutton’s dismissal of Jess Varnish (and I think I’m only paraphrasing slightly here) as having a fat ass and needing to go away and produce babies. G-Dawg was unimpressed, but reasoned you shouldn’t expect much else if you’re foolish enough to promote an Australian to a position of power and authority.

Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:

At the counter I happened to hear an FNG asking the girls whether he should be getting a mug or a cup of coffee and had to intervene for the sake of decency. We are men, we drink from manly mugs.

As he’d defected from another club and embraced his dark side I was curious to find out how we compared us to his previous band of brothers. As expected his former club took the novel approach of splitting into many different rides according to ability and publishing all the routes well before the day.

This had the advantage of allowing people to plan things in advance, but at the obvious expense of surprise and novelty, or as Andeven explained, the joy of looking up to find you’re suddenly in Rothbury, 40 miles from home and expected back for an important family engagement in the next half an hour.

I asked the Pinarello riding FNG, Dogmatix what bike he had before, interested to know just how much of an upgrade the uber-bike was and how it actually compared to a more affordable option. He said he’d ridden a Carrera previously. Well, that was a conversational dead-end then.

Dogmatix then revealed that when he’d stopped to tighten his seat post last week someone had pointed out a washer on the ground that he’d reasoned wasn’t from his bike, but had picked up and slipped into his pocket just in case.

This morning he’d found that it was an essential part for holding together his multi-tool. He’s now gone from being the proud owner of a convenient, quality multi-tool to having two bits of steel case and a loose collection of jangling allen keys and screwdriver bits in his pockets.

Ride Profile

The Waffle:

A dry day, bright and sunny – if bitterly cold and infinitely preferable to the past few Saturdays dreich and bleak showing (they rhyme by the way, if you’re wondering how to pronounce dreich :))

A rare confluence of decent weather, work load and family commitments had allowed me to commute into work 4 times during the week. These journeys had warned that the mornings were still very chilly, but there was at least a possibility that things would warm up enough to be pleasant later.

My commutes had been good rides, other than a strong headwind all the way home on Monday and the fact that on Thursday morning I’d wrapped my bike lock around my frame, but completely missed the bike rack.

Luckily Campus Security spotted my dunderheaded idiocy and slapped on one of their own locks to secure the bike. I’d then been somewhat taken aback to hear the ratbag mountain bike described as “expensive” when I went to get the lock removed. Then again, maybe it just looks good in comparison to some of the bikes our students use.

There was a big group of us at the meeting point on Saturday, including a few faces I’d not seen for months including Famous Sean’s an irregular will-o-the-wisp who occasionally graces us with his presence. This was perhaps the first indication that the long months of cycling hibernation is at last coming to an end, although one swallow doesn’t make a decent drink as the parched sailor said. As a counterbalance there were a few noticeable absences amongst the regulars, with The Red Max away on holiday and Taffy Steve strangely and silently AWOL.

As we started out I found myself riding alongside the Prof who enquired if I’d ever had any issues with the Frankenbike’s bottom bracket. The loud and disturbing creaking from “down there” persuaded me not to hang around in case it ultimately disintegrated and a quick rotation brought me up alongside Richard of Flanders.

He was celebrating as he’d inadvertently found and secured a rare Strava KOM while riding a tatty hybrid to school to pick up the kids. This gave me the idea of hauling my bike over next doors front gate and riding up their drive to see if I can secure an unassailable Strava KOM of my own. I think it could even earn me a Charly Gaul-like nickname, how about “L’Ange de Allées” or “The Angel of the Driveways.”

Yet another rotation found me alongside Son of G-Dawg and I complimented him on a perfectly aero bike, deep section carbon wheels, and skin-tight jersey, but had to ask what had gone wrong with the sloppy, baggy socks that negated all his marginal aero-gains and resembled saggy welly tops that had been set to flutter in the wind like twin drogue parachutes.

Apparently he’d forgotten to do the weekly laundry and scratting around in the back of his drawers to try and find anything suitable to wear, the socks were the best he could come up with. He admitted he’d also tried in extremis to dry his jersey by hanging it in the back of the car on the drive over, but it was still unpleasantly damp around the edges. He was obviously hoping it didn’t rain otherwise he’d start foaming and secreting a trail of soap suds behind him.

Not to be outdone, one of the youngsters in front was wearing hideous, putrid green socks decorated with big bloodshot eyeballs that seemed to be staring right at me. I guess the good old days when the only socks you could wear would be white and you’d be pulled from the start line of a race for any wardrobe transgressions are sadly no more.

I overheard Crazy Legs discussing Captain Scarlet and suggesting he drove an SPV or “Special Patrol Vehicle” and had to jump in to correct him – as we all know Captain Scarlet actually drove a Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle (c’mon kids, keep up). I think this exchange just convinced Richard of Flanders that all cyclists are at heart deeply weird nerds.

At one point OGL drifted aimlessly back through the group, seemingly just to disrupt everyone. A few minutes later he was sprinting back up to the front, going round a blind corner on the wrong side of the road. Son of G-Dawg called out that there was a fast approaching car, but OGL blithely waved off the warning before swooping inside. Son of G-Dawg growled that he didn’t care if OGL tried to ride over the onrushing car – but he was worried by the sudden swoop back across the road that had everyone scrabbling for brakes.

