Retard Units

Club Run, Saturday 12th May 2019

My ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance:	106 km/66 miles with 1,123 m of climbing
Riding Time:	3 hours 59 minutes
Average Speed:	26.6 km/h
Group Size:	28 riders, 2 FNG’s
Temperature:	14℃
Weather in a word or two:	Groundhog day

Groundhog Day?

No surprises certainly, as yet again we are treated to an unseasonably chill, generally dull and cloudy day, with an increasing threat of rain showers the longer we stay out.

Still, there was no delay, drama or diversion on the first leg of my journey and I found myself rolling into the meeting point in good time and in good order.

Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:

I found G-Dawg alone once more, without the Colossus, who seems to have fallen out of love with his road bike following one too many altercations with psychotic drivers. Or, as G-Dawg phlegmatically determined, “He’s gone and done a Kittel.” Now the Colossus was heading out for peaceful, quiet and, most importantly, car-free trails on his mountainbike instead.

Not only was one part of our well-established dynamic duo missing, but one part of our latest dynamic duo was missing too, with Distaff Double Dutch away in Canada, so Double Dutch Dude was out on his own.

Speaking of dynamic duo’s, Crazy Legs had dared to venture out on his much-cossetted Ribble, defying both tradition and the auguries that suggested that, sooner or later, we were bound to encounter some rain today. This was a real sign of increasing desperation and frustration, with Crazy Legs acknowledging he’d never made it into May before without having at least one opportunity to ride his best bike.

Sneaky Pete had been listening to an interview with poet, Simon Armitage, (I can’t say I’m familiar with any of his work, but any who would describe Tom McRae as “one of our greatest living songwriters” can’t be all that bad). Apparently, part of the remuneration Armitage will receive for being the new poet laureate is a “butt of Canary wine” which, as an aside, apparently translates to 720 bottles of sherry.

Sneaky Pete wondered what would be adequate remuneration for our in-house, club blergger in general, Sur La Jante.

“A beaker of battery acid?” I suggested. It seemed appropriate.

Benedict briefed in the route which included the Mur de Mitford and then a slightly less-travelled route to the Trench, avoiding Pigdon. Numbers were bolstered by an unexpected group of Ee-Em-Cee riders; ex-club members, or those who had second-claim membership status with us, so we split into two, and away we went.

I started the day on the front with the Garrulous Kid, chatting about the sad loss to the peloton of Marcel Kittel (and, far more importantly, the sad loss to the peloton of Marcel Kittel’s hair) the Giro and the various sprinters who were likely to dominate the next week or so. The race is so loaded with mountains in the third week, I can’t help thinking not many of these gentlemen will make it all the way to the finish in Verona.

We held the front for the first 15km or so, passing apparent, occasional club member, The Silence (he blanked us) as we rode the Cheese Farm and up Bell’s Hill, before peeling away and inviting the next pair through. I dropped back through the group and was still there sometime later, as we scrambled up the Mur de Mitford. I was then in pole position to watch as a very animated Goose, deeply engaged in conversation, led us straight past the turn we were supposed to take to loop around Pigdon. (Not that I would have realised, if G-Dawg hadn’t pointed it out.)

Oh well, we weren’t going to be using that particular wrinkle to our route today.

Someone called a rest break and we pulled into the junction that led up to Curlicue Hill. Once again the Garrulous Kid was disappointed with the toilet facilities, even when Caracol invited him to step into the field of head-high, painfully yellow, almost buzzing, rapeseed. I encouraged him to adopt a Theresa May persona and go skipping through the fields with gay abandon. He wasn’t interested.

Off we went again, working our way to the bottom of the Trench which we seemed to ascend effortlessly, en masse and as one compact group. We took the dip and swoop through Hartburn and then the turn to Angerton, avoiding Middleton Bank.

Around Bolam Lake the pace picked up, increasing all the way until we hit Milestone Woods, where there seemed to be a slight lull and a bit of hesitation – relatively speaking of course, we were still thundering along at over 25 mph. I was on the outside, surfing a few wheels back from the front, there was space to pass and we were approaching the foot of the rollers. It looked like an open door … how could I possibly resist kicking at it?

I accelerated down the outside and off the front as the first slope bit. I’ve no idea if I had a gap, provoked a response, or caused anyone to be shelled out the back, I just kept going, over the second and third bump without looking back. Unfortunately, there was no tractor waiting to pace me this week, as I tipped down the other side and pushed on.

