Woah!

Club Run, Saturday 26th October, 2019

Total Distance:	108 km/67 miles with 1,091 m of climbing
Riding Time:	4 hours 39 minutes
Average Speed:	23.3 km/h
Group Size:	22 riders, 2 FNG’s
Temperature:	7℃
Weather in a word or two:	Better than expected

On with the rain jacket again, in the face of a chilly start and the forecast foretelling of persistent rain that never quite materialised.

The weather wasn’t dire enough to make a Flat White Ride a necessity instead of a luxury, but Taffy Steve had one organised regardless. He even pre-publicised it on the inter-web thingie, much to the confusion of our Dutch contingent, who read it and instantly became nostalgic for a club run, back in “Het Oude Land” – one totally devoid of any hills. They seemed horribly disappointed to learn a Flat White Ride had more to do with consuming hot beverages, than the topography of the route actually covered.

(Things were further confused by the Hammer misreading the post as promoting a Far Right Ride, leading to expectations that the run might end at the coast, where all “ferriners” would be forcibly ejected from the country.)

I suffered the first needless close pass of the day as I topped the final rise before a gradual descent down to the meeting place. Sadly, it wasn’t to be the last, which left me wondering if these things come in batches?

Despite this, I arrived safely and only a few minutes late, having been held up at a level crossing and then seemingly every single traffic light on my run in.

I joined the growing assembly of slightly damp cyclists under the dank eaves of the multi-storey car park.

Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:

Jimmy Mac was at pains to ensure everyone knew the great sacrifices he had made in order to plan and lead today’s run. He told us that had he known it would coincide with England’s Rugby World Cup semi-final, he would never have volunteered and he pleaded for sworn secrecy in the event that anyone was following the score live. I think he even considered confiscating everyone’s mobiles, before the practicality of riding around with jersey pockets stuffed with 20 odd phones struck home.

G-Dawg seemed unfazed by the prospect of hearing the result and confessed that he didn’t like the tension of watching games live. He preferred knowing the result before he sat down to watch a recording, rationalising he could then decide not to watch, if the team he was supporting had lost.

I wondered how this sat with his great love for the Sunderland football team and he ruefully admitted that, if he took this policy to its ultimate limit – and only watched when they won, he might never get to see them play ever again.

“I have a friend who’s a bit of an expert on rugby and he reckons 60/40 in favour of the All Blacks,” Crazy Legs proclaimed.

“He’s predicting a high scoring game then?” Biden Fecht apparently quipped cleverly, or so I found out when I tried out the exact same crack moments later. Sheesh, late to the party again. I was derided, ridiculed and sent to the back of the class.

Crazy Legs then spent some time wrestling with what I took to be a new Garmin device, which apparently had “gone dark” all of its own accord. I wondered, if perhaps it had been the threat of being confiscated by Jimmy Mac that had pushed it into going off grid.

Crazy Legs found that even peering at the dull display through his super-happy, sunny-yellow, sun specs didn’t help, even though said specs usually make him so happy he’ll spontaneously burst out singing his ultimate happy-smiley-song: “Best Day Ever” by a certain Mr. Spongebob Squarepants.

He wondered where our Garmin wizard, the Red Max was, reasoning he would be able to fix the display by pressing some arcane, ambidextrous combination of different buttons. I didn’t have the heart to tell him about the time the Red Max set my Garmin up and managed to sync it to his own heart rate monitor. Or what an eye-popping revelation that had been …

Meanwhile, Crazy Legs became distracted by a great universal imponderable…

“What is on the upper floors of this car park, anyway?” he wondered.

None of us had ever had reason to venture up, so we couldn’t help, but he determined he would route his next ride up and down the car park ramps on a brave voyage of discovery. I can’t help thinking there might even be a Strava KOM in it.

Despite the weather and competing attentions of a certain game of rugby, we were twenty-strong by the time we pushed off, clipped in and rode out, with two late arrivals, Buster and Spoons, bolstering our numbers with perfectly timed late arrivals.

I had a chat with TripleD-Bee, resigned to a hilly ride after all, but not appreciating the threat of rain. He confessed he’d rather be in bed, but TripleD-El had shamed him into coming out.

As a bit of a novelty, our route out traced the same roads we travel over on our return leg, which gave us a double-dip into the dangerous overtaking of drivers on Berwick Hill. It also put the cafe at Kirkley Cycles in striking distance of the Flat White Club, who were soon breaking away for their caffeine and cake fix.

We pushed along and, as we started to climb up to Dyke Neuk, I slipped off the front and drifted to the back, determined to take an extremely relaxed approach and safe in the knowledge we’d be stopping at the top.

As we briefly paused, we learned that Mini Miss had taken her new Liv for a bike fit, but hadn’t used it since and now it was safely tucked away for the winter.

Goose recounted how the only thing he got out of his £180 bike fit was a solitary 1mm plastic shim, to place between one shoe and cleat. G-Dawg reasoned it probably served no earthly purpose, but was simply a token gesture by the bike-fitter to justify his high-prices.

A brief discussion about the lottery of being excluded from the clubs official Facebook page could shed no light on the seemingly random and arbitrary bans issued to various, long-standing club members, so we pushed on, just as perplexed as ever.

We dropped down Curlicue Hill and then started the climb back through the Trench. Behind G-Dawg was discussing his fixie and being asked about the gearing he used.

“38-14.” G-Dawg affirmed.

“38-14,” Biden Fecht repeated, in a voice loud enough to carry to the front, where Jimmy Mac was toiling away relentlessly. He paused masterfully, before adding, “Was that the final score, then?”

Ooph! Cruel …

By the time we topped the Trench I was feeling as tired as I had last week. I don’t know why, but I’m just not “feeling it” at the moment and everything seems to be harder than it should.

Things aren’t being helped by my saddle, a relatively new Fabric Line, which I just can’t get away with and seems to be becoming increasingly uncomfortable the more I use it. After years of using the ever-reliable Charge Spoon saddle for a comfortable, budget friendly seat, the (revamped and re-named) company’s replacement, the Line is a sore disappointment (both literally and metaphorically) and likely to be discarded soon.

I was just gathering myself for a hurtful assault of Middleton Bank, when Mini Miss called out that she had a puncture. About half a dozen of us dropped back and got the tube changed without too much fuss. I did most of the heavy lifting, but left G-Dawg to the tricky cryogenics of freezing his fingers to the valve stem, as he deployed Mini Miss’ CO2 canister to quickly inflate the tyre.

With all impetus gone for our assault on Middleton Bank, we rode up it at a relatively comfortable pace and I was able to sit in the wheels until the final drag, where I eased back and let the cafe sprint unfold, participating purely as a spectator.

Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:

There was a lot of adult talk at the table about skiing and different types of snow and chalet’s and resorts and … err, prostitutes, if I was following the conversation correctly. (To be fair, I probably wasn’t.)

Skiing sounds like great fun, but, you know, old dog/new tricks and all that. A combination of age, brittle bones, rickety knees and penury, combined with the opportunity cost of going on holiday somewhere cold instead of somewhere warm, means I’m very unlikely to ever give it a go.

New kid Sid brought me the news that Peter Sagan had agreed to ride the 2020 Giro d’Italia. He then entertained me with a series of photos of Sagan possessively cuddling the Trofeo Senza Fine, while Richard Carapaz looked on, wearing the kind of expression you’d find on a possessive and insecure husband watching a charismatic stranger pawing at his younger wife.

On the way home I dropped in alongside Carlton, who had recently joined a running club, but found the experience rather disconcerting, as no one there shouts at him and everyone seems to rub along without too much hysteria or fuss.

He suggested we were all mature, smart and phlegmatic, Brits (or Dutch), who didn’t need to over-dramatise the most innocuous of incidents and make mountains out of molehills.

As we set of along the lane to Berwick Hill a silver 4×4 swept past in the opposite direction, pointedly too fast and both deliberately and dangerously much too close. That’s what I would typically call a punishment pass, although punishment for what exactly I really don’t know.

He came within millimetres of Goose, whose taken to his steel touring behemoth for the winter, with all the antlers, prongs, pannier racks and cages. Luckily for Goose he was deeply engaged in conversation and the danger he was in didn’t really register until the car screamed past, at which point his eyebrows shot away to cower under his helmet.

Luckily for the driver, he didn’t come closer and tangle with the steel behemoth – it might have been an uneven challenge that he couldn’t possibly lose, but the steel behemoth was likely to inflict considerable damage on his shiny vehicle as it went down fighting.

A bit further along and we had another close call, as the driver of a small hatchback tried to squeeze past in too little space.

“Bloody hell, he’s a cyclist too – he has a bike in the back!” Biden Fecht complained, in a mixture of incomprehension and indignation .

“That’s probably from the last cyclist he hit,” I countered, “Like a serial-killer, he’s collecting trophies.”

Outlandish as this claim was, it was actually a more palatable explanation than “one of our own” going rogue and driving like an arse-hat, with no consideration for fellow cyclists and other road users.

A bit further on and young Sid took a sudden and unsignalled dart into a lay-by, causing a mass application of brakes and a dozen voices crying out “Whoa!” in perfect unison, before pressure was applied to pedals once more and on we whirred.

A fairly phlegmatic and undramatic response to a dodgy manoeuvre. I hoped Carlton didn’t feel too discomfited by our lack of hysteria and hyperbole-inflected ranting…

YTD Totals: 6,644 km / 4,128 miles with 87,130 metres of climbing

Carnal Gymnastics – The Sing-Along Version

Club Run, Saturday 19th October, 2019

Total Distance:	104 km/65 miles with 1,064 m of climbing
Riding Time:	4 hours 13 minutes
Average Speed:	24.7km/h
Group Size:	21 riders, 1 FNG
Temperature:	11℃
Weather in a word or two:	OK. OK. OK. Rain.

The weather forecast said rain and the traditional milestone of the hill climb has now been passed, all of which suggested it was time to break out the winter bike until the glorious rebirth of carbon next Spring.

In preparation for this day, the Peugeot had undergone a full service, new headset, bottom bracket, chain ring, chain, cassette, cables and tyres. Phew. It seemed good to go. I pulled it out of the shed and went back in to fetch a water bottle. As I stepped back outside, the rear tyre gave out a wet, flatulent guff and the back of the bike sank slowly and gracefully to the ground. Was it something I said?

