The weather continues to confound, swinging from a frigid -4°C on Wednesday’s early morning commute, to disturbingly mild, double-figures for the weekend.
With no ice to worry about and the morning’s starting to get lighter too, the big concern first thing Saturday was perfecting the balancing act and getting the layering just right – we were looking for the Goldilocks ideal – not too hot and not too cold.
So, a single base layer, Galibier jacket (in case the threatened rain or sleet materialised early than forecast), thin gloves with liners, no buff, no hat or headband. It was a reasonably, solid effort, a self-scoring 7, or an 8 out of 10 and I only feeling chilly the few times we were forced to stopped.
The roads were strangely quiet of fellow cyclists as I made my way across to the meeting place, but it seemed to be a day for solitary runners, who were out in force, in all sizes, shapes and styles.
There were so many, I wondered if there was an upcoming event they were all training for, or perhaps we now had a National Running Day to go along with National Hugging Day, National Pie Eating Day, National Rubik’s Cube Day, or whatever new nonsense they’ve come up with. (Apparently National Running Day does actually exist, but it’s in June.)
On the final approach to the meeting point I was caught behind a vaping driver, billowing plumes of sickly, sweet-smelling smoke out of his car window. It took me a while, but I finally recognised that he seemed to be indulging in a blackcurrant vape, possibly Ribena, or perhaps Vimto? A new one to add to Taffy Steve’s list of improbable and nauseating vape flavours.
Main Topics of Conversation at the Meeting Point:
G-Dawg pointed to the cheap, emergency, strap-on LED light on my handlebars and recounted how he’d attached one to his dog, after its purpose built LED collar failed. He said it worked as a great substitute, until the dog went plunging headlong into the river, at which point he mentally wrote it off.
He was then hugely surprised when the dog had emerged, with the light still blinking away furiously. At this point he decided that for a cheap light, he’d found something that was surprisingly sturdy, waterproof and wholly reliable … until he tried to turn it off to save the batteries for another day and found he couldn’t.
I imagined the disgruntled dog sitting at home, still blinking away like a stray satellite and unable to sleep for the disturbing bursts of light searing through its eyelids every time it tried.
Crazy Legs revealed he’d finished last weeks ride, taken off his gilet and hung it over the handlebars of his bike in the garage. It had still been there waiting for him this morning, but he’d only managed to half pull it on before its rank stink had dissuaded him and he’d been forced to consign it directly to the washing basket.
OGL commented on someone suggesting that he could wear a base layer ten times in a row between washes – or was it ten years in a row? Anyway, this is entirely possible because it was made with miraculous non-stink, Merino wool. I think it’s probably fine – but only if you can pedal fast enough to outpace your own odour …
Still, G-Dawg thought you could get at least 4 “good” wears out of a pair of Y-fronts, worn normally, back to front and then repeating the process but inside out. He was joking. (Right?) The disturbing level of detail he added, such as saving the right side out and the right way around “for best” did make me wonder …
OGL then mentioned some all-day British Cycling, regional meeting in February and wondered if anyone wanted to accompany him to represent the club, a sort of sharing of the pain. He didn’t seem to find any irony in the fact that nobody else has any kind of official status in the club (other than being a paid-up, or even non-paying member.)
In other news, he suggested that the city’s £11 million development plan for two sporting hubs could see a cycling track and possibly clubhouse, built at the Bullocksteads site near the rugby stadium. This, he offered, could be a better meeting point for club rides. This vision was enthusiastically embraced by G-Dawg who lives right on the doorstep of the proposed development. I’ve no doubt he could see his future-self rolling out of bed at 8:55 and still being the first one to arrive at the meeting point.
Taffy Steve nodded over to where Princess Fiona and Mini Miss had gathered and were chatting away.
“The red car and the blue car had a race…” he intoned, drawing attention to the fact that they were dressed almost identically, except one was wearing a red jacket and the other a blue one.
“Do you remember that Milky Way advert?” he asked, “I hated it.”
I wondered what it was provoked such hatred, could it have been the art style and direction? The patent absurdity of it’s storyboard? The jaunty, jangling soundtrack? The ear-worm effectiveness of its jingle? Perhaps it was the product itself, the rather effete, light-weight Milky Way that made him curl his lip in disdain?
“It’s the lyric’s he explained, starting to sing away, “The red car and the blue car had a race, but all Red wants to do is stuff his face, he eats everything he see’s, from trucks to prickly trees, but smart old Blue he took the Milky Way.” He paused, but not for long …
“So, what’s wrong with that? Prickly trees? Prickly trees! Pah! They obviously meant cactuses, but were too lazy to find anything that would rhyme with cactuses, cacti or whatever. Even as a kid I knew it was just a lazy cop-out. Grrr!”
