Another change of weather for the last Saturday club run of the year, and a morning that proved to be startlingly warm, but once again disrupted by almost constant gusting and bellowing winds that often made riding a draining struggle.
Any hopes of a peaceful, relaxed start to my ride were shattered by a squalling, squealing bit of extreme mudguard frotting. This had the crowd at a bus stop clamping hands over their ears, while one or two ran to find cover, no doubt suspecting my tyre was about to blow.
Like a car with a furiously slipping fan belt, it sounded much worse than it actually was, but there was no way I could ride with that racket. I stopped for a bit of all-in, mudguard wrangling, made a few adjustments, picked up the front of the bike and spun the wheel. Blissful silence.
I pressed on, getting no more than 5 yards before the infernal racket had me stopping again. I finally determined that the noise was actually coming from the rear wheel, not the front one as I’d first thought. I bent the mudguard stays a little, this way and that and it seemed to work.
Remounting again I pushed off and pressed on, tentatively at first and then with more confidence as the squealing appeared to have been cured. Crossing the river, I first picked up a tailwind and then picked up the pace, wondering how much time I had lost thwarting my bikes attempts to earn me an ASBO.
Over my right shoulder, a thin paring of a ghostly moon was just starting to fade into the brightening day, while ahead the sunrise painted the clouds in pastel pinks and peaches. It was a pretty enough picture, but lacking the primordial drama of last weeks fiery inferno.
I ran my first time-check as I clambered out of the valley. I’d done 4.7 miles and it was 8:39. My usual guide to being on schedule is having covered 8.42 miles by 8:42 and, by this measure, I was desperately behind. I pressed down on the pedals that bit harder, found a bigger gear and dropped a little lower on the bike to help combat the wind.
Two mile further on, when my Garmin still read 4.7 miles covered, I realised I’d somehow managed to pause it while wrangling the mudguards and I probably wasn’t as far behind schedule as I first thought. Idiot. Sure enough, it was only a couple of minutes past the hour and well within my usual arrival window when I finally reached the meeting place.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
Our ride leader for the day, the Hammer had taken to early morning social-media to question the sanity of riding when it was “blowing an absolute gale.” He’d manned up for the occasion though and then firmly doubled down on macho by arriving on his fixie.
He reported that Taffy Steve was attempting to batter his way in from the coast, but otherwise numbers were likely to be somewhat depressed.
For some bizarre reason, the Garrulous Kid was eager to tell anyone who’d listen (and a few who wouldn’t) that the Red Max had taken to calling him “pencil dick” for the entirety of their extended ride home last week.
Having pointlessly posited unfavourable impressions about his own anatomical short-comings, the Garrulous Kid then spent the next few minutes refuting them, before asserting that he was, in fact, rather mightily and enormously endowed in the … err … trouser department.
This suddenly started to make sense to G-Dawg, who realised carrying such an encumbrance could potentially have a material effect on bike handling skills.
“So, can you not turn to the left, simply because you dress to the right then?” he wondered …
All told, there were 9 of us gathered around as the clock ticked past 9:15 and our usual departure time. Five long minutes later, there was still only 9 of us and we decided that we had our group for the day. (Apparently Taffy Steve arrived scant minutes after we’d left, having battled a debilitating headwind along his entire route, but at least he would have had a turbo-charged ride back again, having barely missed out.)
“Two groups, then?” Captain Black queried, knowing full well we’d be in one very compact group, riding as close together as possible to try and exact the maximum shelter from the rider in front.
G-Dawg and the Hammer led us out and away we went.
It was brutal and exposed and out on the roads, hard work even tucked at the back and we had a constant rotation on the front, as we burned out a succession of riders. Everyone was battling with the wind and what little conversation there was seemed terse and desultory.
Our ninth man was Fleisher Yarn, a refugee from the Grognard’s, who was starting to struggle by the time we hit Black Callerton and an enforced pause at the level-crossing. Here we had to let a Metro rumble past, laden with brave, brave shoppers heading for the Sales, a brief respite before we pushed on again.
By the time we reached the junction of Stamfordham Road, Fleisher Yarn was long gone and nowhere in sight. We pulled over in a driveway to hunker down and wait, looking back down the long straight road for any sign of our detached companion.
After a brief wait he appeared and started to draw closer. Seeing us stopped at the junction he waved for us just to continue without him, day-glo green gloves flashing in the light like some manic, overworked air marshal on a carrier flight-deck.
When we didn’t move, he continued to wave us off, his gestures becoming more and more pronounced as we didn’t seem to be responding. Finally, like the idiots we undoubtedly are, we just took to waving wildly and happily back at him, every time he tried to move us on.
Regrouping briefly, Fleisher Yarn explained he was struggling to keep up, not enjoying the conditions and was happy to just go solo and amend his route accordingly. We pushed on without him, while he set a course for Kirkley Cycles.
I took a turn in the wind just before we hit Stamfordham, linking up with Ovis, who’d already wrung out, used up and discarded Captain Black at the front. Ovis was obviously “on a good one,” feeling super-strong and frisky. He set a pace that I had to scramble to match and which he kept only just shy of being desperately uncomfortable.
Just past the village of Fenwick, we took the lane that would route us around Matfen and, half way up, picked up a trio of cyclists, wastrel’s, waifs and strays, although I’m not sure which was which. They had stopped at the side of the road, perhaps to regather their strength and, from there, they politely implored us to let them tag onto the back of the group.
“The more the merrier, there’s plenty of room at the front,” Captain Black informed them happily, but that wasn’t what they had in mind. Inexplicably they declined his offer and slotted in at the back. (To be fair, they not only bolstered our numbers, but would later contribute on the front too.)
By the time we turned for the Quarry, I’d dropped off the front and was drifting back through the pack, where I found the Garrulous Kid, malingering, avoiding the front and saving himself for the cafe sprint. He was buoyed by the absence of the Colossus and liked his chances.
I kept pace with the sprinters until I felt I was well inside the neutralised 3 km zone and eased back to let them have their fun and the Garrulous Kid his fleeting moment of glory.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
The Hammer wondered how much pleasure the Garrulous Kid got from a sprint victory where he managed to beat a bunch of old blokes twice his age, when a quarter of them were on fixies and they’d all spent the past couple of hours towing him around the lanes.
I could have saved him his breath, the Garrulous Kid liked it plenty…
Talk then turned to magnificently bald domes, hair loss and the other impediments of ageing. In an act of pure mischief, I mentioned to the Garrulous Kid that I thought it looked like his hair was receding already.
And he bit.
Hard.
He spent the next 20 minutes vigorously denying he was losing his hair, while smoothing down his fringe, tentatively probing the back of his scalp and taking multiple close-up selfies of his hairline.
G-Dawg wondered if genetics played a part. “Is your dad’s hair receding too?” he queried innocently.
“No, but his mum’s as bald as an egg,” Captain Black quipped.
“I have a classic V-shaped hairline,” the Garrulous Kid recounted defensively, in what sounded suspiciously like something he’d been told to say.
“Ah, like Ray Reardon?” G-Dawg wondered. There was then a brief interlude when we tired to determine if Ray “Dracula” Reardon was still around. (Now 86, Google reports he’s happily retired and living in Devon.)
“No, not like Ray Reardon, like Daniel Craig,” the Garrulous Kid insisted.
“Who is going bald,” I added, shamelessly recalling the shock# horror# headlines in the Daily Heil: “Is James Bond going bald?” This erudite, momentous and earth-shattering article had quoted the world’s leading hair loss expert, who had “voiced his concern’s over 007’s receding temples in hit movie Skyfall.”
(I know, I know … there’s so much wrong with that last paragraph, that I don’t know where to start, but let’s just go with the flow, eh?)
We then recalled some truly classic comb-overs, with that of Bobby Charlton coming out “top” and even trumping Donald Trump’s fantastical, but completely natural, candy-floss concoction.
“Bobby Charlton, eh? His hair could be offside, even when he was standing in his own half.” G-Dawg declared.
Appearances briefly became the topic du jour, with the Hammer emphasising the need for a good moisturising regimen, while lauding Captain Black’s superior skin tone. He then suggested Captain Black bore more than a passing resemblance to good-looking, Belgian Classics maestro, Peter van Petegem.
I checked, he was right:
On the left, Captain Black, while on the right is Peter van Petegem in his Mysteron Team kit
It was still too early for G-Dawg to set off for home – he’s terrified he’ll get back before 1 o’clock one week and will then be expected back before 1 o’clock every week – so we went for a sneaky, strictly verboten, second free cup of coffee and learned all about the Hammer’s lost weekend, in a hotel in Amsterdam.
I dunno, but it sounds like there could be a good song in there, somewhere …
Finally prised out of the cafe, we saddled- up and rode off for the trip back. Despite the Garrulous Kid still harping on about his hair, things were going smoothly, until Berwick Hill, when Captain Black pulled his pedal clean off its spindle.
I turned back to find him standing at the side of the road, a Look pedal still firmly clamped to the bottom of his shoe and learning just how difficult it is to uncleat with your bare hands.
He tried slotting the pedal back on its spindle, but it kept pulling loose and he realised he’d have to ride a little more slowly and carefully. He waved us away and set to follow at a more sedate pace, limping his way back home.
G-Dawg suffered a ridiculously close punishment pass for daring to hold up traffic for a heartbeat as we skirted the airport. Sadly the driver didn’t take up our invite to discuss his grievances in a polite and considered manner.
The group then split and I tracked G-Dawg and Ovis through the Mad Mile, before swinging away for home. The wind had died down a little, it was incredibly mild and the sky was the pale, washed out colour of faded denim, marred only by a few gauzy aeroplane contrails.
It was turning into a very pleasant last hurrah for 2018, ending with a similar mileage total to my 2017 and the positives and good experiences by far outweighing the negatives.
Now I get to start all over again, but with a small interlude for Thing#2’s birthday next week, when I’ll miss the first official club run of 2019.
The end of the year seems like a good time to stop and take stock and I’ve now got an additional week to consider if I want to continue with this thing (the crap writing, not the crap riding, obviously).
We’ll see.
2018 Totals: 7,341 km / 4,562 miles with 89,974 metres of climbing.
In the past few weeks we’ve been pitched into unending gloom, chilled to the bone, soaked to the skin, peppered with hail and half-broiled because of seriously over-dressing. Having survived all this and just for a change, today we would be ceaselessly battered by high winds. Never a dull moment, eh?
I didn’t realise just how strong these winds were, until I was being buffeted sideways and fighting to control the bike as I dropped down the hill. At the bottom I then had the pleasure of turning directly into a headwind, with gusts of 50-60mph, as I tried to pick my way up the valley.
At Blaydon, in a final insult, a mini-twister harried and harassed a pile of dry leaves, animating them to scuttle around and around, faster and faster, before whipping them up and driving them into a gyre that slapped noisily into my chest and face.
Spitting out a mouthful of dry, dusty leaf residue, I called time on trying to forge my way further up river and turned back to cross on a different bridge. The wind fell silent behind me and now, with a more gentle push, was actually impelling me toward my goal.
This was good … until, turning again, I rode onto the exposed span, high above the river and once again had to battle to steer in a straight line. Luckily the road was quiet and I had the opportunity to tack my way safely back and forth across the empty lanes.
The rest of the ride in was punctuated by cross -headwinds that drained speed and ramped up the effort, or sudden, gusting broadsides, that threatened to pitch me into either the kerb, or the cars. It could be fun riding in a group in these conditions.
Having cut short my route across to the meeting point, I arrived around ten minutes earlier than usual and settled in to wait.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
The Garrulous Kid was the first to arrive, well proud of the fact that he’d achieved a total colour co-ordination, every article of his clothing matching either the red, black, white or grey colour scheme of his winter Trek.
He said he was really looking forward to the Club’s Christmas “Dinner” and annual prize-giving, next Saturday night and was angling to win the “Most Improved Rider” award.
“It’s a bit of a back-handed compliment though,” I argued, “It just means you were crap the year before.”
“Yeah, but it’s still an award, innit?”
Well, yes, I guess so…
The Monkey Butler Boy arrived to deride the Garrulous Kid’s colour co-ordination. Apparently, simply matching your clothes to your bike scheme isn’t good enough now: helmet, specs, gloves and shoes all have to be the exact same colour too. We were all collectively condemned as a lost cause, clueless and completely lacking in style.
Crazy Legs rolled up with Chas ‘n’ Dave’s “Sideboard Song” as an infectious, immovable earwig. This was apparently lodged into his head due to the simple “I don’t care” refrain, which nicely summed up Crazy Legs’ attitude to the weather – although by no means ideal, at least it wasn’t raining or icy.
I joined him for a sublimely beautiful, heart-rending duet, playing Dave Peacock to his Chas Hodges: “I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care if ‘e comes round ‘ere, I’ve got my beer on the sideboard ‘ere, let Muvva sor’ it art if he comes round ‘ere.”
At precisely 9:15 GMT (Garmin Muppet Time), Crazy Legs clambered up onto the wall to address everyone: “Hello, for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Richard … and this is the route for the day.”
He then concluded his briefing with the finest, Sergeant Phil Esterhaus impersonation I’ve heard in years: “Hey, let’s be careful out there.”
We rolled out in one big pack and I let myself drift toward the back, figuring it would be a day for sheltering as much as possible from the wind.
The Colossus and the Garrulous Kid took the first thankless battering on the front, setting a scorching pace from the off, as if they could beat the weather into submission. Shouting at them to ease didn’t help, words were immediately snatched away in the strong gusts and head down and ploughing onward, they could barely hear a thing in the rush of air howling around their helmets.
An ailing OGL was soon cast adrift at the back and Crazy Legs and the Red Max briefly conferred and agreed to drop off to ride with him at a less frenetic pace.
Citing a lack of cafe money as an excuse, perhaps combined with a lack of will for a hard ride, the Monkey Butler Boy was soon dropping off too, to be re-united with the Red Max, or more importantly, the Red Max’s wallet.
Further on and the Colossus also ailing and under the weather and having completed a manful, all or nothing stint on the front, set a course directly for the cafe, as our numbers continued to dwindle.
“We’re dropping like flies,” Aether determined, but we pressed on regardless.
Aether then punctured and my heart sank a little when I noticed he was running Continental Four Season’s tyres, remembering the recent failures we’d had trying to seat Big Dunc’s Conti Grand Prix tyre back on his rims (Trial of Tyres). Luckily, either Four Season’s are more forgiving, or Campagnolo rims are more compatible with the tyres than Shimano rims and we managed without too much effort.
Then, passing a massive, steaming pile of manure, dumped in a malodorous pile at the entrance to a field, the Garrulous Kid identified it as “a big pile of bullshit” and politely enquired if OGL had passed this way recently. That was dangerously close to being funny.
G-Dawg and the Garrulous Kid were back toiling away on the front (for at least the second time) as we started up the horrible, dragging route toward Dyke Neuk. Rab Dee took pity on them and muscled his forward and I pushed through to join him and “do my bit.”
“My bit” probably didn’t last more than a mile or so. Even that was enough to drain any energy I had left and I swiftly went from first in line, back to last. On we went and I was hanging on now, heavy legged and lethargic, either starting to bonk, worn down by my ride in that morning, over-tired from doing too much mid-week , or simply having another bad day and yet another jour sans. Or, maybe it was all of those lame and pitiful excuses rolled into one.
Aether dropped back to check on me, but it was just a case of plodding on and enduring, there was no help to be had.
I hung on through the dip and rise around Hartburn, but was distanced on the run in to Middleton Bank and grinding away horribly on the climb. When Rab Dee was the next to drop back to check on me and I told him not to wait and just press on.
“It’s all right, I’m just going to take it easy too,” he replied.
“This. Is not. Taking. It. Easy,” I assured him, grinding past as the slope started to bite.
Over the top and the group upfront had eased so I rejoin. I pushed hard, but it still took an age and Rab Dee had to close the final few metres for me.
I managed to stay on the wheels through Milestone Wood, up and over the rollers and right up to the final corner of the final climb, before the inevitable. Everyone went skipping away, leaving me to bumble my way to the cafe, very much sur la jante.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
The cafe was relatively quiet and I joined the queue behind Goose as we cast our eyes over all the goodies on display and weighed the pros and cons of each. Then Goose spotted some seasonal stollen scones and declared they were just the business. “You know you’ve hit the jackpot,” he explained, “if you manage to find a nugget of marzipan buried in their depths.” I took his recommendation and ordered a stollen scone too. They were good.
Talk turned to how boring it would be to live in a moderate climate without extremes of weather and how dull it must make things! I politely demurred, I think I could go with an eternal summer, although it might make this blerg dull, boring, pointless and redundant … Ahem, apologies … I obviously meant even duller, more boring, more pointless and completely and utterly redundant.
Goose revealed he is being coerced by the family toward becoming a cat owner and was seeking to understand the life-changing implications. Along with the Cow Ranger, I assured him how pleasant it was to be pitied, looked down on and made to feel inferior by small, furry critters, with brains no bigger than a walnut and a permanent air of self-entitlement.
We listed the other advantages, such as becoming much more intimate with nature’s richness in the form of a steady string of mice, voles, frogs, rats, moles, sparrows, magpies, pigeons, starlings, thrushes, goldfish(?), tits and assorted warblers, forcibly introduced into your home.
If you were lucky, I explained, you’d only have to dispose of the corpses, rather than chase, corral and potentially euthanize your small, furry, psycho-killer’s trophy collection.
And, if you were really, really, really lucky, the Cow Ranger added, you’d only have to clean up a single, small, highly polished and expertly excised piece of offal that is typically the only trace of cat-kill left (the gall bladder, I believe). How a cat manages to extricate and isolate this particular organ with such surgical precision remains one of life’s great mysteries.
Looking to understand both the positives and negatives, Goose wondered if his own cat would add to the accumulation of cat crap in his garden. I assured him it was far more likely to use the neighbours’ gardens, ensuring friendly relations were maintained all the households in the area.
And, the Cow Ranger added it would naturally bury the crap, to lie there like an unexploded mine or buried punji stakes, until someone unsuspectingly ran a lawn mower or a strimmer over it.
The Cow Ranger then capped the entire discussion by assuring Goose he probably wouldn’t even have to be wholly responsible for feeding his own cat, as one or more of the neighbours would in all likelihood step in and supplement its diet for him.
I don’t know, but I think we might have sold him on the idea.
With families regrouping for Christmas, Thing#1 returns from University next week and Gooses’ kids are also bound for home from all points south. According to him his son is a serious runner and very fit, but will not be venturing out with our club this holiday, because he hates cycling.
We tried to understand how this sad state of affairs had arisen, having taken it as every father’s sacred duty to introduce their sons and daughters to the exalted joys of cycling. (Yes, yes, I’ve failed horribly too.)
In Goose’s case, he admitted to a bad start, dragging his then 9-year old son out on a mammoth, long ride far from home, which reduced an exhausted kid to tears, long before they made it back.
The second attempt involved and even longer ride conducted over two days, with an impromptu bit of over-night camping thrown in for good measure. I’ve no idea how these experiences could have fail to ignite a burning desire for more.
I left the cafe with the same group I’d arrived with, plus a few others who’d done the shorter ride. As we pulled out of the car park, approaching traffic separated me and the Big Yin from the rest of the pack. Out front a collective madness seemed to have descended and they’d decided it would be fun to surf a momentary tailwind as far and as fast as possible. The hammer went down immediately. There was to be no pause to regroup, or wait for others and no prisoners taken as they thrashed away.
Seeing what was happening, the Big Yin surged to try and cross the gap. I’ve no idea if he made it, I had neither the will, nor the legs to follow, so embarked on my first ever, completely solo ride from the cafe and all the way home – a wholly unequal mano a mano contest, just me against the wind.
Having finally crossed the river, I started to tackled the steep ramp that led up to the main road, passing a sprightly, silver-haired, booted and back-packed walker striding away down the hill.
“Morning!” he boomed in a hearty, hail-fellow-well-met sort of way.
“Good morning,” I replied, “Someone’s very happy today.”
“Well, life is good,” he assured me.
An hour ago, alone and struggling, I might have argued … but probably not. I waved him off, turned left at the junction and picked up a tailwind to guide me home.
YTD Totals: 7,075 km / 4,396 miles with 86,578 metres of climbing.
The amber tinted lenses of my Agu cycling specs can usually make even the bleakest of days appear bright and sunny, but they must have developed a fault and stopped working on Saturday. The sky was sombre-hued and oppressively dark, piled with heavy clouds, while at ground level, a dull, chilly mist hung low, wet and stifling. Still, I thought happily, dank, damp and dreary as it is, at least it’s not actually raining…
Front and back lights on and blinking away furiously in the murk, I dropped off the hill and began to make my way to the meeting point.
I found both sides of the bridge swarming with cars, trailers, boats and over 100 crews, all congregating for the Rutherford Head of the River Race, which promised a pretty full day of competition out on the water.
The Tyne Rowing Club would later describe this event as being held in “excellent conditions” although they did qualify this with the admission that they just meant it was excellent for rowing – i.e. calm and windless. They did acknowledge that crews, launch drivers, marshals and umpires suffered mightily in the freezing cold rain.
This freezing cold rain featured in our ride too, starting almost the moment we left the meeting point and continuing, without pause, for the entire duration of our ride and beyond. Another bleak and brutal day – to be endured as much as it was enjoyed.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
I noticed G-Dawg had relocated his big brass bell to the side of his stem. This, he explained, was not only more discrete, but stopped him sounding like a struck gong whenever he rode through a pothole. Besides, I suggested, he could always ring it with his knee, like the cycling equivalent of a one man band. G-Dawg then fondly reminisced about utterly destroying the down-tube shifter on his old mountain bike, when he kneed it into oblivion during a particularly vigorous, out of the saddle climbing exercise.