As the road started to climb again, a tight knot of riders burned past, followed by a long tail in one’s and two’s, as I slipped form first to last place, trying to recover. As the road kicked around the bend and onto the final drag, I managed to accelerate and then it was just a case of seeing how many back-markers I could catch and pass before I ran out of road.

Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:

Somewhat surprisingly, it was just about warm enough to tempt us to sit out in the garden. We just had to get there. This proved a breeze for G-Dawg and me, but we were followed out by the Garrulous Kid, who seemed to be really struggling to walk and balance a tray at the same time. Luckily, he didn’t have any gum to chew.

He emerged from the doorway and took his first, tiny, tentative baby step toward us, tray in a white-knuckled, double-handed death grip as he tried, largely unsuccessfully, not to spill coffee over everything. G-Dawg looked down at his plate, speared a chunk of his ham and egg pie on his fork and started chewing thoughtfully. He looked up again …

The Garrulous kid was creeping toward us with all the speed of an approaching Ice Age.

“Have you actually moved?” G-Dawg asked, before returning for another bite of pie.

“Actually, is he not going backwards?” he asked when once again he checked on the Garrulous Kid’s progress.

Finally, after a tortuous, extended period of tottering, stiff-legged steps, that made him resemble a stilt-walker who’d crapped their pants, the Garrulous Kid made it to the table and plonked down a tray awash with coffee.

In direct contrast and moments later Goose swept through the cafe door, tray balanced expertly on the splayed fingertips of one extended hand as he sashayed nimbly around a group of departing cyclists, stepped around a pile of abandoned bikes and strode quickly and purposefully to the table. There, he spun the tray fully through 180 degrees and deposited it, with a flourish on the table.

I commended him on his very stylish, professional busboy technique.

“Yeah, but I spilled coffee everywhere…”

Despite having promised to set the world to rights, deride the current running of the club and speak out as a representative for all the poor, oppressed yoofs, the Garrulous Kid had remained meekly silent and quiescent during a recent club meeting.

We determined that he was either an “all mouth and trousers,” blustering, braggart, or an agent provocateur, working directly for OGL and tasked with sowing discord, while encouraging dissidents to implicate themselves.

“Hold up,” Caracol challenged, “Are you wearing a wire?”

This, we decided was probably why the Garrulous Kid was so particular in finding a pee place where he couldn’t be overlooked and his duplicitous double-dealing discovered. And here I was thinking it was just because of some hideous deformity he was trying to hide.

We learned that the morning’s influx of Ee-Em-Cee riders was prompted by large portions of their club being away on holiday/training camp in Majorca, leaving only a smattering of riders behind. These had been either too few, or otherwise disinclined to form their own club run, so we had been a welcome refuge.

Goose was interested in how far and how fast their typical club runs were (it goes without saying that they were obviously much longer, faster and much, much harder than ours). One of them gave Goose typical distances and average speeds in miles per hour.

“Retard units!” Double Dutch Dude spat vehemently.

What? Who? Whoa!

“These, what is it … Imperial measurements you call them?” he continued, “We always refer to them as retard units.“

He then started to ask a number of very awkward questions – how many ounces are there in a pound? How many pounds in a stone? How many inches in a foot? Feet in a yard? Yards in a mile? How many pints in a quart? How many quarts in a gallon?*

(Unfortunately, he didn’t ask how many bottles of sherry there were in a butt, I knew that one.)

We knew some, we guessed others, we argued over a few more. It was enough to prove his point. Imperial measurements are now wholly devoid of ryhme, reason, or logic, they are arcane, unguessable and unusable.

[* 16, 14, 12, 3, 1760, 2, 4 and 72, respectively. I think]

“Every child in Holland knows there’s 100 centimetres in a metre and 1,000 grams in a kilogram,” The implication was clear: Imperial = retarded. QED.

The Monkey Butler Boy distracted us, talking about a hand-built set of carbon wheels made by the Walker Brothers.

“The Walker Brothers?” I queried, immediately thinking to myself that the sun ain’t gonna shine anymore and regretting that Crazy Legs was absent, otherwise we might have had a little sing-along.

“Yeah, the Walker Brothers,” the Monkey Butler Boy replied, completely oblivious to what I was hinting at, or why I found the name so amusing.