Not a great start, but at least it happened outside my front door and not halfway down the hill. I worked to replace the tube in the comfort and warmth of the dining room, finally leaving, but now almost twenty minutes behind schedule.

Needing to shorten my route, I once more took to the muddy trails and bike paths that can, if you navigate them right, take you right up to the foot of the nearest bridge, without ever having to tangle with the busy dual-carriageways that make up the more standard approach.

Notice, I mentioned if you navigate them right. I think I’ve tried this on maybe three or four occasions and every time I’ve ended up in a slightly different place. Today was no different and somehow the trail spat me out on the fringes of that monument to Mammon, the Metrocentre shopping centre. I didn’t have the time or the will to backtrack, so took to the dual-carriageway at this point for the short hop to the bridge.

Luckily, it was still early and the roads were relatively car free. I made it across the river and picked up the pace to arrive at the meeting point more or less at the usual time.

Main topics of conversation at the meeting place:

Expecting a smaller than usual turnout, with a contingent off for some mountain-biking in the Kielder forest, I was surprised when Crazy Legs turned up, expecting him to be one of the key protagonists for some fat-tyre fun.

“I’ve torn something in my groin,” he explained.

“A guh-guh-guh-roin injury?”

His pronouncement had immediately caused flashbacks to the Cheers episode, where Sam as TV-sports pundit tried his hand at rapping … “Time to rap about a controversy…Gonna take a stand, won’t show no mer-cy… Lotta folks says jocks shouldn’t be…doing the sports news on TV…I don’t wanna hear the latest scores…from a bunch broadcast school boys…So get your scores from a guy like me…who knows what it’s like to have a guh-roin injury….Guh-guh-guh-roin, guh-guh-guh-roin injury.”

“Hmm, was this caused by some exotic, over-energetic, sexual misadventures?” I mused.

Apparently not, Crazy Legs explained it was actually the result of an incredible lightness of well-being – plagued by a (very) long-standing chest infection, he had just finished a course of antibiotics that left his lungs and airways uncharacteristically free of any breathing impediment. Buoyed by this startling feeling, Crazy Legs had decided to give the last half a mile of a ride home “the full welly” at maximum warp. The lungs had held up well, but the rest of his body decided to rebel instead.

Now he had no choice but to take things easy. “I won’t just be the slow group,” he confirmed, “I’ll be the ultra-slow group.”

“OK, the Ultra’s it is then,” I acknowledged, which cheered him up no end as the Ultra’s sounded much, much cooler than the Ultra Slow Group.

As an alternative to the main ride and the Ultra’s ride, Sneaky Pete had hatched a sneaky plan to hold a meeting of the Flat White Club targeted on the Gubeon cafe. This, Crazy Legs affirmed, would also be a good destination for the Ultra’s too.

Wincing and hobbling across to perch gingerly on the wall, the Crazy Legs wince deepened into a concerned scowl when the Cow Ranger rolled up on a Ribble he’d decided to convert to a winter bike. Identical to the much cossetted Ribble, this particular model had (in the eyes of Crazy Legs) been sacrilegiously yoked to full mudguards and heavy winter tyres, with the intent on riding it even when the weather wasn’t completely perfect.

Worse was to come, as the Cow Ranger determined he’d got a slow puncture in the front tyre. He took the wheel out, then bodily lifted the bike overhead and hauled it over the wall and out of the way.

“I thought you were just going to dump it in the bin there,” OGL quipped.

Everyone laughed. Well, everyone except for Crazy Legs, who just scowled with a face like thunder and told anyone who’d listen that he wasn’t happy …

Plumose Pappus reported that he’s already miserably failed in an attempt to be amongst the worlds most qualified unemployed, having just secured a job with the local NHS Trust. He’d even been out the night before to celebrate, discovering an unexpected love of karaoke and apparently finding his pièce de résistance in a full-throated rendition of The Proclaimers “500 miles“.

Once the Cow Ranger’s new winter bike was restored to working order, we were ready to go. I just had the chance to wonder how he could possibly cope with a bike that didn’t keep dropping its chain, when we were off, heading toward the lights and waiting for them to release us out onto the roads.

As we rotated in and out of the line, I had a chat with Sneaky Pete about Venetian detectives, French cop-shows and the possible casting of Tom Hanks as a grumpy Swedish man called Ove.

I then found myself alongside the Hammer, only riding with us for a while, as he’d promised to take his 13-year old daughter on the People’s March in Newcastle, where she was looking forward to heckling Brexiteers. I was just advising him not to treat her to a milkshake, when his chain started clunking and clanking.

“I’m going to stop to sort this out,” he told me, “just keep going.”

He slipped to the side and drifted back and, as instructed, we just kept going. Well, we did, until someone shouted “mechanical!” a sort of over-dramatic, premature ejaculation, if you will.

The pace instantly dissipated as the front pair eased uncertainly and we began to bunch up and fill out the lane on a dangerous stretch of road near the airport. This led to more unintelligible shouting and bellowing, with OGL and Taffy Steve becoming involved in an unseemly spat.

We found a safe place to pull over for a bit more kvetching and bitching and a shouty-sweary, handbags-at-ten-paces, sort of clamour, even as the Hammer sailed serenely past, brief mechanical almost instantly sorted.

Oh well …

Dropping down from Dinnington, the Cow Ranger determined things just weren’t right with his bike and decided to abort his ride. No doubt this secretly pleased Crazy Legs, who was probably convinced the Ribble had rebelled at the utter indignity of being treated as a winter bike and simply decided to stop working in protest.

Past the Cheese Farm, up Bells Hill and into Tranwell Woods we went, at which point, Aether had inserted one of his patented “there and back again” Twizzel Twists into our route. Biden Fecht flung out his arm to indicate we were turning left and almost smacked his riding companion in the face.

Dear me, we were a fractious lot today.

We rolled round the corner, found a lay-by and called a pee stop. Carlton enquired after Crazy Legs’ injury and wondered how he’d hurt himself. I assured him it wasn’t a result of any “carnal gymnastics” – a phrase he seemed to take such delight in, I invited him to use it as often as liked and suggested he should even consider building it into his c.v.

Under way again, the young FNG, Sid, pushed onto the front and was left dangling there, with all the grizzled vets queued up in the shelter of his rear wheel.

I eventually took pity on him and pushed up alongside him on the front, until the climb up to Dyke Neuk, where I let myself slide to the back. Once there we hung around, chatting about nothing in particular, while re-buffing Aether’s earnest attempts to get us moving again.

He finally prevailed and off went, the indefatigable Sid still on the front, but this time alongside Biden Fecht. I found myself riding with Plumose Pappus, ardently keen to convert me to his new-found love of all things karaoke. He even replayed last night’s highlight, his resolute rendition of The Proclaimers “500 Miles” complete with authentic accent, well … it would have been authentic, if The Proclaimers happened to be Irish and hailed from Dublin.

From there, the conversation took an unexpected turn to cover popular artists who all became a bit too self-importantly pompous and wont to disappear up their own rissoles. My prime example was Bono, who once booked his hat a $1,700 first-class seat on a trans-Atlantic flight. I assume Bono accompanied said hat on its trip, but who knows …

Plumose Pappus wondered if Sting belonged in this particular group, before wondering where Sting was now.

“Is he even still alive?” Plumose Pappus pondered.

“Ah, sort of death, where art thou Sting?” I queried, drawing a blank from Plumose Pappus, but a wry chuckle from Biden Fecht. To be fair, I think that was a cheap laugh, as even the most tenuous allusion to John Donne is likely to meet with the approval of our Professor of Renaissance Literature and Culture, Biden Fecht.

I followed up by explaining the last time I’d heard of Sting he was, somewhat preposterously singing about TWOC’ing cars in a Paris suburb, in duet with slinky French siren, Mylene Farmer.

Plumose Pappus then revealed that his mother had actually had some kind of close physical encounter with Sting, back in the day, which (I felt) I was able to top with my experience of peeing in the same urinal as AC/DC frontman Brian Johnson.

This inevitably led to some excited follow-up questions – (Oh OK, perhaps, it was more a feeling of dear-lord-what-is-he-on about-we’d-better-indulge-him, rather than actually excited.)

“The same urinal? At the same time?”

Well, it was technically a trough, so yes …

“Did you talk to him?”

I’m a bloke, standing peeing in a public toilet. What do you think?

“Was he wearing his cap?”

Obviously … but I don’t know if it had its own seat.

“Where was this?”

Lobley Hill Social Club.

“What was Brian Johnson, multi-millionaire, lead singer of mega rock band AC/DC doing in Lobley Hill Social Club?”

That I didn’t know – perhaps he was there for the Bingo?

I found myself at the back of the group as we closed on Middleton Bank. I managed to pass a few stragglers as we went up, but my legs suddenly felt weak and empty.

“I’m too old for this,” I gasped as I drew alongside Aether. He didn’t disagree. How rude.

Over the top, I gave chase to the front group, even though I already suspected I was never going to close the gap.

I did catch the young, indefatigable Sid on the approach to the Rollers, however, as he finally showed he was actually fatigable and we pushed on to the cafe together.

Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop

Aether learned that Mr. Boom was actually called Danny and sparked a table-wide rendition of Danny Boy.

“Oh Danny boy, the pipes the pipes are calling,
From glen to glen and down the mountain side …”

For some bizarre reason, this prompted Biden Fecht to try remembering a song about a mouse that nobody else recognised. Did he mean Em-I-See-Kay-Ee-Why-Em-Oh-You-Ess-Ee?

No.

I saw a mouse?

No.

Eek-a-mouse?

No – but this did prompt him into song, although I had to pull him up when what he started warbling was prime Barrington Levy …

Shoodilley-wop, shoodilley-woop, ooh woh ooh,
Eeh-ooh, eeh-ooh, Ooh-eeh-ooh,
Shoodilley-waddliley-diddley-diddley woh-oh-oh
Zeen!

Rather than the you-n-eek, Eek …

A wa do dem? A wa do dem dem dem?
A wa do dem? A wa do dem dem dem?
And me nuh know, and me nuh kno-o-ow
Me nuh know, and me nuh kno-o-ow

Honestly, you’d think a professor of renaissance literature would have a better understanding of the distinction between singjay and ragga reggae…

I had a further chat with Plumose Pappus on the way home. Now gainfully employed, he was looking forward to getting married, starting a family, crippling himself with a massive, unaffordable mortgage and the first signs of male pattern baldness, all before the end of the year.