With the club organised Sloan Trophy set for Sunday, OGL was intent on reconnoitring the route as a final check that everything was in good shape for the next day’s racing. This led us down the Quarry Climb, where a whimpering, vacillating BFG was so eager to escape the longer, harder, faster group that he felt compelled to dive recklessly away in pursuit of the amblers, brushing incredibly close to G-Dawg, if not in fact physically jostling him as he passed.

This would have been the perfect opportunity for Crazy Legs to prove his maturity by shouting, “Feck off you big feck” or something equally as erudite and witty, but sadly he’d already turned off for the café with a bad case of un jour sans.

Ahead, at the junction we saw the amblers turning left while our longer, harder, faster group went right. I joined G-Dawg on the front pushing into a vicious headwind as we ground our way toward the top of the Ryals – this was perhaps going to be the only day when riding down them was almost as hard as climbing up.

Just before the top Mad Colin called a halt as, for the second time in as many outings, Dogmatix found his seatpost slipping. Bloody cheap Pinarello’s. We waited, but people began to get impatient and started to slip away in ones and twos to stream down the descent.

I held back a little longer, then as things seemed sorted pushed over the brow and began to accelerate downward. I moved onto the drops and tucked in, quickly building up speed as gravity sucked us down and hitting a max of 67.7kmph according to my Garmin, despite the headwind.

Halfway down I saw G-Dawg wrestling manfully with his bike, his whole body rigid and shaking and his wheels oscillating savagely as he tried to ship speed and remain in control. I couldn’t tell if his deep-section wheels had caught a sudden crosswind or he’d developed an uncontrollable speed wobble – either way I gave him as much room as possible, sweeping right across the roadway to slide past.

Somehow an ashen G-Dawg managed to complete the descent, but couldn’t be persuaded to climb back up and try again. We regrouped as we swung right onto a narrow farm track and started to climb up again, where we caught and merged with the riders who’d slipped off the front. More climbing and then a bit more followed, before the road finally levelled and we pushed on at high speed for the run in to the café.

I was sitting behind Laurelan as the pace increased and saw she was slowly starting to detach from the riders in front. I cut inside and clung onto G-Dawgs rear wheel as he and Moscas wound the pace up further. With the road starting to dip down a small group managed to open up a gap and we pulled slowly away.

Son of G-Dawg jumped, but I was at terminal velocity and couldn’t have come around G-Dawg to chase if I’d wanted to. Moscas then slowly faded and dropped away and just when it looked like Son of G-Dawg’s break was decisive, Captain Black thundered past to challenge and they raced each other down and into the Snake Bends.

Crossing the main road, we dropped into single file to slalom around the potholes that made the lane look like a recently bombed lunar surface. There was then just the chance for one last burst up the sharp rise to the junction and we were done and rolling through to the café.

On the way home I dropped in beside Captain Black for a chat and to try to discover the secret of his hugely rampaging form; was it drugs, clean living, motor doping, or perhaps three Shredded Wheat for breakfast?

He said it was nothing exotic, just hard work in the gym and, as his temporary gym membership is due to run out soon, he suggested he’ll soon be returning to join me amongst the ranks of the also-rans. Damn, I was hoping for an easy to follow short-cut to good form, but there’s no chance in hell you’ll get me into a gym.

I completed my trip home in good time and without incident to find anniversary greetings from WordPress in my email. I was somewhat surprised to learn I’ve been plugging away at this blog thing for a full year. Tempus fugit?

So, I guess now’s a good time to thank anyone who’s managed to stumble upon this benighted backwater of the Internet, has put up with my verbose, inane ramblings, actually “liked” the odd post or two, added erudite comments, or even bravely signed up as a follower.

One year, 64 posts, 4,711 hits, 1,943 visitors and counting. It’s all quite humbling. Thank you.

YTD Totals: 2,250 km / 1,398 miles with 21,081 metres of climbing

Hell Among the Yearlings

Club Run, Saturday 6^th February, 2016

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 102 km/63 miles with 813 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 4 hours 28 minutes

Average Speed: 23.0 km/h

Group size: 34 riders, no FNG’s

Temperature: 6°C

Weather in a word or two: Filthy

Main topic of conversation at the start:

Taffy Steve was the first to bring up “motorised doping” with his wry comments that just when athletics was being seen as the bad boy of international sports, cycling somehow found a way to shoot itself in the foot and re-claim the low ground. Again.

OGL rightly pointed out that the worst fallout from Femke Van den Driessche “borrowing a friends bike” (complete with in-built motor) for only the single most important race of her season, was it detracted from a very worthy winner.

So, in my own small and meaningless way to try and redress the balance, congratulations to Britain’s new Women’s U23 World Cyclo-cross Champion, Evie Richards who won with style and panache by riding away from all the older, more established competitors in dreadful conditions on a wind blasted, rain lashed course. And she’s only 18. And it was her first ever continental race. Impressive.

Crazy Legs decided that Taffy Steve deserved the acronym MIR following his Most Improved Rider award. He also made it clear that any likeness to a large, obsolete piece of Russian space junk, prone to a decaying orbit and likely to burn up in the atmosphere was purely intentional.