“He doesn’t get the reference,” G-Dawg let me down gently. Oh well, I don’t know why I was surprised, after all this was the same Monkey Butler Boy who excused his ignorance of Oscar Wilde (“never heard of the feller”) by reminding me he was “only young, so wasn’t around in the 1980’s.”

There was some gentle ribbing of the Monkey Butler Boy for wearing Velotoze time-trial socks on a club run. Apparently, they can save him up to 3 seconds on a 10-mile time trial, but take him 15 minutes of sweating and straining effort to pull on.

Or off.

Per foot.

Life’s too short.

Then, there was just time for the Garrulous Kid to badly fail the most basic, Bike Knowledge 101, (being unable to identify where his jockey wheels were located) and we were packing up to go.

I was chatting with Goose as we approached the bottom of Berwick Hill, when the Monkey Butler Boy surged off the front. I immediately dropped onto his wheel and was sitting there trying to look calm and composed when he looked around to see how big a gap he’d opened up. He swung away and I took over the pace-making on the front, dragging everyone up and over the crest.

The rain had obviously swept through here moments before and the road ahead was soaking wet and still sheeted in water. In seconds my socks were soaked and had gone from pristine white, to grimy grey.

“Ha! bet you wish you had Velotoze on now,” the Monkey Butler Boy crowed.

“Still,” he continued, “It could be a lot worse, at least we’re on the front.”

He was right, we were safely out of the spray being kicked up by everyone’s wheels, we just had to stay there. We did, by keeping the pace high enough to discourage anyone else from coming through, as we drove to the bottom of the hill, up through Dinnington, past the airport and finally down into the Mad Mile.

It could also have been worse if we’d been in the second group on the road, who said they took a real battering from rain and hail as they passed through Ogle. This was a rain storm we were happy to have missed. I’ve yet to find out if Crazy Legs’ much cossetted Ribble will ever forgive him for this ultimate of betrayals.

At the end of the Mad Mile, I swung off and away for home, with the sun occasionally breaking through and the roads starting to dry out. My clothes followed suit, so I was bone dry by the time I hauled ass up the Heinous Hill, though my socks remained a grainy, grungy, grimy grey and may have to be abandoned. Do you think I need Velotoze?

YTD Totals: 3,075 km / 1,911 miles with 40,367 metres of climbing

Bertie Bassett’s Northern Exposure

Club Run, Saturday 19^th March, 2016

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 102 km/64 miles with 945 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 4 hours 9 minutes

Average Speed: 24.7 km/h

Group size: 38 riders, 4 FNG’s

Temperature: 9°C

Weather in a word or two: Chilly, grey and overcast

Main topic of conversation at the start:

The G-Dawg collective claimed their grandiose-sounding “bike-tree” storage solution has now been fully rotated and locked down into its summer position. Winter bikes will no longer be accessible until the autumn equinox and a blood sacrifice under a new moon.

We wondered if the whole ensemble not only rotated, but dropped securely into a secret vault (to the accompaniment of a soundtrack consisting of Thunderbirds-style pounding drums) where micro-bots and an army of minions would set to work making sure all parts were clean, well-lubricated and gleamed like new.

At one point though I caught G-Dawg’s wistful look as his eyes turned glassy, his lower lip trembled slightly and he asked of no one in particular in a small, plaintive voice, “Does anyone remember Duraglit?”

Micro-bots and minions be damned, this is the only man I know who polishes his chain to a mirror brightness and bemoans the passing of chrome on bikes because it gives him less to furiously burnish.

We envisaged him and Son of G-Dawg working with in tandem in the shade beneath their towering bike tree, with the companionable silence only being interrupted by Son of G-Dawg asking for the green toothbrush, “No, no, I need medium-hard for the chainstays.”

Taffy Steve likened it to Private Benjamin cleaning the latrines with her toothbrush and suggested Son of G-Dawg had emerged from beneath his Pa’s shadow and earned himself a new soubriquet of Private Benjamin. Will it stick?

On cursory inspection Crazy Legs’s helmet failed to pass muster, not because he’d got the angle wrong this time, simply because it was filthy with mud spatters that he claimed were off last week and a particularly muddy patch on the lane to Ogle. I don’t recall there being a muddy stretch there, but the sharp intake of breath from G-Dawg as it was mentioned suggested he did and the recollection didn’t make him at all happy.