I began to wonder if he wasn’t more mayfly than thistledown.

We contrasted his seemingly heavily-strictured, pre-ordained and homogenised life path, with that of our ex-companion and his near contemporary, Yoshi, who, in his latest adventure had travelled to Shanghai to pick up a new Giant bike, that he was now riding home, documenting his journey in a video-diary.

Undoubtedly an adventurous, profoundly life-changing and exciting experience though this is – and one Plumose Pappus suspected his mother might heartily encourage him to take on – we agreed that neither of us were cut out for such extreme stuff, while wondering what Yoshi could possible find to do next that wouldn’t seem impossibly dull and restricting.

As we entered the Mad Mile the rain started and once I’d struck out on my own, I stopped to pull on a rain jacket, suspecting that as soon as I did so the rain would stop.

Naturally it did, but it was only a temporary pause and as I was crossing the river, it came back with a vengeance.

Unusually, climbing Heinous Hill, I found myself in the company of another cyclist closing in on home. We had a brief chat as we toiled breathlessly upward, though, to be fair it wasn’t really the time, or the place to be sociable.

Still, it’s good to know I’m not the only bike in the village. Or something.

YTD Totals: 6,478 km / 4,025 miles with 85,188 metres of climbing

A Two Percent Chance of Rain

Club Run, Saturday 12th October 2019

Total Distance:	97 km/60 miles with 1,122 m of climbing
Riding Time:	3 hours 53 minutes
Average Speed:	24.9km/h
Group Size:	22 riders, 1 FNG
Temperature:	14℃
Weather in a word or two:	Better than usual

Heavy overnight rain passed, but left a rearguard of sporadic, unpredictable, light showers that punctuated the early morning, occasionally sweeping past, before fading quietly away.

I pulled on a showerproof jacket as I left the house and it stayed on my back for most of the ride out. Dropping off the hill, I spotted a couple of cyclists ahead of me as I traversed the valley floor and gave chase. Always a good incentive to pick the pace up, and I caught and passed them as we cut through Blaydon.

Luckily, the stiff headwind that had blown down the Tyne Valley last night and that I had battered myself against on the commute home, seemed to have dissipated. It was just as well, as we were heading straight upriver, to just outside Corbridge for our annual club hill climb up Prospect Hill.

I crossed the river, turned my back on what little wind remained and pushed through to the meeting point arriving in good time.

Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:

OGL turned up, checking we had enough volunteer officials for the event, before driving out to Prospect Hill to set up. Crazy Legs and G-Dawg had once more volunteered as official starters and time-keepers at the bottom of the hill, with Benedict set to provide timings at the top.

Mindful of typical Hill Climb weather (usually very cold and very wet) each had prepared appropriately, with Crazy Legs packing at least two jackets, while G-Dawg was wearing a heavily insulated, quilted winter jacket. Perhaps most sensibly, Benedict had a kit bag stuffed with warm clothing that he gave to OGL to transport to the hill for him.

Before leaving, OGL asked who was actually going to ride the event. Out of the twenty plus riders there, only Rainman stuck his hand up. The rest of us were all wimps, or had tried-and-died once too often on the slopes of Prospect Hill. (One day I might return for a final crack at our Hill Climb but not this year.)

What can I say, Rainman is either brave, or foolish. Or both. Then again he is Dutch, so maybe normal rules don’t apply.

The poor response caused a suitably disgusted OGL to wonder what kind of riders we actually were. Some would argue sensible and sane, but I know that’s a lie, so I’m not sure what the answer should be.

On other fronts, Crazy Legs was eagerly awaiting the publication of this years Tour de France route, primed for an excursion via camper van to the venerable Bourg d’Oisans campsite, to watch the pros take on some iconic Alpine climbs, such as the Alpe d’Huez, Col de la Croix de Fer and the Galibier.

The only hint we had about the route was a rumoured time-trial up the Planche de Belle Filles, or, perhaps if the gravelled section was used Super Planche de Belle Filles.

This, we quickly decided, was far too much of a mouthful for us ignorant and lazy Brits, so it quickly became PDF and Super-PDF – a diminutive that I feel is likely to stick.

I’m not sure whether his plans will need to change, given the subsequent unveiling of a rather unusual Tour route, that seems to deliberately avoid all the traditional, tried and tested big climbs.

With around 24 riders gathered, even if not everyone was riding the hill, we felt we’d be able to at least provide support for our Go-Ride kids, as they hurled themselves upward with mad abandon. I’d even tried downloading a cow bell app to my phone, but had to admit being unimpressed with its desultory, sotto voce, and unremarkably dull clunking. It wouldn’t get used.

With the need to get to the hill as quickly as possible, G-Dawg had us marshalled and ready to go bang on 9:15, although, as he rightly acknowledged, they (literally) “can’t start without us.”

We picked our way out of the city en masse and I’d pushed onto the front alongside G-Dawg as we made the turn toward the river. Just past the corner, Crazy Legs looked back.

“Bloody hell,” he wondered, “Where’s everybody gone.”

Our numbers had essentially halved. Support on the hill was going to be noticeably muted and quite sparse then.

On we went, threading our way through periodic sharp showers and bursts of bright sunlight, angling ever westwards, occasionally flanked with arcing rainbows that seemed to mark out our final destination.

Every time we were lashed with another sharp shower, Crazy Legs gleefully reminded us that the weather forecast promised “only a two percent chance of rain.” It seemed to be a line he was able to trot out on more than half a dozen occasions.

Down into the valley and along the river, G-Dawg found himself over-heating in his padded, quilted jacket and seemed to be looking forward to the odd, cooing rain shower, even as they became less and less frequent.

He checked everyone had the requisite documentation and inoculations, before bravely leading us across the bridge and into wild, savage lands, south of the river … welcome to Mordor, have a nice day.

We were on the final push now, pausing only to carefully skirt a devastating roadkill, an untidy pile of featureless, pink, blancmange like sludge, scraped into mouldering heap in the middle of the road. Try as we might, we were completely unable to discern any trace of features that would give us a clue and help us determine what type of poor creature had contributed its corporeal body to form this unsightly splatter.

Rainman roared off the front for an extended warm-up and by the time we’d reabsorbed him, we were at our destination – by G-Dawgs reckoning we covered around 40kms at a decent clip and in less than an hour and a half.

Perhaps shamed into riding, 7 or 8 of the seniors decided they would give it a go and joined the swarms of happy, excited Go-Ride kids, queuing up to sign on to ride the hill. Even our FNG decided to take part. Will he ever forgive us?

I helped pin on a few numbers, before making my own way up the hill to a junction about halfway up where I could provide some slight vocal encouragement and snap a few photos of the contestants for the group Facebook page.

It was great to see the kids hurling themselves uphill with reckless abandon, sometimes on their own, sometimes with parental outriders providing escort duties.

Cowin’ Bovril volunteered to escort one of the kids, acting in loco parentis and later admitted he’d had a good workout and he struggled to stay ahead of his young charge with the finish line approaching.

As the last riders came past I was joined by Rainman and Buster, both celebrating new best times on the hill. We made our way down to the start line again, where numbers were unpinned and all the shed weight (bottles, pumps, jackets et al) reclaimed.

We then just had to wait for Princess Fiona and Mini Miss to rejoin us. Neither had been seen since they’d finished their efforts up the hill, and had taken OGL’s advice on the best route back down to the start. They eventually appeared from completely the wrong direction, having been who knows where and complaining bitterly that they’d been sold a pup.

We then let Den Hague guide us through the tortuous labyrinth of Corbridge’s one-way traffic system, before we made our way to Valhalla, no, hold on, that’s not right, to Vallum, our cafe of choice for the day.

Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop

A quick check of phones revealed that Eliud Kipchoge had managed to break the two hour record for the marathon. You can’t help but be impressed by someone running a 100 metres in about 17 seconds and then doing it again and again and again, without pause, 421 more times in a row.

Spry, seemed slightly underwhelmed though, pointing out it wouldn’t be a recognised world record, as this wasn’t an open competition, Kipchoge was led by a pace car and accompanied by a phalanx of pace-setters, with bike riders on hand to hand over fluids as needed.

Kipchoge even had a laser directed at the road in front of him to keep him on pace, something I seem to recall was proposed for the Wiggins’ Hour Record, but the UCI rejected. (I’ve seen Cat#1 wildly chasing the red dot of a laser pointer and can confirm it is the most insidious form of mechanical doping known to man. Or feline.)

Anyway, we suggested that Spry take to Twitter to inform Kipchoge his record was worthless. Having already used this medium to allegedly enrage Elaine Paige fans as well as lambast Philip Deignan for having the temerity to marry Lizzy Armitstead, we reasoned adding one more mortal enemy on social media wouldn’t be too much of a burden.

By the way, can I please ask why long distance runners have taken to wearing arm warmers with a vest? At least Kashoge’s managed to match his to his top, unlike recent shocking efforts from Sir Mo, but nonetheless, it’s not a good look.

Meanwhile, Spry confirmed his single-handed, Go-Pro-armed, vigilante crusade to eradicate bad driving on the mean streets of the nation’s capital was going well – with 17 incidents reported to the police, of which 15 had resulted in cautions being issued. Not exactly crime-fighting worthy of a superhero, but you’ve got to admire his efforts.

As we were leaving, Crazy Legs vowed to hmm, maybe, perhaps, possibly, consider taking part in next years hill climb, before looking at me meaningfully, as if to remind me that as a friend I’d promised to never let him do it, ever again and I had a solemn duty to protect him from himself.

Leaving the cafe, we were soon skirting Whittle Dene Reservoir and, with the time already rapidly approaching when I’d usually be home, I swung off to head back down into the valley to make my way home.

The sky had cleared, it was a bright warm day and I had a good trip back, arriving just in time to catch the last 40kms of Il Lombardia. The Race of the Falling Leaves always signals the end of the pro-cycling season to me, despite whatever nonsense the UCI gets up to in the Far East. It’s a sign that winter is approaching and shiny plastic bikes are soon to be packed away until better weather returns.

Hopefully we’ll have a decent winter and there wont be too many interruptions to our rides. Still, I’m sure the Flat White Club is primed and ready if the conditions get too testing.