We were hoping that Goose would turn up with the new 1,500 lumen front light he’s been boasting about, but it wasn’t to be. Sensibly he’d decided that his already weighty, steel behemoth of a grand touring bike, burdened under multiple pannier racks, was handicap enough, without adding the additional weight of his new portable searchlight and separate battery pack.
He did suggest the new lamp was good for picking out bombers on a moonless night, communicating with fishing boats far offshore, or just turning midnight into midday. I wondered if it would also be useful for lamping rabbits and badgers, a use Goose hadn’t previously considered, but now began to seriously think about.Perhaps it could even have brightened the gloom of this particular morning …
But then again, probably not.
Goose sought out OGL for advice about swapping out the cantilever brakes on his steel behemoth for something more effective. The price of this advice was, of course, the standard, ritual condemnation of his bike, this time with the added spice of an assertion that Goose’s rear wheel was, in highly technical terms, fucked. The rim apparently badly worn and the tyre bulging.
“She’s gonna blow,” I think was the exact phrase used, something I never thought I’d hear outside of Hollywood’s hoariest movie cliche’s. (According to the Short List, it belongs in the top 20 most over-used lines in Hollywood blockbusters, having appeared, with scant variation, in 53 different movies.)
Shockingly, it was Garmin Muppet Time +2, before a seriously tardy Aether called for attention and began to address the gathered riders, “Hello, for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Richard … and this is the route for the day.”
The plan was to include an ascent of the Quarry climb, before a general re-grouping, with longer route options around Capheaton and Hallington.
Crazy Legs outlined the Third Way, a more refined, relaxed and genteel, Flat White Ride, that would once again make use of the excellent cafe facilities at Matfen. I flashed him a quick thumbs up – it seemed like a grand plan.
Although shorn of the actual and original Monkey Butler Boy this week, his Wrecking Crew of Monkey Butler Boy Mini-Me’s all congregated at the start, aiming to set out with us, like a fighter escort for a group of heavy bombers. After brief exposure to their chatter, I’ve decided the most appropriate collective noun for a group of Monkey Butler Boys is a squabble.
Ignoring the squabble, who would we know, abandon us after just a few miles, there were 24 of us and we decided to split into two groups. Numbers looked suspiciously low in the front group as they started to form up, so I bumped down off the pavement and joined up, hoping to even things out a little.
With Jimmy Mac, Kermit, the Cow Ranger and Rainman driving things along on the front, we started fast and just kept going.
The pace was so high that when Caracol dropped back to pull on a waterproof jacket in the face of rapidly intensifying rain, he had a real chase just to catch back on.
Then, once they reached Bingo Fuel, the squabble made off like the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. I thought at one point they had managed to abduct the Garrulous Kid in his ruby red jacket. Somehow though he managed to extricate himself from their evil clutches and slowly dropped back and into our group again.
I hung at the back, catching-up with Kermit, before dropping in alongside a relative FNG, Baby Doc, for much of the ride.
With his help I charted the ingress of cold water as it breached my defences, first the waterproof gloves, then the waterproof boots and finally the forearms of my waterproof jacket. I made use of his medical expertise to check out known cures for trench foot, reasoning it could be knowledge I might need before the end of the ride.
We also discussed why certain drivers, particularly those who struggle to wear a cap the right way round, pay good money to make their cars sound broken. We reached no conclusions.
As we hammered through Matfen, I was tempted to peel off into the cafe and await the appearance of Crazy Legs and the rest of the Flat White Crew, but the opportunity went past long before cryogenically sluggish limbs could respond to my frantic brain signals.
Caracol shipped his chain on the climb, so we had a brief pause to regroup, before the pace was pushed up again, as we drove toward the Quarry seemingly anxious just to get the ride over with.
I was in tight and up close to Rainman, as we made the run to the bottom of the Quarry Climb. Too close, as a matter of fact. He jumped out of the saddle and there was that dreaded micro-pause as he suddenly stopped pedalling and his bike seemed to lurch back at me.
With a loud “bzzzzt” my front tyre butted his rear wheel and was flicked to the right. I twitched it back, through a more prolonged “bzzzzt, zzzzt” as I brushed his tyre again, but this time going in the opposite direction. Then he was pulling clear, I steadied the bike, breathed a sigh of relief and, still resolutely upright, on we went.
The top of the Quarry climb was the designated point for everyone to coalesce before splitting into fast and slow, short and long rides. Most of us though had seen quite enough of the foul weather and decided to cut the ride short and head straight for the cafe.
G-Dawg said he would hold back to meet up with the others, while Caracol, Ovis and a few other brave and hardy souls decided to complete the full ride.
I was left alone with lots of big, powerful and fast units. Oh and Kermit. Jimmy Mac, Rainman, the Cow Ranger and Baby Doc began driving the pace up and up as we closed on the cafe.
I hung on with a bit of late braking and tight cornering, even hitting the front on the grind up to Wallridge Crossroads in a show of ill-conceived bravado. I was helped in my task by members of the local hunt, ambling their mounts up and down the road and causing the racing peloton to briefly slow and give the sometimes skittish horses a wide berth.
As the final sprint wound up I was on Kermit’s wheel until he decided he’d had enough, eased and dropped away. By the time I’d rounded him the gap had blown wide open and there was no closing it, so I rolled into the cafe on my own.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
Talking about my touch of wheels, the Cow Ranger declared that, “it caused a ripple through the entire peloton.”
“Well, it caused a ripple through my entire colon, too,” I offered.
Riders kept pitching up to drop new, wet articles on top of the pile of discarded hats, gloves, caps and buffs already laid in a steaming pile on top of the stove. Rainman played Mother, deftly flipping gloves and hats like the world’s best short-order cook, ensuring they were evenly toasted on both sides and encouraging their wet dog smell to pervade the entire cafe.
Kermit, with access to the stove blocked by our “Frying Dutchman”™ took to drying his hat on over his teapot, which wore it like a bad, cycling tea cosy – perhaps something Rapha would make and sell for a small ransom.
His cap was soon steaming briskly and I wondered how he was going to explain away a scalded scalp when he arrived at A&E, having clapped it onto his head without letting it cool slightly.
Then, of course, because I was surrounded by a bunch of medical types, they started to regale us with all the odd insertions they’d recovered from their patients body cavities and all the convoluted excuses used to explain them, such as one unfortunate trying to justify to the Cow Ranger how they accidentally ended up with a toilet brush firmly wedged up their rectum – bristle end first.
Jimmy Mac recalled one particularly delicate operation to remove a broken Coke bottle from an anal passage, after which the medical team were challenged by the supervising surgeon to explain why the patient had used a Coke bottle.
After a few minutes of rejecting all their wild and inaccurate medical and anatomical speculation, it was revealed that the correct answer was, “because he couldn’t get 7-Up.” This, I think just goes to show that even the most elevated and refined amongst us aren’t immune to the allure of bad Dad jokes.
Across the next table a fellow cyclist was brought a plate of steaming poached eggs on toast and a suddenly interested Kermit wondered if he’d be allowed to drop his cap over them, to help dry it out a little more.
I then pulled my buff back on and Kermit told me it made me look like Eton-and Oxford educated, Tory Euroseptic (sic) and Bullingdon Club Grand Poobah, the privileged, bigoted, supremely condescending and quite abhorrent, Jacob Rees Mogg. Kermit, you complete and utter bastard. I. Hate. You.
Meanwhile, Jimmy Mac wondered why everyone seemed so keen to set their gloves to smouldering on the wet stove. “I think cold and wet is much more preferable to warm and wet,” he declared.
I wondered if this was a general life choice, or only extended to water-logged articles of cycle clothing. He defended his position by referring to the phenomena of boiling water freezing much quicker than cold water, arguing you’d be chilled quicker in warm wet gloves, than in just wet gloves.
Often referred to as the “Mpemba Effect” – Jimmy Mac explained that the most likely explanation for this was “entropy.” I was in no position to argue and took him at his word. (Trying to read up about it later, I would be defeated by the sentence, “hydrogen bonds are weaker than covalent bonds but stronger than the van der Waals forces that geckos use to climb walls” – so let’s just leave it there and go for entropy as an adequate enough explanation, ok?)
“See,” Jimmy Mac declared, “I think we’ve genuinely raised the level of cycling club talk to a whole new, stratospheric, super-enlightened height.”
A few breaths later and we were back discussing the value of waterproof socks and neoprene overshoes. I looked across at Jimmy Mac and mimed a plane nose-diving into the ground. Well, he’d tried.
At the cafe early, we set off for home early, in the same small group, again ramping the pace up for the first few miles, just to try and warm up. At the Kirkley junction, I swung away for route through Ponteland and past the airport, making a bee-line for home and not even considering my usual short-cut which grants me quieter roads, in return for a bit more climbing.
As I dropped down toward the river, the valley floor was shrouded in low, wet and clinging cloud – ideal conditions for the dozens of crews scattered across the Tyne? Maybe not.
The same, thick, wet fog served to decapitate part of the Heinous Hill, but I sadly knew it was an optical illusion and the road still dragged all the way up to the top. Despite carrying perhaps an extra 4 or 5lbs in excess water in my sodden clothing, I managed the climb reasonably well, spurred on by thoughts of a hot shower, although dreading the pain it would bring as the blood flooded back into my frozen extremities.
Before disappearing to scream like a girl in the shower, I discarded a pile of water-logged outer kit on the tiles in front of the washing machine. It looked as if someone had caught the Wicked Witch of the West in our kitchen, poured a bucket of cold, dirty water over her head and watched her dissolve until there was nothing left but a puddling heap of sad and sodden, dirty clothes on the floor.
So, not the most pleasant of rides, still it had its moments and was suitably entertaining despite everything. Hopefully things will be better when we give it another go, next week.
YTD Totals: 6,936 km / 4,310 miles with 84,684 metres of climbing
I missed last week due to a lingering chest infection, but felt I’d just about recovered enough to get back in the saddle, albeit running at around three-quarters optimum efficiency and accompanied by a hacking cough.
Saturday morning turned out to be murky, misty and foggy, first thing and I was pleased to be well-bundled up in my thickest base layer, winter jacket, rain jacket, thermal socks, buff, headband, gloves and glove-liners, as I dropped down the hill, buffeted by a chill wind.
Turning along the valley, I tracked, but couldn’t catch, a fellow rider, marked by the wan, ghostly glow of bare legs, as much as by the tell-tale flicker of red lights on his bike and helmet. Once again I am humbled by how inured some North East riders seem to be to the biting cold. Perhaps I’m just a wimp.
I was on-time to be held-up at the level crossing by the 8:15 Blaydon to Hexham train, otherwise it was a standard and uneventful ride across to the meeting place.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
Taffy Steve told me I’d missed another massive turnout of near on 40 riders last week. Speculation about whether this was due to OGL’s pre-announced absence remain just that, purely speculative, but that’s 2 bumper winter rides in the pace of a month and quite unusual behaviour. Perhaps this is a cyclists response to climate change?
Part of the high turnout seemed to revolve around the Monkey Butler Boy’s Wrecking Crew, who had congregated to ride with us part way, before scuttling away to do their own thing. The Red Max mentioned Taffy Steve had been bewildered by this troupe of Monkey Butler Boy clones (have I spelt that right? – I’m sure there’s mean’t to be a ‘w’ in there somewhere) – who all shared a certain, raw-boned hungry look, in their all matching, carefully coordinated kit. I suspect William Golding might have found them an endless source of inspiration.
I couldn’t help recalling the moment I first encountered this particular subgenus in the café garden, as they swarmed around a bike, pointing and jabbering excitedly at this, that or the other, before moving on to the next bike to repeat the process and then the next and then the next…
The Garrulous Kid wanted to now why ever-present G-Dawg wasn’t present. “It’s not 9 o’clock yet,” Crazy Legs replied laconically.
“But, it’s nearly 9 o’clock,” the Garrulous Kid answered.
“Yes, but it isn’t 9 o’clock.”
“So, what time’s it now?” Crazy Legs asked after a short while.
“It’s just turned 9 o’clock, official Garmin Muppet Time,” someone replied, glancing down at their Garmin.
“See!” Crazy Legs nodded to where G-Dawg was pulling up, on cue and bang on time, his internal navigation, vectoring protocols and automated targeting systems, whirring and clicking away with mechanised efficiency.
We were all hugely impressed by the Red Max’s lights, especially the one on the front of his bike, a common or garden, Pifco torch, mummified in swathes of gaffer tape that strapped it directly to the underside of his stem. This, the Red Max explained was purely for the Wednesday night chain-gangs, which is the only bit of riding he does in the dark, so he didn’t see the need for actual bike lights with a proper mounting.
The Red Max broke of our conversation to clamber up onto the wall and outline the route. “Hello,” he began, “For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Richard and this is the route for the day …”
He then apologised for selecting a rather standard, regular, run-of-the-mill ride, without even any variation in the direction we were running the different segments.
“That’s fine, ” I told him, “If we run another route widdershins, we’ll just end up summoning the devil.”
Two groups were agreed, with a more or less equal split of the numbers and off we went.
I rolled out in the second group, not looking for anything too fast and frenetic and hoping to get through the ride without inducing a mammoth coughing bout.
I fell in alongside Crazy Legs as we rolled out, principally tasked with helping him decipher the lyrics to a Half Man Half Biscuit song that was rattling around in his brain.
It was undeniably chilly out on the roads and I could feel my toes slowly turning numb. As we followed the Red Max out and up Limehouse Lane, I plaintively asked if there was a café nearby. I was only half-joking, but let’s just say the opportunity for the inaugural Winter 2018 Flat White ride didn’t fall entirely on barren soil.
Crazy Legs suggested a early coffee intervention at Matfen, so we did our stint on the front and pulled the group through to Stamfordham, before turning off the planned route for a shortcut to caffeine succour.
Sneaky Pete joined us and for a moment our desperate trio were united in a co-ordinated bout of coughing, so we sounded like the TB wing of the club, or desperate refugees at the Mexican-US border breathing in a very minor form of tear gas. (Very safe.)
For a time I pushed on at the front alongside Sneaky Pete, with Crazy Legs running along behind and between us, declaring rather contentedly, “It’s nice back here.”
A few turns along wet and muddy roads though and he became suspiciously solicitous, asking how I was feeling and suggesting I needed a spell off the front. I let him through and he immediately explained he was ok riding behind me, but for some reason Sneaky Pete’s (almost identical) mudguard was spraying him with road crud, so one side of his body was pristine, clean and dry, the other splattered and speckled with mud.
Leading from the front, Crazy Legs guided us unerringly to the hidden jewel of Matfen village store, complete with its own café and one of those huffing, spluttering, gurgling, steaming, barrista-wrangling, coffee machines, where we went for flat whites all around.
Damn fine coffee.
Main Topics of Conversation – Coffee Stop#1
We decided the the Flat White Club needed a President to promote its life-affirming, ride enhancing, cold alleviating properties and duly proposed, seconded and elected Taffy Steve to the role … in his absence.
We then worked out an impressive number of Flat White ride options, which included potential coffee interludes at Kirkley Cycles, Matfen, the Gubeon, Belsay, Capheaton and Bolam Lake.
Sneaky Pete impressed me with his adoption and familiarity with the Apple Pay digital wallet, something Crazy Legs had recommended to him. I was overwhelmed by his all round tech savvy and acuity and felt there was hope for us Luddite’s yet …
Then he went and spoiled by becoming the only person in living history to lament the demise of (the dreadful!) Freeserve internet and email service.
Suitably warmed through and refreshed, we left the café just as our front group charged through the village and swung away up the hill. We were almost, almost, perfectly placed just to drop onto the back, but they were travelling just a little too fast and we would have needed to have left the café about 30 seconds earlier to tag on without a supreme effort.
Not to worry, we saddled up and followed as they made their way to the Quarry, at which point they picked the pace up and we wouldn’t see them again until we made the café .
The three of us pushed on anyway, and arrived just behind the front group to join the back of a ridiculously long queue that stretched w-a-a-a-y back.
Main Topics of Conversation – Coffee Stop#2
“Bloody hell! I thought you had a full head of hair under that helmet,” Crazy Legs couldn’t help exclaiming, as we tagged onto the back of the queue, just behind the Ticker, sans helmet. Smooth.
Meanwhile Sneaky Pete carefully assessed the length of the queue, carefully assessed the likely delay and issues he’d cause by being devoted technocrat, right on the cutting-edge of digital payment systems and wielding Apple Pay with confidence and impunity. He then, wisely decided he’d rather head for home than challenge the antiquated, antediluvian staff and their convoluted and tortuous till system. So, he sneaked away.
Oh mi corazón!For reasons unknown, Crazy Legs started singing the Clash song, Spanish Bombs, before declaring the ride had done him a world of good and helped him clear his chest. “I’ve howked up a right load of crap,” he declared happily.
I commended him, not so much on the therapeutic benefits of the ride, but on his use of a good Geordie word I haven’t heard for years. Howk – a wonderfully onomatopoeic word, suggesting something that’s physically clawed out and expelled violently – most often used in the context of brutal and fierce expectoration.
We finally got served and seated, although not without a few problems with Crazy Legs’ own digital wallet, which needed several attempts to work and proved Sneaky Pete, as well as being an early-adopter, was both prescient and perspicacious.
These travails with digital payments also sadly revealed that we were in a wi-fi black spot, so Crazy Legs couldn’t share the video of creepy, distasteful and oleaginous MP, Michael Gove slipping and falling on his arse in Downing Street.
It seemed I then only had time to briefly rib the Garrulous Kid for asking what was happening next Fursday, before we were collecting our kit and heading out again.
A decent pace was set for the run home and I found myself on the front as the majority peeled-off left. I accelerated and pushed straight on, into the Mad Mile, expecting at any minute to be passed by a flying G-Dawg and Colossus, racing to be first home and into the shower. But, somehow, I reached my turn-off still leading the group and swung away for home.
Hmm, perhaps the 10-mile less than normal I’d covered on the day, the relatively modest pace, or lack of full-blooded cafe sprint, made all the difference and meant I was fresher than usual and able to hold off any challenges from those behind?
Or, more likely, G-Dawg and the Colossus had already negotiated first use of the shower via a complex, rock-paper-scissors style-challenge and were just cruising home now on autopilot. We’ll never know.
Like my run in, my return was delayed at the level crossing, this time by a train running the opposite way, from Hexham to Blaydon. Still, I was in no hurry, the weather was fine, I felt pretty decent and, like Crazy Legs, I think the run out had actually helped with the chest infection.
That means next week it’s back to the full distance, full-blooded cafe sprint and being ritually expelled, or even howked, from the back of the group at the end of the Mad Mile.
Unless, of course, someone suggests a Flat White Ride…
Anyone?
YTD Totals: 6,787 km / 4,217 miles with 83,107 metres of climbing
Total Distance: 110 km / 68 miles with 1,174 metres of climbing
Ride Time: 4 hours 40 minutes
Average Speed: 23.6 km/h
Group size: 26
Temperature: 12°C
Weather in a word or two: Not bad at all
Ride Profile
First off, my apologies if, in my incessant babbling last week, I wrote off your cycling club and it’s still going strong. This was prompted by a blerg comment I received, suggesting the members of the Tyne Road Club would be very surprised to learn of their apparent demise.
In my own paltry defence, I will say that they must be operating in a particularly clandestine manner, or at least one that easily thwarted my (admittedly amateurish) research capabilities: the club no longer appear to be registered with British Cycling and their web domain registration has expired.
I did subsequently find a Strava group for the club, but this had the same link to the lapsed website and was only showing a single, solitary member. Still, I’m very happy to be proven wrong and do hope the club continues.
The one benefit of my research activities was stumbling across this film of the 1960 Dunston C.C. road race. (I think I’m safe in asserting that this club, is no more.)
Meanwhile discussions between Toshi San and OGL revealed that VC Electric were composed of electricians from the Swan-Hunter shipyards. Since the once mighty Swan-Hunter closed a long time ago, I think VC Electric are another club we can safely consign to the past.
Anyway, back to the present … A lone seagull, circling high over the house marked the start of my ride with a series of plaintive, mournful cries. I’ve no idea why it was so sad, it was a bright, breezy, not too cold day. A large band of heavy rain had passed over us through the night, but now the skies were clearing and it would be a dry throughout. Not bad. Not bad at all.
My trip across the river to the meeting point was wholly unremarkable and I arrived to find G-Dawg, the Hammer and the Colossus already there and waiting.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
That film of that 1960’s road race did spark some lively debate about the two front pockets that used to adorn all cycling jersey’s and just what purpose they could possibly serve. Too shallow for spares, or tools, too precarious for money, or valuables, I felt they were perhaps ideally sized to carry a pack of fags, or maybe they were designed for more refined times and specifically for a gentleman’s, freshly pressed, linen handkerchief or pocket square.
OGL was the only one of us who could remember owning a jersey with front pockets, which he suggested were simply there to catch the wind, like twin drogue parachutes. Like us, he had no earthly idea of their actual purpose and could recall getting his mum to sew a couple of press-studs on, to try and keep them from gaping, like a slack-jawed village idiot.
The Garrulous Kid started telling us about his “posse” of “friends” and their university choices and I wondered where he ranked in the group pecking order, was he the Alpha Male or Beta? Perhaps he was even his own man and a newly-minted Zeta?
Talk of his peer group prompted Plumose Pappus to muse what collective noun we might best apply. A “chatter” I suggested. He countered with a “chaos” which seemed altogether more appropriate.