Somewhat predictably, this set him off on a tribute to Billy Bragg and a quick rendition of New England. It’s wrong to wish on space hardware, but I think Taffy Steve somewhat wished he’d never become embroiled in the conversation.

Apparently the Cycling Weekly reporter never made it to the café and his rendezvous with OGL last week, but will be returning at a later date for a full-on feature on the club.

We’ve been warned that only those in official club jersey’s will be allowed to partake in the accompanying photo-shoot. What effect massed ranks of our lurid, club jersey might have is hard to tell, but I’m predicting a sudden outbreak of subconjunctival haemorrhaging amongst the unsuspecting readership of Cycling Weekly.

Captain Black suggested the photo-shoot might provoke a Songs of Praise phenomena, when usually draughty, empty churches suddenly see congregations swell alarmingly as soon as the TV cameras show up to a service. There was even some speculation about a black market in illicit club jersey’s developing, perhaps signalling the first time this venerable piece of club kit has ever been even remotely desirable.

Footnote:

Not content with motor doping (allegedly) we have since learned that Van den Driessche’s father and brother (already a convicted bike doper) are facing criminal charges for trying to steal parakeets from a pet store.

In any sense of the word you want to take, I suggest it’s now fair to refer to the entire Van den Driessche family as “budgie smugglers” and treat them with all the opprobium and revulsion you would typically reserve for being confronted by a pale, wobbling, moob-endowed, hirsute man in too-tight Speedo’s. You know the sort, we’ve all seen them.

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop:

OGL stopped by to inform us that new club skinsuits were now available for our Racing Snakes. I don’t want to prejudge, but I hope they’re a more sympathetic design than the current club jerseys, or I might be getting that “budgie smuggler” nausea all over again.

He also told us to be careful on the way back as a local Tri-Club were running a time trial down Berwick Hill. We convinced ourselves that the only way we would do this in weather like todays would be to have a hot tub at the finish. We reasoned that getting into the tub could even be used for transition practice, but then realised the idea would probably fail as once in the tub no one would be coming out in a hurry.

Again motorised doping reared its ugly head and Son of G-Dawg had perhaps the best idea, fitting pullback motors to cyclo-cross bikes, specifically for their “cavalry charge” starts. I can see it now, a long line of 50 or so riders dragging their bikes backward to wind up the spring, before being unleashed to race toward the nearest course bottle-neck. High speed carnage almost guaranteed.

Crazy Legs revealed a life-long ambition to be bundled into a mail pouch and snatched up by a speeding express train, apparently just for the buzz of that initial retina-threatening acceleration.

Perhaps this dare-devilry is purely genetic as he then told us of accompanying his 75 year old mother to an avant-garde installation in the BALTIC, where following a series of screens led them to the brink of a 12 foot high, stainless steel slide. Not only was his mother thoroughly undaunted by the slide, but demanded another go.

The Waffle:

A dry if chill start to the day promised good riding and I dropped into the valley to find that the winds weren’t anywhere as bad as the storm-whipped, westerly gales of the past few weeks and had swung completely around to blow upriver just for a change.

Without a debilitating wind to battle, I was early and the only one at the meeting point when OGL swung by in civvies, loaded down with a very large, shiny club trophy, which had apparently been donated by David Millar. I started to politely and modestly decline it, as I couldn’t see how I could possibly ride while burdened with a large piece of what footballers always, unimaginatively and predictably refer to as “silverware.”

OGL patiently explained that the trophy wasn’t for me and he was taking it to the Club’s Go-Ride event to present to Daniel Dixon, our best young rider. Well done Daniel, I didn’t touch it. Honest.

OGL also explained he wasn’t riding this week as he was full of cold. While Our Glorious Leader was crying off, this was the first Saturday in the month, so all our more advanced youngsters were out in force.

Their number included the Monkey Butler Boy, accompanied by the Red Max who was suffering from a particularly vicious bout of the lurgy, but had somehow managed to drag himself out despite being “as sick as a parrot” – another hoary old football cliché that seemingly fits alongside (dare I say dove-tails with?) a worryingly recurring avian theme this week.

With OGL being absent G-Dawg and Crazy Legs put their heads together, intent on devising a route that would be somewhat different from the usual. After a few minutes they offered a couple of alternatives, but were immediately shouted down – nobody wanted to think and have to make a choice. We didn’t want options, we just wanted to ride!

Point made they set out and 32 lads and lasses pushed off, clipped in and followed, not really sure of where we were going and not really caring too much either.

Loitering at the back I caught up with Andeven, recently returned from summer at the bottom of the world and finding acclimatising back to British winter a trifle depressing. I also discovered Rab Dee lurking here, out on a new winter bike for his first ride of the year and also finding the cold less than agreeable.

For a short while, on one of our less frequented routes, we sped down a narrow path bordering the A1: a cracked surface, rucked with tree roots and strewn with debris, but infinitely preferable to jousting with the thundering HGV’s on the main road.

Somewhat surprisingly, we survived without puncture or mishap, exiting onto a private road, where still in single-file a long line of us streamed through a quiet village.