Crazy Legs determined that all he needed to do was take off his helmet and lay it on the ground at G-Dawgs feet, the dirt would call seductively to G-Dawg, who wouldn’t be able to resist picking the helmet up and giving it a good clean.

Before he could test this theory however, we were interrupted as an FNG rolled up and asked for mechanical assistance as he couldn’t find bottom gear. G-Dawg broke off long enough to fiddle with the barrel adjuster on his rear derailleur for a few seconds, quickly fettling the problem.

It was then rather cruelly suggested that the FNG didn’t actually want to come on our club run, but had just been riding past, spotted a random gaggle of cyclists and stopped on the off chance he could get his bike sorted quickly. Now though he had no choice but to tag along with us to save face.

Crazy Legs, still on his heavy winter bike then related how the frame had been delivered through the simple expedient of dropping it over a fence into his back yard. On unwrapping he found that the headtube had been dinged and was misshapen. He contacted the supplier only to be told to just hammer an old headset into the frame and that this should sort his problem.

Taffy Steve reflected that only in Britain would you be expected to engage in a spot of aggressive, percussive engineering to fix defective goods that the supplier couldn’t be arsed to deliver properly in the first place, or replace when things went wrong.

We could only imagine what the phone call to the suppliers help-desk sounded like from their end…

“Yes sir, no don’t worry sir, we’ll soon have that fixed. Now do you have the old headset we talked about? Yes, good.”

“And a hammer? Ok, great”

“Now then, can you sit the headset on the frame? Yes, yes, very good.”

“Ok, now hit it with the hammer. Ok, again.”

” Again. Again. And again. And again”

“Ok, I see. Can I just ask, what kind of hammer are you using sir?”

“Ah, no, actually we need a lump hammer for this type of work…”

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop:

We found a lone Sealskinz glove on the café floor and after a long and fruitless Cinderella-style search couldn’t find a princess worthy of it. Odd, I would have thought that anyone leaving the café with but a single-glove would actually realise their loss before they’d gone too far.

Unclaimed, I suspect the Prof probably snaffled it and transported it home to his secret workshop/laboratory/lair to add to his horde of random cast-offs, discarded flotsam and jetsam and sundry road-kill. Goodness knows what he’ll finally make with it, or what it will look like when it remerges into the light of day.

An old couple pushed open the café door, saw the place was mobbed with unruly cyclists and that every table was taken. They did an abrupt about-face, leaving the door to swing open behind them in a fit of pique. Taffy Steve felt it was about time the café installed an electronic door closer for moments like this, but I argued a trained monkey would be a better choice and much more entertaining.

There was then some debate about whether a dog was easier to train than a monkey, with a forceful case for our canine cousins being made because you can point and a dog will look immediately at what you’re pointing at, while a monkey will just look all around in disinterest. (I know from bitter experience that if you point for a cat it’ll just stare fixedly at your finger until you get bored, it gets bored, or it decides to attack your hand.)

Caracol then settled the argument by suggesting what we actually needed was a trained monkey that could point at the open door and then direct a dog to go and close it. Somewhere along the line someone suggested dolphins should be considered in the mix because of their high intelligence, but this was patently preposterous as everyone knows they have big problems with door handles.

Sneaky Pete sneaked up and sneaked straight into a space we’d cleared for a recently arrived Crazy Legs, who’d finally returned from his ride of splendid isolation. G-Dawg was happy to remind Pete of the time he treated us all to a wide band of exposed flesh between his too short shorts and too short leg warmers. I think this encounter has possibly scarred G-Dawg for life and he shuddered just recalling it.

Richard of Flanders commended me on my pan-European, all-embracing approach to cycling attire, adjudging my new Tørm jersey to be Spanish and following on from my German Bundisliga(?) and Belgian Lion of Flanders theming.

The Tørm jersey is a lot more sedate than my usual attire, plain black with just simple red and yellow bands across chest and sleeve, but it does nicely match my bike frame…and, err, wheels and tyres… and, err water bottle and overshoes … oh and shorts.

Never mind pan-European, Taffy Steve concluded that I just looked like a giant Liquorice Allsort and only needed a bobbly, blue Tam O’Shanter or perhaps one of those weird, bumpy Catlike Whisper helmets in UN Peacekeeping Force colours to create an uncanny resemblance to Bertie Bassett.