It was time for route announcements, with Richard of Flanders bounding up onto the wall and, somewhat astonishingly, priming the crowd with his opening declaration, “Hello! For those that don’t know me, I’m Richard and this … is your route for the day …”
With numbers requiring a split into two groups, he then broke standard etiquette, by declaring he would be leading the front group and hustled off before anyone could object.
In the second group, OGL wanted a more organised rotation, with no one doing more than 3 miles on the front, before ceding their position and dropping all the way to the back. No one had any real objections, so off we set, with this rather novel restriction in mind.
I found myself riding along beside Ovis, out on his fixie because he’s not happy with the cantilever brakes on his winter bike. He’s dropped it in to his LBS for a service and to see if they could find a way of increasing braking power. I suggested better brake blocks could be helpful.
“Oh, I have to admit the last pair I bought were cheap as chips,” he conceded ruefully, “and for all the effect they were having, I might as well have been using chips.”
After three miles, Taffy Steve and Crazy Legs dutifully swung off the front, accompanied with loud cries of “get thee behind me!” and “go on, all the way to the back now.”
Spoons and Goose took over and we pressed onward. Out through Ponteland and up Limestone Lane, until it was our turn and I moved onto the front with Ovis, as, with perfect timing, my Garmin ticked over to 23 miles.
“That must be three miles done already, ” Ovis suggested hopefully a few moments later.
“Close, but that’s actually only about 0.2 of a mile. But don’t worry, we’re about to a hit a nice, smooth patch of tarmac.”
And we did, to a noticeable, collective, dare I say, almost orgasmic sigh from those behind.
Ovis considered calling for a pee stop, but wavered as he couldn’t remember the right gate and he recalled the Gategate incident, when all sorts of trouble accrued to those who dared to worship and … ahem, “spend their tribute” at the wrong gate. Much better to ride with the discomfort of a full bladder and treat it as a sort of humble debasement, a sign of true dedication.
A little further on a cluster of cyclists could be seen at the side of the road. “Perhaps,” I mused, “they’re at the right gate and they’re pilgrims paying homage to that most holy of cyclist sites?”
But no, it was just our front group, stopped and pulled up at the side of the road with what looked like another front wheel puncture for G-Dawg.
I doffed an imaginary cap and we pressed on. After exactly three miles, I had us swing over and the next pair took to the front as we drifted all the way to the back. In this way the ride progressed, sensibly, orderly, organised, equitable, overly fussy and, according to Crazy Legs, ultimately boring.
A bit further on and we had to stop for our own puncture, as Spoons rear tyre was slowly softening. He set to work changing the tube and then starting to re-seat the tyre, lining up three tyre levers to help him. Even without Crazy Legs’s magic thumb, I thought it was worth trying to push the tyre on manually and with a bit of grunting, gurning and groaning I managed to roll it back onto the rim. It was only at this point that I realised I’d been wrestling with a Schwalbe Marathon, tyres that are notoriously difficult to fit. I have to admit I was quite smugly pleased with myself.
As Spoons began inflating his tyre, Goose fished a snack-sized Malt Loaf out and devoured it in three bites. Ovis snorted in derision, then drawled, “That’s not a malt loaf, this is a malt loaf,” reaching back and pulling out his usual, family-sized, malt loaf brick out of a jersey pocket.
In between bites, he explained how he’d completed the Fred Whitton Challenge fuelled purely on malt loaf, with two stashed in his jersey pockets and a third, for emergencies, strapped to his top tube.
“Only trouble was, I was a bit sick of it by the time I got to the last feed-station. You know what they were serving there? Bleedin’ malt loaf!”
I was fully expecting our front group to catch us while we were tyre wrangling and talking nonsense, but there was no sign of them. I later learned we’d deviated slightly from the planned route. (Shh! Don’t tell Richard.)
Underway again, Biden Fecht was struggling to hold the wheels and obviously in the throes of a major jour sans. We nursed him along to the Quarry, where he joined those making a quick strike for the café, while the rest of us went plummeting down the Ryals.
It must have been on the cusp of the 11th hour, of the … wait, what? 10th day? … when we shot past a small group observing a (surely premature) minutes silence at the war memorial at the bottom of the hill. Hopefully we didn’t disturb them too much.
The planned route was for us to climb back up through Hallington, but we took the longer, less hilly loop around the reservoir instead – Taffy Steve’s preferred option, even on his svelte summer bike and given even greater appeal now he was astride the thrice-cursed winter bike.
Half way around and Spoons was calling a stop to sort out his leaky, rapidly softening tyre, going for a few blasts of his pump rather than a full tube change. He set out for the café, pushing well ahead of everyone in a desperate race against time, hoping to make it before having to stop and force more air into the troublesome tube.
We followed, accelerating toward coffee and losing Ovis on the short, but savage Brandy Well Bank, that could legitimately bear a warning sign declaring “death to all fixies.”
Speed was up and we were humming along now, with Taffy Steve pulling on the front and rapidly closing in on Spoons, as we hit the stretch down to the Snake Bends. I pushed through, as we caught and dropped our front runner, rattling along on what I suspect was an uncomfortably flaccid tyre. Then Taffy Steve went blasting past with Crazy Legs on his wheel and the pair opened up a gap as they duked it out for the final sprint.
Punctures and stops had us arriving at the cafe way behind our usual time and, while the other groups were already indulging in refills and thinking about leaving, we were just sitting down.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
Enthusiasm for the rugby international was somewhat dampened by realisation that the game would only be live on Sky, a company and service all right-thinking people should morally object to giving money to, regardless of your thoughts on their cycling team.
Crazy Legs questioned just how smart Sky were though, as he knew of at least one family sharing their Multiroom package between a house in Tyneside and a flat in East Finchley.
“You could always argue you’ve just got a very big house,” I decided.
“And the Multiroom subscription was just for the west wing,” the Colossus added.
Talk of big houses reminded OGL he’d once been asked to deliver a boatload of expensive Pinarello gear to a certain chubby, charmless, money-grubbing, shifty-grifter, Sir Alan Sugar. Mrs. OGL had been suspicious of the order, so OGL had Googled the address to reveal a palatial, sprawling monstrosity of a house, that convinced him this was no scam.
This reminded Crazy Legs of a tale he’d heard about a fellow cyclist who’d hauled himself to the top of an Alpine climb to find Sir Alan Sugar, complete with personalised Pinarello, camped outside a cafe, sipping an espresso.
“I know you!” the cyclist had declared, seemingly much to Lord Sugar’s initial delight, until the cyclist pointed a finger and declared, “You’re fired!”
“Oh, fuck off!” Lord Sugar had allegedly replied, with remarkable wit and sagacity, before throwing a leg over his bike and quickly riding off.
The Garrulous Kid dropped by wondering if he’d done enough to deserve a prize at the club’s annual dinner and awards ceremony.
“What would you like a prize for,” G-Dawg queried, “The shortest club ride, ever?”
“How about finishing a ride without falling over?” I suggested, “Oh, wait …”
But the Garrulous Kid had already flitted to the next topic, declaring he had a great idea for improving the club run: free rides. I’m not sure what he was getting at, we don’t pay anyway.
As everyone seemed to be packing up to leave, Big Dunc finally arrived at the cafe, having been riding with our group, but suffering an unremarked puncture on the run in. I persuaded Crazy Legs to join me in a coffee refill (to be honest, it wasn’t difficult) and we stayed behind to keep Big Dunc company, as everyone else left for the run home.
The three of us finally left the cafe and started to head back. I was riding on the front chatting with Crazy Legs, until he turned round and we finally noticed our trio had become a duo.
We back-tracked to find Big Dunc stopped by another puncture. We hustled into the entrance to a farm track and started to replace the tube. The tyre proved to be a complete and utter bastard to get off the rim, with tyre levers pinging everywhere, skinned knuckles, a lot of polite swearing and everyone trying and failing horribly.
Finally, we managed to drag the tyre off, pulled the tube out and replaced it. If we thought getting the tyre off was difficult, getting it back on was to be even more of an ordeal. Rolling it didn’t work, levering it didn’t work and in this instance, even the Crazy Legs magic thumb failed us.
All the while we were entertained by a postman driving his van in and out of farm entrances as if he was auditioning for the Fast & Furious 10 (Ogle Burn Up) and Crazy Legs started judging the steady stream of passing cyclists by how sincerely they enquired if they could assist us in any way.
Meanwhile, I wondered how Big Dunc had managed on his own, when he’d punctured on the run into the café? Truth be told he didn’t know – I suspect a supernatural burst of adrenaline, similar to the phenomena that lets desperate mothers lift cars off their run-over children.
My new found confidence in being able to handle difficult tyres following success with the Schwalbe Marathon’s, quickly evaporated, defeated by an unholy alliance of Continental Grand Prix tyres and Shimano rims.
Finally, with all hands to the pump and injudicious application of tyre levers, gloved hands, grunting, straining and swearing, the tyre grudgingly snapped over the rim. Unfortunately we could see numerous places where it had trapped the tube under the bead and it would be impossible to inflate.
Working the tyre vigorously from side to side for five minutes, we thought we’d finally released the tube, screwed a pump onto the valve and I gave it a dozen or so good blows.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Either my pump was refusing to work, or, much more likely we’d damaged the tube with all our industrial manhandling.
Unable to face another round of tyre wrangling, Crazy Legs volunteered to ride home, get his car and come and pick Big Dunc up. We agreed the plan and I handed over a spare tube in case Big Dunc’s superhuman strength and mystical tyre changing abilities suddenly reasserted themselves. Then we left him, vowing to replace his tyres with something that was a little more forgiving and easier to fit.
Pushing along with Crazy Legs and discussing year end distance totals, he recalled last year being stuck on 3,973 miles at Christmas and having to spend an hour or so on the turbo, just to round things up to an even 4,000.
This compulsion was something he’d previously tried to explain to an uncomprehending Taffy Steve and me, when he was horrified to learn we track our Garmin numbers in both miles and kilometres and therefore would have the impossibility of two numbers to round-up.
“I’ve probably topped 4,000 miles sometime this week,” I told him.
“Bloody hell, 4,000 miles in a week? That’s impressive.”
Funny man.
As we approached Kirkley Hall, about 45 minutes behind our usual schedule, Crazy Legs proved we’ve been riding together too long, by rightly guessing I was planning to turn right to shave a mile or two off my route home. Or, maybe he was trying to prompt me to go that way, because as soon as I confirmed it, he started grinning.
“Good,” he said, “Then I can ride the rest of the way at a more comfortable pace.”
“But, I’m only riding at this speed to keep up with you!” I insisted.
We fell into an uneasy silence, until we approached the junction.
“Right. Bye.”
“Bye. I’ll see you next week.”
“Next week.”
Next week, when we’ll probably continue to ride together at a pace just a little too fast for either of us to be truly comfortable, but we’ll both be to stubborn and conceited to admit it, or back down …
YTD Totals: 6,584 km / 4,091 miles with 80,581 metres of climbing
Club Run, Saturday 10th November, 2018
My Ride (according to Strava)
Total Distance: 110 km / 68 miles with 1,174 metres of climbing
Ride Time: 4 hours 40 minutes
Average Speed: 23.6 km/h
Group size: 26
Temperature: 12°C
Weather in a word or two: Not bad at all
Ride Profile
First off, my apologies if, in my incessant babbling last week, I wrote off your cycling club and it’s still going strong. This was prompted by a blerg comment I received, suggesting the members of the Tyne Road Club would be very surprised to learn of their apparent demise.
In my own paltry defence, I will say that they must be operating in a particularly clandestine manner, or at least one that easily thwarted my (admittedly amateurish) research capabilities: the club no longer appear to be registered with British Cycling and their web domain registration has expired.
I did subsequently find a Strava group for the club, but this had the same link to the lapsed website and was only showing a single, solitary member. Still, I’m very happy to be proven wrong and do hope the club continues.
The one benefit of my research activities was stumbling across this film of the 1960 Dunston C.C. road race. (I think I’m safe in asserting that this club, is no more.)
Meanwhile discussions between Toshi San and OGL revealed that VC Electric were composed of electricians from the Swan-Hunter shipyards. Since the once mighty Swan-Hunter closed a long time ago, I think VC Electric are another club we can safely consign to the past.
Anyway, back to the present … A lone seagull, circling high over the house marked the start of my ride with a series of plaintive, mournful cries. I’ve no idea why it was so sad, it was a bright, breezy, not too cold day. A large band of heavy rain had passed over us through the night, but now the skies were clearing and it would be a dry throughout. Not bad. Not bad at all.
My trip across the river to the meeting point was wholly unremarkable and I arrived to find G-Dawg, the Hammer and the Colossus already there and waiting.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
That film of that 1960’s road race did spark some lively debate about the two front pockets that used to adorn all cycling jersey’s and just what purpose they could possibly serve. Too shallow for spares, or tools, too precarious for money, or valuables, I felt they were perhaps ideally sized to carry a pack of fags, or maybe they were designed for more refined times and specifically for a gentleman’s, freshly pressed, linen handkerchief or pocket square.
OGL was the only one of us who could remember owning a jersey with front pockets, which he suggested were simply there to catch the wind, like twin drogue parachutes. Like us, he had no earthly idea of their actual purpose and could recall getting his mum to sew a couple of press-studs on, to try and keep them from gaping, like a slack-jawed village idiot.
The Garrulous Kid started telling us about his “posse” of “friends” and their university choices and I wondered where he ranked in the group pecking order, was he the Alpha Male or Beta? Perhaps he was even his own man and a newly-minted Zeta?
Talk of his peer group prompted Plumose Pappus to muse what collective noun we might best apply. A “chatter” I suggested. He countered with a “chaos” which seemed altogether more appropriate.
It was time for route announcements, with Richard of Flanders bounding up onto the wall and, somewhat astonishingly, priming the crowd with his opening declaration, “Hello! For those that don’t know me, I’m Richard and this … is your route for the day …”
With numbers requiring a split into two groups, he then broke standard etiquette, by declaring he would be leading the front group and hustled off before anyone could object.
In the second group, OGL wanted a more organised rotation, with no one doing more than 3 miles on the front, before ceding their position and dropping all the way to the back. No one had any real objections, so off we set, with this rather novel restriction in mind.
I found myself riding along beside Ovis, out on his fixie because he’s not happy with the cantilever brakes on his winter bike. He’s dropped it in to his LBS for a service and to see if they could find a way of increasing braking power. I suggested better brake blocks could be helpful.
“Oh, I have to admit the last pair I bought were cheap as chips,” he conceded ruefully, “and for all the effect they were having, I might as well have been using chips.”
After three miles, Taffy Steve and Crazy Legs dutifully swung off the front, accompanied with loud cries of “get thee behind me!” and “go on, all the way to the back now.”
Spoons and Goose took over and we pressed onward. Out through Ponteland and up Limestone Lane, until it was our turn and I moved onto the front with Ovis, as, with perfect timing, my Garmin ticked over to 23 miles.
“That must be three miles done already, ” Ovis suggested hopefully a few moments later.
“Close, but that’s actually only about 0.2 of a mile. But don’t worry, we’re about to a hit a nice, smooth patch of tarmac.”
And we did, to a noticeable, collective, dare I say, almost orgasmic sigh from those behind.
Ovis considered calling for a pee stop, but wavered as he couldn’t remember the right gate and he recalled the Gategate incident, when all sorts of trouble accrued to those who dared to worship and … ahem, “spend their tribute” at the wrong gate. Much better to ride with the discomfort of a full bladder and treat it as a sort of humble debasement, a sign of true dedication.
A little further on a cluster of cyclists could be seen at the side of the road. “Perhaps,” I mused, “they’re at the right gate and they’re pilgrims paying homage to that most holy of cyclist sites?”
But no, it was just our front group, stopped and pulled up at the side of the road with what looked like another front wheel puncture for G-Dawg.
I doffed an imaginary cap and we pressed on. After exactly three miles, I had us swing over and the next pair took to the front as we drifted all the way to the back. In this way the ride progressed, sensibly, orderly, organised, equitable, overly fussy and, according to Crazy Legs, ultimately boring.
A bit further on and we had to stop for our own puncture, as Spoons rear tyre was slowly softening. He set to work changing the tube and then starting to re-seat the tyre, lining up three tyre levers to help him. Even without Crazy Legs’s magic thumb, I thought it was worth trying to push the tyre on manually and with a bit of grunting, gurning and groaning I managed to roll it back onto the rim. It was only at this point that I realised I’d been wrestling with a Schwalbe Marathon, tyres that are notoriously difficult to fit. I have to admit I was quite smugly pleased with myself.
As Spoons began inflating his tyre, Goose fished a snack-sized Malt Loaf out and devoured it in three bites. Ovis snorted in derision, then drawled, “That’s not a malt loaf, this is a malt loaf,” reaching back and pulling out his usual, family-sized, malt loaf brick out of a jersey pocket.
In between bites, he explained how he’d completed the Fred Whitton Challenge fuelled purely on malt loaf, with two stashed in his jersey pockets and a third, for emergencies, strapped to his top tube.
“Only trouble was, I was a bit sick of it by the time I got to the last feed-station. You know what they were serving there? Bleedin’ malt loaf!”
I was fully expecting our front group to catch us while we were tyre wrangling and talking nonsense, but there was no sign of them. I later learned we’d deviated slightly from the planned route. (Shh! Don’t tell Richard.)
Underway again, Biden Fecht was struggling to hold the wheels and obviously in the throes of a major jour sans. We nursed him along to the Quarry, where he joined those making a quick strike for the café, while the rest of us went plummeting down the Ryals.
It must have been on the cusp of the 11th hour, of the … wait, what? 10th day? … when we shot past a small group observing a (surely premature) minutes silence at the war memorial at the bottom of the hill. Hopefully we didn’t disturb them too much.
The planned route was for us to climb back up through Hallington, but we took the longer, less hilly loop around the reservoir instead – Taffy Steve’s preferred option, even on his svelte summer bike and given even greater appeal now he was astride the thrice-cursed winter bike.
Half way around and Spoons was calling a stop to sort out his leaky, rapidly softening tyre, going for a few blasts of his pump rather than a full tube change. He set out for the café, pushing well ahead of everyone in a desperate race against time, hoping to make it before having to stop and force more air into the troublesome tube.
We followed, accelerating toward coffee and losing Ovis on the short, but savage Brandy Well Bank, that could legitimately bear a warning sign declaring “death to all fixies.”
Speed was up and we were humming along now, with Taffy Steve pulling on the front and rapidly closing in on Spoons, as we hit the stretch down to the Snake Bends. I pushed through, as we caught and dropped our front runner, rattling along on what I suspect was an uncomfortably flaccid tyre. Then Taffy Steve went blasting past with Crazy Legs on his wheel and the pair opened up a gap as they duked it out for the final sprint.
Punctures and stops had us arriving at the cafe way behind our usual time and, while the other groups were already indulging in refills and thinking about leaving, we were just sitting down.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
Enthusiasm for the rugby international was somewhat dampened by realisation that the game would only be live on Sky, a company and service all right-thinking people should morally object to giving money to, regardless of your thoughts on their cycling team.
Crazy Legs questioned just how smart Sky were though, as he knew of at least one family sharing their Multiroom package between a house in Tyneside and a flat in East Finchley.
“You could always argue you’ve just got a very big house,” I decided.
“And the Multiroom subscription was just for the west wing,” the Colossus added.
Talk of big houses reminded OGL he’d once been asked to deliver a boatload of expensive Pinarello gear to a certain chubby, charmless, money-grubbing, shifty-grifter, Sir Alan Sugar. Mrs. OGL had been suspicious of the order, so OGL had Googled the address to reveal a palatial, sprawling monstrosity of a house, that convinced him this was no scam.
This reminded Crazy Legs of a tale he’d heard about a fellow cyclist who’d hauled himself to the top of an Alpine climb to find Sir Alan Sugar, complete with personalised Pinarello, camped outside a cafe, sipping an espresso.
“I know you!” the cyclist had declared, seemingly much to Lord Sugar’s initial delight, until the cyclist pointed a finger and declared, “You’re fired!”
“Oh, fuck off!” Lord Sugar had allegedly replied, with remarkable wit and sagacity, before throwing a leg over his bike and quickly riding off.
The Garrulous Kid dropped by wondering if he’d done enough to deserve a prize at the club’s annual dinner and awards ceremony.
“What would you like a prize for,” G-Dawg queried, “The shortest club ride, ever?”
“How about finishing a ride without falling over?” I suggested, “Oh, wait …”
But the Garrulous Kid had already flitted to the next topic, declaring he had a great idea for improving the club run: free rides. I’m not sure what he was getting at, we don’t pay anyway.
As everyone seemed to be packing up to leave, Big Dunc finally arrived at the cafe, having been riding with our group, but suffering an unremarked puncture on the run in. I persuaded Crazy Legs to join me in a coffee refill (to be honest, it wasn’t difficult) and we stayed behind to keep Big Dunc company, as everyone else left for the run home.
The three of us finally left the cafe and started to head back. I was riding on the front chatting with Crazy Legs, until he turned round and we finally noticed our trio had become a duo.
We back-tracked to find Big Dunc stopped by another puncture. We hustled into the entrance to a farm track and started to replace the tube. The tyre proved to be a complete and utter bastard to get off the rim, with tyre levers pinging everywhere, skinned knuckles, a lot of polite swearing and everyone trying and failing horribly.
Finally, we managed to drag the tyre off, pulled the tube out and replaced it. If we thought getting the tyre off was difficult, getting it back on was to be even more of an ordeal. Rolling it didn’t work, levering it didn’t work and in this instance, even the Crazy Legs magic thumb failed us.