I watched in amusement as a woman on the far side of the road picked up one of her small, yappy and obviously semiprecious, dog and clutched it to her chest protectively. She rather warily watched us go by with fear filled eyes that might, perhaps, be a suitable reaction to a horde of wild Cossacks intent on pillage, but seemed misplaced for a meandering line of mild-mannered, grinning and gurning cyclists. Maybe they don’t get many visitors from “the outside”

Freezing rain had started to liberally pepper us and we were losing order along with riders as they stopped to pull on waterproof jackets. Well, all apart from Shoeless who with seeming insouciance retrieved his rain jacket from a back pocket, shook it out, slipped it on and deftly managed to zip it up despite the massive winter gloves limiting his dexterity – all the while driving the pace at the front of the bunch.

We decided to stop under a road bridge to regroup and let everyone get sorted, before pushing out into what had now become a steady, icy downpour. I later learned that Keel had bizarrely decided the forecast was good enough to break his good bike out of hibernation and had obviously offended the cycling gods, who now punished us with earlier and heavier than forecast rain.

I was braced for the steep climb of the Mur de Mitford, always a challenge and especially when the road is slick, but we by-passed this particular nasty and dragged ourselves up through the village of Mitford itself. From there we worked our way to Dyke Neuk and another quick stop for the Racing Snakes and braver amongst us split for the longer, harder, faster, Self-flagellation Ride™.

Our reduced group pressed on with thoughts of coffee and cake fuelling our pace, though we prudently scrubbed off the speed for the increasingly sketchy drop down the dip and then sharp clamber up to Hartburn.

Again we regrouped to allow stragglers to catch on, before sweeping down through Milestone Woods, and hitting the first rollers. Taffy Steve led the charge for home with a hopeless attack dedicated to the absent Red Max, but faded as the road ramped up.

I swung past on the back of a long line, but couldn’t hold the pace and the gap widened. A few riders nipped past, including Kipper, but he started to slow as the next gradient bit. I swung to the outside and started to ease past him, just as he swung right to avoid several potholes in the road and our bars became entangled like two ancient, rutting stags locking horns.

With a frantic bit of wrestling and a whole heap of wobbling, we finally managed to pull apart, but the momentum directed me laterally over the white line, right across the road and into the thick mud in the opposite gutter. Needless to say the driver of the fast approaching, sharply braking car was mightily unimpressed as I was swept across the road in front of him.

With wheels churning and spinning in thick mud, I clung to the very edge of the road to let the car slip past, waving sheepishly in embarrassed apology to the driver. Kipper apologised for not having seen me, but it was just one of those things that can happen and no harm was done, although the adrenaline spike to the heart wasn’t particularly pleasant.

Clearing the café, the Prof took some of the others back by a longer route, but the weather wasn’t conducive to an extended ride, so most of us took the usual way home.

Somewhere along the way, I have a vague recollection of the Red Max drifting off the back in a case of illness induced enfeeblement. I’m guessing he should really have been home recuperating, instead of battering himself to try and contain our more enthusiastic youngsters and suffering through his own private hell among the yearlings.

Still, not all bad as I’m guessing the Monkey Butler Boy revelled in dropping his Pa – hey, a victory is a victory and you can only beat the competition that turns up on the day.

On splitting from the group I was relieved to find that, for once I wasn’t faced with punishing headwinds on my push for home and the miles were duly ticked off with no great trials or traumas.

YTD Totals: 533 km /331 miles with 5,207 metres of climbing

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.

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

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.

Hell and High Water

Club Run, Saturday 7^th November, 2015

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 87 km/54 miles with 558 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 3 hours 35 minutes

Group size: 20 riders including 6 kids, no FNG’s

Weather in a word or two: A deluge.

Main topic of conversation at the start: I stood in the sheltered but dank and gloomy bowels of the multi-storey car park trying to identify the other riders as they surfed their way into the meeting point through the gloom and heavy rain. “Ah, and here come the Dawson twins,” I announced to no one in particular, as G-Dawg and Son of G-Dawg rolled up. “They aren’t twins are they?” one of the befuddled youngsters tentatively suggested, “One looks so much older than the other.” Oh dear.

OGL castigated us for fielding and replying to queries about club run start times on Faecesbook, as apparently his revised timings from last week were perfectly clear and understandable and caused no confusion whatsoever (although I understand several people did miss the start last Sunday). Apparently our use of social media shouldn’t be so … well … social.

He even suggested that the Faecesbook stuff wasn’t necessary as all our start times are clearly listed on the club website. (The club website sees even less traffic than this benighted blog and I personally don’t visit it much – the wide empty spaces bring on my monophobia and besides, I’m allergic to tumbleweed.)

We were then treated to the Prof’s execrable Geordie accent as he tried to chivvy us along, in the process doing for the Geordie nation what Dick van Dyke managed to do for Cockneys the world over. Encore!

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop:

I had a chat with Tri-Boy’s Dad and commiserated with his struggles to keep the youngster in check. Apparently the boy likes to dangle in front of his Pa, wait for the catch to almost be made, then accelerate away again. Ah, good to see the much beloved and traditional Szell game is still alive and appreciated by the younger generation. Across the table I could see the Monkey Butler Boy listening avidly, taking it all in and eyeing up his Pa, already looking forward to trying this.