The Waffle:

I think I might have lit the blue touch paper by outing Zakaria Amirouch who has now garnered disparaging mentions on our Faecesbook page and prompted one or two calls to try and find a solution to his unwelcome omniscience.

Our megalomaniac interloper has joined 1,242 separate Strava Groups according to beZ – I won’t question his undoubted dedication, attention to detail and mathematic skills in computing this, but I am somewhat nonplussed that he had the time or will to sit and do it. I somehow suspect we may be returning to this topic…

Saturday and another dry if chilly day meant there was no question that it was another outing for Reg and my freewheel sang with joy as we dropped off the hill and into the valley. On arriving at the lights on the bridge I once again encountered the Ee-Em-Cee rider from a couple of weeks ago, this time off to meet his clubmates before a pre-planned long run, a 100 mile trip up to Alnmouth and back.

I had a much more modest distance in mind, finding the legs somewhat heavy after 3 commutes in the week, including one on Friday that was interspersed with a 20 minute, 9.6 kilometre stint on a Watt bike as part of our office Sports Relief effort. I swung east after crossing the river while the Ee-Em-Cee rider turned west and rode off to begin his grand adventure.

Sur La Jante modelling the new “Liquorice Allsorts” range from Tørm

Yet again there was a massive turnout at the meeting place, with riders sprawled across the pavement and ready for the off. Before we could do this though even more servicing was required on the FNG’s ailing bike, with OGL stepping up to the plate this time with some assured mechanical nous.

When we finally roused ourselves to get going it was a large group of 38 riders pushing off, clipping in and heading out, including Red Max riding shotgun on the Monkey Butler Boy again and one of the more capable FNG’s returning from the previous week.

Taffy Steve later reported that this FNG had enjoyed her ride out the previous Saturday and he’d congratulated her as she never seemed to be in any trouble and had handled everything with aplomb. He later realised he’d probably and unwittingly sounded incredibly patronising and it would serve him right if he found out he’d been talking to the Scottish junior national time-trial champion or someone equally as accomplished.

I hit the front with Crazy Legs and led everyone out through the Great North Cyclemaze in a long, snaking line. Crazy Legs mentioned how chilly it was and was explaining how he’d dithered between full length and three quarters bib tights before finally resorting to asking his wife for advice.

When he said he was concerned three quarter tights were too risky I misheard and thought he’d said they were too risqué. This left me briefly wondering if Mrs. Crazy Legs was partial to a pair of well-turned ankles, or perhaps demanded even piano legs be covered to prevent immodesty.

We then had a discussion about whether a world champion cape would be a better alternative to a rainbow jersey and I felt consummate showman Peter Sagan would definitely be up for it. Crazy Legs suggested domestiques would have to carry the ends of the cape, like a wedding train, until the rider got up sufficient speed for it to stream out behind him. It all seemed doable – why isn’t the UCI acting?

This harmless nonsense kept us amused until we’d driven everyone up the climb past the Cheese Farm, where we pulled over and waved the next group through and onto the front. I tried dropping back through the pack, but there was some reluctance for anyone to drift too close to the front, so I slotted into second wheel, briefly chatting with OGL, the Monkey Butler Boy and Taffy Steve as everyone shuffled position.

Crazy Legs, who said he hated riding in big groups, eased backwards with far more success and I didn’t see him again until he turned up late at the café, apparently having ridden off on his own after deciding that either he, or his heavy winter bike weren’t up for the mass hurtle to the café.

At one point the façade cracked and we caught a glimpse of the real Zardoz behind his mask of avuncular bonhomie with a brief reprise of last week’s “angriest man in the peloton.” This time he mock-growled at the Monkey Butler Boy, who’d apparently had the audacity to overtake him on a hill. Listening-in intently, the Red Max was convulsed by a paroxysm of evil giggles.

After we split and waved off the amblers I fell in with the BFG, back onto his ultra-modern, all carbon-on-carbon, uber-machine. He does like to change things up. He told me that earlier in the week he’d only narrowly avoided setting fire to his wheels and crashing his brand new bike after somehow mistakenly fitting non-carbon specific brake blokes. These had melted under extreme heat and apparently produced an aroma he suggested was akin to roast pork.

We swept down into the valley and up the rise to Hartburn, somehow passing the amblers group who were pulled over to the side of the road while they worked to fix yet another mechanical on the FNG’s bike. I was beginning to think maybe he’d only come out to get a free bike service.