All the while we were entertained by a postman driving his van in and out of farm entrances as if he was auditioning for the Fast & Furious 10 (Ogle Burn Up) and Crazy Legs started judging the steady stream of passing cyclists by how sincerely they enquired if they could assist us in any way.
Meanwhile, I wondered how Big Dunc had managed on his own, when he’d punctured on the run into the café? Truth be told he didn’t know – I suspect a supernatural burst of adrenaline, similar to the phenomena that lets desperate mothers lift cars off their run-over children.
My new found confidence in being able to handle difficult tyres following success with the Schwalbe Marathon’s, quickly evaporated, defeated by an unholy alliance of Continental Grand Prix tyres and Shimano rims.
Finally, with all hands to the pump and injudicious application of tyre levers, gloved hands, grunting, straining and swearing, the tyre grudgingly snapped over the rim. Unfortunately we could see numerous places where it had trapped the tube under the bead and it would be impossible to inflate.
Working the tyre vigorously from side to side for five minutes, we thought we’d finally released the tube, screwed a pump onto the valve and I gave it a dozen or so good blows.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Either my pump was refusing to work, or, much more likely we’d damaged the tube with all our industrial manhandling.
Unable to face another round of tyre wrangling, Crazy Legs volunteered to ride home, get his car and come and pick Big Dunc up. We agreed the plan and I handed over a spare tube in case Big Dunc’s superhuman strength and mystical tyre changing abilities suddenly reasserted themselves. Then we left him, vowing to replace his tyres with something that was a little more forgiving and easier to fit.
Pushing along with Crazy Legs and discussing year end distance totals, he recalled last year being stuck on 3,973 miles at Christmas and having to spend an hour or so on the turbo, just to round things up to an even 4,000.
This compulsion was something he’d previously tried to explain to an uncomprehending Taffy Steve and me, when he was horrified to learn we track our Garmin numbers in both miles and kilometres and therefore would have the impossibility of two numbers to round-up.
“I’ve probably topped 4,000 miles sometime this week,” I told him.
“Bloody hell, 4,000 miles in a week? That’s impressive.”
Funny man.
As we approached Kirkley Hall, about 45 minutes behind our usual schedule, Crazy Legs proved we’ve been riding together too long, by rightly guessing I was planning to turn right to shave a mile or two off my route home. Or, maybe he was trying to prompt me to go that way, because as soon as I confirmed it, he started grinning.
“Good,” he said, “Then I can ride the rest of the way at a more comfortable pace.”
“But, I’m only riding at this speed to keep up with you!” I insisted.
We fell into an uneasy silence, until we approached the junction.
“Right. Bye.”
“Bye. I’ll see you next week.”
“Next week.”
Next week, when we’ll probably continue to ride together at a pace just a little too fast for either of us to be truly comfortable, but we’ll both be to stubborn and conceited to admit it, or back down …
YTD Totals: 6,584 km / 4,091 miles with 80,581 metres of climbing
Club Run, Saturday 10th November, 2018
My Ride (according to Strava)
Total Distance: 110 km / 68 miles with 1,174 metres of climbing
Ride Time: 4 hours 40 minutes
Average Speed: 23.6 km/h
Group size: 26
Temperature: 12°C
Weather in a word or two: Not bad at all
Ride Profile
First off, my apologies if, in my incessant babbling last week, I wrote off your cycling club and it’s still going strong. This was prompted by a blerg comment I received, suggesting the members of the Tyne Road Club would be very surprised to learn of their apparent demise.
In my own paltry defence, I will say that they must be operating in a particularly clandestine manner, or at least one that easily thwarted my (admittedly amateurish) research capabilities: the club no longer appear to be registered with British Cycling and their web domain registration has expired.
I did subsequently find a Strava group for the club, but this had the same link to the lapsed website and was only showing a single, solitary member. Still, I’m very happy to be proven wrong and do hope the club continues.
The one benefit of my research activities was stumbling across this film of the 1960 Dunston C.C. road race. (I think I’m safe in asserting that this club, is no more.)
Meanwhile discussions between Toshi San and OGL revealed that VC Electric were composed of electricians from the Swan-Hunter shipyards. Since the once mighty Swan-Hunter closed a long time ago, I think VC Electric are another club we can safely consign to the past.
Anyway, back to the present … A lone seagull, circling high over the house marked the start of my ride with a series of plaintive, mournful cries. I’ve no idea why it was so sad, it was a bright, breezy, not too cold day. A large band of heavy rain had passed over us through the night, but now the skies were clearing and it would be a dry throughout. Not bad. Not bad at all.
My trip across the river to the meeting point was wholly unremarkable and I arrived to find G-Dawg, the Hammer and the Colossus already there and waiting.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
That film of that 1960’s road race did spark some lively debate about the two front pockets that used to adorn all cycling jersey’s and just what purpose they could possibly serve. Too shallow for spares, or tools, too precarious for money, or valuables, I felt they were perhaps ideally sized to carry a pack of fags, or maybe they were designed for more refined times and specifically for a gentleman’s, freshly pressed, linen handkerchief or pocket square.
OGL was the only one of us who could remember owning a jersey with front pockets, which he suggested were simply there to catch the wind, like twin drogue parachutes. Like us, he had no earthly idea of their actual purpose and could recall getting his mum to sew a couple of press-studs on, to try and keep them from gaping, like a slack-jawed village idiot.
The Garrulous Kid started telling us about his “posse” of “friends” and their university choices and I wondered where he ranked in the group pecking order, was he the Alpha Male or Beta? Perhaps he was even his own man and a newly-minted Zeta?
Talk of his peer group prompted Plumose Pappus to muse what collective noun we might best apply. A “chatter” I suggested. He countered with a “chaos” which seemed altogether more appropriate.
It was time for route announcements, with Richard of Flanders bounding up onto the wall and, somewhat astonishingly, priming the crowd with his opening declaration, “Hello! For those that don’t know me, I’m Richard and this … is your route for the day …”
With numbers requiring a split into two groups, he then broke standard etiquette, by declaring he would be leading the front group and hustled off before anyone could object.
In the second group, OGL wanted a more organised rotation, with no one doing more than 3 miles on the front, before ceding their position and dropping all the way to the back. No one had any real objections, so off we set, with this rather novel restriction in mind.
I found myself riding along beside Ovis, out on his fixie because he’s not happy with the cantilever brakes on his winter bike. He’s dropped it in to his LBS for a service and to see if they could find a way of increasing braking power. I suggested better brake blocks could be helpful.
“Oh, I have to admit the last pair I bought were cheap as chips,” he conceded ruefully, “and for all the effect they were having, I might as well have been using chips.”
After three miles, Taffy Steve and Crazy Legs dutifully swung off the front, accompanied with loud cries of “get thee behind me!” and “go on, all the way to the back now.”
Spoons and Goose took over and we pressed onward. Out through Ponteland and up Limestone Lane, until it was our turn and I moved onto the front with Ovis, as, with perfect timing, my Garmin ticked over to 23 miles.
“That must be three miles done already, ” Ovis suggested hopefully a few moments later.
“Close, but that’s actually only about 0.2 of a mile. But don’t worry, we’re about to a hit a nice, smooth patch of tarmac.”
And we did, to a noticeable, collective, dare I say, almost orgasmic sigh from those behind.
Ovis considered calling for a pee stop, but wavered as he couldn’t remember the right gate and he recalled the Gategate incident, when all sorts of trouble accrued to those who dared to worship and … ahem, “spend their tribute” at the wrong gate. Much better to ride with the discomfort of a full bladder and treat it as a sort of humble debasement, a sign of true dedication.
A little further on a cluster of cyclists could be seen at the side of the road. “Perhaps,” I mused, “they’re at the right gate and they’re pilgrims paying homage to that most holy of cyclist sites?”
But no, it was just our front group, stopped and pulled up at the side of the road with what looked like another front wheel puncture for G-Dawg.
I doffed an imaginary cap and we pressed on. After exactly three miles, I had us swing over and the next pair took to the front as we drifted all the way to the back. In this way the ride progressed, sensibly, orderly, organised, equitable, overly fussy and, according to Crazy Legs, ultimately boring.
A bit further on and we had to stop for our own puncture, as Spoons rear tyre was slowly softening. He set to work changing the tube and then starting to re-seat the tyre, lining up three tyre levers to help him. Even without Crazy Legs’s magic thumb, I thought it was worth trying to push the tyre on manually and with a bit of grunting, gurning and groaning I managed to roll it back onto the rim. It was only at this point that I realised I’d been wrestling with a Schwalbe Marathon, tyres that are notoriously difficult to fit. I have to admit I was quite smugly pleased with myself.
As Spoons began inflating his tyre, Goose fished a snack-sized Malt Loaf out and devoured it in three bites. Ovis snorted in derision, then drawled, “That’s not a malt loaf, this is a malt loaf,” reaching back and pulling out his usual, family-sized, malt loaf brick out of a jersey pocket.
In between bites, he explained how he’d completed the Fred Whitton Challenge fuelled purely on malt loaf, with two stashed in his jersey pockets and a third, for emergencies, strapped to his top tube.
“Only trouble was, I was a bit sick of it by the time I got to the last feed-station. You know what they were serving there? Bleedin’ malt loaf!”
I was fully expecting our front group to catch us while we were tyre wrangling and talking nonsense, but there was no sign of them. I later learned we’d deviated slightly from the planned route. (Shh! Don’t tell Richard.)
Underway again, Biden Fecht was struggling to hold the wheels and obviously in the throes of a major jour sans. We nursed him along to the Quarry, where he joined those making a quick strike for the café, while the rest of us went plummeting down the Ryals.
It must have been on the cusp of the 11th hour, of the … wait, what? 10th day? … when we shot past a small group observing a (surely premature) minutes silence at the war memorial at the bottom of the hill. Hopefully we didn’t disturb them too much.
The planned route was for us to climb back up through Hallington, but we took the longer, less hilly loop around the reservoir instead – Taffy Steve’s preferred option, even on his svelte summer bike and given even greater appeal now he was astride the thrice-cursed winter bike.
Half way around and Spoons was calling a stop to sort out his leaky, rapidly softening tyre, going for a few blasts of his pump rather than a full tube change. He set out for the café, pushing well ahead of everyone in a desperate race against time, hoping to make it before having to stop and force more air into the troublesome tube.
We followed, accelerating toward coffee and losing Ovis on the short, but savage Brandy Well Bank, that could legitimately bear a warning sign declaring “death to all fixies.”
Speed was up and we were humming along now, with Taffy Steve pulling on the front and rapidly closing in on Spoons, as we hit the stretch down to the Snake Bends. I pushed through, as we caught and dropped our front runner, rattling along on what I suspect was an uncomfortably flaccid tyre. Then Taffy Steve went blasting past with Crazy Legs on his wheel and the pair opened up a gap as they duked it out for the final sprint.
Punctures and stops had us arriving at the cafe way behind our usual time and, while the other groups were already indulging in refills and thinking about leaving, we were just sitting down.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
Enthusiasm for the rugby international was somewhat dampened by realisation that the game would only be live on Sky, a company and service all right-thinking people should morally object to giving money to, regardless of your thoughts on their cycling team.
Crazy Legs questioned just how smart Sky were though, as he knew of at least one family sharing their Multiroom package between a house in Tyneside and a flat in East Finchley.
“You could always argue you’ve just got a very big house,” I decided.
“And the Multiroom subscription was just for the west wing,” the Colossus added.
Talk of big houses reminded OGL he’d once been asked to deliver a boatload of expensive Pinarello gear to a certain chubby, charmless, money-grubbing, shifty-grifter, Sir Alan Sugar. Mrs. OGL had been suspicious of the order, so OGL had Googled the address to reveal a palatial, sprawling monstrosity of a house, that convinced him this was no scam.
This reminded Crazy Legs of a tale he’d heard about a fellow cyclist who’d hauled himself to the top of an Alpine climb to find Sir Alan Sugar, complete with personalised Pinarello, camped outside a cafe, sipping an espresso.
“I know you!” the cyclist had declared, seemingly much to Lord Sugar’s initial delight, until the cyclist pointed a finger and declared, “You’re fired!”
“Oh, fuck off!” Lord Sugar had allegedly replied, with remarkable wit and sagacity, before throwing a leg over his bike and quickly riding off.
The Garrulous Kid dropped by wondering if he’d done enough to deserve a prize at the club’s annual dinner and awards ceremony.
“What would you like a prize for,” G-Dawg queried, “The shortest club ride, ever?”
“How about finishing a ride without falling over?” I suggested, “Oh, wait …”
But the Garrulous Kid had already flitted to the next topic, declaring he had a great idea for improving the club run: free rides. I’m not sure what he was getting at, we don’t pay anyway.
As everyone seemed to be packing up to leave, Big Dunc finally arrived at the cafe, having been riding with our group, but suffering an unremarked puncture on the run in. I persuaded Crazy Legs to join me in a coffee refill (to be honest, it wasn’t difficult) and we stayed behind to keep Big Dunc company, as everyone else left for the run home.
The three of us finally left the cafe and started to head back. I was riding on the front chatting with Crazy Legs, until he turned round and we finally noticed our trio had become a duo.
We back-tracked to find Big Dunc stopped by another puncture. We hustled into the entrance to a farm track and started to replace the tube. The tyre proved to be a complete and utter bastard to get off the rim, with tyre levers pinging everywhere, skinned knuckles, a lot of polite swearing and everyone trying and failing horribly.
Finally, we managed to drag the tyre off, pulled the tube out and replaced it. If we thought getting the tyre off was difficult, getting it back on was to be even more of an ordeal. Rolling it didn’t work, levering it didn’t work and in this instance, even the Crazy Legs magic thumb failed us.
All the while we were entertained by a postman driving his van in and out of farm entrances as if he was auditioning for the Fast & Furious 10 (Ogle Burn Up) and Crazy Legs started judging the steady stream of passing cyclists by how sincerely they enquired if they could assist us in any way.
Meanwhile, I wondered how Big Dunc had managed on his own, when he’d punctured on the run into the café? Truth be told he didn’t know – I suspect a supernatural burst of adrenaline, similar to the phenomena that lets desperate mothers lift cars off their run-over children.
My new found confidence in being able to handle difficult tyres following success with the Schwalbe Marathon’s, quickly evaporated, defeated by an unholy alliance of Continental Grand Prix tyres and Shimano rims.
Finally, with all hands to the pump and injudicious application of tyre levers, gloved hands, grunting, straining and swearing, the tyre grudgingly snapped over the rim. Unfortunately we could see numerous places where it had trapped the tube under the bead and it would be impossible to inflate.
Working the tyre vigorously from side to side for five minutes, we thought we’d finally released the tube, screwed a pump onto the valve and I gave it a dozen or so good blows.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Either my pump was refusing to work, or, much more likely we’d damaged the tube with all our industrial manhandling.
Unable to face another round of tyre wrangling, Crazy Legs volunteered to ride home, get his car and come and pick Big Dunc up. We agreed the plan and I handed over a spare tube in case Big Dunc’s superhuman strength and mystical tyre changing abilities suddenly reasserted themselves. Then we left him, vowing to replace his tyres with something that was a little more forgiving and easier to fit.
Pushing along with Crazy Legs and discussing year end distance totals, he recalled last year being stuck on 3,973 miles at Christmas and having to spend an hour or so on the turbo, just to round things up to an even 4,000.
This compulsion was something he’d previously tried to explain to an uncomprehending Taffy Steve and me, when he was horrified to learn we track our Garmin numbers in both miles and kilometres and therefore would have the impossibility of two numbers to round-up.
“I’ve probably topped 4,000 miles sometime this week,” I told him.
“Bloody hell, 4,000 miles in a week? That’s impressive.”
Funny man.
As we approached Kirkley Hall, about 45 minutes behind our usual schedule, Crazy Legs proved we’ve been riding together too long, by rightly guessing I was planning to turn right to shave a mile or two off my route home. Or, maybe he was trying to prompt me to go that way, because as soon as I confirmed it, he started grinning.
“Good,” he said, “Then I can ride the rest of the way at a more comfortable pace.”
“But, I’m only riding at this speed to keep up with you!” I insisted.
We fell into an uneasy silence, until we approached the junction.
“Right. Bye.”
“Bye. I’ll see you next week.”
“Next week.”
Next week, when we’ll probably continue to ride together at a pace just a little too fast for either of us to be truly comfortable, but we’ll both be to stubborn and conceited to admit it, or back down …
YTD Totals: 6,584 km / 4,091 miles with 80,581 metres of climbing
Club Run, Saturday 10th November, 2018
My Ride (according to Strava)
Total Distance: 110 km / 68 miles with 1,174 metres of climbing
Ride Time: 4 hours 40 minutes
Average Speed: 23.6 km/h
Group size: 26
Temperature: 12°C
Weather in a word or two: Not bad at all
Ride Profile
First off, my apologies if, in my incessant babbling last week, I wrote off your cycling club and it’s still going strong. This was prompted by a blerg comment I received, suggesting the members of the Tyne Road Club would be very surprised to learn of their apparent demise.
In my own paltry defence, I will say that they must be operating in a particularly clandestine manner, or at least one that easily thwarted my (admittedly amateurish) research capabilities: the club no longer appear to be registered with British Cycling and their web domain registration has expired.
I did subsequently find a Strava group for the club, but this had the same link to the lapsed website and was only showing a single, solitary member. Still, I’m very happy to be proven wrong and do hope the club continues.
The one benefit of my research activities was stumbling across this film of the 1960 Dunston C.C. road race. (I think I’m safe in asserting that this club, is no more.)
Meanwhile discussions between Toshi San and OGL revealed that VC Electric were composed of electricians from the Swan-Hunter shipyards. Since the once mighty Swan-Hunter closed a long time ago, I think VC Electric are another club we can safely consign to the past.
Anyway, back to the present … A lone seagull, circling high over the house marked the start of my ride with a series of plaintive, mournful cries. I’ve no idea why it was so sad, it was a bright, breezy, not too cold day. A large band of heavy rain had passed over us through the night, but now the skies were clearing and it would be a dry throughout. Not bad. Not bad at all.
My trip across the river to the meeting point was wholly unremarkable and I arrived to find G-Dawg, the Hammer and the Colossus already there and waiting.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
That film of that 1960’s road race did spark some lively debate about the two front pockets that used to adorn all cycling jersey’s and just what purpose they could possibly serve. Too shallow for spares, or tools, too precarious for money, or valuables, I felt they were perhaps ideally sized to carry a pack of fags, or maybe they were designed for more refined times and specifically for a gentleman’s, freshly pressed, linen handkerchief or pocket square.
OGL was the only one of us who could remember owning a jersey with front pockets, which he suggested were simply there to catch the wind, like twin drogue parachutes. Like us, he had no earthly idea of their actual purpose and could recall getting his mum to sew a couple of press-studs on, to try and keep them from gaping, like a slack-jawed village idiot.
The Garrulous Kid started telling us about his “posse” of “friends” and their university choices and I wondered where he ranked in the group pecking order, was he the Alpha Male or Beta? Perhaps he was even his own man and a newly-minted Zeta?
Talk of his peer group prompted Plumose Pappus to muse what collective noun we might best apply. A “chatter” I suggested. He countered with a “chaos” which seemed altogether more appropriate.
It was time for route announcements, with Richard of Flanders bounding up onto the wall and, somewhat astonishingly, priming the crowd with his opening declaration, “Hello! For those that don’t know me, I’m Richard and this … is your route for the day …”
With numbers requiring a split into two groups, he then broke standard etiquette, by declaring he would be leading the front group and hustled off before anyone could object.
In the second group, OGL wanted a more organised rotation, with no one doing more than 3 miles on the front, before ceding their position and dropping all the way to the back. No one had any real objections, so off we set, with this rather novel restriction in mind.
I found myself riding along beside Ovis, out on his fixie because he’s not happy with the cantilever brakes on his winter bike. He’s dropped it in to his LBS for a service and to see if they could find a way of increasing braking power. I suggested better brake blocks could be helpful.
“Oh, I have to admit the last pair I bought were cheap as chips,” he conceded ruefully, “and for all the effect they were having, I might as well have been using chips.”
After three miles, Taffy Steve and Crazy Legs dutifully swung off the front, accompanied with loud cries of “get thee behind me!” and “go on, all the way to the back now.”
Spoons and Goose took over and we pressed onward. Out through Ponteland and up Limestone Lane, until it was our turn and I moved onto the front with Ovis, as, with perfect timing, my Garmin ticked over to 23 miles.
“That must be three miles done already, ” Ovis suggested hopefully a few moments later.
“Close, but that’s actually only about 0.2 of a mile. But don’t worry, we’re about to a hit a nice, smooth patch of tarmac.”
And we did, to a noticeable, collective, dare I say, almost orgasmic sigh from those behind.
Ovis considered calling for a pee stop, but wavered as he couldn’t remember the right gate and he recalled the Gategate incident, when all sorts of trouble accrued to those who dared to worship and … ahem, “spend their tribute” at the wrong gate. Much better to ride with the discomfort of a full bladder and treat it as a sort of humble debasement, a sign of true dedication.
A little further on a cluster of cyclists could be seen at the side of the road. “Perhaps,” I mused, “they’re at the right gate and they’re pilgrims paying homage to that most holy of cyclist sites?”
But no, it was just our front group, stopped and pulled up at the side of the road with what looked like another front wheel puncture for G-Dawg.
I doffed an imaginary cap and we pressed on. After exactly three miles, I had us swing over and the next pair took to the front as we drifted all the way to the back. In this way the ride progressed, sensibly, orderly, organised, equitable, overly fussy and, according to Crazy Legs, ultimately boring.