Looking out at the rain still hammering down outside, we talked about whether on days like this we would be better off not stopping at all, even if it meant (Shock! Horror!) abstinence from cake and coffee. (Ok, I realise this is a radical step too far.)

We also couldn’t help but reminisce about the Damn Yankee who used to come out with us, and who just about collapsed from mild to moderate hyperthermia on arriving at the café during one of our harsher winter rides.

I think everyone was surprised he succumbed to the cold as he was a big, big unit, built like a gridiron fullback and, as Taffy Steve appropriately suggested, with massive calves the size of American footballs.

We’ve no idea where this once club run regular disappeared to – originally from San Franscisco, he apparently went to college in the Deep South, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas or some such. He was quite happy to confirm all our worst prejudices about such places being awash with Antebellum grand dames, in-bred, jug-eared and twanging banjo-duellists, sheet wearing Grand Wizards with burning crosses and constant demands to squeal like a pig.

I often think we sometimes miss that rational, reasoned international perspective

A sign that perhaps my Garmin didn’t like the weather too much – perhaps the weirdest ride profile ever.

The Waffle:

If last week was all about generating a Gallic vibe to encourage the Peugeot, this week was all about the rain, so perhaps I should have been watching Eddie Vedders “Water on the Road” and listening to Talk Talk, “After the Flood” and Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall”.

A list of the Strava titles my companions used to label their rides may gave you some indication of what we faced; “Biblical Rainfall,” “Ou Est Mon Bateau?” “The Life Aquatic” and “Yo, Noah, Where Art Thou?” being just a few selections.

Yes it rained, and rained heavily, and no it didn’t let up, although it did ease slightly once I was on the last climb for home. Still, we couldn’t say we hadn’t been warned, for once all the forecasts got it right and were spot on with their predictions of unremitting bleakness.

Between a slight cold and family commitments I’d only managed a single, solitary ride into work on the bike all week, so I was going out on Saturday, come hell or high water – and someone certainly didn’t stint on the latter.

Lesson#1 - Repeat after me ... — Lesson#1 – Repeat after me …

Actually I awoke Saturday morning to find very little rain in the air, despite a prolonged deluge that had lasted all night. I now realise we were just passing through the eye of the storm and that the rain was holding back only until I actually got outside.

Oh well, at least I got to field-test the new jacket in the most extreme conditions – and learn a lot about its limitations in the process.

With rain starting to bounce violently off the tarmac, I swung a leg over the Peugeot and struck out, noting the distinctive tang of wet leaves and damp ash mixed with the burned smell of spent fireworks. Remember, remember the 6^th of November?

Tipping down the bank the combination of heavy rain and road spray almost instantly soaked through my shorts, leg warmers and gloves, and I could feel cold tendrils of water creeping through my overshoes into my socks by the time I hit the bottom. Still my upper half initially remained warm and dry as I hit the valley floor and started to work my way westward while becoming increasingly frustrated with the traffic.

What is it about the rain that so completely befuddles drivers – I’ve noticed when driving in and out of work that even a slight, innocuous shower will add at least 10 minutes to the journey. It’s as if they their brains get tied-up trying to process more than one hazard at a time and it retards their thinking so they no longer act and drive instinctively. I wonder if there’s a little inner monologue that goes something like, “Oh, rain, uh-uh…better be careful” and then, “Oh, rain, AND A BIKE! Aargh! Panic! What do I do?”

I was subject to more iffy, too close passes that morning than I’ve had in three months of commuting by bike and (my own personal bugbear) several drivers who overtook, before immediately braking and cutting sharp left just in front of me.

Extra special appreciation this morning though was reserved for a van driver who gave me a long fusillade on his horn because I did something he obviously thought was wrong. Well, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt here and assuming he genuinely thought I’d done something wrong and he wasn’t just being a RIM.

This worries me more than the thoughtless close passes, because it not only suggests a self-righteous ignorance of the law and a distinct lack of empathy and consideration, but also the inability to anticipate and safely react to the behaviour of other road users.

I was riding uphill, heading towards a set of traffic lights and needing to turn right, across the lane of oncoming traffic. As I approached the lights I looked behind and noticed the van, safely some distance behind. 2 or 3 more pedal strokes and I looked behind again and saw that the van wasn’t gaining on me, and had in fact dropped further back as it slowed for a number of speed bumps (this is a 20mph, School Zone.) I stuck my hand out, looked back once more and then rode into the centre of the lane as I reached the lights.

I slowed at this point to pass behind an oncoming black Range Rover, before making the turn, accompanied by the loud wail from van man leaning aggressively on his horn as he swept past. I naturally took a leaf out of Mr. Cavendish’s book and kindly reminded him of Agincourt, 1415 and all that, but this one really did rankle and I’m still trying to fathom what I did wrong or what else he expected me to do.

Half an hour later and continuing through the unrelenting rain, I could begin to feel the cold, damp creep of water slowly leeching through the arms of my jacket and into my base-layer. The material had, I assume, became so saturated that the rain was no longer beading and rolling off the surface, but started to slowly worm its way inward. By the time I’d reached the meeting point everything was pretty much soaked through, cold, damp and heavy.

