Me Gansy’s aal Clarty

Club Run, Saturday 22^nd October, 2016

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 102 km/63 miles with 754 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 4 hours 18 minutes

Average Speed: 23.6 km/h

Group size: 26 riders, 1 FNG

Temperature: 12°C

Weather in a word or two: Damp

Ride Profile

The Ride:

While last week’s weather watch always showed a picture that was unremittingly bleak and rain-swept, this Saturday’s forecast was for grey, cloudy and overcast skies, but revealed not the slightest hint of a shower. It was disappointing then to wake to the sound of rain ticking heavily on the windows. Hmm, that wasn’t in the plans.

Luckily, by the time I’d dressed, had breakfast and assembled all the usual crap I cart around with me, the rain was easing and by the time I reached the meeting point it had all but cleared away. Maybe a soaking like last weekend wasn’t on the cards after all?

Main topics of discussion at the start

The limping BFG was firmly ensconced at the meeting point when I arrived, astride what he described as his Frankenbike, made from lots of spare and cast-off parts he’d found “just lying around.” Ooph! His idea of a Frankenbike is substantially better appointed than my best bike and far, far too good for a winter “hack.” I did however question his oddly squared off, Prologo Nago saddle which had “nack” stencilled on the rails and I hoped this wouldn’t prove prophetic.

OGL was even more demanding, wanting to know what make of chain he had fitted and railing about mixing Campagnolo, SRAM and Shimano components. Sacrilegious, apparently, although he did admit it does usually work.

The attention-seeking, BFG then tried to insist he was actually a camera-shy, retiring sort of individual and as supporting evidence cited the fact that he’d only stuck a camera on his bike once. He’d then managed to spear his head on an errant branch and crashed horribly, captured for all the world to see in full technicolour glory.

This, he suggested, was all the proof needed to confirm his shy and reclusive nature, as he blamed the crash on being pressured into performing for the camera, it had felt unnatural, he’d tensed up and then it all went horribly wrong. A very sound and compelling argument I feel. Especially if made by someone who doesn’t have a record of errant riding and occasional accidents …

Meanwhile, after all the time, effort and money Rab Dee invested into his BMC Time Machine, it had proved far too refined for the hurly-burly of club runs and the ravaged and parlous state of the local roads. He’d cut his losses, stripped and sold the frame and taken on-board (with far less aggravation and delay in getting it roadworthy) a Cannondale Evo instead.

Following on from last week’s discussions about G-Dawg’s OCD tendencies and how he would be unable to exist in the same house as a dirty and neglected bike, Taffy Steve hatched a cunning plan to utilise him as some kind of cycling-focussed, surrogate Rumpelstiltskin, if you can imagine such a thing. This scheme involved finding a bike in a poor state of repair, smuggling it into G-Dawg’s house and returning the next morning, when it would undoubtedly be magically restored to its full pristine glory.

It seemed a workable plan, after all this is a man who buffs his chain to a mirror shine, managed to retain spotless white bar tape for over a year of hard riding, gets nostalgic about the smell of Duraglit and bemoans the trend towards black spokes that “you can’t really polish” (although I’m sure he still tries.)

I suspected this wasn’t a good week to trial the scheme however, as both G-Dawg and Son of G-Dawg were still on their “best” summer bikes and I suspect they would have their work cut out cleaning those after today’s ride.

Zeb arrived on what was truly a Frankenbike, in a fugly shade of flat, paint-primer in battleship grey. True to his upbringing and in the spirit of cobbled-together, gimcrack solutions loved by the Prof, he’d substituted a missing stay on an antique set of aluminium mudguards, with one taken from a set of plastic Race Blades. I can’t decide if this type of innovation is clever or parsimonious – perhaps though he’s taking his newly acquired persona of poor, penniless student just a little too far?

Meanwhile, seemingly just to rub his nose in it, his sparring partner for the day, Jimmy Cornfeed was luxuriating in the double-protection provided by both full length mudguards and an ass-saver. I know we had really bad weather last week, but this still seemed like overkill.

Taffy Steve declared that the “time sponsored by Garmin” was ripe for our departure and in the absence of Crazy Legs invited me to lead out with him. We wove our way through the aimlessly milling crowd of cyclists to the kerb, pushed off, clipped in and were off for another frolicking and fun-filled ride.

After a bit of slow pedalling and waiting to regroup, we finally formed up and beZ and Jimmy Cornfeed took up the front and led us through the suburbs and out onto the open roads. Riding behind beZ I couldn’t help noticing that his jerry-rigged mudguard was swaying extravagantly from side-to-side like a drunken, snake-charmed cobra, while his saddle-bag did a particularly deft impersonation of a sagely nodding dog. Between the two objects moving in odd, contradictory patterns I began to feel a rising sense of motion sickness, so I was immeasurably pleased when the pair relinquished the front as we turned off for the Cheese Farm.