A bit further on and we had to stop for our own puncture, as Spoons rear tyre was slowly softening. He set to work changing the tube and then starting to re-seat the tyre, lining up three tyre levers to help him. Even without Crazy Legs’s magic thumb, I thought it was worth trying to push the tyre on manually and with a bit of grunting, gurning and groaning I managed to roll it back onto the rim. It was only at this point that I realised I’d been wrestling with a Schwalbe Marathon, tyres that are notoriously difficult to fit. I have to admit I was quite smugly pleased with myself.
As Spoons began inflating his tyre, Goose fished a snack-sized Malt Loaf out and devoured it in three bites. Ovis snorted in derision, then drawled, “That’s not a malt loaf, this is a malt loaf,” reaching back and pulling out his usual, family-sized, malt loaf brick out of a jersey pocket.
In between bites, he explained how he’d completed the Fred Whitton Challenge fuelled purely on malt loaf, with two stashed in his jersey pockets and a third, for emergencies, strapped to his top tube.
“Only trouble was, I was a bit sick of it by the time I got to the last feed-station. You know what they were serving there? Bleedin’ malt loaf!”
I was fully expecting our front group to catch us while we were tyre wrangling and talking nonsense, but there was no sign of them. I later learned we’d deviated slightly from the planned route. (Shh! Don’t tell Richard.)
Underway again, Biden Fecht was struggling to hold the wheels and obviously in the throes of a major jour sans. We nursed him along to the Quarry, where he joined those making a quick strike for the café, while the rest of us went plummeting down the Ryals.
It must have been on the cusp of the 11th hour, of the … wait, what? 10th day? … when we shot past a small group observing a (surely premature) minutes silence at the war memorial at the bottom of the hill. Hopefully we didn’t disturb them too much.
The planned route was for us to climb back up through Hallington, but we took the longer, less hilly loop around the reservoir instead – Taffy Steve’s preferred option, even on his svelte summer bike and given even greater appeal now he was astride the thrice-cursed winter bike.
Half way around and Spoons was calling a stop to sort out his leaky, rapidly softening tyre, going for a few blasts of his pump rather than a full tube change. He set out for the café, pushing well ahead of everyone in a desperate race against time, hoping to make it before having to stop and force more air into the troublesome tube.
We followed, accelerating toward coffee and losing Ovis on the short, but savage Brandy Well Bank, that could legitimately bear a warning sign declaring “death to all fixies.”
Speed was up and we were humming along now, with Taffy Steve pulling on the front and rapidly closing in on Spoons, as we hit the stretch down to the Snake Bends. I pushed through, as we caught and dropped our front runner, rattling along on what I suspect was an uncomfortably flaccid tyre. Then Taffy Steve went blasting past with Crazy Legs on his wheel and the pair opened up a gap as they duked it out for the final sprint.
Punctures and stops had us arriving at the cafe way behind our usual time and, while the other groups were already indulging in refills and thinking about leaving, we were just sitting down.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
Enthusiasm for the rugby international was somewhat dampened by realisation that the game would only be live on Sky, a company and service all right-thinking people should morally object to giving money to, regardless of your thoughts on their cycling team.
Crazy Legs questioned just how smart Sky were though, as he knew of at least one family sharing their Multiroom package between a house in Tyneside and a flat in East Finchley.
“You could always argue you’ve just got a very big house,” I decided.
“And the Multiroom subscription was just for the west wing,” the Colossus added.
Talk of big houses reminded OGL he’d once been asked to deliver a boatload of expensive Pinarello gear to a certain chubby, charmless, money-grubbing, shifty-grifter, Sir Alan Sugar. Mrs. OGL had been suspicious of the order, so OGL had Googled the address to reveal a palatial, sprawling monstrosity of a house, that convinced him this was no scam.
This reminded Crazy Legs of a tale he’d heard about a fellow cyclist who’d hauled himself to the top of an Alpine climb to find Sir Alan Sugar, complete with personalised Pinarello, camped outside a cafe, sipping an espresso.
“I know you!” the cyclist had declared, seemingly much to Lord Sugar’s initial delight, until the cyclist pointed a finger and declared, “You’re fired!”
“Oh, fuck off!” Lord Sugar had allegedly replied, with remarkable wit and sagacity, before throwing a leg over his bike and quickly riding off.
The Garrulous Kid dropped by wondering if he’d done enough to deserve a prize at the club’s annual dinner and awards ceremony.
“What would you like a prize for,” G-Dawg queried, “The shortest club ride, ever?”
“How about finishing a ride without falling over?” I suggested, “Oh, wait …”
But the Garrulous Kid had already flitted to the next topic, declaring he had a great idea for improving the club run: free rides. I’m not sure what he was getting at, we don’t pay anyway.
As everyone seemed to be packing up to leave, Big Dunc finally arrived at the cafe, having been riding with our group, but suffering an unremarked puncture on the run in. I persuaded Crazy Legs to join me in a coffee refill (to be honest, it wasn’t difficult) and we stayed behind to keep Big Dunc company, as everyone else left for the run home.
The three of us finally left the cafe and started to head back. I was riding on the front chatting with Crazy Legs, until he turned round and we finally noticed our trio had become a duo.
We back-tracked to find Big Dunc stopped by another puncture. We hustled into the entrance to a farm track and started to replace the tube. The tyre proved to be a complete and utter bastard to get off the rim, with tyre levers pinging everywhere, skinned knuckles, a lot of polite swearing and everyone trying and failing horribly.
Finally, we managed to drag the tyre off, pulled the tube out and replaced it. If we thought getting the tyre off was difficult, getting it back on was to be even more of an ordeal. Rolling it didn’t work, levering it didn’t work and in this instance, even the Crazy Legs magic thumb failed us.
All the while we were entertained by a postman driving his van in and out of farm entrances as if he was auditioning for the Fast & Furious 10 (Ogle Burn Up) and Crazy Legs started judging the steady stream of passing cyclists by how sincerely they enquired if they could assist us in any way.
Meanwhile, I wondered how Big Dunc had managed on his own, when he’d punctured on the run into the café? Truth be told he didn’t know – I suspect a supernatural burst of adrenaline, similar to the phenomena that lets desperate mothers lift cars off their run-over children.
My new found confidence in being able to handle difficult tyres following success with the Schwalbe Marathon’s, quickly evaporated, defeated by an unholy alliance of Continental Grand Prix tyres and Shimano rims.
Finally, with all hands to the pump and injudicious application of tyre levers, gloved hands, grunting, straining and swearing, the tyre grudgingly snapped over the rim. Unfortunately we could see numerous places where it had trapped the tube under the bead and it would be impossible to inflate.
Working the tyre vigorously from side to side for five minutes, we thought we’d finally released the tube, screwed a pump onto the valve and I gave it a dozen or so good blows.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Either my pump was refusing to work, or, much more likely we’d damaged the tube with all our industrial manhandling.
Unable to face another round of tyre wrangling, Crazy Legs volunteered to ride home, get his car and come and pick Big Dunc up. We agreed the plan and I handed over a spare tube in case Big Dunc’s superhuman strength and mystical tyre changing abilities suddenly reasserted themselves. Then we left him, vowing to replace his tyres with something that was a little more forgiving and easier to fit.
Pushing along with Crazy Legs and discussing year end distance totals, he recalled last year being stuck on 3,973 miles at Christmas and having to spend an hour or so on the turbo, just to round things up to an even 4,000.
This compulsion was something he’d previously tried to explain to an uncomprehending Taffy Steve and me, when he was horrified to learn we track our Garmin numbers in both miles and kilometres and therefore would have the impossibility of two numbers to round-up.
“I’ve probably topped 4,000 miles sometime this week,” I told him.
“Bloody hell, 4,000 miles in a week? That’s impressive.”
Funny man.
As we approached Kirkley Hall, about 45 minutes behind our usual schedule, Crazy Legs proved we’ve been riding together too long, by rightly guessing I was planning to turn right to shave a mile or two off my route home. Or, maybe he was trying to prompt me to go that way, because as soon as I confirmed it, he started grinning.
“Good,” he said, “Then I can ride the rest of the way at a more comfortable pace.”
“But, I’m only riding at this speed to keep up with you!” I insisted.
We fell into an uneasy silence, until we approached the junction.
“Right. Bye.”
“Bye. I’ll see you next week.”
“Next week.”
Next week, when we’ll probably continue to ride together at a pace just a little too fast for either of us to be truly comfortable, but we’ll both be to stubborn and conceited to admit it, or back down …
YTD Totals: 6,584 km / 4,091 miles with 80,581 metres of climbing
Club Run, Saturday 10th November, 2018
My Ride (according to Strava)
Total Distance: 110 km / 68 miles with 1,174 metres of climbing
Ride Time: 4 hours 40 minutes
Average Speed: 23.6 km/h
Group size: 26
Temperature: 12°C
Weather in a word or two: Not bad at all
Ride Profile
First off, my apologies if, in my incessant babbling last week, I wrote off your cycling club and it’s still going strong. This was prompted by a blerg comment I received, suggesting the members of the Tyne Road Club would be very surprised to learn of their apparent demise.
In my own paltry defence, I will say that they must be operating in a particularly clandestine manner, or at least one that easily thwarted my (admittedly amateurish) research capabilities: the club no longer appear to be registered with British Cycling and their web domain registration has expired.
I did subsequently find a Strava group for the club, but this had the same link to the lapsed website and was only showing a single, solitary member. Still, I’m very happy to be proven wrong and do hope the club continues.
The one benefit of my research activities was stumbling across this film of the 1960 Dunston C.C. road race. (I think I’m safe in asserting that this club, is no more.)
Meanwhile discussions between Toshi San and OGL revealed that VC Electric were composed of electricians from the Swan-Hunter shipyards. Since the once mighty Swan-Hunter closed a long time ago, I think VC Electric are another club we can safely consign to the past.
Anyway, back to the present … A lone seagull, circling high over the house marked the start of my ride with a series of plaintive, mournful cries. I’ve no idea why it was so sad, it was a bright, breezy, not too cold day. A large band of heavy rain had passed over us through the night, but now the skies were clearing and it would be a dry throughout. Not bad. Not bad at all.
My trip across the river to the meeting point was wholly unremarkable and I arrived to find G-Dawg, the Hammer and the Colossus already there and waiting.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
That film of that 1960’s road race did spark some lively debate about the two front pockets that used to adorn all cycling jersey’s and just what purpose they could possibly serve. Too shallow for spares, or tools, too precarious for money, or valuables, I felt they were perhaps ideally sized to carry a pack of fags, or maybe they were designed for more refined times and specifically for a gentleman’s, freshly pressed, linen handkerchief or pocket square.
OGL was the only one of us who could remember owning a jersey with front pockets, which he suggested were simply there to catch the wind, like twin drogue parachutes. Like us, he had no earthly idea of their actual purpose and could recall getting his mum to sew a couple of press-studs on, to try and keep them from gaping, like a slack-jawed village idiot.
The Garrulous Kid started telling us about his “posse” of “friends” and their university choices and I wondered where he ranked in the group pecking order, was he the Alpha Male or Beta? Perhaps he was even his own man and a newly-minted Zeta?
Talk of his peer group prompted Plumose Pappus to muse what collective noun we might best apply. A “chatter” I suggested. He countered with a “chaos” which seemed altogether more appropriate.
It was time for route announcements, with Richard of Flanders bounding up onto the wall and, somewhat astonishingly, priming the crowd with his opening declaration, “Hello! For those that don’t know me, I’m Richard and this … is your route for the day …”
With numbers requiring a split into two groups, he then broke standard etiquette, by declaring he would be leading the front group and hustled off before anyone could object.
In the second group, OGL wanted a more organised rotation, with no one doing more than 3 miles on the front, before ceding their position and dropping all the way to the back. No one had any real objections, so off we set, with this rather novel restriction in mind.
I found myself riding along beside Ovis, out on his fixie because he’s not happy with the cantilever brakes on his winter bike. He’s dropped it in to his LBS for a service and to see if they could find a way of increasing braking power. I suggested better brake blocks could be helpful.
“Oh, I have to admit the last pair I bought were cheap as chips,” he conceded ruefully, “and for all the effect they were having, I might as well have been using chips.”
After three miles, Taffy Steve and Crazy Legs dutifully swung off the front, accompanied with loud cries of “get thee behind me!” and “go on, all the way to the back now.”
Spoons and Goose took over and we pressed onward. Out through Ponteland and up Limestone Lane, until it was our turn and I moved onto the front with Ovis, as, with perfect timing, my Garmin ticked over to 23 miles.
“That must be three miles done already, ” Ovis suggested hopefully a few moments later.
“Close, but that’s actually only about 0.2 of a mile. But don’t worry, we’re about to a hit a nice, smooth patch of tarmac.”
And we did, to a noticeable, collective, dare I say, almost orgasmic sigh from those behind.
Ovis considered calling for a pee stop, but wavered as he couldn’t remember the right gate and he recalled the Gategate incident, when all sorts of trouble accrued to those who dared to worship and … ahem, “spend their tribute” at the wrong gate. Much better to ride with the discomfort of a full bladder and treat it as a sort of humble debasement, a sign of true dedication.
A little further on a cluster of cyclists could be seen at the side of the road. “Perhaps,” I mused, “they’re at the right gate and they’re pilgrims paying homage to that most holy of cyclist sites?”
But no, it was just our front group, stopped and pulled up at the side of the road with what looked like another front wheel puncture for G-Dawg.
I doffed an imaginary cap and we pressed on. After exactly three miles, I had us swing over and the next pair took to the front as we drifted all the way to the back. In this way the ride progressed, sensibly, orderly, organised, equitable, overly fussy and, according to Crazy Legs, ultimately boring.
A bit further on and we had to stop for our own puncture, as Spoons rear tyre was slowly softening. He set to work changing the tube and then starting to re-seat the tyre, lining up three tyre levers to help him. Even without Crazy Legs’s magic thumb, I thought it was worth trying to push the tyre on manually and with a bit of grunting, gurning and groaning I managed to roll it back onto the rim. It was only at this point that I realised I’d been wrestling with a Schwalbe Marathon, tyres that are notoriously difficult to fit. I have to admit I was quite smugly pleased with myself.
As Spoons began inflating his tyre, Goose fished a snack-sized Malt Loaf out and devoured it in three bites. Ovis snorted in derision, then drawled, “That’s not a malt loaf, this is a malt loaf,” reaching back and pulling out his usual, family-sized, malt loaf brick out of a jersey pocket.
In between bites, he explained how he’d completed the Fred Whitton Challenge fuelled purely on malt loaf, with two stashed in his jersey pockets and a third, for emergencies, strapped to his top tube.
“Only trouble was, I was a bit sick of it by the time I got to the last feed-station. You know what they were serving there? Bleedin’ malt loaf!”
I was fully expecting our front group to catch us while we were tyre wrangling and talking nonsense, but there was no sign of them. I later learned we’d deviated slightly from the planned route. (Shh! Don’t tell Richard.)
Underway again, Biden Fecht was struggling to hold the wheels and obviously in the throes of a major jour sans. We nursed him along to the Quarry, where he joined those making a quick strike for the café, while the rest of us went plummeting down the Ryals.
It must have been on the cusp of the 11th hour, of the … wait, what? 10th day? … when we shot past a small group observing a (surely premature) minutes silence at the war memorial at the bottom of the hill. Hopefully we didn’t disturb them too much.
The planned route was for us to climb back up through Hallington, but we took the longer, less hilly loop around the reservoir instead – Taffy Steve’s preferred option, even on his svelte summer bike and given even greater appeal now he was astride the thrice-cursed winter bike.
Half way around and Spoons was calling a stop to sort out his leaky, rapidly softening tyre, going for a few blasts of his pump rather than a full tube change. He set out for the café, pushing well ahead of everyone in a desperate race against time, hoping to make it before having to stop and force more air into the troublesome tube.
We followed, accelerating toward coffee and losing Ovis on the short, but savage Brandy Well Bank, that could legitimately bear a warning sign declaring “death to all fixies.”
Speed was up and we were humming along now, with Taffy Steve pulling on the front and rapidly closing in on Spoons, as we hit the stretch down to the Snake Bends. I pushed through, as we caught and dropped our front runner, rattling along on what I suspect was an uncomfortably flaccid tyre. Then Taffy Steve went blasting past with Crazy Legs on his wheel and the pair opened up a gap as they duked it out for the final sprint.
Punctures and stops had us arriving at the cafe way behind our usual time and, while the other groups were already indulging in refills and thinking about leaving, we were just sitting down.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
Enthusiasm for the rugby international was somewhat dampened by realisation that the game would only be live on Sky, a company and service all right-thinking people should morally object to giving money to, regardless of your thoughts on their cycling team.
Crazy Legs questioned just how smart Sky were though, as he knew of at least one family sharing their Multiroom package between a house in Tyneside and a flat in East Finchley.
“You could always argue you’ve just got a very big house,” I decided.
“And the Multiroom subscription was just for the west wing,” the Colossus added.
Talk of big houses reminded OGL he’d once been asked to deliver a boatload of expensive Pinarello gear to a certain chubby, charmless, money-grubbing, shifty-grifter, Sir Alan Sugar. Mrs. OGL had been suspicious of the order, so OGL had Googled the address to reveal a palatial, sprawling monstrosity of a house, that convinced him this was no scam.
This reminded Crazy Legs of a tale he’d heard about a fellow cyclist who’d hauled himself to the top of an Alpine climb to find Sir Alan Sugar, complete with personalised Pinarello, camped outside a cafe, sipping an espresso.
“I know you!” the cyclist had declared, seemingly much to Lord Sugar’s initial delight, until the cyclist pointed a finger and declared, “You’re fired!”
“Oh, fuck off!” Lord Sugar had allegedly replied, with remarkable wit and sagacity, before throwing a leg over his bike and quickly riding off.
The Garrulous Kid dropped by wondering if he’d done enough to deserve a prize at the club’s annual dinner and awards ceremony.
“What would you like a prize for,” G-Dawg queried, “The shortest club ride, ever?”
“How about finishing a ride without falling over?” I suggested, “Oh, wait …”
But the Garrulous Kid had already flitted to the next topic, declaring he had a great idea for improving the club run: free rides. I’m not sure what he was getting at, we don’t pay anyway.
As everyone seemed to be packing up to leave, Big Dunc finally arrived at the cafe, having been riding with our group, but suffering an unremarked puncture on the run in. I persuaded Crazy Legs to join me in a coffee refill (to be honest, it wasn’t difficult) and we stayed behind to keep Big Dunc company, as everyone else left for the run home.
The three of us finally left the cafe and started to head back. I was riding on the front chatting with Crazy Legs, until he turned round and we finally noticed our trio had become a duo.
We back-tracked to find Big Dunc stopped by another puncture. We hustled into the entrance to a farm track and started to replace the tube. The tyre proved to be a complete and utter bastard to get off the rim, with tyre levers pinging everywhere, skinned knuckles, a lot of polite swearing and everyone trying and failing horribly.
Finally, we managed to drag the tyre off, pulled the tube out and replaced it. If we thought getting the tyre off was difficult, getting it back on was to be even more of an ordeal. Rolling it didn’t work, levering it didn’t work and in this instance, even the Crazy Legs magic thumb failed us.
All the while we were entertained by a postman driving his van in and out of farm entrances as if he was auditioning for the Fast & Furious 10 (Ogle Burn Up) and Crazy Legs started judging the steady stream of passing cyclists by how sincerely they enquired if they could assist us in any way.
Meanwhile, I wondered how Big Dunc had managed on his own, when he’d punctured on the run into the café? Truth be told he didn’t know – I suspect a supernatural burst of adrenaline, similar to the phenomena that lets desperate mothers lift cars off their run-over children.
My new found confidence in being able to handle difficult tyres following success with the Schwalbe Marathon’s, quickly evaporated, defeated by an unholy alliance of Continental Grand Prix tyres and Shimano rims.
Finally, with all hands to the pump and injudicious application of tyre levers, gloved hands, grunting, straining and swearing, the tyre grudgingly snapped over the rim. Unfortunately we could see numerous places where it had trapped the tube under the bead and it would be impossible to inflate.
Working the tyre vigorously from side to side for five minutes, we thought we’d finally released the tube, screwed a pump onto the valve and I gave it a dozen or so good blows.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Either my pump was refusing to work, or, much more likely we’d damaged the tube with all our industrial manhandling.
Unable to face another round of tyre wrangling, Crazy Legs volunteered to ride home, get his car and come and pick Big Dunc up. We agreed the plan and I handed over a spare tube in case Big Dunc’s superhuman strength and mystical tyre changing abilities suddenly reasserted themselves. Then we left him, vowing to replace his tyres with something that was a little more forgiving and easier to fit.
Pushing along with Crazy Legs and discussing year end distance totals, he recalled last year being stuck on 3,973 miles at Christmas and having to spend an hour or so on the turbo, just to round things up to an even 4,000.
This compulsion was something he’d previously tried to explain to an uncomprehending Taffy Steve and me, when he was horrified to learn we track our Garmin numbers in both miles and kilometres and therefore would have the impossibility of two numbers to round-up.
“I’ve probably topped 4,000 miles sometime this week,” I told him.
“Bloody hell, 4,000 miles in a week? That’s impressive.”
Funny man.
As we approached Kirkley Hall, about 45 minutes behind our usual schedule, Crazy Legs proved we’ve been riding together too long, by rightly guessing I was planning to turn right to shave a mile or two off my route home. Or, maybe he was trying to prompt me to go that way, because as soon as I confirmed it, he started grinning.