As we turned off on a route that by-passed Middleton Bank I confessed to Taffy Steve that I was heavy-legged and happy we’d chosen the slightly shorter run in, but he just snorted in derision and said my inner demons would have kicked in and compelled me to attack Middleton Bank as soon as we hit the lower slopes, no matter how much it hurt. Hmm, maybe.

At some point we passed a decapitated and eviscerated deer corpse, flung violently to the side of the road by a car, a particularly vivid and gruesome reminder of the danger of RIM encounters. Thankfully it was too large and messy to fit in the Prof’s back pockets and he didn’t have time to stop and sling it across the front of his bike.

roadkill — If he’d been able to add a deer carcass AND stray glove the Prof might have been convinced all his birthdays had come at once

A few short, sharp climbs later we regrouped (well, more or less) and began the push for the café. Rab Dee led off, trying to keep a reasonable speed until Taffy Steve attacked, his acceleration snapping the knots out of our line like a string pulled suddenly taut and we were quickly lined out and racing along.

We stormed through Milestone Woods and over the rollers, down the last dip and began the climb up to the café. Rounding the last bend G-Dawg and Strummer sprinted away to contest the sprint, while I rode up the outside, passing everyone in front of me who seemed to be flagging, falling off the pace and drifting over to grind up the far side of the road.

At the last rise I sensed more than saw riders on my backwheel, eased out of the saddle and with the last few dregs of energy tried to accelerate up the final slope, hearing or perhaps just fancifully imagining, a groan of dismay from behind.

As it was the kick seemed to have dragged me well clear of everyone else and I closed and latched onto the now freewheeling G-Dawg, quietly buoyed by being able to put space between myself and the rest of the chasers.

Leaving the café Crazy Legs led a splinter group for a slightly longer ride home, taking G-Dawg with him, ostensibly so he could avoid the muddy patch that had so infuriated him last week. There was a huge amount of dithering around by those left behind and getting sick of the delay Taffy Steve gave up and kicked off for home.

I followed him and we enjoyed a companionable and unremarkable ride back, expecting to be overhauled by the rest of the group, but seeing neither hide nor hair of them. Perhaps they’d been delayed when the FNG’s bike needed one last fix?

As I turned off for my solo effort I actually felt stronger than I had when setting out and powered my way home in good time and without incident, all in time to catch the end of a very entertaining Milan-San Remo.

Another grand day out, capped by a startling conversation with Daughter#1 after we’d spent a little time laughing at Sean Kelly’s accent :

Daughter#1: “Do you think we’d make a good comedy double-act?”

SLJ: “Yes, as long as you play the straight man”

Daughter#1: “Does one of them always have to be gay?”

Sigh.

YTD Totals: 1,489 km /925 miles with 15,193 metres of climbing

Black Mirror

Club Run, Saturday 5^th March, 2016

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 102 km/63 miles with 997 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 4 hours 17 minutes

Average Speed: 23.7 km/h

Group size: 32 riders, no FNG’s

Temperature: 7°C

Weather in a word or two: Bright to bruising

Main topic of conversation at the start:

Crazy Legs was still counting down the incomprehensibly precise 39 days until the arrival of his new, fake Oakley jawbone specs from the Far East and wondering what sort of subtle Chinglish branding might adorn them.

We speculated that 39 days was the amount of time to gather enough orders to make it worthwhile breaking into the factory at night for a quick production run, sort of the cycling equivalent of the shoemaking elves in Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

It was a small leap of logic to then wonder if these were the same magic elves who mysteriously clean and pimp Son of G-Dawgs bike whenever he leaves it in his Pa’s garage overnight.

Ovis appeared in one of the thoroughly indestructible jerseys from his old Triathlon club which appeared to have cannibalistically part-consumed another jersey, leaving only the tell-tale sign of a faint branding transfer where there should have been none. Appropriately for Ovis, it’s all a bit “Silence of the Lambs”, with the Buffalo Bill jersey first skinning and then wearing its conquests like a second skin.

It now seems certain that at least one of his seemingly endless stock of identical jerseys has mutated, perhaps as a result of the successful stress-testing undertaken on the kit to give it that bright, acid yellow colour that appears nowhere in the natural world, as well as to check it will survive through an all-out thermonuclear war.