At the head of the group and rolling around a corner beside Taffy Steve, we startled a young deer that was obviously picking its way across the road and had almost made it to the other side. It panicked and spun around to backtrack, the hooves skittering and sliding across the slimy tarmac as it sought to find a purchase. It reached the edge of the road, found some traction and sprang away through the hedge. Gone in an instant. With a flash of white scut.

As we started to pull the group up Bell’s Hill we were closing in on one of the Prof’s preferred peeing-places and predictably the call came up that his infinitesimally small and weak bladder had already started nagging him and we should stop.

At the junction on the crest of the climb though, two toffs* stood astride horses, calling urgently down to me, “I say, cycling-chappies, which way are you going?”

I indicated we’d be swinging to the left and they began to back their rather skittish mounts up the opposite lane and away from our route. One of the horses was still panicked by the bikes and spun in a full 360 with a clatter of hooves as the rider fought to regain control. This was all the encouragement we needed to petition for a postponement to the Prof’s preferred pee-stop until we were presented a place less perilous and populated.

(*I always assume horsey people out in the countryside are toffs, which I know is possibly probably a horribly clichéd stereotype on my part. Guilty as charged M’Lud.)

Around the corner and well out of sight of our excitable equine friends, we finally pulled over for the Prof’s postponed pee. Someone queried why we hadn’t stopped in our usual place and a straight-faced Taffy Steve declared that we didn’t want to give the horse’s a sense of inadequacy when the Prof unleashed his, err… prodigiously proportioned pointer.

With the perfect timing of a natural-born comedian, beZ then swung past and announced he’d be calling in to the Prof’s later that day as he needed to “borrow the hose” – the cue for an eruption of much schoolboy sniggering and snorting.

During this enforced stop one of the Monkey Butler Boy’s contemporaries, the Garrulous Kid looked at my frame and declared, “I never knew Peugeot made bikes.”

For a moment I was utterly and completely speechless – or gobsmacked in footballer parlance. I can sorta-maybe-kind-of get that kids today may never have heard of Holdsworth, they were in the grand scheme of things a largely domestic, perhaps arguably provincial team on distinctly British bikes. But Peugeot? A behemoth amongst elite professional teams, steeped in the heritage of our sport and home to some of the greatest riders of the past?

Peugeot were recently calculated to be the most successful cycling team of all time by the website cycleranking.com and their roll-call of riders included Charly Gaul, a young King Ted, Bernard Thévenet, Tom Simpson, Robert Millar, Steven Roche, Sean Yates and Phil Anderson among others.

Even if they don’t relate the name to actual bikes, surely everyone knows the iconic white jersey with the black, chequerboard band of the Peugeot team? Does cycling for some people really start with Bradley Wiggins or Lance Armstrong? What a thoroughly depressing thought.

Relieved of duties on the front, Taffy Steve and I drifted back through the pack where we found Richard of Flanders, another rider who’d eschewed his winter-bike for one last blast on his high-priced carbon velocipede. Unfortunately, the lack of guards on his best-bike had given him an unsightly smear of dripping, congealed sludge between his buttocks and I suggested he looked like he’d “done a LeMond” and queried if he was all right.

If possible the roads seemed even more filthy than they’d been last week, which in itself was “a three bucket day” in terms of bike cleaning and no one seemed to have escaped the mud spatters and general road grime. As we rode through a long stretch of mud-caked track our wheels picked up and casually flung a cold shower of filthy water up and over everyone and I heard a plaintive cry of, “Me gansys aal clarty!” from OGL – or in rough translation from the idiomatic Geordie: “What-o chaps, my jersey is becoming somewhat mud-speckled.”

We split just before the clamber up to Dyke Neuk then worked our way through Angerton. With the group splintered and scattered on the final climb past Bolam Lake, Zardoz eased himself slowly to up to the front and waited a heartbeat. I could almost imagine him cackling loudly and rubbing his hands with glee as he then put the hammer down and we were strung out and hurtling toward the café. Again.

I was surfing the wheels, staying just back off the front group when we hurtled down into Milestone Woods, only to encounter a horse and rider blithely trotting along the verge. Brakes were forcefully applied and our momentum bled quickly away as we negotiated this unexpected impediment. Then safely around it, we hit the rollers with no time to build the speed back up and a few struggling trying to turn too big a gear.