YTD Totals: 6,298 km / 3,914 miles with 83,003 metres of climbing

Riding the Fine Line between Foibles and Rissoles

Club Run Saturday 5th October 2019

Total Distance:	110 km/68 miles with 1,273 m of climbing
Riding Time:	4 hours 31 minutes
Average Speed:	24.2km/h
Group Size:	20 riders, 1 FNG
Temperature:	14℃
Weather in a word or two:	Cool and dry.

Saturday was a grey and cool, but generally still day. Pleasant, but not quite shorts weather (although Jimmy Mac disagreed) and while I needed the extra layer of a windproof jacket for the trip across to the meeting point, it was quickly abandoned and tucked away in a back pocket before we got underway.

Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:

The Hammer complemented someone on a carefully colour coordinated bike and kit, before declaring, “Never trust a cyclist who doesn’t colour coordinate.

Crazy Legs was about to endorse the view when, interrupted by an involuntary thought, he reached up to pat all around his helmet. This failed to satisfy his concerns, so he unbuckled his helmet, picked it off his head and brought it down to eye-level to squint at it and confirm he’d chosen the right one, it matched his jersey and he was suitably colour-coordinated

I had missed Taffy Steve’s triumphal return last week when I was hiding from the early morning rain, but he was back, propped up by Voltarol (other pain relief gels are available), which he’s buying by the case load. He’s determined it’s the only thing making his damaged rotator cuff sufficiently bearable to ride with. Other than that there’s no real treatment beyond physiotherapy which apparently doesn’t include painting and decorating. He knows this, because he tried.

Being unable to lift his arm above waist height, I couldn’t help imagining a series of rooms with beautifully decorated, pristine walls up to an impromptu, free-hand dado-rail height, above which the paint was a clashing, contrasting colour, aged, dirty and scabrous.

Sneaky Pete was also making a return, but his was from a pleasant sojourn on the Côte d’Azur and he asserted he could very easily see himself living there. He’d even managed to fit a sneaky ride into his holiday, having hired a bike for the day.

“The guy in the bike hire shop asked if I was a racer and declared I had racers legs,” he admitted somewhat reluctantly.

“I feel a change in blerg nickname is called for,” Taffy Steve mused, “How does Racer Legs sound?”

It dawned on Sneaky Pete that he’d said something injudicious within my earshot and that, of course, I have absolutely no discretion …

So, Sneaky Pete, or Steel Rigg, or White Stripes, or Racer Legs. Hmm, he’s collecting almost as many monikers as the Garrulous Kid, a.k.a. Zoolander, a.k.a. Helen, a.k.a. Fresh Trim, a.k.a. Jar-Jar Binks etc. etc. ad nasueum.

We were interrupted by a loud noise that sounded exactly like a bus suddenly releasing it’s air brakes, which itself sounds uncannily like a bicycle tyre enduring an unexpected, catastrophic failure. We looked around to see OGL rolling to a stop, as behind him a bus pulled away from he stand.

Long seconds ticked slowly past, tension building, while we wondered which way this audible coin was going to fall, before we heard, “Oh bugger, puncture.”

OGL set about stripping out his punctured front tube and replacing it, while we turned our attention to Mini Miss’ new bike, a sleek, smart looking Liv, aerobike in a dark, purplish-blue. The only awkward thing about it would appear to be the model name, the EnviLiv?

It might be brand new, it might look fantastic, but the EnviLiv did not come with the gears properly set up, so OGL had no sooner repaired his puncture than Mini Miss was leaning on him to fettle her new bike too. There’s no rest for the wicked.

While this was going on in the background, the Hammer outlined our route for the day, which included a climb up the Ryals, for potentially the last time this year. I can honestly say it won’t be missed.

About 20 strong, we decided not to split the group, pushed off, clipped in and rode out. At the traffic lights we checked to see if we were all together and found OGL missing, still stranded where we’d been gathered. He called across that he’d actually blown out the sidewall of his tyre, was heading home for a replacement and would make his own way to the cafe.

One down already, but I’m pretty sure we were all bravely determined not to let it spoil our ride…

I pushed onto the front alongside Jimmy Mac and we led the group out, occasionally calling back to Crazy Legs for directions as, naturally, neither of us had really been paying that much attention to the route outline.

As we took the road to Prestwick, Jimmy Mac started bunny hopping the (ridiculously over-large) speed bumps, encouraged by a chortling Crazy Legs shouting “Olé!” each time he went airborne, while I winced inwardly each time he came thumping down, half expecting his wheels to suddenly disintegrate and collapse under him.

Through the village of Ponteland, Crazy Legs called up, “Listen to all the happy chatter behind.”

“This is serious,” I growled back, “they’re not supposed to be enjoying it.”

“Silence!” Crazy Legs immediately bellowed, “the Ride Leader is disappointed to think you might be having fun.”

For the next minute or so there was an awkward, guilty silence, before the noise burbled up again. Are we that inured to being so thoroughly browbeaten?

Reaching the end of Limestone Lane and after a decent stint of perhaps 15km on the front, I peeled off, swung wide and drifted to the back.

There I found the Hammer, policing the group from the rear and we had a brief chat about possible destinations for another continental invasion next year, with the northern Dolomites being an early front-runner, depending on flights and accessibility.

We also touched on group size and dynamics as well, including how (more by luck than good management) we all somehow managed to bump along, despite being a generally disparate and diverse bunch, each, as the Hammer diplomatically put it, with our own peculiar foibles.

“Yep,” I agreed, ” We all definitely have foibles.”

“And there’s a very fine line between foibles and assholes,” the Hammer remarked sagely, “But somehow it seems to work.”

When we stopped for a comfort break, Crazy Legs declared an impromptu meeting of the Flat White Club, for all those who didn’t want to tackle the Ryals.

“Two coffee stops!” Otto Rocket exclaimed, somewhat scandalised.

“No,” Crazy Legs corrected her, “One coffee stop, one Flat White club meet.”

They’re different.

Apparently.

A little further along and the Flat White Club swung off, leaving the rest of us on the road to the delightfully named, but blink and you’ll miss it, Little Bavington and firmly en route to the Ryals.

Just before the descent to the village, a harsh rumble from my rear wheel heralded an untimely puncture and I pulled to a stop. I urged everyone to keep going, but obviously wasn’t persuasive enough, so they pulled over a little further up the road and Spoons dropped back to help.

As I wrestled manfully, but spectacularly unsuccessfully to prise my tyre off the rim to replace the tube, Spoons unzipped my tool tub to pull out one of my two spares and pump.

After much swearing and skinned knuckles, I finally managed to prise and peel the reluctant tyre from the rim, where it seemed almost to have adhered in place. I think I’ve been rolling on the same tyres for almost two years now and had their replacements ready and hanging in the shed for over a year without ever feeling the need to change them.

Surprisingly the tyre slipped back onto the rim without too much effort, I semi-inflated the tube and slotted the wheel back into the frame. As I did this, Spoons helpfully rolled up the punctured tube and slotted it into my tool tub.

Re-attaching my pump I started trying to inflate the tyre, but was getting nowhere. I unscrewed and reattached the hose. Nothing. I unscrewed the hose, tested the valve, tightened and loosened it and reattached the pump. Still nothing. I swapped my pump for Spoons’ pump. Still nothing. This was frustrating and in danger of turning into the longest tyre change in club history.

I told Spoons to rejoin the group and get everyone moving again, while I tried to channel some inner calm. Alone and feeling less pressured, I stood the bike against a nearby wall, securely attached the pump hose to the valve yet again and gave it a few blows. Success, the tyre started to inflate and slowly harden beneath my prodding thumb.

One slow, painful, puny upper-body cardio-vascular work out later, I felt drained and light-headed, but able to set off in pursuit of the rest of the group. I thought that even if I didn’t manage to rejoin, I might be able to at least see them ahead of me as they scaled the Ryals.

I took the climb through Hallington and rattled down the other side, swerving around potholes, gravel moraines, muddy puddles, a scattered windfall of broken branches and tussocks of wiry grass. Thankfully, I’ve been led to believe this particular track has now been removed from the Beaumont Trophy – and not before time. I couldn’t imagine actually travelling at break-neck speed down this road in a tightly packed, bunch of grizzled pros.

I was spat out at the bottom onto the road that drags its way up toward the Ryals, which rose like a wall in front of me. It was here that I expected to see at least the tail-end of the group battling with the slope, but the road ahead was completely empty. They must really have put the hammer down once they left me.

I dragged myself up the climb (as unpleasant and uninspiring as always) and tried to pick up the pace over the top.

Swinging left onto the road up to the Quarry, I spotted a lone cyclist in front of me. It wasn’t one of our group, but gave me a hare to chase and encouraged me to push the pace up a little more.

I caught him at the top of the slope, exchanging a quick greeting as I swung past and off to the right. Another cyclist coming down the road burned past us both. Perfect timing, now I had another target to chase down and I started to wind up the speed again.

I caught and passed him on the slow drag up to the crossroads, darted across the road with him on my wheel and then worked to open up a gap. I think he’d decided we were in a race too, so he kept the pressure on through the descent and all the way up to the final junction, which was where I think I finally managed to shake him loose.

All the way I was thinking I would at least see remnants of our group, but they were strangely absent and only OGL and a few later-starters were at the cafe when I arrived.

Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:

I was served, found a table to deposit my tray on and went to wash my hands, filthy from wrestling with tyres. I thought our group might have gone left, rather than right at the top of the quarry and then perhaps been held up by a puncture or mechanical. I settled down to read my emails and was halfway through my coffee before the others started to drift in.

Chatting with Jimmy Mac, we finally worked out that they hadn’t taken the climb through Hallington, but looped around the reservoir. Despite my best chasing, I hadn’t seen anyone on the road, because they’d been behind me all along.

The main group were followed in some minutes later by the Flat White ride, looking suitably fortified and quite relaxed. I couldn’t help thinking they’d chosen the right option.

We learned Plumose Pappus had enjoyed his holiday in Thailand, despite the fact (or maybe because) he’d been frequently mistaken for David Beckham. He’d also only narrowly avoided being arrested for loitering, having spent far too long eyeing up the frozen peas in the chilly sanctuary of a 7-Eleven freezer aisle, the only reliable haven he’d been able to find from the persistent heat and humidity.