The mutated, uber- jersey is now quite obviously sentient and intent on growing stronger by absorbing all the other jerseys and garments in Ovis’s collection through forcible osmosis – a strange, Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest struggle for lycra supremacy.

A discussion about solid rubber tyres had OGL reminiscing misty-eyed about pram tyres which were apparently delivered as one long coil of rubber that had to be cut to size to fit the wheel diameter and then secured in place with a stripped wire core that was twisted into a cork-screw gimlet, before the whole thing was folded over itself. I didn’t quite understand the baffling intricacies, but I was certainly convinced they were a complete and utter bastard to fit. Think I’ll stick with clinchers.

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop:

Ovis stood in the queue with a face almost unrecognisable behind patchwork spatters of mud and dirt and grime, pointed at my similarly begrimed face and laughed out loud. We were all and without exception utterly filthy. I deployed my buff for official use #43 and managed to wipe at least some of the excess crud away, but I still needed the coffee to wash the grit out from between my teeth.

G-Dawg had been in a gym where a static bike complete with monitor had let him simulate an Alpine climb. His verdict was that it wasn’t particularly impressive, but better than staring at the wall. I queried whether there weren’t more rewarding, err, distractions in the gym, but we all agreed that we were beyond the age when we could safely lift our eyes up from the floor in such environments.

This led to general discussion about how uncomfortable and careful we feel we have to be around children these days. Taffy Steve talked about a recent social experiment when observers set a lost-looking child to wander around a shopping centre just to see how people interacted with them.

After being studiously ignored for an uncomfortable amount of time, a Scout Master was finally brave enough to cautiously approach the child to find out if they needed help, moving carefully from downwind while maintaining eye-contact and a safe exclusion zone of at least 3 metres. What’s the world coming to, eh?

Another Engine then back-tracked on a story about “his paperboy” to explain his paperboy isn’t actually his paperboy because:

He doesn’t deliver their paper and
They don’t actually have a paper-delivered

Anyway, the actual kernel of this story is that the paper-boy who operates in Another Engine’s street rides a bike with a chain so rusty that it’s ginger and furry and squeaks like a demented polecat with its paw caught in a snare.

In the old days Another Engine would have combined his benevolent, avuncular nature, keen understanding of cycling mechanics and easy access to machine oil to provide a lubricating salve to the offending chain, before affectionately patting the lad on the head and sending him off, probably with a spare ha’penny so he could buy his own oil for next time.

Now Another Engine says he sees the lad and just crosses the road, realising that any offer of help is likely to be dangerously misconstrued. We were of course determined to find a way to make innocent assistance sound as damning as possible, with suggested euphemistic approaches such as, “Does your chain need a good lubing?” or, “Step into the hallway and I’ll give you a bit of oily relief.” Things were admittedly juvenile and shockingly low brow, but thankfully Szell, the master of the single-entendre wasn’t around to drag the conversation even lower than we’d managed to achieve all by ourselves.

Taffy Steve was left to once again ponder the vagaries of Italian sizing and wonder aloud where their rugby team managed to find clothing to fit a proper props body. Aether speculated that Evans Cycles and Evans “plus size” shops were in fact one and the same and they had tricked us all into thinking UK cycling kit was the norm when in fact it was all over-sized.

Ride Profile

The Waffle:

The day started in the worst possible way, a sudden chilling downpour that had the roads instantly awash with surface water. My Garmin seemed to be struggling mightily with the atmospheric conditions and I had to reboot it 2 or 3 times before it could even find a satellite. Meanwhile the rain and road spray quickly soaked through my overshoes to my shoes and socks and tights and gloves became unpleasantly damp and chilled.

At the bridge a local rowing club were completing shuttle runs in the pouring rain, chanting en masse about closing with the enemy and killing them with their bare hands, driven along like rookie marines under the tutelage of a beasting, sadistic drill sergeant. Odd.

While stopped at the lights I exchanged pleasantries with an Eee-Emm-Cee rider (I believe they started out as an offshoot of our club) utilising the traditional and UCI approved cycling lexicon and subject guide:

“How do?”

”Going far?”

“Do you think the rain’ll ever stop?”

As I started to retrace my route on the opposite side of the river one half of the sky was smothered in an angry towering mass of ominously thick, dirty grey cloud while ahead a swollen sun had just about pulled itself over the horizon into startling clear sky and burned down with shattering brilliance, the light bouncing savagely back off wet tarmac that burned like a black mirror.