I chased after the lead bunch, pulling the FNG with me as we rode down and passed a few of this groups cast-offs, including Zardoz who I caught just before the road tipped over for the winding descent to the last uphill scramble.

Around the last bend, the FNG sailed past on my outside with the distinctive, ticking thrum of slight chain rub, but his timing was poor and I caught and passed him on the final ramps as he faded and I closed, but couldn’t quite catch Goose ahead of me.

Bundling into the café we were again forced to haul on the brakes, not by a horse this time, but by the new till system that the staff were still struggling with. This time though they’d placed a big sign on the counter warning that service could be slow, while they tried to work out which buttons to press and paused occasionally to curse out the management who’d imposed the new system on them.

Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop

The Garrulous Kid arrived with a huge slice of cake he declared was Victoria Sponge, but sadly still no Spear & Jackson miniature cake spade to eat it with.

In between bites, he mentioned his school was awash with pupils who’d been saddled with truly preposterous names. None of the examples he gave were particularly startling or outlandish in the greater scheme of things, but we did wonder why parents burdened their kids with names that pegged them to a specific era, tied them to some ropey, cheesy, feckless celebrity or trashy TV show and so cruelly betrayed their worst chavvy, trailer-trash tendencies.

Taffy Steve declared his simple rule of thumb – to be applied equally to both girl and pet names – if it sounds like you’re calling for a stripper, then you might need a re-think – so no more Roxy, Bambi, Cheyenne, Crystal, Jewel, Kyla, Britney, Lacey, Lexi or Destiny.

His particular ire was drawn to “unusual” or “exotic” (i.e. dumbed down, awkward and simply bad) spellings of well-known names, a disdain he seemed to share with Mrs. Taffy Steve who he applauded for one epic put-down of a new pupil:

“But Miss, my name’s Chelsea. Spelt with a Y”

“Yes, well I can’t be accountable for your parents’ illiteracy.”

The Natty Gnat declared we needed to take control of this and called for government intervention. We all agreed that there should be a list of sanctioned names and approved spellings that everyone had to conform to when registering births. Failure to do so should result in a slap around the head, the admonishment not to be so bloody stupid and instructions to go away and try again.

We say: no more stupid celebrity names – no more Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches, Apple, Sage Moonblood or Reignbeu, no more Buddy Bear, no more Crux, no more Rumor.

We say: no more calling kids after places – no more London, Tokyo, India, Dallas, Manhattan, Chardonnay or Scunthorpe.

We say: no more dumbed down spellings – no more Chelsy or Raychul or Britni or Kortny.

You know we used to joke about giving kids stupid names – I always thought Debbie Dobbie or Robbie Dobbie would be a great idea … but it was only a joke.

I also used to work with a Maltese bloke call Bob Cardona, who said he wanted to call his son Barclay … but it was only a joke.

Or a boy at school called Nigel Long who wanted to call his son Ob … but it was only a joke.

So Kanye West, what flash of comedic brilliance encouraged you to call your kid North. Is it still funny? Will he be laughing in 10 years’ time? He has to carry that name for the rest of his life.

And Rob Morrow – I loved Northern Exposure, but then you had to go and call your daughter Tu. Tu Morrow. Ha-frickin’-ha.

(A special mention must go to a bloke that both Crazy Legs and Mrs. Sur La Jante knew through work – yes indeed, step forward Mr. Robert Sherunkel, or Bob as he was more commonly known. I don’t think he works with them anymore, perhaps he finally snapped and has been locked up for parricide.)

Other countries have taken a stand against this in-bred stupidity and I applaud them: in Italy, a jury prevented a couple from calling their kid Friday as they thought the name would expose him to mockery, while in Norway a woman was for jailed for two days for naming her child Bridge. Now that’s a result.

So come on, no more Zhaden, no more Zyler or Skyler, no more Jakasta or Chayse or Chelsie or Cortnee or Kade. Please, think of the kids.

[By the way, Government research suggests pupils’ names are linked to differing success rates in exams, while a study found that psychiatric patients with more unusual names tended to be more disturbed.]

We had a brief discussion about unsavoury places to ride your bike – the kind of places you pray you don’t puncture or get stopped at the lights. Taffy Steve reflected that the number of big bore exhausts on annoyingly noisy, badly-driven small cars was a good warning indicator – the higher the number, the less you should be looking to linger. The proportion of gardens decorated by trampolines was another ready-reckoner, although he felt you could probably discount those with safety netting.

Talking about all the less than salubrious places we’d been, the Natty Gnat trumped us by claiming to have once lived in Middlesbrough and survived to tell the tale.