“Good,” he said, “Then I can ride the rest of the way at a more comfortable pace.”
“But, I’m only riding at this speed to keep up with you!” I insisted.
We fell into an uneasy silence, until we approached the junction.
“Right. Bye.”
“Bye. I’ll see you next week.”
“Next week.”
Next week, when we’ll probably continue to ride together at a pace just a little too fast for either of us to be truly comfortable, but we’ll both be to stubborn and conceited to admit it, or back down …
YTD Totals: 6,584 km / 4,091 miles with 80,581 metres of climbing
Total Distance: 90 km / 56 miles with 967 metres of climbing
Ride Time: 3 hours 48 minute
Average Speed: 23.6 km/h
Group size: 8-9-8-7-6-5
Temperature: 6°C
Weather in a word or two: Brutal then balmy
Ride Profile
Honestly, I just think the weather’s playing mind-games with me now. The morning last week dawned bright gorgeous, warm and dry, as if to make up for the Saturday before when it rained incessantly for most of the day. This week, it was back to freezing cold, wet and utterly miserable.
In fact as I sat down to breakfast and looked out of the window the icy rain changed suddenly to fat flakes of pelting snow that even started to lie, despite the garden being thoroughly sodden.
To cap it all, I was late leaving, in part because I was hoping for a break in the weather, or at least an easing of the conditions. The other reason was a last minute panic, as I decided to swap all the carefully considered, wet-weather gear, for cold and wet-weather gear.
As a consequence, I didn’t get going until after 8.20, a time when I’m more normally approaching the bridge, 3 or so miles upriver. This I recognised as time I would really struggle to make-up, so I needed a Plan-B.
The alternative crossing, a closer, but busier bridge, could be reached fairly quickly and directly, but via a fairly unpalatable and somewhat risky ride down a dual-carriageway, typically full of speeding cars and dotted with massive multi-lane roundabouts. That didn’t seem a sensible option on a day when visibility was likely to be restricted by both the dark and dismal weather and the massive waves of spray the cars were going to be kicking up.
I was however fairly confident I could use local bike tracks and woodland trails to work my way around to the bridge on safer, less travelled routes, as long as I didn’t mind a little off-road adventure. This then became Plan-B.
Lights on and blinking away furiously, front and back, I dropped down the Heinous Hill. Shorts and leg warmers already soaked with icy rain and spray by the time I hit the bottom. This was not going to be pleasant. A sharp right, past the old cricket ground and I found a bike trail, heading, more or less, in the right direction.
My front light was designed more so people could see me, than for lighting my path, so I had to trust to blind luck that the trail was mostly clear, as I picked my way through the shadowed and gloomy woods.
A carpet of yellowed, fallen leaves helped provide a bit of contrast and highlighted the way ahead, but they were also wet and slippery and occasionally hid the menace of a low ridge thrown up across the track by a wandering tree root. I didn’t dare go too fast, but at least I felt I was making progress.
I crossed the River Derwent on a narrow, single-track bridge, apparently waking a huge, statuesque heron, standing stilt-egged in the middle of the stream. It raised its head to glare at me through one beady yellow eye, but otherwise remained completely unperturbed by my passage.
Out of the woods, the trail ran alongside the river, as it meandered its way toward the Tyne. Things seemed to be going to plan, until the trail stopped at a closed metal gate. I dismounted and peered over. The trail continued on the other side, but only after crossing the railway lines. I slipped through the gate, picked the bike up, peered into the gloom for approaching trains (it was far too wet and cold to press my ear to the rail, Tonto style) and scuttled across.
I was on gravel and tarmac now, the road winding past a boating club, where a bloke stood out in the freezing rain in just shorts and a T-shirt, drawing desperately on an E-cigarette and emitting impressively huge clouds of vapour. Perhaps vaping provide some inner warmth along with a lungful of noxious chemicals? Maybe I should try it.
Finally, the trail deposited me at the foot of the bridge and I used the pavement to cross. Now all I had to do was navigate 6 lanes of traffic and a busy roundabout. I spotted a subway entrance and dived down. My lights were feeble in the enfolding darkness and I had no idea what I was riding through, but I made it out the other side amidst much rustling, crackling and several disturbing, sharp snaps of something giving way beneath my tyres.
One more subway, a skid up and over a grassy bank and I was onto familiar roads and climbing out the other side of the valley, back on time, unscathed and remarkably puncture free.
The rain started to ease a little as I approached the meeting point, but I was probably already as wet as I was going to get and devilishly cold.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
Huddled in the gloom of the multi-storey car-park I found a very select few; OGL, G-Dawg, the Garrulous Kid and Rollocks. Crazy Legs and Buster were the next to arrive and then finally Taffy Steve appeared in a burst of retina blasting, epilepsy-inducing commuter lights. This was to be it then, with the solitary addition of the Colossus, who was running late and would intercept us somewhere along the route.
G-Dawg had a new addition to his fixie – a brass bell clamped securely to his handlebars, perhaps in case he’s ever possessed by the ghost of Charlie Allinston and finds himself engaged in some wanton and furious driving. He explain that he’d been given an Edinburgh Cycles gift certificate and the bell was the only thing he could find that he wanted … in the entire shop!
“It’s cold.” The Garrulous Kid complained.
“But, it’s warming up,” G-Dawg countered
“Yeah, the temperatures up from 2° to 3°,” I agreed.
“See,” G-Dawg argued, “We’ve had a 50% rise already.”
I tsked at the Garrulous Kid, still on his best bike and missing even rudimentary mudguards.
“Don’t need them,” he argued, pointing to the solid infill of his seat stays above the brake bridge, “I’ve got this.”
“Well, it might just about keep the top of your seat tube dry,” unsurprisingly, G-Dawg didn’t seem at all convinced.
OGL was busy investigating the bike lockers that have recently appeared in the car park, testing the doors and trying to peer inside to see if they were in use. This prompted G-Dawg to wonder if he shouldn’t use a locker, reasoning they were big enough to keep at least two bikes in. Then he could just stroll up on a Saturday morning, assess the weather and decide which bike best suited the conditions.
With departure time fast approaching, Crazy Legs made the first call for a “flat white” ride – an additional coffee stop at Kirkley Cycles. We decided to play it by ear, see what the day brought us and adapt accordingly. With that we pushed off into the lashing, freezing rain and rode out.
First up a rendezvous with the Colossus at the end of Brunton Lane.
G-Dawg and Taffy Steve hit the front and off we went, out of the sanctuary of the car park, where it was just as brutally cold, wet and unpleasant as I’d imagined. Blood rapidly fled from all extremities and there were numerous bad attempts at “jazz hands” and other uncoordinated flapping in a futile attempt to restore circulation.
“Today,” OGL declared, “Will be a day when a post-ride, hot shower will cause grown men to whimper.”
Thankfully, we didn’t have long to wait at the end of the lane for the Colossus to join us and, for a brief moment we were 9 strong. Then, just outside the Dinnington Badlands, chilled to the core and soaked to the skin, the mudguardless Garrulous Kid abandoned.
Rather abruptly.
Instead of slowing and waving people past, he simply swerved aside, banged up over the kerb and came to juddering halt on the pavement. From there he watched us ride away before turning around and high-tailing it home.
“And then there were 8,” the Colossus intoned.
Onward we plugged, reaching the junction with Berwick Hill, where we all swept left, except Buster who swung right, steering a course directly for his warm house. Ostensibly his ride was curtailed by a bad knee and had absolutely nothing to do with the atrocious weather and savage cold. Honest.
“And then there were 7,” the Colossus corrected his running count.
Up Berwick Hill we went, battered by pelting sleet and buffeted by an icy wind, before turning right at the top and snaking down the lane toward Kirkley Hall. At this point the majority decided we needed to get out of the rain and warm up a little and we quickly determined that Crazy Legs’ suggestion of stopping at the café at Kirkley Cycles had suddenly become utterly irresistible.
At the next junction, for whatever reason, OGL was determined to go his own way, heading by the most direct route to our usual café stop.
“And then there were 6,” the Colossus stated.
“Eh? What?” G-Dawg wanted to know, looking around. Head down, battering away on the front of the group, he’d been completely unaware of our steadily dwindling numbers.
We had to explain where and how we’d lost various riders.
“Ok,” he concluded, “but keep talking back there, just so I know I’m not alone.”
Rollocks was only planning on riding for an hour or so more, so he too pressed on, while the rest of us turned for the café.
And then there were 5.
As we rolled up the Colossus admitted he’d never been inside before and Taffy Steve assured him it was a good place, a true cycling café, with good coffee, excellent prices and some great memorabilia, including his favourite, a poster of Idi Amin in full La Vie Claire cycling kit!
Or at least that’s what my frozen ears thought he was saying.
Main topics of conversation at coffee stop#1
As a measure of just how cold it was and how chilled we’d become, for the first time that I can ever recall, even the Colossus wanted a coffee rather than a cold drink. I stripped off my rain jacket, sat down and clutched my mug in a death grip, trying to stop shivering long enough to actually take a sip without dribbling the contents down my front.
Across from us, two of the denizens of the fitness studio next to the café, were enjoying a post-workout coffee and chatting to a couple of hikers. Crazy Legs was intrigued by the odd contrast of two svelte, toned and barely dressed gym-goers, chatting comfortably with a big bloke in a fully zipped up parka, wearing thick gloves, boots and a woolly hat under the hood of his coat which was pulled up and fastened tight.
The resident dog wandered past and stopped to lick at the moisture on G-Dawgs specs, which he placed on the floor inside his helmet. It wandered off, before coming back to run a rasping tongue up and down Taffy Steve’s shin, before deciding to lick the inside of his helmet bowl.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a dog lick my helmet before,” he disclosed in a too loud voice, just as there was a general lull in the conversation, prompting us to fall about giggling like a bunch of naughty schoolboys.
Looking all around at all the cycling clothes, spare components and memorabilia, I demanded to know where the poster of Idi Amin in cycling kit was and I was horribly disappointed to find I had misheard and that it wasn’t a poster of Idi Amin, but one Bernard Hinault. Pah!
“Mind, those gloves look nice.” Crazy Legs nodded at a display of sturdy, weatherproof gloves.
“And dry,” he added.
“You could buy them and put them on,” G-Dawg suggested, like a kid getting a new pair of shoes that you want to wear straight out of the shop.”
Crazy Legs didn’t need to though, as following Red Max Winter Protocol#1, he had a spare, dry pair in his back pocket and not just any pair of gloves, but some mighty Planet X lobster mitts. He stood, plonked his helmet on, zipped up his jacket and pulled on his dry gloves, before turning to our café companions.
“I have to say that’s a brilliant contrast between people who look freezing and those that look hot,” he told them.
“Well, thanks, we do look hot, don’t we?” one of the gym-goers demanded.
For the briefest of moments Crazy Legs stood there, trying to think up a witty come-back that wouldn’t sound either totally lecherous, or horribly ungallant. His brain failed and he quickly turned, scuttling for the door and beating a hasty retreat.
We followed him out, but at a more leisurely place.
The rain had cleared while we were inside, but typically started up again, as soon as we turned back onto the main road. Luckily though it was a fairly brief downpour and soon eased and disappeared. There was even some semblance of sun and the rolling nature of the road had us working hard and thankfully, at last starting to warm up.
Even winter boots had failed to protect us from the lashing rain and spray and feet were soaked through. Always happy to find a positive though, Crazy Legs declared it was worth running the risk of trench foot to be able to pare back his well-basted toenails without resorting to an angle grinder.
We reached the Gubeon and turned toward our second café stop of the day in close formation, two up front, two at the back with our fifth man sat comfortably in the middle – our 5-blank domino formation as Crazy Legs dubbed it.
We stretched our legs a little in getting to the café, with a general increase in pace, although no one was interested in it turning into a full-blooded sprint. We arrived just as OGL was pulling out and heading for home.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop#2
Inside the café we found Big Dunc and couple of other brave riding companions. They’d started out a bit later than us, hoping, but failing to miss the worst of the weather. He described with horror the difficulties of stopping for a pee, spending long moments hunting for his shrinking, “vestigial” appendage in the bitter cold, then even longer trying to force water-logged gloves back onto to freezing wet hands.
For my part, I told him our ride out was like Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, just without the Cossacks, who’d decided it was too cold to be out. It had been a deeply unpleasant, brutally attritional journey, with a trail of comrades lost along the way.
G-Dawg slapped his gloves on the café stove to try and dry them out. They sizzled like fish fillets in a frying pan.
Relating a football anecdote, Crazy Legs couldn’t remember a player’s name and had to describe him as the big, black forward who played for England and used to regularly fall over for no apparent reason.
From this scant description everyone immediately and unerringly identified the luckless Emile Hesky.
From there we learned of a Match of the Day where presenter Gary Lineker was joined by panellists Alan Shearer and Ian Wright and introduced the show as featuring “two of England’s most accomplished strikers … and Ian Wright.”
The Colossus and Taffy Steve recommended finding Ian Wright’s appearance on Top Gear, when he admitted to stupidly trashing his own Ferrari and having to stop himself instinctively running away, when he realised he was the cars legitimate owner.
By the time we were ready to head out again, the weather was dry, bright and significantly warmer. We decided to resurrect G-Dawgs original plan for a longer ride back, even if the first part would have us battling directly into a headwind. G-Dawg and the Colossus were more than up for the task anyway and spearheaded our return with an impressively long and uncomplaining stint toiling away on the front.
The headwind nevertheless took its toll and Taffy Steve started struggling on the hills, where his thrice cursed winter-bike became his five-fold cursed winter bike. Every time he dropped off, one or other of us would announce, “There’s a gap” and we’d ease a little until he caught back on.
After a while, Crazy Legs decided it would be better to substitute the “gap” call with a quick round of “Oops upside your head” – although his suggestion for us all to get down on the ground and pretend to row a boat were sensibly dismissed.
We then found that G-Dawgs bell would automatically ping like a sonar whenever he ran his wheel through a pot, providing us with some useful early warning signals and a chance to avoid the worst depredations of the road surface.
This also served to distract Crazy Legs, who naturally progressed from The Gap Band to Anita Ward and “You can ring my bell.”
We dropped down past the Cheese Farm and picked up our usual route home, through Dinnington. From there it was into into the Mad Mile and soon I was swinging away for my trip home and immediately pulling to a stop.
I stripped off my too hot rain jacket and winter gloves, substituting them for some thinner, drier ones. The cap that had kept the worst of the spray off my specs I kept on though, as now it was useful to block the glare from a very bright, very low sun. Then, a bit more comfortable, I pressed on for home in what was to prove to be the best riding conditions of the entire day.
YTD Totals: 6,254 km / 3,805 miles with 76,583 metres of climbing
Total Distance: 115 km / 71 miles with 1,091 metres of climbing
Ride Time: 4 hours 24 minute
Average Speed: 26.2 km/h
Group size: 23 riders, 0 FNG’s
Temperature: 12°C
Weather in a word or two: Coolly pleasant
Ride Profile
This week seemed to be a carbon copy of last week, with one major difference. No wind!
This meant what worked last week, should work this week too, so jersey, tights, arm warmers and a lightweight rain jacket for an extra layer of protection, just until I got across to the meeting point and the morning air lost its chill edge.
I was passed by several cars, elongated with long thin hulls strapped to their roofs, as I made my way down the valley and the rowing club was busy with vehicles parking up and rowers clambering out and about, obviously gearing up for some event or other.
It turned out to be the Tyne Long Distance Sculls, whatever that involves. I guessed they wouldn’t be starting in the near future though as, when I rolled over the bridge, I saw the tide was most assuredly out and the river reduced to just a thin ribbon of dark water between two shiny, featureless mud flats.
I was so busy avoiding aimlessly meandering rowers from the Tees Rowing club that I almost missed the fact that the cable, that had been dragged across the road at the end of the bridge, had been removed, along with its temporary barrow of tarmac. It was all smooth sailing from there on – well, for me anyway.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting place:
I arrived at the meeting place to find Jimmy Mac admiring the Garrulous Kid’s vintage Castelli jersey, a hand-me-down from a benevolent uncle, which Jimmy Mac commended as very retro.
“Yeah,” the Garrulous Kid explained, “It’s good for this weather, as it’s not fick and it’s not fin.”
Despite the need for a not fick and not fin jersey, the Garrulous Kid was still wearing shorts, along with G-Dawg who is flat-out refusing to accept that summer is actually over. At the other extreme and true to his word, the Rainman had already broken out his winter bike, a week before the traditional last hurrah for carbon, our Hill Climb event.
“Sheee-orts!” an arriving OGL exclaimed loudly, in a pitch I had previously thought only attainable by pre-pubescent castrati, caught sucking down a lungful of helium.
Taffy Steve was visibly taken aback by this shocking squeal of outrage, “Remarkable! I didn’t know you could emit that sort of noise, I only ever associated you with gruff bellowing, ranting and swearing…”
The Garrulous Kid contended he was perfectly comfortable in his shorts, even when Taffy Steve declared his legs had the appearance of corned beef. We then had to spend a good few minutes explaining that corned beef and spam were not the same thing and came from completely different animals.
(For those interested in a, “I never knew that” sort of way, the corn in corn beef refers to the salt pellets traditionally used to cure the meat and not niblets of the Green Giant variety. I never knew that!)
The Garrulous Kid then rolled up his shorts legs to, shockingly, reveal his tan-line, or I should say the very, very subtle, almost indiscernible shading between unhealthy and just plain pallid. He was right in a way though, if his lower extremities resembled corned beef, the tops did look a lot like spam.
Needing a distraction, any kind of distraction, Taffy Steve quickly diverted the Garrulous Kid by asking him why 6 was so afraid of 7.
“Huh?” the Garrulous Kid replied brightly.
“I don’t know Steve,” I asked, “Why is 6 so afraid of 7.”
“Because 7-8-9!” Taffy Steve chuckled at his obvious winner in the Dad-Joke-of-the-Week competition.
“Huh?” the Garrulous Kid replied brightly.
“Seven … ate … nine … uh, furgeddaboudit.”
The Hammer took centre stage to outline the intended route for the day, which would take us, down into the Tyne Valley and then out again. He concluded with a set of admonitions that, at first, had everyone nodding along in agreement:
“No profanity, no smoking, no expectoration. Always be polite to fellow road users, doff your cap to lady pedestrians, signal your intent with clarity and celerity … and no half-wheeling.”
“What?” the Red Max exploded, “Nah, I’m not having that!” The last statement was a bridge too far, the straw that broke the camel’s back and an inimical impediment to the Red Max’s whole raison d’etre.
Arf.
With numbers borderline for split groups, we left en masse, once more picking our way safely along the Broadway “war zone” and out into the countryside.
OGL had a bit of a rant about people who only showed up once in a blue moon and dictated our route, but I just let it wash over me. He was luckily distracted by the high pace being set up front, so at least had something else to complain about. Then, as we approached the airport, his phone started ringing loudly and incessantly from his back pocket.
He ignored it.
A bit further on and it started ringing again, he decided he had to answer and dived into the layby on the roundabout, just outside the airport entrance. I caught the others up, told them what was happening and we pulled into a bus stop to wait.
The last of our riders pulled up, someone said OGL wasn’t going to follow and that we should just push on. So we did.
Along the way it was suggested that, like the classic preparation for a blind date, we should all have a pre-arranged call set-up, one that we can answer if the pace of the group is too high and we need an excuse to abandon mid-ride.
At some point I found myself just behind Crazy Legs, already planning a shorter route and, naturally, inspired to sing about it. He settled on a fine version of Fleetwood Mac’s, “Go Your Own Way” and I was able to contribute in small part, with backing vocals for the chorus.
We swung left toward the river and called a pee stop, while Crazy Legs and the Red Max took their splinter group away for a shorter ride, much to the disgust of the Monkey Butler Boy who hadn’t been invited along and now had to face the longer ride with us.
There was only time for the Garrulous Kid to half-inhale a Snickers bar and then we were off again.
For some unknown reason, I indulged in a bit of joyful scat singing with Biden Fecht as we rolled along, “Be-ba-ba-boop-bap-baddaber-ap!”
“Zoober-za-deep-za-boo-da.”
“What? That sounds like Saudi. Why are you singing in Saudi?” the Garrulous Kid demanded to know, much to the amusement of Plumose Pappus, who declared he’d never seen me at a loss for words until that moment.
Meanwhile, the Monkey Butler Boy confessed that he’d spent some time carefully aligning his bar end plugs, following my stinging criticism last week. I had to admit his bike looked much, much better for it.
We enjoyed a swooping drop into the Tyne Valley, on a new, smooth road surface that seemed to have been stripped of its old rumble strips, and I hit the front (and a bit of a pesky headwind) along with Biden Fecht, as we followed the river and then started to climb toward Corbridge.
It was a day of scattered road kill and we passed deer, squirrel, rabbit and hedgehog corpses all splayed on the tarmac, or flung carelessly down the side of the road. Apart from obviously being dead, the squirrel in particular looked in rude health, remarkably fat and glossy. I surmised it had probably died of some obesity related disease, but according to Biden Fecht I needn’t have worried too much as “it was one of those ferrin’ grey ones.”
As if keeping to a theme, our stint on the front finally brought us to a road junction marked by some tawny, speckled and formless, feathering pile of a dead bird. Glory be to dappled things, indeed.
We turned left onto the main road and then first right, up toward Aydon, where the bridge took us safely up, up – and over the teeming, car-clogged, A69.
As the road continued to climb, I dropped toward the back of the group, taking it relatively easy and testing how the legs were after my struggles last week.