It’s amazing what superficial ephemera we carry from our yoof and how much it can still trouble and annoy us …
Our route architect for the day, Crazy Legs asked if anyone was interested in the full details of his grand plan. Apparently not, so without further ado, he invited G-Dawg to lead out those who wanted a faster ride, adding that there’d be no waiting to regroup.
The first group started to coalesce around G-Dawg, with the majority of riders joining. I hung back to try and even out the numbers, but it was still a two-thirds to one-third split – apparently no one wants any kind of association with a “slow” group.
Crazy Legs did have a little rueful chuckle to himself, as the (always game) Goose bumped his steel behemoth down off the kerb and went to join the fast group.
We agreed he’d be fine, he likes a challenge and the route wasn’t too hilly.
The second group followed, but we hadn’t gone more than a couple of hundred yards before the Red Max’s front tyre gave out with a sound like a sputtering Catherine Wheel – fzzzzit-fzzzzit-fzzzzit-fzzzzit.
We all pulled to a stop and clustered around and I moved up in unison with Crazy Legs to see how we could help.
“Don’t worry,” he declared, “We’ll soon have it fixed, the Dream Team’s here!” as he referred to the time we’d fruitlessly spent half an hour struggling with Big Dunc’s unholy alliance of Continental Grand Prix tyres and Shimano rims (Trial of Tyre’s.)
We’d failed in that instance, only to later learn that Big Dunc had saved himself through the simple expedience of flipping the wheel around and inserting the inner tube into the other side. Why that made a difference, I really don’t know, but it obviously did and it might be worth trying if you’re ever stuck with seriously recalcitrant tyres.
Despite the close attention and best ministrations of the Dream Team, the tyre change went pretty smoothly and we were soon back on the road again.
I was on the front with the Ticker, (Ticker-less, now he’s on his winter bike) and we spent much of the time calling back, trying to determine what the route was – I really should have paid attention, or at least encouraged Crazy Legs to give us an actual and foolproof briefing.
Occasional incoherent shouting punctured our ride, apparently caused by a RIM in a Volvo taking exception to our right of way, but I was well insulated from any altercations as we plugged away on the front, up through High Callerton and toward Medburn.
Here, we were drawn to a halt when the Red Max’s tyre gave out again. While he cursed his shoddy and useless Continental summer tyres, that seemed shot after “a mere 5,000 miles” of extraordinary wear and tear, I double-checked the rim and carcass for offending objects – glass, thorns, shards of metal, flints, rough edges, caltrops, thumb tacks, whatever. There was nothing.
Meanwhile, the Red Max realised he’d used a Vittoria inner tube, so he had a little rant about “Italian crap” while he was on. Even as a proud Vittorian I wasn’t going to stand in front of that particular runaway express.
“Badd-bing-badda-fzzzzit,” Taffy Steve added helpfully.
Meanwhile, Crazy Legs took the flaccid, holed tube off the Red Max, ostensibly to locate where the puncture was, but really just to hold it up to his nose and inhale deeply.
“Ah, I love the smell of rubber,” he declared, evidently quite content with the world. Apparently it smelled considerably better than his gilet.
There then followed a very deep, lengthy and philosophical discussion about how inner tubes can smell so good, when the air inside them is so rank.
“Like stale kippers,” I suggested and nobody disagreed.
We got going again and pressed on to the crossroads at Heugh, where a bronchitis-suffering OGL made a bee-line for the cafe. The Red Max decided to cut his ride short too, hoping to lessen the chances for further punctures and departed to provide escort duties.
Somewhere along the way I found myself directly behind Taffy Steve and Crazy Legs as they rode along, for some reason arguing about similarities between OGL and, somewhat randomly, football manager Neil Warnock.
Things turned a shade darker when Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe and Saddam Hussein were somehow added to the equation Still, the only conclusion they could agree on was that, if Idi Amin was a club member, they were pretty sure he hadn’t paid his subs in a good long while. Bizarre.
Having been delayed by recurrent punctures, we took a slight short cut toward the Quarry and, as the road started to climb, I nudged onto the front alongside Crazy Legs.
As we pulled the group along I complained about how I seemed to have become a dirt magnet for the day, liberally spotted and besplattered with mud from head to toe. My boots had turned a deeply unpleasant shade of brown and I was peering out at the world through seriously spotted glasses.
It was bad enough to start me singing “Teenage Dirtbag” – a selection that was at least tolerated by Crazy Legs as a “not-too-bad” earworm.
“Left, or right?” Crazy Legs pondered as we dragged the group toward the top of the Quarry.
“Left,” I declared, “We haven’t been that way for a long time.” So long in fact that I’d forgotten bits of the road had actually been patched and was (in places) almost decent.
So, left we went, slowing to allow everyone to regroup after the climb. As we rolled on, Crazy Legs bent right over to point, his finger hovering scant inches from the road surface as he bellowed out a lung-shredding “POT!” – a warning that was probably heard in the Scottish Borders.