I began to worry that drivers approaching from behind would be blinded and unable to see me and kept as far left as I could, almost riding in the gutter and flicking on my rear light, even though I suspected it would be far too feeble to provide any counter against the suns vicious glare.

At one point the road was reflecting the sun so brilliantly that I had trouble looking forward and if the car in the outside lane hadn’t come to a sudden halt I would have sailed straight through a junction, completely oblivious to the red light that was demanding I stop.

Turning to climb up the other side of the valley and putting the sun behind me brought some welcome relief, even with the front wheel ripping through the stream that poured down the inside of the road. The rain finally started to ease just as I made it to the meeting point, intact but uncomfortably damp around the edges.

With it being the first Saturday in the month the kids were out to accompany us some of the way, and there was a good turnout of over 30 riders including the Red Max’s son, the Monkey Butler Boy set to ride the entire route with us.

With the rain easing I slipped off and stowed the waterproof, before we pushed off, clipped in and sailed out.

I dropped into line near the back and alongside Mini Miss, chatting as we pushed along. At one point we swung by Red Max and he paused from shouting abuse encouragement at the Monkey Butler Boy long enough to confirm he’d recovered from the desperate ride he inadvisably completed in the throes of his illness, despite being flushed out the back of the bunch like a blue ice meteorite from a 747. Mini Miss said she’d been concerned and continuously checking on Strava until he’d posted up his ride to prove he’d made finally made it home.

At a quick, Prof encouraged pee stop we learned from OGL that peeing au naturel had inspired the first weed-killers. He then went on to correct the unforgiveable gaping hole in my education with a discourse on Scottish and Newcastle brewing and the genesis of Newcastle Brown Ale.

Taking the open road, as distinct from last weeks closed road, we clambered and climbed and swooped and regrouped until the time came to split away from the amblers for a slightly harder, faster and longer run to the café. The Red Max left with the slightly more sedate group, understandably taking the Monkey Butler Boy with him, along with a distinctly under the weather Son of G-Dawg

As our group approached Middleton Bank I was castigated for freewheeling past all the fixies, but they had the last laugh as I hit the bottom slopes at high speed and in completely the wrong gear. I found my legs spinning as fast as theirs had on the descent, but there was no resistance.

Figuring it was too late to go hunting for another gear and being inherently lazy I let everyone sweep past and freewheeled until the slope finally began to bite and I could actually gain some traction, only then was I able to set off in pursuit of everyone else.

It seems to have been an age since we last tackled Middleton Bank, so it was good to know it’s still hateful and the gradient remains awkward enough to confuse me so I rarely feel I’m in the right gear.

Everyone regrouped over the top and we set off for the café, gradually winding the speed up. This was it, this was fun bit – a dozen or so of us in a tight bunch, hurtling around corners at break-neck speed, shoulder to shoulder and inches from the wheel in front as the pace ramped up along with a booming heart rate.

Legs burning, a face-full of grit and cold spray, leaning hard into the corners and scrambling up the hills as we jockeyed for position and raced along finely poised between exhilaration and catastrophic disaster. It hurt, but I found myself grinning like an idiot.

As the front of our arrow-head hit the final slopes on the drag up to the café it shed riders like bits of sabot being stripped from an armour piercing shell. I clung to Crazy Legs’s wheel as long as I could before sitting-up and drifting back as Taffy Steve swept past with Laurelan in hot pursuit. Great fun.

On the return the Mad Mile proved not quite as breakneck with Son of G-Dawg obviously suffering and I surfed along on the back, getting a mighty slingshot around the roundabout as I split for home. I found myself briefly in the company of the Cow Ranger who wanted to put in a few extra miles and as I left him and turned uphill the hail started pelting down, ticking off my helmet and seemingly intent on filling up the vents.

The hailstorm accompanied me almost all the way home, rattling and pinging off car roofs while bouncing and drumming off the road. It wasn’t particularly unpleasant as I was well wrapped up and it was falling more or less vertically so couldn’t find any exposed skin to sting. I soon found myself happily swinging up onto Heinous Hill to cap another good run.

YTD Totals: 1,155 km /718 miles with 11,547 metres of climbing

Sur La Jante

The Chronicles, Confessions and Idle Musings of a Club Cyclist

Tag: EMC

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