We regrouped over the top and pressed on toward Matfen. A group eased off the front and I found myself in a small knot of riders following on, with others scattered behind. The Colossus surveyed our little group and declared we’d gone from a dozen and a half riders to just four in little over a mile.
Toledo Tomás, our Swedish-educated-Spanish-newcomer, riding with us while studying for a masters at Newcastle University, joined on to the back of the group. At one point he attempted to bridge across to the front group, he’s fit and fast enough to do it, but he missed a turn and had to backtrack to re-join us. The misdirection seemed to temporarily subdue him and he hung off the back and seemed content just to follow the wheels after this.
We piled up the Quarry climb, swung right and accelerated up and through Wallridge crossroads and then down. I took it up for the last drag up to the final junction, then pulled over to let the Colossus, G-Dawg and the Garrulous Kid contest the sprint. I expected Toledo to join in, but he hesitated, so I pushed past and followed the others.
Tomás unleashed a devastating sprint, much, much too late, but he latched onto the others, while I managed to re-join only once we had crossed the main road and ducked down the lane for the last 500 metres or so to the café.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
With a large group in front, plus our shorter route followers, along with the Back Street Boys (or Back Door Bikers, as the Red Max has gleefully taken to calling them), already ensconced inside, the café was packed to heaving, leaving little choice but to retire to the garden, where we found it was surprisingly mild and comfortable.
As I wandered out, I bumped into OGL and Another Engine who’d just arrived.
“What happened to you?” I wondered.
“I had to take a call,” OGL.
“We waited.”
“No they didn’t!” Another Engine snorted.
“Well, we did a bit…”
“They went a different way.” OGL insisted.
“No they didn’t!” Another Engine snorted.
Wondering if I’d inadvertently wandered into a panto rehearsal, I left them arguing between themselves and went to find a table, not that it was difficult, the garden being otherwise empty.
Talk of the TV series “The Bodyguard” somehow turned to Theresa May and her party conference “dancing” which I admitted had severely scarred my soul. G-Dawg had quickly realised it was something you sadly couldn’t un-see, which was the single reason he hadn’t plucked his own eyeballs out in response.
(I particularly liked Josh Widdicombe’s take, that she danced like someone trying to move a fridge, with a nod of respect to Stewart Lee’s “like a mantis with an inner ear infection.”)
We decided that, not only was it mild and pleasant out in the garden, but there was an appealing absence of wasps too.
Another Engine declared that wasps got a bad press and then somewhat ruined it by admitting he’d never been stung by one. This was despite once sitting on a wasps nest in Scarborough’s Peasholm Park to watch the miniature naval battle re-enacted on the lake.
To be fair, he said he didn’t realise he was sitting on a wasps nest at the time, although he did wonder why he got such a great spot, with a grandstand view and nobody pressed in beside him.
G-Dawg, a man known to frequently crush wasps with his bare thumbs, carried grim tales of a bus being stopped and evacuated mid-route after half the passengers had panicked when a wasp flew in the window.
Never mind crushing them, Another Engine determined, in polite company you were meant to gently waft them away.
“Ah, like an errant fart?” I suggested, which led to the unfortunate revelation that both Another Engine and the Garrulous Kid suffer from sustained and impromptu flatulence following a long bike ride.
“I’ll bet that’s an excuse that’s worn thin by a Thursday evening,” G-Dawg mused.
OGL complained he’d found some bearings in a MTB bottom bracket that were so esoteric he’d had to ring the manufacturer, Giant for guidance.
Childishly, I couldn’t help but imagine how that particular phone-call might have sounded, intoning: “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum, Giant headquarters, how can we help you human?”
With just one week to go until the club hill climb, Another Engine fondly recalled his last experience competing.
“Do you remember the time we were waiting to start and those two women on touring bikes with panneers rode by en route to who knows where and asked if they could join in?” he asked.
“Panneers? Are they posh panniers?” OGL demanded.
Panneers, panniers, whatever,” Another Engine continued. “The point is, these two women rode the event, without preparation and on touring bikes loaded down with full panniers.”
“That was the year I was second last,” he concluded, glumly.
There was just time to deride the increasing proliferation of “official” world boxing champions titles, determine Tyson Fury had perhaps the perfect name for a boxer and discuss how after shedding over 122 pounds in weight, from fick to fin, he’s still burdened with the skin of a 385 pound man … and it’s not a good look.
Then we were off and away. Luckily the Backstreet Boys has left earlier, so there was no intermingling of clubs and testosterone levels were capped off well below the danger level. The ride back was fast-paced, but controlled and I swung away at the end of the Mad Mile feeling in good fettle and looking forward to a ride back without having to constantly battle with a headwind.
Perfect timing saw the traffic parting like the Red Sea and I skipped straight over the roundabout on the approach to the Heinous Hill without even having to slow. For once the capricious gods of cycling had aligned everything in my favour, the lights at the bottom of the climb burned green and I was able to carry a bit of speed up the first ramps, before picking my way upwards and home again.
YTD Totals: 5,805 km / 3,607 miles with 71,525 metres of upness
Total Distance: 113 km / 70 miles with 1,060 metres of climbing
Ride Time: 4 hours 33 minute
Average Speed: 24.9 km/h
Group size: 26 riders, 1 FNG’s
Temperature: 14°C
Weather in a word or two: Happy winds-day
Ride Profile
Well I had a Goldilocks-style week of commuting in to work to help me determine what to wear on Saturday and I’m not sure it helped. Wednesday, an unexpectedly, uncharacteristically and uncomfortably warm and mild, anomaly of a day (where did that come from?), I’d gone for a long base layer, windproof jacket, gilet and leg warmers … and cooked. Too hot.
Thursday I went for a summer weight jersey, short-sleeved base layer and arm warmers and shivered, when the cold snapped back. Fingers, toes and ears in particular were downright uncomfortable. Too cold.
Friday saw me trying a summer weight jersey, short-sleeved base layer, arm warmers, with a gilet and gloves for the ride in, before stowing them away for the ride home. Just perfect? Well, no, but better and bearable.
Saturday promised to be just as tricky and over a much more extended period of time and the usual efforts involved in riding at a sustained tempo, rather than just pootling along to work. The early, post-dawn start was likely to be cruelly chill – especially the first couple of miles dropping off the hill – and then hopefully the sun would come out, but it wouldn’t be so hot that I’d need to take off more layers than I had pockets for.
To combat the cold start, I pulled on a lightweight rain jacket for the trip across town. It flapped and fluttered like a supermarket bag caught on a barbed wire fence during a gale, as I sped down the hill, but cut out some of the wind.
Pushing on, the helpful digital sign on the factory unit told me it was a chilly 9°C, as I made my way toward the (finally) fully re-opened bridge and its newly re-instigated traffic lights, which made me wait before I was released onto the new, super smooth surface across the river …
… ruined by the fact that they’d seemingly forgotten to embed one particular cable or pipe and simply dragged it across the road and piled a mouldering heap of loose tarmac over the top. I thudded jarringly over this impromptu, already crumbling, speed bump, which I’m hoping is only a temporary measure.
A few delays for traffic lights and at some new road works, convinced me I was running late, so I injected a bit of pace to my climb out the other side of the valley and made it only a few minutes late and suitably warmed through.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
Princess Fiona was out putting the finishing touches to her form with a last ride before jetting off for her Barcelona IronmanIronwoman Ironprincess event.
“Are you tapering?” someone enquired
“And exactly how long have you been tapering for?” I asked cheekily.
“I think I’ve been tapering my entire life,” the Red Max mumbled, somewhat ruefully.
He was consoled though, by thoughts of the Monkey Butler Boy, who’d ridden out today with the Back Street Boys, for a planned foray, south across the river and deep into Mordor.
“I hope he doesn’t get dropped,” the Red Max relayed, “He doesn’t know the roads across there and I’m not sure the phones work.”
“Phones?” I queried, “Of what do you speak?”
Even more delightful, the Red Max relayed how the Monkey Butler Boy is busy building him a new winter hack (if that isn’t an oxymoron) and had sprayed the frame silver after the Red Max reneged on his promise to ride a bright pink bike throughout the winter.
With enough silver spray left for a few little side projects, the Monkey Butler Boy decided to bling up an old pair of specs, too. Popping the lenses out and coating the frames in smooth layers of shiny silver.
Declaring himself well pleased with the results, the Monkey Butler Boy did the Wednesday night chain-gang kitted out in his spiffy new specs. “Of course, he didn’t lacquer them,” the Red Max explained, “So when he took his specs off, he still looked like he had them on!” Or, at least a semi-indelible silver impression around his eyes where the frames had been.
I told Max that I’d read his route when he’d posted it up on Facebook, but didn’t understand any of it. He patiently explained it in precise detail, while I nodded along in encouragement.
“Nah,” I finally concluded, “Haven’t got a clue.”
Away the route was set and would slowly unfold before my eyes. Garmin Muppet Time arrived and I tagged onto the front group for what was, for us, surprisingly a fairly even split of numbers. Almost as soon as we got underway a strong and gusting wind made its presence felt and it would dog us for the rest of the day.
It was hard work, two or three wheels back from the front and even harder for those brave souls who spearheaded the ride, with G-Dawg, the Colossus, Caracol, Richard of Flanders and the Rainman doing especially long and impressive stints at the head of affairs. Sterling efforts all around and much appreciated.
I didn’t spend as much time and effort assiduously avoiding the front like some of our number, but my stint up there was quite limited. It was just as well, for whatever reason my legs were sore and heavy, I was having a major jour sans and our average speed would have suffered horribly if I’d kept at it long.
I was in conversation with the Rainman as we approached one junction. “It’s left and then first right here,” he assured me smoothly.
“Left or right?” the call came from the front.
“Left, left,” I answered with confidence, only to be shouted down seconds later with cries of “Right! Right! Right!” from behind.
“Well, you had 50% chance of being right,” someone said as the confusion died down.
I naturally blamed the Rainman, who shrugged and declared he knew the right way all along, but the truth was simply lost in translation.
Caracol called for a comfort break, so we cast around a bit until we found a suitable gate, figuring that even if it wasn’t an officially approved pee-stop, at least we had the basic principles down pat.
Then, we pushed on briefly, until Goose picked up a puncture and we rolled to a stop. Odd how the cruel and capricious gods of cycling always seem to insist we pay for any voluntary stops with an equal length, or even longer, enforced one.
Goose wanted us to all push on without him, but naturally we all wanted to stay, just for the opportunity to watch and criticise his technique as he fumbled to change his tube.
We half expected the second group to catch us, but they were having fun and games of their own, so on we pressed, battered and buffeted by the wind, which, if we weren’t grinding headlong and directly into it, would rip and swirl through any gaps in the fields and trees and slap us sideways across the road.
Other than that it would have been a perfect day, bright, clear, dry and a reasonable temperature now the sun was fully up.
We started to splinter as we approached a turn-off point for longer and shorter rides, but quickly regrouped. A handful then set off to work their way through Hallington and scale the Ryals, seemingly convinced they would have a vicious tailwind to help drive them to new KOM’s on the climb.
My legs certainly didn’t have a clamber up the Ryals in them, wind-assisted or not, so I opted for the shorter route and we set off towards Capheaton.
As we approached the short, but savage Brandywell Bank climb, Two Trousers dropped back with a puncture, but urged the rest of us on. With the smell of cake and coffee already in our nostrils, we took very little urging to leave him behind, without so much as a backward glance.
I used the last of my energy reserves on the climb and then we were swinging onto the road that would take us all the way down to the Snake Bends.
I was just about hanging on, until Richard of Flanders attempted a speculative, forlorn hope, long-range attack. (He’s been riding with the Red Max far too much lately). I didn’t have legs to immediately follow and a bunch sped away while I plodded on at my own speed.
Richard of Flanders faltered and I slid past him, but the rest were long gone and I didn’t see anyone else until I caught up with the Colossus freewheeling through the Bends and recovering from his sprinting efforts.
We cheated, taking the high road, straight down the A696, while the rest took to more scenic, less busy lanes of the low road, allowing us to sneak into the café at the head of the queue.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
I took a seat opposite OGL and Taffy Steve, directly in the full glare of a very bright and low sun. When OGL left to head home early, I immediately jumped into his seat, blinking to try and restore vision to my sun blasted retinas.
“I don’t know what was more painful to watch,” Taffy Steve sniggered, “You trying to look attentive and interested when OGL was talking, or the way you were suffering in the light.”
I had to admit it was actually the light that had been the most oppressive.
Caracol said he had a relaxing afternoon planned, watching the World Championship road race and then the Ryder Cup.
Taffy Steve suggested there was half a decent idea in there, but there weren’t any other golf fans amongst us. Sneaky Pete said he endorsed John Peel’s comments, “I do regard the playing of golf as like entering the antechamber to death. When my mates tell me they’ve started playing golf, I mentally cross them off the Christmas card list.”
The Red Max moaned that he had a far less relaxing afternoon planned, as he’d been press-ganged into replacing a malfunctioning bedroom light-fitting. We found common ground cursing electricians who install fittings with the wires stretched taut and with not a millimetre of give in them.
Taffy Steve said that his multimeter was one of the best D-I-Y purchases he’d ever made and really useful for determining if there’s any current running through a wire.
“Oh, I’ve got one of them,” the Red Max declared, licking his thumb and forefinger and miming quickly pinching them together. “My dad taught me this trick.”
“He’s quite sane and sensible, you know. Well, apart from his collection of ancient, broken and useless vacuum cleaners,” he continued
I suggested that the Red Max’s ziggurat of old and worn out bottom brackets could very easily be likened to a collection of old and worn out vacuum cleaners, but he wasn’t having it, insisting sooner or later someone will invent the tools and components he needs to repurpose all the old bottom brackets and put them back to use.
Zardoz wandered in, first to return from the longer group that had ventured up the Ryals. “He looks happy,” Taffy Steve observed, “He must have mugged someone off!”
We determined that Zardoz’s skittishness was probably caused by the outside conditions and we compared notes on our pets’ behaviour to the wind, something that always seems to send them ever so slightly loopy. One of our cats in particular goes into hyper-drive, seeing everything that moves as something to attack and belting around the garden in a state of increasing agitation and excitement.
We later learned that the Rainman had punctured at the bottom of the Ryals and Zardoz had ridden on with one of those patented, classic Sneaky Pete declarations, “I’ll just press on, I’m sure you’ll soon catch me.”
The Red Max reported that the second group had had a couple of punctures too, including one for OGL, who had somehow and uncharacteristically fumbled his repair.
The punctures had also delayed everyone, so we were running late and some were already packing to go home. We decided that a third cup of coffee was in order though and determined Sneaky Pete looked the most innocent amongst us and had the best chance of flying under the radar to successfully secure 2nd refills all round.
Talk of punctures inevitably led to a discussion about tyre choice and I naturally defended my Vittoria Rubino’s (with added graphene!) that have now ably served me through two summers of cycling, probably over 4,000 miles and trips through both the Alps and Pyrenees. I should have known better.
Then Ovis turned up, seemingly with his entire family in tow, and he declared it was late and we should already have left the café by now. The place was full to bursting and seating was scarce, so we got the bum’s rush from Ovis. “Hi, how you doing? Good to see you, isn’t it time you were going? Here’s your helmet. Bye!”
He skilfully manoeuvred his family into our warm seats, even as he smoothly ushered us out the door, where we briefly stood blinking and bewildered and once more being battered by the wind. Nicely done!
There were only five or six of us laggards left. I took to the front with Taffy Steve and away we went, battling our way once more into the wind, until Taffy Steve noticed my squishy back tyre and I stopped to repair the inevitable puncture, even as the cruel and capricious gods of cycling chuckled smugly to themselves.
With time running late, I urged everyone to just press on, insisting I’d be ok on my own. They were having none of it though and wanted to hang around, just so they could constantly remind me of my boasting about my faith in Vittoria Rubino’s (with added graphene!)
Bastards.
Job done, we set off again. As we dragged ourselves up the climb to Dinnington, the Red Max confessed his legs were “well tired” as he was slowly distanced.
Just before the Mad Mile, I dropped back to check he was okay, before setting off for my solo ride home. The first part of this was determinedly uphill and straight into the teeth of the wind. I’d felt tired and heavy-legged before, this was just adding insult to injury.
I finally crested the lip of the valley and started to drop down to the river, finding I still had to pedal to maintain momentum. Across the river and along the valley floor and I was finally at the foot of the Heinous Hill, with just one more battle with the wind and gradient before I could finish what had been an unexpectedly hard ride.
YTD Totals: 5,633 km / 3,500 miles with 69,467 metres of upness
Total Distance: 110 km / 69 miles with 1,139 metres of climbing
Ride Time: 4 hours 11 minute
Average Speed: 26.4 km/h
Group size: 28 riders, 1 FNG
Temperature: 16°C
Weather in a word or two: Passable
Ride Profile
I passed a small cluster of cyclists who were meeting up at the traffic lights leading down to the river, less than three miles or so into my journey. It did make me ponder why I was riding a further 7-8 miles to meet up with the usual gang of reprobates, when there were obviously perfectly pleasant, companionable cyclists and clubs much closer to home.
Still at least there are possibilities if we ever attempt a palace coup that fails…
Once again I found myself arriving at the meeting point early, despite leaving at more or less the same time and following the same route. I seem to be getting faster, but it’s probably not worth making adjustments, the switch to the winter bike will soon fettle that.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting place:
Forget about the melting polar ice caps, receding glaciers and spiralling average temperatures. Forget about the increasing incidence of extreme and violent weather, rising sea levels and the carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere. If you want incontrovertible proof that global warming is an actual, real phenomenon, then that evidence was proudly on display this Saturday morning – we’re well into September and yet the first cyclist to join me at our meeting place was Szell, someone who we’d expect to be deep into his hibernation cycle at this time of the year.
And yet, here he was, blinking in the milky autumn light and questioning whether he had made the right clothing choices to cope with the variable temperatures.
I told him that this conundrum was all too common and no one had the right answer – even the most hardened, experienced, all-weather, all-year round, veteran cyclists wasted long minutes every day pondering what clothing layers and accessories to wear and deciding what could be easily pulled on and taken off at a moment’s notice. And, I assured him, they still, invariably got it wrong.
The Garrulous Kid was back and announced he’d had a great holiday in Florida.
“Florida is horrider, than Whitley Bay,” Szell intoned.
“There’s no McEwan’s Best Scotch in the USA,” I followed up with the next line in a creaky TV ad campaign from the distant, hazy annals of our youth.
Florida? Nice Place, Shame about the Beer.
We had a laugh at the conceit behind labelling McEwan’s Best Scotch, a mass-produced, fizzy, bland and utterly un-noteworthy, generic beer as the “one you had to come back for.”
Szell seemed to remember a whole series of these ads, but the only other one that I could recall was the Russian one:
“Red Square’s dead square, we know that for a fact,
No McEwans’s Best Scotch in the Warsaw Pact
They’ve just got propaganda, not proper Geordie brew,
They asked about Marx? Well …one out of ten for you.”
I had to admit, I much preferred the much simpler, smarter Newcastle Brown Ale posters in (probably) indecipherable Geordie, the only one of which I still recall said simply:
AHCUDDOONABROON.
G-Dawg outlined the route for the day, including a raid down into the Tyne Valley and, with another good turnout of 28 riders, we split into two groups that, somewhat surprisingly, turned out to be more or less equal.
Well … ish.
I rolled onto the front of the first group alongside Caracol and we pushed out, safely traversed the deadly and treacherous Broadway West and then we were away.
I spent the first few miles chatting about the Vuelta and, in particular, Simon Yates distinct lack of media training and polish. This, I felt was a refreshing change from the corporate blandness of Sky, even if it did leave to some rather terse and uncomfortable interviews.
Caracol was fully sympathetic and wondered how any normal person would cope with being asked the same inane questions, over and over, in French, English and Spanish and maybe half a dozen other languages beside.
Interviewer: “What went wrong at the Giro.”
Simon Yates: “I don’t know what went wrong at the Giro.”
Interviewer: “Will what happened at the Giro happen here to?”
Simon Yates: “I don’t know if what happened at the Giro will happen here to.”
Etc.
G-Dawg’s route included a new wrinkle that took us up Birney Hill, a narrow country lane, seemingly frequented by only the most considerate and polite of drivers. As the third of these in quick succession pulled over to the side and stopped to let us through, the Red Max somewhat ruined my impression of the denizens of the area by nodding at all the parked-up cars and muttering cynically, “It’s a bit early for dogging, isn’t it?”
Back onto more familiar roads, we had a third incident with a biker in as many weeks. Does this mark a new departure in the conflict between motorist and cyclist? Have all bikers now been seduced by the dark side and the four-wheeled forces of oppression? Or, is it perhaps the same biker who has a very particular grudge against this club and has been stalking us for the past 3 weeks, just so he can vent?
This particular biker slowed, mid-overtake, to ride alongside Crazy Legs and loudly declare, “Mare allah bunda munts!”
“Pardon me?” Crazy Legs, enquired politely.
“Mare allah bunda munts!” the biker repeated, but just as unintelligibly as the first time.
“What?” Crazy Legs shook his head, acting perplexed.
“Mare. Allah. Bunda. Munts!” the biker shouted, trying to enunciate each word carefully through the constricting confines of his helmet.
“Eh?” Crazy Legs responded, smiling at the biker in a manner he hoped would encourage further elucidation.
By now it was obvious that the biker wasn’t trying to convey a friendly greeting, but this comedic interchange had robbed his intended invective of any sting.