“Sometimes, I really think I need to become a little more mature,” Crazy Legs considered.
“No, don’t go changin’ – we love you just the way you are.” I assured him.
He rode on in silence for a good dozen or so pedal strokes while he digested this …
“You bastard! You utter, utter bastard!” he complained, “First you give me Wheatus and then snatch it away for … for bloody Billy Joel!”
“Oh, is that a Billy Joel song?” I enquired innocently.
He then swore me to silence as he had a huge confession to make, needed advice, but demanded the ultimate in discretion. (This blerg doesn’t count, as no one reads it.) He looked around cautiously to make sure no one could eavesdrop. The group was still reforming behind us after the climb and we had a brief exclusion zone.
“I’ve been thinking about my set-up for the mountains and … Well… I don’t think I can get what I want with Campag.”
I was deeply shocked, almost speechless, as he hurriedly and in hushed tones, talked about Shimano, or even SRAM groupset options. Oh and the sky is falling down and meanwhile, in deepest, darkest hell, the thermostat’s been nudged up just a little …
Further discrete discussions around this bombshell were abandoned as we started a slow burn for the cafe, gradually picking up the pace.
“Do you want to go for this sprint?” Crazy legs wondered.
“Nah, I’m happy to just roll through.”
We built up the speed until all the talking behind stopped and we were lined out, clipping along, bouncing and juddering across the rough road surface.
I nodded up ahead where the road rose, before starting to drop down toward the Snake Bends.
“Take it to the top and then unleash the hounds?” I suggested.
So we did, peeling off neatly to either side and ushering the rest through for the final charge.
Cowin’ Bovril was the first to try his hand, surging off the front as we drifted toward the back.
He briefly had a good gap, but was slowly reeled in. Then, just before the road started to level, Taffy Steve attacked from the back, an astute masterclass in timing.
The gap quickly yawned upon, Cowin’ Bovril was washed away and only Carlton seemed able to give chase. I nudged onto his wheel and followed, but the move proved decisive. Carlton closed, but couldn’t come to terms with a flying Taffy Steve.
Main Topics of Conversation at the Coffee Stop:
In the cafe, Carlton apologised for our slightly ramshackle and disorganised riding at the start of our grand adventure, but explained that, when you’re on the front with your nose in the wind, it’s really difficult to hear what’s being shouted up from behind.
We agreed we needed a better system and Crazy Legs’ idea of passing messages forward always seemed to stall half way up the line.
“Perhaps we need a dog whistle?” Crazy Legs pondered.
Visions of One Man and His Dog sprang to mind. Cum ba Shep, cum ba. No, don’t think that’s going to work.
Changing tack, Carlton wondered what was going on with the weather. “It’s at least three degrees warmer today,” he remarked.
“Did you say three degrees?” I queried.
We paused…
I looked at Crazy Legs, Crazy Legs looked at me and we both shook our heads. Luckily, neither of us could remember any Three Degrees songs. A narrow escape.
We reminisced about our old representative from the Hollow Lands, De Uitheems Bloem, who we have traded in for a younger, newer model in Rainman. (It’s my understanding that Dutch riders are held in in such high regard, that UCI rules limit them to one per club. As such I can’t recall if our two ever actually rode together, but I do know we weren’t allowed to keep both.)
Crazy Legs remembered planning a winter break to Amsterdam and asking De Uitheems Bloem for some recommendations. He later received a 5-page email, detailing a full itinerary of all the things to see and do on his trip. This was appended with a long range weather forecast for the weekend; sunrise and sunset times, temperature, wind speed and direction, chance of precipitation, air pressure, cloud cover and pollen count. It concluded that it looked like being a particularly mild weekend, “so don’t bother taking your skates.”
On returning, Crazy Legs had sought out De Uitheems Bloem, “Thanks for all the recommendations, that was brilliant. By the way, English people don’t own skates.”
“They don’t?”
We shared tales of riding in the Alps with Carlton, who seemed surprised that the Col de la Croix de Fer was Crazy Legs’ favourite climb. He couldn’t recall seeing the (admittedly modest) iron cross, perhaps because his overriding memory of the climb was being paced up it by a wild horse. This beast, rather worryingly, refused to leave the road and didn’t seem all that bothered by the gaggle of cyclists lined out behind it.
“It was obviously a draught horse,” I offered. I thought it was funny, Crazy Legs was simply dismayed. Secretly, I just think he was upset because the only wildlife we saw on the climb was a sun-blasted, completely flattened, giant toad-in-the-road. (The Circle of Death).