Surprisingly there was a sizeable turn out, including a handful of the kids who, as it was the first Saturday of the month, were going to ride out with us before heading off on a different route. 20 brave lads, lasses and kids then, pushed off, clipped in and went to collectively see just how much cold water we could sponge up, a latter day band of brothers, united by our battle with the elements.

I started drifting through the group trying to find a wheel to follow that had at least some semblance of a mudguard, but even these were throwing off an arc of spray, so I slotted into the gap between the two riders in front.

We’d just made it out of the ‘burbs when one of OGL’s lights shook loose and went bouncing down the road. As he turned to retrieve it I pulled over to field a phone call from home. My eCrumb had stopped in the rain and they were wondering what was going on.

I couldn’t work the phone through my gloves, so stripped them off and then found they were so wet I couldn’t pull them back on again. I had a dry pair in my pocket (a trick learned from the Red Max) but decided to keep them until after the café, so I wrung as much water as I could out of the original pair and stowed them away.

A spare pair of gloves - a real boon when the first get soaked through. — A spare pair of gloves – a real boon when the first get soaked through.

Not only was my eCrumb struggling with the conditions, but Red Max declared his Garmin was waterlogged and fritzed, and at the end of the ride my Strava threw up the weirdest of ride profiles. I’ve no idea what it was recording in the middle of my ride.

Phone and gloves safely tucked away, I got moving again and found Crazy Legs waiting a bit further up the road as OGL hadn’t made it back to the group yet. We hung back until he cruised up and then set the pace to escort him back to where everyone else was waiting.

At the next roundabout all the kids split off, apart from Tri-Boy and the Monkey Butler Boy. A little further on and all well soaked, the majority of us decided to cut the ride short and head directly for the café. We still had time to engender some truly apoplectic rage from OGL for pushing the pace too high, before we were storming toward the Snake Bends and the café sprint.

OGL might as well have tried to stop the rain falling as to halt our momentum at this point, but while his efforts were fruitless a little bit of air managed to do for me. Not any old air in general of course, just the minuscule portion of it I had borrowed and cruelly entrapped in my inner tube. The tunnel was completed, the gates swinging wide, the sirens wailing and an all or nothing break-out was most definitely on the cards for this poor repressed portion of the atmosphere. Another week, another puncture.

With heavy steering, a slowly sinking feeling and the road vibrating increasingly through a rattling and no longer cushioned rim, I slipped silently backward and out of the group to fix things without the attendant critical audience.

I still haven’t found the source for this rash of punctures, but the Gatorskins have been consigned to the bin, they’ve either ran out of durability, or ran out of luck and neither is acceptable. Time to see if the Schwalbe Durano’s perform any better.

Sadly I missed the final “dive” to the café, which ripped through a massive, edge-to-verge, road-spanning lake of dirty collected rain water at full tilt, our speeding bunch producing a bow wave reminiscent of a newly launched super-tanker crashing down the slipway.

This in turn gave birth to a minor inland tsunami so high that it washed over the top of The Red Max’s waterproof winter boots and once inside and with no way for the water to drain out, he was left sloshing his wiggling toes around and hoping to avoid developing a bad case of trenchfoot.

Somewhat behind everyone else I limped into the café, sur la jante, to find Max comfortably perched on a black bin bag, feet up and boots off. Every so often the Monkey Butler Boy would be tasked with stepping out into the rain and emptying the water from the boots, but no matter how many times he did this the insides were obviously super-saturated and more water inevitably collected and pooled in the dark confines of the boot.

We managed to prise ourselves out of the café and into heavy, wet clothes, gloves, helmets et al and I took to the front with Taffy Steve, intent on setting a brisk pace to try and warm up a little. Approaching the penultimate climb we were so engaged in a deep philosophical discussion of the Lego Movie that I failed to notice we were riding into a flooded section of the road. While everyone did their best to edge around the perimeter of this lake where the water was the shallowest, I plunged straight through the middle and quickly found myself up to the wheel hubs in water.

I was considering freewheeling through the rest, but the water only deepened further and sucked away my momentum. In real danger of toppling spectacularly I recovered and thrashed my way through, with the water lapping up to my knees.

Somehow, despite guffawing uproariously at my antics the BFG still had enough puff left to attack the hill, and as Laurelan jumped to give chase I swung onto to her wheel and followed. Over the top the BFG, Cow Ranger, and Tri-Boy kept pushing the pace, while I switched from wheel to wheel, occasionally drifting back to clear my eyes from the constant pressure hose wash of road spray being flung off the tyres.

We made good time and I was soon turning off for home, leaving the BFG chuckling to himself, this time as much amused by the Cow Ranger’s mad thrashing to try and drop everyone as my aborted attempt at water skiing.

I arrived home in good time, stopping on my way to a hot shower only long enough to deposit a sodden heap of slowly leaking clothing in a big puddle on the kitchen floor. Bizarrely, masochistically a good run out.

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.”

I did discover one bad consequence of riding in a group in weather like this as, for a couple of days afterwards, my eyeballs felt like they’d been taken out, lightly sand-papered, rolled in salt and then squeezed back in.

I also realised my Galibier jacket, while perfectly adequate for showers and occasional rain, isn’t going to keep me dry through exposure to a heavy and sustained downpour like we endured today.