A phone embargo was placed on the table, as Jimmy Mac had recorded that mornings England’s vs. Argentina rugby game and was desperate to avoid the score. For my part, I’m not convinced the tournament has quite got going yet, despite one or two shock results and I had no expectation of anything but a handsome England win.

Still, with a rugby international to look forward to and late arrival at the cafe, in no small part due to my tyre-fumblings, we were keen to get back on the road and formed up as the first group to head home.

At this point I discovered my rear tyre was flat again and waved the group away while I once more set about replacing the tube. I unhooked the wheel and managed to strip out the tube without any of the early difficulties. Checking the inside of the tyre I found one of natures caltrops, a vicious thorn sticking through the tread. I assume I’d just picked this up and it wasn’t a holdover from my first puncture, but I guess I’ll never know.

I pushed and pinched the thorn out, and unzipped my tool case to get at my pump and spare inner tube … to be confronted by two indistinguishable tubes, the original, punctured one from earlier this morning that Spoons had carefully and helpfully packed away for me and a new, undamaged one.

They both looked identical, pristine and untouched, but which was which. I picked one at random opened the valve and forced some air into it. It seemed to be holding, so I fitted it and wrestled the tyre back onto the rim.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised to find I’d picked the wrong tube and no matter how hard I worked the pump it never got beyond slightly squishy. Cursing my own stupidity, I set about replacing the tube again … and that’s where the second group to leave the cafe found me, struggling to force the last section of tyre back onto the rim, only to discover all my upper-body strength seemed to have deserted me.

Crazy Legs lent a hand and we finally manged to seat the tyre. I added enough air to get me home (later revealed to be a rather paltry 20 psi) and I was glad to get back on the bike and give my arms a rest.

I had a quick chat with the FNG on the run back, but with time pressing on, left the group early to loop around the opposite side of the airport and shave a few miles off my route home.

I made it back without further incident, but had to leave almost immediately to wander down to the Brassworks at Pedalling Squares, where Patrick had been beavering away on the Peugeot to prepare it for the coming winter.

This gave me a second opportunity to ride up the Heinous Hill in short order, just to round my day off perfectly.

It’s the club hill climb next week. I’m not likely to compete, but I will go along to shout on the kids. Before that though, I’ll be wrestling with tyres once again, it’s way past time to slap those pristine, new Vittoria Rubino’s on Reg.

YTD Totals: 6,144 km / 3,817 miles with 81,078 metres of climbing

Go Your Own Way – A Solo Sawtooth, Cold Toes Ride

Non-Club Run, 28th September, 2019

Total Distance:	60 km/37 miles with 1,254 m of climbing
Riding Time:	2 hours 45 minutes
Average Speed:	21.8km/h
Group Size:	Me
Temperature:	15℃
Weather in a word or two:	Dank

Also featuring bong-eyed cows…

The alarm on Saturday morning woke me to find a sustained rainstorm lashing the house and sheeting the roads with run off water. It was horrendous and I went back to bed.

When I woke again, the rain had largely petered out, but it was quarter to nine and I had half an hour to get up, get dressed and get across to the meeting place in time to join the club run. It wasn’t going to happen.

Instead I decided to stay south of the river for a solo ride, meandering aimlessly through the hills closer to home and tackling climbs I haven’t attempted since I was a junior. Despite the years and increasingly erratic and extreme weather conditions, I can report that I didn’t find any instances where erosion had noticeably lessened the steepness, severity or height of any of these hills.

If you squint hard enough, my ride profile could perhaps be seen as resembling an overused, worn out, old saw blade, but there was no discernible pattern to the route I inscribed across the map – a giant, formless, free-form squiggle that even Jackson Pollack would disown.

Still, I enjoyed my ride and managed to pack over a thousand metres of climbing into my sixty kilometres.

Hopefully, normal service will be resumed next week.

Oh … the cows. Daughter#2 needed some original photos of farm animals for one of her school projects, so when a herd of cows in a field adjacent to the road started keeping pace with me up one of the climbs, I backtracked down the hill and stopped to snap some pics of my bovine pacers on my phone. The photos were begrudgingly accepted, but only after I was accused of deliberately seeking out the North East’s ugliest, bong-eyed cows. That’s gratitude for you.

YTD Totals: 5,978 km / 3,715 miles with 78,970 metres of climbing

Knee Bother, Pet

Club Run, Saturday 7th September, 2019

Total Distance:	56 km/35 miles with 581 m of climbing
Riding Time:	2 hours 22 minutes
Average Speed:	23.5km/h
Group Size:	35 riders, 1 FNG
Temperature:	16℃
Weather in a word or two:	Bright but chilly

So, it appears my little, pre-holiday tumble did more damage than I first thought. Three weeks on and my ribs are still sore, but more concerning is my right knee, which started hurting more and more across the four days I rode into work.

I don’t know if I damaged it in the fall, in a separate incident, or if I’d hurt it by unconsciously changing my position in some way to compensate for the rib injury. By Friday I was riding with the knee heavily strapped and that was the order of the day for Saturday’s club run too.

A chilly start meant long-fingered gloves and a windproof jacket for the ride across, which passed without incident with the knee niggling, but bearable.

Main topics of conversation at the start:

Jimmy Mac asked if I wouldn’t like to amend my recent tale of woe and tell everyone I’d had a crash, rather than a fall. He suggested crashes are much more macho-sounding, while falls are strictly for toddlers and the elderly. Ah well, if the cap fits … I told him it wasn’t dramatic enough to be called a crash and I was quite content being classed as one of those elderly people prone to “a fall.”

Someone queried if the Monkey Butler Boy would be joining us and we learned from the Red Max that he would be, but only after recovering from a hissy-fit, brought on because he couldn’t find his knee warmers anywhere.

The Red Max explained his progeny was particularly upset because his knee warmers weren’t exactly where he was looking for them, which, apparently was quite remote from where he’d actually put them.

OGL asked if G-Dawg had been watching the Vuelta and especially the brutal, double-digit climb of Los Machucos.

“I wonder what gears they were riding, maybe a 34-32,” he pondered.

“Bunch of pussies!” declared G-Dawg, a man who sees the inner ring as an unnecessary frippery, solely for effete, losers.

“Merckx would be spinning in his grave,” he growled, ” … err, well … if he was dead, that is.”

I wasn’t quick-witted enough to suggest that you’d never find Eddy Merckx spinning in his grave, or anywhere else for that matter. Gurning, honking and grinding a huge gear? Yes, undoubtedly, but surely never spinning.

The Monkey Butler Boy belatedly joined us, sans knee-warmers, but wearing a buff around his neck.

“Oh, could you only find the one knee-warmer then?” Jimmy Mac quipped. I guffawed, but the comment sailed over it’s intended marks head.

In other news, Sneaky Pete reported that Taffy Steve has been missing for the past few weeks because of a nasty torn rotator cuff, once and for all ending his aspirations to be an NFL-calibre starting quarterback. Hopefully he’s on the road to recovery and will be back amongst us soon.

Then we were off a massive turnout of three dozen, when even splitting into two groups didn’t seem enough.

I slotted into the front group behind Crazy Legs and Richard of Flanders and away we went.

I was chatting with the Red Max about how it was still chilly and I wished I’d kept my gloves on, but was becoming more and more distracted by a building pain in my right knee.

As we approached Dinnington, I decided I was doing my knee more harm than good and told Crazy Legs I was aborting and heading for home. The group took a left to follow the planned route, while I kept going, to swing in a wide loop around the airport and pick my way back. It was a shame because I was actually feeling in pretty decent nick.

I found my knee continued to hurt sitting down, but not when I climbed out of the saddle, while my ribs were okay sitting down, but hurt when climbing. It seemed a decent trade-off, so I took my frustrations out on a few climbs on the way back, burning away some excess energy as I attacked the slopes.

Back early, time to rest up and hopefully heal some before trying it all again.

YTD Totals: 5,567 km / 3,459 miles with 73,332 metres of climbing

Crazy Horses

Club Run, Saturday 24th August, 2019

Total Distance:	119 km/74 miles with 1,172 m of climbing
Riding Time:	4 hours 41 minutes
Average Speed:	25.3km/h
Group Size:	30 riders, no FNG’s
Temperature:	26℃
Weather in a word or two:	Getting there.

An inauspicious start to the week, saw a capricious gust of wind and a wet and slimy speed bump, combined with a bit of cycling stupidity of Froomesque proportions, conspire to send me crashing to the tarmac on Wednesday’s commute home.

I took the brunt of the impact on my right hand side, a grazed shoulder, elbow, knee and ankle. I gouged deep scores in the lenses of my specs, which would have made them unwearable, even if the fall hadn’t snapped them clean in two.

I also managed to grate away the ends of the fingertips of my left hand and once, I got moving again, found blood running down my brake lever to drip a sporadic, splattery, breadcrumb trail all along my route home.

Worst of all though, I’d taken a blow to the ribs, which hurt a little when climbing and a little more when climbing out of the saddle. It was a discomfort I would carry across my next few commutes and into the Saturday club run.

If the road had been unkind, at least the weather hadn’t reciprocated and we were looking at a dry day with plenty of sunshine. A nice Saturday, for a refreshing change.

Despite the good weather, I didn’t spot many other cyclists as I made my way across to the meeting point, but there were lots of runners around, either drawn out by the good weather, or perhaps realising the Great North Run is only weeks away and they really need to start doing a little training.

I managed to hit one sweet spot, when the pedals seemed to spin effortlessly and I was cruising along at 19 mph without even trying. It was the best I’d feel all day and naturally it wouldn’t last.

Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:

Failing to learn from last year, the Monkey Butler Boy has a new pair of ultra white shoes to defile. I keep telling him that it’s not a colour conducive to the Northumberland climate, but it doesn’t appear to have registered. His last pair survived no more than a year before they became so discoloured they were consigned to the washing machine in a desperate rescue attempt. I don’t think this managed to return them to their former glory and worse, they actually shrank so much they no longer fit.

Having secured new, pristine white shoes meant he could now disparage the Red Max’s shoes, A sensible black and (naturally) red, which were apparently not stiff enough and certainly not expensive enough for the Monkey Butler Boy’s tastes.

“Two bits of wood with a cleat nailed on, that’s all you need,” a totally unfazed Red Max responded.