Talk of climbing mountains led Carlton to talk about Jimmy Mac’s 900 gram, special climbing wheelset. First, Crazy Legs thanked Carlton profusely for introducing the subject of wheels into the conversation, something he felt we hadn’t discussed for … oh, at least 3 or 4 weeks. Then things got serious as we fired off a range of questions to try and frame the fearful symmetry of Jimmy Mac’s climbing wheelset …
“What type of spokes, how many and how are they laced?” Crazy Legs demanded.
“When you say 900 grams, is that with, or without rim tape?” I pondered.
“Quick release skewers?” Crazy Legs added.
“The cassette?”
“The freehub?”
A rather overwhelmed Carlton could provide none of the answers and was now probably regretting mentioning wheels in the first place.
Now Crazy Legs wanted Jimmy Mac to ride out on his fabled wheels and then strip them down completely, so he could fully weigh them and see if their claimed mass could be independently verified.
Luckily, Carlton spotted Jimmy Mac entering the cafe at just that moment and was able to deflect Crazy Legs onto the actual wheel owner. Crazy Legs immediately got up to pursue the issue, before coming back and reporting it was a dead-end, as Jimmy Mac had trashed the wheels during his International Grand Fondo horror smash.
I thought this would deflate Crazy Legs somewhat, but it actually cheered him up. He now felt fully vindicated in his view that such wheels aren’t robust enough to stand up to the wear and tear of actually riding on them.
All good things come to an end and were soon lining up to head for home. Here I noticed the Monkey Butler Boy visibly shivering.
“Feeling the cold?” I asked him, proving yet again just how startlingly perceptive I am.
“Yes,” he replied tightly, “And it’s all his fault” he pointed at the Red Max.
“But that’s unfair, surely your dad didn’t tell you what to wear this morning?”
“No, but I inherited a stupid gene from him.”
Ha!
As we set off I found myself chatting to the Red Max as we trailed the Monkey Butler Boy. He despaired at his progeny’s lack of common sense and choice of attire, short sleeve jersey and arm warmers, shorts and knee warmers, already despoiled white socks and once pristine (now poisonous ivory) shoes. Looking at Max bundled up in a winter jacket, gloves, boots, and hat, I determined that genetics isn’t always the answer.
I also noticed that of the four teens out today, at least three of them were riding bikes without mudguards, whereas just about all the older set had at least some semblance of protection for themselves, their bikes and most importantly, their fellow riders.
I wondered if that says something about generational differences – perhaps the youngsters are more concerned with style, or maybe they’re more willing to put up with discomfort? More daring? More stoical? Harder? Less cossetted?
Then again, perhaps I’m over-thinking it and they are what they seem to be when I’m at my grumpiest – at best thoughtless, or just plain inconsiderate.
The Red Max told me he’d taken the Monkey Butler Boy along to see a professional coach, who told all the youngsters that they were training too hard and in the wrong way. He’d described the ideal training programme as a pyramid, a base of solid, core, low intensity miles, capped with fewer, high intensity efforts only once this base had been established.
The concept resonated with the Red Max:
“That was interesting wasn’t it?” he’d asked.
“Yes, it was good.”
Something to think about?”
“Nah, it obviously doesn’t apply to me.”
A “3-2-1-Go” countdown signalled an impromptu sprint up the final few metres to the crest of Berwick Hill, fiercely contested by G-Dawg and the Garrulous Kid.
What can I say, the Garrulous Kid, in the full prime of youth and with all the advantages of modern technology, astride his ultra-light, uber-Teutonic, precision engineered, carbon Focus, was up against the grizzled veteran, three times his age and hauling an all steel fixie. It seemed a very unequal contest …
And so it proved. The Garrulous Kid was chewed up, worked over and unceremoniously spat out the back. Score one for the wrinklies.
I slotted in alongside Jimmy Mac as we started down the other side of Berwick Hill, where we were passed by a lone Derwent C.C. cyclist, all elbows and a busy style.
“He’s a bit far from home. I wonder what he’s doing on the boring roads over here, when he has the choice of all those good hilly routes south of the river?” Jimmy Mac mused.
This prompted a discussion about possible rides and the challenging terrain “over there” in the south of the Tyne badlands, (or Mordor, as my clubmates will refer to it.)
We hit the climb up to Dinnington and, in just a few metres, the gap between us and the Derwent C.C. rider almost entirely evaporated.
“Ah,” I suggested, “He doesn’t like hills.”
“Which is why he’s riding over here!” we both decided in unison.
As we entered the Mad Mile, I was completely and wholly unsurprised when a sudden headwind seemed to rise up out of nowhere. I’m getting used to this now.
I sheltered behind Caracol and G-Dawg for as long as I could, then I was on my own and plugging my way home. I got back suitably tired – I might not have been running with the “fast group” but I felt I’d had a good workout nonetheless.
YTD Totals: 648 km / 403 miles with 8,825 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.
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: 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 