And one final thought – to be fully compliant, I really do need to paint a Plimsoll line on the winter bike…

YTD Totals: 5,429 km/ 3,260 miles with 60,918 metres of climbing.

The Texas Chainring Massacre and the Road to Cheesecake.

Club Run, Saturday 31^st October, 2015

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 107 km/66 miles with 884 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 4 hours 07 minutes

Group size: 30 riders with no FNG’s

Weather in a word or two: Astonishingly mild.

Main topic of conversation at the start: As I rolled up to the meeting place the BFG told me I looked like Fausto Coppi. Normally I would have been insufferably pleased at such a compliment as surely no rider has ever looked as elegant as the languid and composed Il Campionissimo. In this instance however it just made me question the BFG’s suspect eyesight.

My suspicion’s regarding his lack of ocular acuity were further confirmed when he told me he spent most of last Sunday’s club run admiring another riders leg warmers, which he thought were the acme of form-fitting apparel and style, perfectly moulded to the riders physique and showing every bulging muscle and sinew. He was just about to ask where he could buy a pair of leg warmers just like them, when the Prof pointed out he was actually looking at the legs of one of the black guys who was only wearing shorts.

The BFG then went on to tell me that in his world torque wrenches and washers were all redundant, information the Offshore Safety Directive Regulator may be interested in.

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop:

The Red Max kept us royally entertained, first with the tales of last Sunday’s club run when an encounter with a local Tri-Club led to a bit of competitive drag racing that blew the two groups apart and caused chaos down Berwick Hill, or as Zippy commented near the road to the Cheese Cake. He did correct himself and obviously meant the Cheese Farm, but I like the thought of a road to Cheese Cake so much that I’ve pinched it.

Red Max then moved on to his ultra-competitive, turbo-training sessions with the Monkey Butler Boy (aka Red Max Junior) which have seemingly become a source of marital discord. These used to be played out across dual turbo’s set up in front of the TV, with the protagonists vying to see who can pedal fastest while simultaneously trying to frag each other online in Call of Duty. Unfortunately a liberal coating of oil to a new chain led to the last contest spraying an arc of oil from chainset to ceiling, like the spray of blood in a bad slasher movie.

To compound the issue, Mrs. Max returned home one night to find Max and the Monkey Butler Boy sitting in the middle of the living room floor with Max’s dirty bike spread out in pieces all around them. Max couldn’t quite understand what the furore was all about, as he phlegmatically suggested, “It wasn’t as if we were watching hardcore porn while she was out.” Needless to say bikes and bikers are now banned from the living room.

With OGL being absent we looked to Grover for oberleutnant and enforcer duties. He was late appearing in the café queue, perhaps as he was outside inspecting bikes and taking down the names of all those without mudguards.

We idly wondered if other cycling clubs were run like the Cosa Nostra, with an all-powerful Capo, but didn’t talk about it too loudly in case we woke up to find a sawn-off set of handlebars sharing the bed with us.

Ride Profile

The Waffle:

And so it’s time put away bright shiny carbon things and coax the reluctant and recalcitrant Peugeot winter bike out of “le sulk”. I feel that half the battle with continuing to ride throughout the winter is not to have a bike that you hate so much you can’t bring yourself to swing a leg over it, that’s just putting one more barrier in the way of riding – as if the rain, wind, freezing cold, ice, dark, pot-holed and filthy, crappy roads aren’t disincentive enough. (Remind me again why I do this?)

So we’ve entered a period of entente cordiale where I’m trying to make the Peugeot feel loved and wanted, after all it’s going to be a long few months where I rely on it. On Saturday for example we celebrated the birthday of Philippe de Vitry, French composer, poet, and theorist and breakfasted on pain au raisin and warm brioche. Meanwhile Alizée, Mylene Farmer, The Dø, and Yelle have all been on heavy rotation on the iPod.

(In keeping with the Gallic theme, on Friday night I watched The Returned – it’s started a bit slow and it’s not quite up to the standards of the first series yet, but it does still feature super-creepy kid Victor, who bears a striking resemblance to Alberto Contador.)

victor contador — Alberto Contador as creepy revenant Victor in The Returned and Swann Nambotin (yes, really) as Alberto Contador in the new Steak Out movie. (Sorry).

I’ve even tried to curry favour with the Peugeot through lavish, hopeful gifts– gone are the no-name brakes for something with a bit more stopping power and I’ve recently bought a new pair of shiny Cinelli bar end plugs and some Schwalbe Durano tyres. I haven’t fitted the tyres yet but hope will prove as puncture resistant as the Gatorskin Ultra’s are have been, while providing a little more grip.

Le Peugeot, Waiting for the Winter – as the (rather fabulous) Popguns once sang.

So that’s it – we’re all geared up for winter and good to go. Now let’s see what the weather’s going to throw at us…

If today is an example though, I think we’ll be all right. Heavy rain throughout Friday left the roads wet and with lots of surface water everywhere, but the day was mild, generally still and pleasant.

Fausto Coppi not only epitomised grace and elegance on the bike, but could keep the peloton in stitches with his famous preying mantis impersonation. — Fausto Coppi not only epitomised grace and elegance on the bike, but kept the peloton in stitches with his famous preying mantis impersonation.