That’s pretty much how they used to be,” I reminisced, recalling the cycling shoes of my youth, when you did have to literally nail the cleats to the soles.

“Yeah, nailed directly onto the soles of your feet,” the Red Max confirmed, “That’s how hard we were.”

Benedict had set the route for the day and admitted it was exactly the same as the last one he’d posted. This, he said, was a punishment of sorts, as most of us had messed up by failing to take the designated turn just after the Mur de Mitford. Apparently he was intent on us doing this route again (and again and again, if necessary) until we got it right.

OGL issued dire warnings about the brief spell of good weather bringing all sorts of farm vehicles out on the roads as farmers rushed “to bring their crops in.” I wondered if this was a substitute, doomsday scenario because the weather conspired to deprive him of his favourite subjects for whipping up his “we’re all doomed” pronouncements, you know, glacial ice sheets, monsoon rains, or tornado like winds.

The fact is though that, just three days later, a 77-year cyclist was sadly killed in a collision with a combine harvester on one of our typical routes home. There’s probably a lesson in there for me not to be such a cynical smart-arse, but, well …

Anyway, away we went and I bumped down the kerb and tagged onto the back of the first group and after a little re- shuffling found myself riding alongside and chatting with the Cow Ranger.

Just after Bell’s Hill the Red Max cruised up to the front to tell us the second group had caught us. I didn’t think this was such a big issue now we were out of the ‘burbs, but I think Caracol and the Big Yin took it as a personal affront. The pace was ratcheted up to an uncomfortable level and we rattled through Tranwell and on toward Mitford at an unrelenting pace, that had us well strung out.

As we paused at a junction I asked for the pace to be dialled back and we managed a more orderly descent into the Wansbeck Valley. I found myself descending alongside Otto Rocket, “This,” she whooped, “is one of my favourite descents.”

“Yeah,” I warned, “but what goes down ….”

… has to go up again – and in this case, the up was the short, but savage Mur de Mitford.

“Aw feck,” I heard Otto Rocket muttering, “I’d forgotten about this!”

Up we whirred, each at their own pace, before we regrouped and pushed on to find Benedict’s less than obvious turn. Safely negotiated, we climbed, then climbed some more, up the 4th Cat Hill to Low Hesleyhurst, before a long swooping descent dropped us back into the Font Valley.

Throughout, we seemed to encounter numerous horsey-looking, horsey people on numerous horses, (none of the horses looked remotely human however). For the most part, they were polite and gracious, greeting us warmly, waving, thanking us for slowing down, or pulling to the side of the road to let us past. Not an erstwhile Taras Bulba however, riding one huge beast barebacked (the rider, not the horse!) while leading another by the bridle and seeming to take up the full road to do it. I swear he kicked his horses into a gallop as he surged toward us and we scrabbled to get out of the way. Crazy.

I caught up with G-Dawg, who’d has the immense privilege of a midweek ride out with a group of international cyclists who were in Newcastle to participate in the World Transplant Games, everyone of whom had an inspirational story to tell. He’d ended up chatting with a young Dutch guy who’d won the Road Race, Time Trial and Team Time Trial on a borrowed liver and another guy who was competing on the back of a double lung transplant.

And then it was back to the work in hand as we started climbing up the Trench. Again. For whatever reason, it seems to have featured in my last three or four club runs. Den Haag set a brisk pace and I managed to hang tough with the front group. Near the top he glanced back, to find maybe half a dozen of clustered together, the rest were scattered, adrift all the way down the climb.

“Hmm, we seem to have opened up some gaps,” he mused.

“I should bloody well hope so,” I gasped, “I’d be horribly disappointed if we hadn’t after all that effort.”

We regrouped at the top and pushed on for Angerton, but as we started to climb up toward Bolam Lake, I was suddenly done. Empty and heavy-legged, I drifted off the back of the group on the final climb and no matter how hard I chased I couldn’t close the gap. Even a token effort over the rollers didn’t help and I slipped into the cafe sur la jante.

Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:

In commemoration (or perhaps celebration?) of the Garrulous Kid’s last club ride before heading off to university, G-Dawg had arranged for the cafe to provide us with a celebratory cake. He emerged from the cafe with said cakey-treat (anointed with a single, solitary candle) and, rather bizarrely, a dozen knives, but no plates.

The candle was duly lit and the Garrulous Kid blew it out, as we all stood around and made (probably) the same wish. He then started to slice up the cake, handing out the first massive slice that took away about an eighth of its mass in one cavalier, over-generous moment.

We quickly pointed out his wasn’t going to work. Like chum in shark-infested waters, a seething pack of gimlet-eyed cyclists were already circling the table, building up into a cake-feeding-frenzy and they all needed to be appeased.

As the Garrulous Kid progressed, he started slicing and dicing the cake into smaller and smaller portions, until the last few slices were wafer-thin shavings of mostly barely stuck-together crumbs. Somehow, he just about managed to get away with it, although I dread to think what would have happened if he’d only been working with five loaves and two fishes – perhaps an unavoidable food riot?

Cake disposed off, the Garrulous Kid mused that at this time next week he’d be on the train heading to Aberdeen, while his parents would be driving up there without him.

This, he said, was so that he could take his bike up while leaving room in the car for other things. We naturally interpreted this as a pitiful excuse so the Garrulous Kids parents didn’t have to endure a 5-hour journey stuck in a car with him.

I even suggested they would probably dump all his gear in a heap on the pavement outside his halls of residence and be long gone by the time he rolled up with his bike.

G-Dawg told him not to worry though as, in an even bigger surprise than the cake, he’d arranged for OGL to travel up to Aberdeen on the train with the Garrulous Kid, to “see him off proper” (and make sure he didn’t sneak back.)

Even better, he hinted OGL had been persuaded to wear nothing but a club jersey and a slightly soiled, somewhat askew sporran – a sight that once formed in your imagination becomes almost impossible not to see …

Different groups of cyclists started to form up and start out for home, including Biden Fecht, also due to travel to Aberdeen University, to resume his teaching post.

They all wandered across to wish the Garrulous Kid goodbye and good luck.

“You will leave the front door key under the plant pot, won’t you?” the Garrulous Kid quipped, as Biden Fecht made to leave.

Oh how we laughed … well, all apart from Biden Fecht who sidled quickly away, wearing a slightly bilious expression.

Once it was our turn to leave we decided to route back through Walton again, just for a bit variety. I found myself riding alongside the Big Yin. He gestured toward the Garrulous Kid. “I bet he’s going to be a player amongst the girls at Uni,” he mused, “And that’s player with an A on the end…” He tried sounding it out, “You know, a ‘play-ah’.”

I could only stare at him in mute horror and incomprehension.

I was still tired and weak-legged as we chased down a group of our club mates who’d followed a different route to suddenly emerge on the road ahead of us. We managed to tag onto the back as this group accelerated past the Cheese Farm, but the chase had emptied my reserves and the pace was too high to sustain. I was done, sat back, eased up and disengaged.

I inhaled an emergency gel in the hope it would stave off, or counter any negative effects of bonking and settled in for my solo ride for home. That was hard.

I’m off for another family holiday and not back on a club ride until September.

September?

Already?

W.T.F.

YTD Totals: 5,435 km / 3,269 miles with 71,604 metres of climbing

Rambunctious Rowdy Rabble

Club Run, Saturday 17th August 2019

Total Distance:	118 km/73 miles with 1,191m of climbing
Riding Time:	4 hours 41 minutes
Average Speed:	25.3km/h
Group Size:	29 riders, 1 FNG
Temperature:	21℃
Weather in a word or two:	Getting there.

It’s Saturday morning again, so, naturally it’s raining. Again. Heavily. This time however, I’m assured that it is going to stop and the rest of the day should be relatively rain free.

45-minutes later, I’m getting ready to leave and the rain is slowly petering out. Still I take precautions, pulling on a light waterproof jacket and, after a tormented inner dialogue of Hamlet-like intensity, a pair of black socks. These make me feel rather uncomfortable and dirty, but it seems preferable to ruining another pair of white socks with road spray.

Minutes later and I’m more at peace with my choice as my front wheel cuts a bow wave through all the surface water sheeting the Heinous Hill. Socks and shoes are already soaked, but looking none the worse for it.

I’m caught behind the barriers of a level-crossing as two trains trundle past in opposite directions and then passed by two cyclists who I track to the end of the bridge, where they split off left and I head right. They’re both braving the weather sans-rain jacket and I soon stop to follow suit. Things are good, the weather has perked up and I’m almost perfectly dry by the time I pull up at the meeting point.

Main topics of conversation at the meeting point

“Are you the cycling group that leaves here at nine?” a breathless feller asked as he pulled up in front of us.

“9:15,” we corrected him. Obviously we were not the droids he was looking for and he scuttled away around the corner to search for who knows what group and who knows where. I’d been there from just before 9 o’clock and I could have re-assured him there been no other groups of cyclists lurking in the area.

The Garrulous Kid came bounding in, flushed with success having secured the grades necessary to get into Aberdeen University. Now he/we only have a couple of rides left before he leaves for an extended Fresher’s week over the border. It seems just moments since he was a gangling, callow, awkward and immature school kid, incapable of taking a left turn smoothly on a bike. Now look at him – a gangling, callow, awkward and immature, soon-to-be student, who is still incapable of taking a left turn smoothly on a bike.

Caracol reported a city-wide street party had spontaneously erupted in Edinburgh when they learned the Garrulous Kid was headed to university in Aberdeen rather than in their fair city. We also speculated on how Biden Fecht might take this news and whether he’d feel honour-bound to resign from his post at the University of Aberdeen

As our maître d’, unofficial meeter-and-greeter and chief pastoral carer, Crazy Legs was once again employed to bring a stray FNG into the fold. This proved to be a guy riding a bike that he claimed was transitioning from city bike, to gravel bike. The revolution had started at the front end with impressively wide-chunky tyres, before petering out with the super-skinny slicks still on the rear. We’re a broad church, with an open and inclusive outlook though, so both rider and transbike were immediately welcomed into our merry throng.

Den Hague had bravely volunteered to plan and lead the ride today and had us set for picking our way along some newish, somewhat pot-holed and distressed looking tracks en route to an assault on the Ryals. Crazy Legs assured the FNG that his bike was probably ideal for the task in hand … well, half of it was anyway.