Even better, having paused mid-overtake to berate us for holding up the traffic, he was now getting serious grief from the cars behind that couldn’t get past him. Perhaps it finally dawned on him just how foolish he looked, and our new biker friend gave up and roared off. Maybe he’s planning to give it another go next week?
I found myself riding alongside the Monkey Butler Boy, who’d finally determined the osymetric chain-ring he’d invested all his hard earned currency in was, to quote the Red Max’s expert opinion, “utter crap.”
He’d since bitten the bullet and reverted back to more traditional style chain ring, but was bemoaning the fact that he’d having also switched from a 36 to a 39, the ratios were all wrong and he was struggling to get used to the change. It was also a ready-made excuse if he started to struggle on the hills. (Just saying).
Down into the Tyne valley we went, skirting the river for a while and rolling straight through our usual re-grouping point at Bywell Bridge, determining in conversation with the Red Max that our pace probably meant the second group were well adrift and it would be an overly prolonged wait.
So, we kept going and almost immediately started the scrabble to climb back out the valley. We were soon splintered and strung up and own down the road, but stopped to regroup after threading our way across the 4-thundering lanes of A69 traffic. This was safely achieved with a lot of patience, a couple of sharp kamikaze dashes and the use of a handily placed median strip, where we could temporarily kneel in prayer and claim sanctuary.
Once across the dual carriageway, there was yet more climbing to be done before the road would level and lead us on toward Matfen. On the climb the Garrulous Kid became detached, allegedly distracted while trying to inhale a Snickers bar whole. Then the Monkey Butler Boy lost contact, still trying to come to grips with his new and completely alien gear-ratios.
The other stragglers may have had their excuses too, but if they did they were more stoical and refused to acknowledge them.
We regrouped once again and then pushed on toward Matfen and from there to the Quarry. The pace started to pick up and a handful went off the front as we made the turn for the climb.
I rounded the corner and dropped back to make sure we collected any stragglers before pushing on. As I rolled back up to speed I encountered a happy, freewheeling Crazy Legs engaged in a bit of Rick Rolling, booling along and merrily engaged in an energetic rendition of Never Gonna Give You Up…
The front runners had long disappeared when our group made it to the top of the Quarry, to the accompaniment of Mr. Astley’s finest only moment. Here we swung right and started our final run to the café.
As the road straightened, the Monkey Butler Boy was the first to attack surging off the front and opening a short-lived lead, before the inevitable response reeled him in.
Richard of Flanders and the Red Max tried next, each attacking in turn, but on the long drag up toward the crossroads their speed and advantage quickly bled away. Caracol caught and drove past them, I dropped onto his wheel and as we darted through the crossroads, he looked back and saw we’d opened up a sizeable gap.
“Looks like it’s just me and you,” he declared … and so it was, as we hammered down through the curves, swept through the junction and ground our way up the last few ramps.
As we swung onto the road down toward the Snake Bends, Caracol was questioning the wisdom of the Monkey Butler Boy’s premature attack that had lit the blue touch-paper and set everything off.
He was, I suggested, simply a hostage to genetic imperative and couldn’t help uphold the family traditions of attacking early and quite forlornly.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
At the café, the Red Max played us all expertly, suggesting it was still warm enough to sit outside and then, after we had all dutifully trooped out to the garden, taking his pick of chairs inside.
Despite the deception he wasn’t wrong, it was perfectly pleasant outside and the bothersome wasps were fewer in number and not quite as aggressive as they had been last week.
We settled down for a “3-mugger” and a classic spot of blather and bullshit …
It started when the Garrulous Kid wandered past, digging in his back pockets and dislodging an empty Snickers wrapper that spiralled slowly down to the ground.
“I do like a Snickers,” Zardoz commented, “It’s been shown to have the perfect, irresistible ratio between sugar and fat content”
“Ah, a sort of golden ratio. I thought that was the ring donut?” I countered, obviously having heard somewhere that the perfect ratio between sugar and fat was to be found in ring donuts.
“Those as well.” Zardoz affirmed, “But for your 70p, a Snickers bar will give you the highest calorific content and the perfect ratio. It’s the peanuts.”
“What? Wait, 70p! I remember when they used to be only 20p. And a lot bigger too.”
“Yeah, yeah and they used to be called a Marathon.” Zardoz was only slightly sympathetic.
“Exactly, it was named after the most recent tussle between them Persians and Greeks.”
“It’s all ancient history now, old boy.” Zardoz observed dryly.
We were joined by G-Dawg, the Colossus and Taffy Steve, having just led the second group in, and talk turned to various cycling commentators. We wondered how Sean Kelly and his indecipherable accent had ever been seen as a prime candidate to be the expert voice of Eurosport.
Although thankfully he’s grown into this role, Richard of Flanders still recalled a memorable, early radio interview with Kelly when he had to be constantly reminded that listeners couldn’t actually see him nodding away or shaking his head, no matter how vigorously he did this.
From there it was just a hop, step and jump (luckily bypassing the even more puzzling choice of Jonathan Edwards as a cycling presenter) en route to talk about how the rather odious sounding Brian Clough had publicly humiliated Peter Shilton on national TV for a standard, run-of-the-mill, goal-keeping blunder.
Speaking of inappropriate job choices, Richard of Flanders recalled Peter Shilton had then moved into management with Plymouth Argyle, or some other remote (well, to us, anyway) team, where he didn’t seem to have a clue and constantly demanded his players do push-ups as punishment for minor infractions.
This, I suggested was exactly the kind of thing our club was missing and I moved that push-ups for any kind of infraction be immediately added to the club rule book.
Ah, the club rule book. Did such a mythical creation even exist?
We imagined it as a massive tome, bound in ancient, flayed skin of indeterminate origin, covered in arcane motifs and sigils and sealed with a massive, black iron hasp and padlock.
If allowed access to its hallowed content, the yellowed parchment pages would crackle dryly as you opened it up, each section headed with massive illuminated letters and consisting solely of a series of dire instructions: “Though shalt” and “Though shalt not’s.”
G-Dawg felt the tome would be hidden within a secret chamber, the fuhrer bunker, buried deep beneath OGL’s house.
“Guarded by traps, trip-wires and a giant boulder,” Taffy Steve imagined.
“Poison darts and snakes,” I added.
“And even if you find it, you’ll still have to fight the ghost of Pat Roach for it, somewhere along the line,” Taffy Steve concluded, while Richard of Flanders looked on in bewildered incomprehension.
Talk of old football legends, brought up talk of old football stadiums, with Richard of Flanders, on safer ground now, wondering if anyone could recall going to the toilets at old Ayresome Park.
As I remember the stadium itself was like one big toilet, so my imagination failed when it came to picturing what the actual toilets within it could be like.
“Just a long, blank wall with a gutter at the bottom,” according to Richard of Flanders.
“And no drains,” G-Dawg stated.
“Apparently, you’ve never experienced Liverpool until you’ve felt the Kop warm leg welcome.” Sneaky Pete relayed and then there were numerous stories about football spectating in the good old days, terraces awash with urine, pitches showing more mud than grass and leather case balls that would dislocate your neck if you tried to head them when they got sodden and heavy.
Oh, and the ever present threat of violence.
Back talking about a slightly more civilized sport, everyone wanted to know why Szell was still riding, even though it was already September. We wondered if he’d even keep going right up until the Club Hill Climb and if he might perhaps participate?
Szell revealed he’d ridden it once before in the dim and distant past and had no desire to revisit that particular form of intense self-flagellation, a view much supported by Taffy Steve.
“You could always come along and push people off,” a well-meaning, Richard of Flanders suggested, but off course we took his suggestion the wrong way.
“Like, hide in the bushes half way up and leap out at unsuspecting riders?” the Colossus wondered, imagining a Takeshi’s Castle style contest, with a ninja-style, anti-cyclist who would suddenly appear and push each rider over as they strained upwards.
As if a hill climb isn’t already hard enough.
The Colossus suggested he was facing a near impossible task with the hill climb and couldn’t better his first ever time, just back from uni, when he was younger, fitter and most importantly, much lighter. Now, getting older and heavier, his chances of a new personal best time were receding, despite the vagaries and inconsistencies in OGL’s official time-keeping.
Someone countered that weight followed a typical bell-curve through age and there would be a point where you could expect to start getting lighter again.
“Great,” I suggested, “Another 17 years and I might be at my optimum for the hill climb.”
Of course at that age, all dry sinew and skeleton, there’s a good chance that you would simply snap attempting a hill climb.
We speculated about our assailant, potty-mouthed motorbiker and G-Dawg concluded he must surely know us as he had correctly identified that we were a bunda munts. Perhaps, he suggested, it was a disgruntled, ex-club member – although that would be casting the net ridiculously wide and would in no way help us narrow down the biker’s identity.
I then learned that Canyon were a German bike brand (I didn’t know, but can’t say I’d given it much thought) and could also be considered when the Garrulous Kid looks to replace his Focus and insists that only precision and world-renowned Teutonic engineering will suffice. So, from our count he can choose, Canyon, Focus, Rose, Cube or Stork. Not a bad line up.
Speaking of German bikes, we learned that the Garrulous Kid was on his winter bike because he “broke his tyres.” (The tyres were obviously not engineered in Germany.)
He seemed rather nonplussed when Taffy Steve suggested he could have just swapped over the wheels.
“They’re too heavy.”
“But they’d still be better on your Focus than on your winter bike.”
“I hate my winter bike,” the Garrulous Kid declared.
“Yes,” Taffy Steve affirmed, “That’s the point.”
Off we went and I found myself riding alongside the BFG. He’s taking his newly achieved granddad status very, very seriously and has been regularly riding out with the new grand kid perched on a seat fixed to the front of his bike.
Unfortunately, all he can see when he’s riding is the back of the kid’s head, so it’s always a shock when he gets home and sees the snot-encrusted mask that the wind and speed has dragged out and dried like cement across the kids face.
Even worse, he got home one time to find the kid had somehow eviscerated his helmet, the hollow shell sitting on the back of his head, while the disengaged padding was wrapped tightly around his face.
I suggested this was probably a defence mechanism and the kid was so terrified he had pulled the helmet lining down to cover his eyes, like a condemned man before a firing squad.
The BFG was having none of this though, insisting he knew the kid had been smiling all the way around because of the flies stuck to his teeth.
A turn on the front, through Dinnington to the turn-off, was my last major effort of the day, then the main body swung left and I dropped behind Caracol and G-Dawg to surf through the Mad Mile and away.
The rain blew in as I plugged my way across the river toward home and I stopped to pull on a jacket. The poor weather seemed to have the effect of boosting the appeal of the shopping centre and the traffic was starting to back up. I had to queue patiently on the approach to the roundabout at the bottom of the Heinous Hill, slowly getting soaked ad cold.
Finally across and through the traffic lights, I spun my way up and home to end another ride, at least on a high point, if not an actual high.
YTD Totals: 5,239 km / 3,255 miles with 64,597 metres of climbing
Total Distance: 111 km / 69 miles with 1,159 metres of climbing
Ride Time: 4 hours 10 minute
Average Speed: 26.6 km/h
Group size: 31 riders, 0 FNG’s
Temperature: 21°C
Weather in a word or two: Perfect
Ride Profile
Saturday morning proved a good bit warmer than Thursday and Friday, when my commutes had been distinctly chilly affairs. Perhaps this was due to the insulating effect of fairly solid cloud cover that gave the early morning light a dimly suffused and milky quality and turned the river a notable flat and evil-looking slate grey. Still it was dry and, apart from a niggling, occasional bit of wind, looked like being a perfect for a ride.
I was pleased to find the bridge across the river still closed to cars, but it’s surely only a matter of time before they finally finish the longstanding repairs and I no longer get sole and unhindered use of its nice, shiny new surface. I’ve no idea what’s causing the delay, it’s been closed since May, but for once I’m happy to celebrate the inefficiency of the great British workforce.
I was first to arrive at the meeting point, just a little ahead of G-Dawg and the Colossus who I spotted approaching on my own run in.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
Seeing one of our number wearing the new Holdsworth racing team jersey, OGL was unsurprised to learn it had been on special offer, revealing that he understood the team was going to fold before it had even got really started. If true, then they would join the likes of Aqua Blue and One Pro Cycling as emblems of the parlous state of British professional bike racing.
The complete and utter malfunction in marketing of Aqua Blue was also discussed as a quick, straw-poll of all those gathered revealed that only one of us realised Aqua Blue was actually a website selling cycling gear, similar to Wiggle or Chain Reaction . We variously thought it was a brand of designer water, a type of deodorant … or a make of prophylactic.
The lone person amongst us who recognised that Aqua Blue was, ahem, “the No.1 marketplace for all things pedal powered” was the Colossus and he only knew this because Aqua Blue ads constantly kept appearing on all his social media sites. In fact he said they were so intrusive, so frequent and so annoying, that he vowed never to visit the website out of principle.
Wasps were to become a recurring theme throughout the day and the little beggars provided Crazy Legs with an opportunity to expound on his interesting factoid of the week – apparently figs have to be pollinated by a wasp crawling through a hole, so small and tight that its wings are ripped off in the process. (Think of something akin to a normal sized human trying to squeeze into a medium sized Castelli jersey). The wasp becomes trapped and is then digested by enzymes in its fruit cell – one explanation for the crunchy bits in figs.
Crazy Legs said when someone first told him this, he immediately called bullshit, but a bit of research proved it was true and he challenged us to do our own research if we didn’t believe him. He also reassured us the crunchy bits in figs were just the seeds and not partially digested wasp parts.
I was surprised by the return of cycling heavyweight, Plumose Pappus and wondered when he’d be heading back to university, only to be even more surprised when he told me he’d finished his course, graduated with flying honours and was now looking to do a masters at Newcastle University. Has it really been 3 years? Have I been writing this drivel for that long? The horror…
Our leader for the week Aether outlined the route, including a late amendment which would have us using Broadway West as a route out of the city, ostensibly a measure to avoid the heavily potholed route through the Dinnington Badlands. Any other reasons for these last minute route change went unremarked and were, we felt, covered by plausible deniability.
With our numbers again bolstered by a large contingent of Grogs, we split into two groups and, seeing the balance of numbers lay with the second group, I tagged on to the back of the first one, as we pushed off, clipped in and rode out.
Yet again, we made it through Broadway West without incident. Benedict drifted to the back to ride alongside me and we passed the time chatting about commuting, cycling holidays, club runs and the like.
Today seemed to be National Cyclist Abuse Day, we had a number of drivers celebrating our very presence on their roads by serenading us sweetly with their horns – including one passing in the opposite direction at high speed, who barely had time to register his disapproval, let alone be in any way discomfited by our group.
Even the bikers wanted in on the act today though, with a particularly friendly specimen using sign language to query if we perhaps belonged to the lost tribe of Onan?
After the Monkey Butler Boy swept away to meet up with his hormonally charged Wrecking Crew, we shuffled around a bit and, once again, I dropped to the back where I was soon joined by the King of the Grogs, who’d bridged across from the second group and reported that they weren’t all that far behind.
Amongst other things, we had a brief chat about the clubs (complete lack of) succession planning for when OGL hangs up his wheels and retires, or, simply cannot summon the will to ride above the Augustus Windsock speeds that frustrate everyone else.
As we hit Whalton, he dropped back to wait for the second group, while I pushed on with the original members of the first group until we reached Dyke Neuk.
Here we paused to regroup, before choosing various shorter/longer, faster/slower options. Having been told the second group had been snapping at our heels only a few miles back, we didn’t expect a long wait, but minutes dragged past with no sign of them.
Finally the bulk of group 2 emerged, clambering up the hill to join us and we learned the King of the Grogs had hit a pothole and punctured at the bottom of the climb. We settled in for a longer than expected wait while repairs were made.
The delay gave the Red Max an opportunity to carefully inspect his rear tyre, revealing it was on its last legs and had previously been condemned to the turbo. It had been pressed back into service at short notice when the Monkey Butler Boy had decided to “borrow” Max’s Continental Grand Prix tyres to save his own, high-end, super-supple, Vittoria Corsa race tyres from unnecessary wear and tear.
Max then pointed to his front wheel, where the Monkey Butler Boy had also inexplicably swapped out the inner tube for one with a 60mm valve, 95% of which poked out, rudely and ridiculously from the skinny rims.
I couldn’t help thinking this was a case of biter-bit, recalling all the times throughout the winter when the Red Max had manically cackled about replacing one failing component after another with bits “borrowed “ from Mr’s Max’s bike.
“The fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree,” I suggested.
Combined, the Red Max and Monkey Butler Boy could probably strip a bike down to the frame, while removing all useful components, faster than Blofeld’s piranha pit could reduce a super-secret agent, or bumbling henchman to a loose collection of bare bones.
Apparently they could be just as lethal as well, with the Red Max stating he’d actually started one ride before he realised the Monkey Butler Boy had decided to ride alloy instead of carbon wheels that day and “borrowed” Max’s brake blocks when he made the switch.
With the puncture finally repaired, there was a brief coalescing before everyone split and I tagged onto the group heading up the hated climb to Rothley Crossroads and points beyond. We became strung out and splintered on the grinding climb and not a little disorganised. At the crossroads, I followed Caracol and Ovis straight across the junction. while behind some decided to wait, some went left and some, who had initially followed us, turned back again.
Caracol hesitated and looked at us quizzically. Ovis gestured we should just press on and I nodded in assent, so the three of us did just that, happy to ride as a small group. We would later learn that others had followed, but we didn’t see them and they never caught up.
Caracol led from the front, forging his way up Middleton Bank and then accelerating hard toward the café. Ovis and I contributed a couple of short turns, but I suspect we were only slowing things down and, after thrashing ourselves breathless we’d just drift back to hang off Caracol’s back wheel again, trying to recover.
Then we hit the rollers and I accelerated up and over the ramps, dragged our group up to the last corner and last climb, before I sat up. Caracol zipped past, Ovis followed a little bit later and a little more laboriously and I trailed the pair into the café.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
It was just about pleasant enough to sit outside in the garden, where we found ourselves constantly assailed by wasps, especially when Ovis broke the edict and had jam with his toasted teacake.
This was in direct contravention of Standing Order#414 and much to the chagrin of Carlton, who was sitting alongside him, suffering from the same over-attentive wasp activity, while looking ruefully between his own dry teacake and the one laden with gooey, sticky and sweet jam that Ovis was blithely chomping his way through.
Buster downed his cappuccino and declared it was good, much better in fact than the muddy, often tasteless big mugs of coffee we usually indulge in. This, we decided, was a classic case of quantity over quality. Not only was the cappuccino too small, effete and more costly, but crucially it didn’t come with the “free” refill. I could only quote that quantity has a quality all of its own, an aphorism I always associate with Napoleon, but has been variously attributed to Stalin, von Clauswitz and others.
After the wasp-fig bombshell from earlier this morning, Buster took up the cudgels on behalf of our vespidae friends (fiends?) He suggested that they were an essential part of the ecosystem, contributing massively toward insect pest control and that without them there’d be a massive increase in the use of pesticides.
He explained he knew so much about them because he participated in a study where members of the public were tasked with building wasp traps, collecting the contents, freezing all the little wasp corpses and them posting them off to the Royal Entomological Society for counting and identification.
This sounded like a Blue Peter appeal from some nightmarish alternate reality, with kids encouraged to make traps (out of beer bottles and baited with beer no less) and then collect dead animals. Still, probably easier and more worthwhile than collecting milk bottle tops.
We wondered why the wasps had to be frozen before posting, reasoning that they would thaw out in transit – unless, Caracol suggested, they were transported in one of those organ donor ice boxes. I could also see issues with people mistaking their collected wasp corpses for frozen mince and cooking a chilli with far more kick than intended.
Meanwhile, on an adjacent table, I could hear Crazy Legs, no doubt having already wowed his audience with facts about wasps and figs, describing how one of his neighbours had tackled a wasp nest with a Dyson…
We finally decided to retreat and leave the wasps in temporary charge of the garden, swiftly packing up to head home.
Conducting a quick headcount, G-Dawg wondered where everyone had gone. Someone pointed out the Grogs were predictably missing, having slipped away to do their own thing, while I could account for a few more who’d left early, setting out in one and two’s as they needed to get back home by a certain time.
“Oh,” I added, And Plumose Pappus was abducted by wasps. They picked him up and just flew away.” Somewhat surprisingly, everyone seemed to accept my explanation as at least plausible, if not 100% accurate.
I’m not so sure they believed my next assertion, that the wasps were going to make him their God-Emperor and the Chief Overseer of the wasp factory, responsible for making all the new wasps to replace the ones we’d killed today.
On the return I dropped in alongside Crazy Legs and we decided the Vuelta had become the Tour of Redemption for both the French, through Bouhanni and Gallopin and for previously hapless and winless, under-performing teams like EF Education First–Drapac, AG2R La Mondiale and Dimension Data.
While reminiscing about now dissolved retailer Toys R Us, Crazy Legs recalled a girlfriend who was convinced there name was actually pronounced Toysaurus. I guess either version is still better than Aqua Blue.
We’d made it almost to the top of Berwick Hill, when I declared, “Hey, no cars this week! Naturally, scant seconds later a car barrelled around the corner and we dived to the side of the lane so it could squeeze past. Me and my big mouth.
There was only time for G-Dawg to hope that if anyone did happen to have an accident on Broadway West, they would have the decency to drag their broken body and bike into a side street before calling for help, then I was swinging away and starting to pick my way back home.
A very brief shower peppered me as I crested the top of the Heinous Hill and disappeared as quickly as it came. Then I was back, done and dusted, home and hosed, or however else you want to describe it.
YTD Totals: 5,182 km / 3,219 miles with 63,722 metres of climbing
Sur La Jante 