The kit was pretty much the same as last week, long sleeve jersey, base layer, shorts leg warmers and long-fingered gloves. The only difference was I swapped the Belgian booties for waterproof shoe covers. Yet again I was surprised to see a number still out in their shorts. Brave, foolish, or just considerably younger than I am, I guess.

OGL, G-Dawg and a few others were up in Jockland for the Braveheart Dinner and with Crazy Legs suffering from sustained, serious jet lag it was left to Red Max and Taffy Steve to lead us out into the unknown. A good group of 30 lads and lasses pushed off, clipped in and took the road out west.

Our regular lane out into the countryside was awash with debris; gravel, leaves, hedge trimmings and who knows what else, and sure enough we had only left it a couple of mile behind when Shoeless pulled over with a puncture. We rolled past as he stopped to make repairs, and turned off the main route, ironically on the road to Cheese Cake.

I was sitting comfortably perched on the crossbar, chatting with Taffy Steve while we waited and just happened to mention that I was surprised we only had the one puncture as I idly stabbed a thumb into my front tyre. This turned out to be a big mistake as the tyre was suspiciously squishy and would have given a ride I could only describe as plush.

Whipping out a new tube I set to work, and I was still wrestling to replace a particularly recalcitrant tyre by the time Shoeless rejoined. Zardoz then took pity on my effete weakness (damn, I broke a nail as well) and utilised his “pincers of steel” fingers to neatly and effortlessly pop the tyre back onto the rim for me.

I declined Crazy Legs’s kind offer of a lend of his molto piccolo, Blackburn Airstick and used Taffy Steves mighty frame pump to give my upper body an intense workout, harder than any of the pedalling I done up to that point. (Following the Crazy Legs tradition, I popped my track pump onto the tyre when I got home to discover my considerable and most strenuous efforts had driven a massive, awe inspiring 50 psi into the tyre.)

Under way again we passed the landed gentry, striding out intent on slaughtering the local wildlife. Usually this takes the form of a hunt – all horse faced people on, well, horse-faced horses (what did you expect?). This week however it was a shooting party, all goofy tweed jackets, baggy, three quarter-length “trizers”, flat caps and shiny Purdey’s, strolling down the middle of the road and out to “bag a grice or two.” They seemed unconscionably cheerful about what they were doing.

What, what, Old Boy - I can't shoot grice in these trizers. (With apologies to Steve Bell) — “What, what, Old Boy – I can’t shoot grice in these trizers.” (With apologies to Steve Bell)

We split at the junction to the Quarry, with a few of the racing snakes heading for a long, fast descent and then a corresponding long haul back uphill. I noticed the FNG from last week got sucked in by the Siren Song of the Racing Snakes and went with them. I silently wished him luck.

Split made, the pace was pushed higher and higher and I sat on Zardoz’s wheel as he dragged us up toward the front. With the group heading for the “Snake Bends” route to the café (not favourable terrain for me) I decided to blast the Quarry Climb instead, and hit the front on the last steep ramp, managing to pull clear and hang on with my nose in front as we crested and swung right. I even managed to net a Strava PR of 4:41 for the climb.

As we hit a long drag, followed by a few fast descents I again found myself on the front negotiating a particularly hazardous, gravel-strewn corner. I drove on through a couple of junctions and more slight rises that all felt like major cols and hung out front until the road levelled and Red Max led the charge past me and down to the Snake Bends. Great fun.

Another puny weakling from the waist up struggles to force more than 50 psi into a tyre.

On the ride home Shoeless and I commiserated together about having to repair punctures in front of everyone and amidst all the sharp intakes of breath, head-shaking, tutting and “You don’t do it like that” comments. Still, it’s character forming … isn’t it?

So far, so good…

YTD Totals: 5,322 km/ 3,260 miles with 60,139 metres of climbing.

The Gastone Nencini Chapeau Awards

More coveted than the “coveted Pointless Trophy©”, more glorious than receiving kudos on Strava and just occasionally a bigger slap in the face than the Carbuncle awards and more opprobrious than a Razzie, I give you (drum roll, trumpet fanfare) the Gastone Nencini Chapeau Awards.

Celebrating the wise, the witty, the weird, the wacky, the wayward, the wretched, the worthy and the worthless in the world of cycling – wimps, wafflers ,whingers, the wayward and the wonderful – from the famous to the futile, international hero to the unheralded, the omnipresent and those brief gadflies that occasionally flicker across our consciousness before disappearing forever.

Our award goes to:

Carl “Dabman” Dale

For unremitting cheerfulness while all the world crashes around you.

Gastone Nencini salutes you – Chapeau!

Sur La Jante

The Chronicles, Confessions and Idle Musings of a Club Cyclist

Tag: British Cycling

Nut Screws Washers and Bolts

Pulling a Whitey

Wellie Tops and Collie Wobbles

Hell Among the Yearlings

Vittoria’s Secret and the Cold Hand Gang

The Teacake Haiku (Destry Rides Again)

Banjaxed!

Hell and High Water

The Texas Chainring Massacre and the Road to Cheesecake.

The Gastone Nencini Chapeau Awards