We then only had time to ponder the unusual, unannounced absence of G-Dawg before we were pushing off, clipping in and riding out.

I dropped onto the back of the first group, where things started to go wrong almost immediately, as we were split by a red light. The light changed to green and Homeboyz and the Big Yin led the chase onto the main road, in pursuit of the front end of the first group.

They barrelled straight over the first round about. Uh-oh, I think we should have turned left at that point. We pressed on and then started to slow and prevaricate as it became apparent we really should have taken that left turn.

We decided to push on regardless, adding in a big dog-leg to our route in order to get back on track. A few miles further up the road, a group of cyclists appeared ahead of us and we were able to tag onto the back. The only thing was, it wasn’t our first group but the second and our numbers had just swelled it to a bloated twenty-plus.

The Big Yin queried if we should over-take and chase down the front group, but I suspected it would cause all kinds of mayhem and so we just sat at the back and enjoyed the ride.

Which we did, until we got to Matfen and a general re-grouping. Homeboyz explained how we ended up at the back of the second group and held his hand up to acknowledge his part in our misadventures.

“I have to admit,” he declared, “It was partly my fault,” he assured Crazy Legs.

“Partly?” I queried.

“Oh, okay, it was fully my fault,” he amended.

Better.

We split at this point, some off to the cafe via the Quarry, while the rest pushed on climbing up through Great Whittingham, flirting briefly with the A68 before taking the rough track through Bingfield toward the Ryals.

Then up the Ryals we went. I struggled to find the right gear and wasn’t pushing too hard, but somehow managed a new, fastest time, which was a little unexpected bonus.

A front group had raced away up the climb and they didn’t look back, but the rest of us regrouped in the village of Ryal, before tackling the Quarry. At the top we turned right and started to accelerate toward the cafe.

A small knot pulled away from the front, but I held fire figuring they would slow on the long drag up to Wallridge crossroads and I could try attacking and bridging across then, all the while Crazy Legs drove us on, intent on pulling our splintered group back into one cohesive unit.

I paused to let an approaching car past, then slipped to the outside and gave a kick. The delay for the passing car proved fortuitous as I caught the front group just as they approached the crossroads. I only had to slow momentarily before one of them called that the road was clear. Still carrying more momentum than the group I’d just caught, I eased past and pushed on with what I suspected was a small gap, but it was still a gap.

From behind Den Hague gave chase and pulled the Garrulous Kid along with him. Down the twisting descent, I made it through the junction, still with a slight advantage. Den Hague finally overhauled me on the climb up to the final junction.

Onto the road down to the Snake Bends, he seemed to pause momentarily and I tried to give chase, slowly clawing back some distance. Then the Garrulous Kid thundered away of my wheel and I eased, letting the pair up front fight it out, before once again our group slowly coalesced and we made our way to the cafe.

Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:

We found a perky looking G-Dawg already ensconced at a table in the garden, having decided to wait out the early downpour before taking to the roads. I think he was suffering from the same malady I was last week – rainmalaise.

Crazy Legs suggested if we ever needed a grumpy old man to replace OGL to bitch and kvetch about the weather and massively exaggerate its impact, we’d found the ideal candidate.

Meanwhile, Buster turned up at our table with a Chocolate Rollo tray bake as dense as osmium.

“That looks super-calorific,” Crazy Legs acknowledged admiringly.

“You might even say it’s super-calorific- expialidocious ,” I ventured, but singularly failed to inflict an unwanted ear-worm on Crazy Legs.

I needn’t have worried, minutes later he as talking about the end of season three of Stranger Things and serenading us all with a heartfelt version of Neverending Story.

Talk turned to other TV-Series and we learned that both Buster and Princess Fiona still have two episodes of Killing Eve left to watch and they warned us against issuing any spoilers.

“I’m only just getting over the shock of her husband leaving,” Buster volunteered.

“What! Her husband leaves her?” Princess Fiona demanded.

Oops, there goes the no spoilers alert, looks like someone actually has more than 2 episodes to catch up on.

From TV, it was a short hop to film, with Crazy Legs off to see the new Tarantino movie and still marvelling at how Christoph Waltz made drinking a glass of milk look so threatening and unsettling in Inglourious Basterds.

We discussed a pivotal point early in the film, when a spy in a German bar revealed himself by ordering three drinks the British way, by holding up his his index, middle, and ring finger. Apparently, that’s not how it’s done on the Continent.

“Show us three, with your fingers,” Crazy Legs asked Double Dutch Distaff, who wasn’t really following the conversation. She immediately held up three digits … a thumb, index finger and middle-finger.

Crazy Legs responded with his British version – index, middle finger and ring finger proudly upraised.

She looked totally perplexed, as if he’d just performed some incredibly difficult and strange sleight of hand, before declaring it was just wrong, unnatural and awkward. I sensed we were just moments away from such a gesture being declared retarded.

G-Dawg wandered over to suggest we took a different route home via Whalton as the road for our regular run through Ogle was muddy and “covered in crap.”

Crazy Legs announced the change, but probably could have saved his breath, G-Dawg swung left instead of right out of the cafe and everyone else just seemed to naturally follow.

The Red Max was riding happily alongside Crazy Legs, when he suddenly reprised “Neverending Story.”

“Nah!” the Red Max declared, “I’m not having it, not that song.” He made a show of pulling off to one side and slipping to the back.

Interesting.

I shuffled up and had a chat with Crazy Legs, again touching on the lack of club jersey’s in a group that was still almost twenty-strong.

“We must look like a bunch of masterless Ronin, roaming the countryside, seemingly without purpose,” I mused.

“I’ve always seen us as more of a rowdy, rabble.” Crazy Legs determined. He liked the connotation of rowdy with rodeo’s, suggesting our Wednesday evening drop-rides akin to bronc riding, you just hug on as long as you could before you were inevitably thrown off the back.

A brief reshuffle and I found myself alongside the Red Max. I couldn’t resist and gave him a quick burst of Neverending Story – and it was a quick burst, as I only know that one line from the chorus. Nevertheless, it was more than enough, even before my ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah’s, were complete, the Red Max was swearing like a trooper and dropping out of line again:

“Na! Na! Na! I’m not having it. Na!”

Who’d have thought it. Like kryptonite to Superman, or garlic to vampire’s, we’d discovered that Limahl’s horrid warbling was the Red Max’s Achilles’ heel.

G-Dawg and the Garrulous Kid finished their stint on the front and I took over alongside Homeboyz, keeping the pace respectably high as we swung round the airport. As we entered the Mad Mile and most of the group swung away, G-Dawg appeared on my shoulder and we pressed on to the roundabout, where I could slingshot away and start my solo ride back.

YTD Totals: 5,261 km / 3,269 miles with 69,553 metres of climbing

Jammy Dodger

Club Run, Saturday 20th July, 2019

Total Distance:	115 km/71 miles with 1,097 m of climbing
Riding Time:	4 hours 27 minutes
Average Speed:	25.9 km/h
Group Size:	33 riders, no FNG’s
Temperature:	23℃
Weather in a word or two:	Sticky and showery

Ride Profile

A quick hit before I disappear for a well-deserved (well, in my opinion) holiday on the Costa Blanca…

Saturday was sticky, hot and humid, even under granite coloured skies that promised to live up to the forecast of frequent heavy showers. The air was strangely still and breathless, mirroring the river which was dull, flat and as still as a millpond as I rolled over the bridge.

Last night I’d resorted to some creative bike wrangling to ensure Reg was ready, fully restored and, most importantly back home. I’d ridden into work on the single-speed as usual, but returned via the Brassworks bike workshop at Pedalling Squares, at the bottom of the Heinous Hill. There, I swapped bikes, picking up and paying for the work on the Holdsworth, before riding it home.

I’d then pulled on a pair of trainers, packed my cycling shoes in a rucksack and ran back down the hill to retrieve the single-speed. This was enough to reinforce my long-held belief that biathlon’s and triathlons are the creation of the devil.

Still, it was worth it, the Holdsworth was running true and smooth and as good as new. There’s something reassuring in finding a bike mechanic who’s a perfectionist. Now the potential for rain was about the only thing likely to ruin a good ride.

Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:

The sadomasochistic Buster had volunteered for his maiden role of ride leader, devising a route that was replete with just about all of our signature climbs in one neat package; Bell’s Hill, the Mur de Mitford, the Trench, Rothley Crossroads, Berwick Hill and Middleton Bank. I definitely needed any advantage a good bike could bestow.

The Garrulous Kid was just hoping to get to the cafe as fast as possible, so he could retrieve his sun specs, which he’d managed to leave behind the week before. G-Dawg told me they made the Garrulous Kid look like a bad Roy Orbison impersonator and he had visions of some old feller finding them, slapping them on his head and then walking blindly into all the tables and chairs as he tried to locate the exit.

I reassured the Garrulous Kid that I was certain they’d still be there as, from G-Dawg’s description, it didn’t sound like anyone else would actually want them. He then wondered if his water bottle would still be there too, as that was something else he’d forgotten.

I’m trying to see if we can develop an unofficial club jersey that more than two or three people are happy to wear, so had a chat with a few people about this, including Princess Fiona … which was when I realised I hadn’t considered a female option as (apparently) they’re built a bit different. I think this is going to be one of those projects that sounds easy, but the deeper you dig, the more issues you unearth.

A bunch of our riders had submitted themselves to a British Cycling ride leader course last Sunday, to allow them to officially take groups of youngsters out onto the open roads and introduce them to the mystical, mythical, ever-enduring club ride.

The course was an astonishing 8 hours long and preceded by a 3 hour computer test on general road safety and regulations – a hell of a commitment, that still didn’t get us to where we want to be. Apparently, ride leaders also require an up to date, First Aid certificate too – an additional course and between £15-£25 per person and then it’s only valid for 3-years.

Once we have all this in place, we would still only be allowed 8 junior riders for every fully qualified and certified ride leader and to cap it all, British Cycling charged the club £1,000 to run the course, plus the cost of the venue hire.

From talking to the group, many of the principles, guidelines and requirements they learned sounded rather Byzantine and restrictive and, well, a bit of a ball ache to be fair. I’m in no position to judge if the course teaches the best and safest way to lead a group of youngsters onto our undoubtedly dangerous roads, but the cost and time commitments alone seem to actively discourage clubs from doing this. I’m not sure how well this chimes with the mission statement of British Cycling to grow cyclesport?

With such a large group, we split into two and I dropped into the second group. Talk of enacting course leader principles were quickly shelved and we pressed on in our usual ramshackle manner.

I found myself riding alongside Sneaky Pete as we got underway chatting about Canadian singer-songwriters, the TV adaption of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and the right balance between practical colours for a cycling jersey and rider visibility.

I climbed the Mur de Mitford at a fairly relaxed pace and found myself alongside Taffy Steve as we pressed on.

“Ah, the Pigdon Prowler, ” I announced, referring to the Strava segment we now found ourselves traversing. “I wonder where that name came from?”

Taffy Steve agreed it was bizarre, but admitted to being far more interested in the etymology behind a different Strava segment: “Jonny’s Polish Shagfest” – having spend months trying to identify if we had any Jonny’s in the club he could interrogate to try and understand the origin of the Central European Shagfest and what relation it had to cycling.

Next on our list of came the Trench which again we seemed to run at a reasonable pace, before pausing to regroup. Just as we were determining shorter and longer options, our first group clambered up to join us, having been delayed when Caracol inexplicably tried to mate his rampant bike with Rainman’s. The only issue from this most unholy of unions had been a smashed derailleur, which had forced Rainman to abandon and call for the voiture balai to get him safely home.

Crazy Legs urged the front group to keep going at their usual, brisk pace, while the rest of us would trail along behind in our own time. Several defectors though took the opportunity to drop back into the second group, notably Goose and the Big Yin. Good for them, bad for everyone else as it prompted me to unleash my finest nasal, Dylanesque wail; “What’s the point of changing … horses in midstream.”

Having somehow survived my intemperate wailing, we pressed on toward Rothley crossroads, taking the much maligned and hated traditional route, rather than the equally, or even more maligned and hated novel approach that Taffy Steve had recently inflicted on us.

As the gradient bit and the speed dropped, I pushed onto the front alongside Goose to help pace us up and over the cross-roads. We repeated the exercise on Middleton Bank and then started building up the speed for our long run toward the cafe.

Into the final few mile and I attacked on the rollers, just to surprise everyone, figuring they certainly wouldn’t be expecting the move. I then dragged a quite remarkably unstartled, unmoved and unflustered group, who were firmly lodged on my back wheel, up and around the final corner, before swinging aside for the sprinters to burn past.

Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:

Although earlier arrivals had all chose to sit inside the cafe, it was so hot and sticky we decide to sit outside in the garden. Zardoz had heard rumblings about a new, alternative jersey.

“Oh, can I have one with my name on it?” he wondered.

“We can all have your name on it,” I assured him.

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t know who I was then,” he deadpanned.

I heard from G-Dawg and Crazy Legs that The Silence had been one of those attending the Ride leaders programme, where, by all accounts he’d remained characteristically tight-lipped and taciturn throughout. I’m not wholly convinced keeping mum is great attribute for a ride leader.

We also learned that he has a near fatal attraction for edging toward the kerb, particularly alarming for anyone caught on his inside. He’d make a deadly sprinter in a bunch finish.

Our brief sojourn in the garden was otherwise uneventful and we left in two or three disparate groups to make our way home. By great good fortune we saw no actual rain, but would periodically encounter soaking wet roads, suggesting we’d only just missed being caught in a fearsome shower or two.

This good fortune held all the way home, completing an unexpectedly dry club run and it wasn’t until I parked up the bike and stepped into the house that the heavens opened up and the rain came stottin’ down.

For once, good timing.

YTD Totals: 4,825 km / 2,998 miles with 64,345 metres of climbing

Silver Surfer

Total Distance:	53 km/33 miles with 950 m of climbing
Riding Time:	2 hours 20 minutes
Average Speed:	22.8km/h
Group Size:	–
Temperature:	20℃
Weather in a word or two:	Damn fine.

Time. I just can’t seem to scrape together enough of this elusive, precious resource these days.

— or maybe, I’m just lazy.

Either way, it took me an excruciating 3-weeks to write-up and post about my misadventures in the Alps and all the while weekends kept ticking past. I now realise I’m in danger of losing this blerg’s raison d’etre, the celebration of the venerable club run, with all it’s attendant lurid colour, madness, madcap characters, incessant chatter and mayhem.

I was hoping to report that normal service would now be resumed, but events have conspired against me. More of that later, but first a brief recap of what I’ve missed and what you’ve been spared …

Club Run, Saturday 22nd June : Got a Short, Little, Span of Attention Distance : 109km Elevation Gain: 1,133 m Riding Time: 4 hours 2 minutes

My first ride back from the Alps, not quite recovered and riding with very heavy legs. The Monkey Butler Boy wore a new pair of shorts complete with a sheer, translucent back panel, which is undoubtedly marketed as being more aero. The Red Max branded them as vaguely obscene and off-putting and insisted the Monkey Butler Boy ride behind him at all times. I wondered if, given this animal-like, ritual display, a change of name to Baboon Butler Boy wasn’t in order.

The Red Max complained the Monkey Butler Boy had stolen his trademark use of selected red highlights, although, to be fair the Red Max has never taken it to the extreme of exposing a big, pimply, scarlet baboon-ass in his quest for colour co-ordination.

At the cafe, talk turned to the upcoming Team Time Trial which Captain Black has somehow found himself press-ganged into riding. Throughout the discussion he kept looking at me with pleading eyes and silently mouthing “Help” and “Save Me” across the table. Sadly, I felt powerless to intervene.

As well as the physical pain and torment of actually riding the event, he may also have to suffer the indignity and mental anguish of donning our most unloved of club jersey’s. Astonishingly, the Cow Ranger declared wearing the club jersey should make you feel ten feet tall and unbeatable.

So, apparently not like a giant box of orange and lime Tic Tacs, then?

Club Run, Saturday 29th June : Topsy Turvy Distance : 122km Elevation Gain: 1,140 m Riding Time: 4 hours 37 minutes

A genius route, planned by Taffy Steve that turned our entire world upside down and shattered all kinds of preconceived notions. He had us riding up to Rothley Crossroads the wrong way, using the route we usually take to get away from the hated junction. It’s hated because we usually get there via a long, leaden drag, on lumpen, heavy roads, not quite steep enough to be called proper climbing, but not flat enough to power up sitting in the saddle.

Guess what? The alternative route is even worse…

Amidst much wailing, moaning and gnashing of teeth, I heard several riders vow they would never, ever, ever complain about our more typical route up to Rothley Crossroads again.

The ride was noteworthy as, perhaps the first time, we’d had a full complement of all four of our current refugees from the Netherlands out at the same time. As Taffy Steve quipped, we had numbers enough to form our own Dutch corner.

At the cafe, budding biological scientist the Garrulous Kid insulted our European compatriots by insisting the metric system was “crap.” He declared what we really needed was a decimal system that was easy to use, adaptable, internationally recognised, universally accepted and simple to pick up and apply. (Yes, I know he just described the metric system, but remember this is in Garrulous Kid World, which is dangerously unhitched from reality.)

Club Run, Saturday 29th June : Great British Bicycle Rides with Philomena Crank Distance : 122km Elevation Gain: 1,140 m Riding Time: 4 hours 37 minutes

My second annual Anti-Cyclone Ride, which has grown from a base of just two participants, Taffy Steve and The Red Max three years ago, to the 2019 edition which reached almost standard club run numbers. Twenty-two of us set out for a route that would occasionally intersect with the Cyclone Sportive, most importantly at a number of feed-stations where copious amounts of cake and coffee could be purchased.

For me, the most notable moment of the day was when my left hand crank slowly unwound from it’s spindle and came off, still attached to my shoe by its cleat. The Goose helped me fit it back on using the pinch bolts, but the crank cap appeared damaged. Still, I managed to make it the rest of the way around our route and right to the bottom of the Heinous Hill, before I felt my foot tracing that weird lemniscate pattern as the crank unwound again.

Bad luck, but reasonable timing, as it happened right outside Pedalling Squares cycling cafe. I was able to call in to their bike workshop, the Brassworks, where Patrick patched me up enough to get the rest of the way up the hill and home.

Later in the week the bike would travel back down to the Brassworks for a proper fix and, as a special treat, top to bottom service. I’ve no idea what was to blame for the unfortunate mechanical, perhaps the bike was damaged in transit after all?

And that’s me pretty much caught up and back on schedule. With Reg still convalescing, I was looking forward to a rare summer club run aboard the Peugeot, my winter bike.

I prepped the bike the night before and things were going well as I crossed the river and started backtracking down the valley. That was when my bottom bracket started to creak and complain.

By the time I started climbing out the other side, the creaking had turned into a full on chorus of complaints, as if a nest full of ever-hungry fledglings had taken up residence in my bottom bracket and were demanding to be fed.

A bit of tinkering gave temporary relief, but it wasn’t long before the hungry birds returned with a vengeance. I reluctantly pulled the pin and aborted the ride, turning back. Even if the bottom bracket had held up mechanically, I couldn’t ride with that cacophony as an accompaniment.

Home by 9.30, too late to join the club, but too early to call it a day, I pulled out my bike of last resort, the single-speed I use for commuting. I bravely and foolishly decided to head due-south, for a few loops around the Silver Hills, where I used to ride as a kid. You’d think I’d know better by now.

My ride profile shows the change, my clearly defined ride of two halves, as I went from relatively benign to brutally bumpy. This included a couple of 4th Category climbs with 25% gradients and lots of ragged, wet and gravel-strewn surfaces. Single-speed vs. Silver Hills is definitely an unequal contest, but I got a decent work-out and, to be honest, I quite enjoyed myself in an odd, masochistic and not-to-be-soon-repeated sort of way.

YTD Totals: 4,651 km / 2,890 miles with 62,397 metres of climbing

Sur La Jante

The Chronicles, Confessions and Idle Musings of a Club Cyclist

Tag: cycling

Woah!

Carnal Gymnastics – The Sing-Along Version

A Two Percent Chance of Rain

Riding the Fine Line between Foibles and Rissoles

Go Your Own Way – A Solo Sawtooth, Cold Toes Ride

Knee Bother, Pet

Crazy Horses

Rambunctious Rowdy Rabble

Jammy Dodger

Silver Surfer