I wondered if anyone remotely famous had ever come from Middlesbrough, other than Paul Daniels of course and Taffy Steve was going to suggest Ridley Scott, before correcting himself when he remembered the film director was actually from South Shields.

With names being the topic du jour I suggested that perhaps nothing was quite so strange as a Belgium bicycle manufacturer naming themselves after a film director born on Tyneside and with no known affiliations or connections to cycling. Apparently Ridley CEO, Jochim Aerts named his bike company after film director Ridley Scott because it sounded right and added an international tone.

This led the Garrulous Kid to declare that at least Belgium had a great football team, a statement which brought a Cheshire Cat smile a mile wide to the face of our exiled Welshman, Taffy Steve.

Astonishingly and for perhaps the first time ever our route through the lanes past Kirkley Mill was completely empty of cars and we didn’t have anyone driving aggressively toward us, flashing their lights or leaning on their horns. G-Dawg suggested all the rat-running routes on the Sat-Navs must be turned off for the day.

We were leading as we began to pace the group up Berwick Hill, managing to keep the pace steady even as the gradient rose. “Any minute now.” G-Dawg suggested and began to countdown.

“5-4-3-2-1”

“Easy!” the shout came up from OGL, bang on cue.

“Ah, timing” I suggested, “The secret of good comedy.”

Well, with the Red Max away on holiday, someone had to step up and be shouted at.

This proved to be the last bit of excitement for the day and the ride home was smooth and uneventful.

YTD Totals: 5,774 km / 3,588 miles with 56,883 metres of climbing

A Plethora of Punctures and the Mass Hurtle

Club Run, Saturday 20^th August, 2016

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 99 km/61 miles with 1,064 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 3 hours 55 minutes

Average Speed: 25.2 km/h

Group size: 21 riders, 1 FNG

Temperature: 18°C

Weather in a word or two: Chilly with showers

The Ride:

Ride Profile

The on-board camera failed today, reporting Error Code: 2754/86#3, which checking in the on-line manual appears to translate as “extreme user idiocy”. So, no pretty pictures, just the usual flood of err… coruscating and witty effulgence?

Late August already and this is beginning to feel more like monsoon season rather than the Indian Summer that’s been widely predicted. All the forecasts for Saturday were predicting a relatively dry start, giving way to heavy and prolonged, lashing rain showers at about 11.00 – or at just about the time when we hit the furthest point from home on our outward trajectory. It looked impossible to avoid a drenching, the only question was just how bad it was going to be.

I might have considered breaking the Peugeot out of storage, but it’s enjoying an extended holiday in the LBS for a full service in preparation for winter. The only other choice with mudguards was the single-speed hack the venerable Toshi San built for me, which sees intermittent use as a commuter when I get tired of the ratbag MTB.

I say intermittent because we’ve only just managed to get it up and running again after some initial teething problems. First the chain kept slipping as the standard tensioner failed to do its job properly.

soxks — Never mind sock length, what’s the UCI doing about the far more important shorts length?

Toshi San did some deep thunking and bike-tinkering par excellence and replaced the chain tensioner with a converted rear mech. This cleverly utilises a length of brake cable to provide the tension to keep the mech properly aligned and the chain taut, but don’t ask me for the technical details – it’s all techno mumbo-jumbo and dark arts as far as I’m concerned.

With the chain sorted, further downtime became necessary when I snapped a crank off while trying to climb the Heinous Hill. I suspect this had more to do with stresses through the crank arm caused by slightly too loose fitting, rather than a manufacturing flaw in Campagnolo cranks – not even in the darkest recesses of my own fevered imaginings did I suspect it was due to the immense strength and power I was putting down on the climb.

I’m not sure the single-speed was the right answer for a high-speed club run and I’d already used it three times on commutes throughout the week, so it looked like a day for Reg and sitting on black bin bags in the café.

It was a strange ride across to the meeting point as I felt largely disassociated, lost in thought while, paradoxically not really thinking about anything at all. I also started to feel strange aches as if my saddle had suddenly become ultra-uncomfortable, which is odd because I’ve probably spent more time on it than any other and it’s always been reliably comfortable. Maybe it was just a reaction of a week away, or swapping from one bike to another?

First at the meeting point, I was soon joined by Crazy Legs, unexpectedly out on the much cossetted Ribble. Perhaps this was a divine sign that the weather wasn’t going to be too bad after all.

Main topic of conversation at the start:

Jason Kenny’s travails with false starts in the Keirin were the main topic du jour – with everyone convinced he was going to be disqualified, but impressed with him endlessly circling the track, arms folded, looking cool and blithely unconcerned while debate and uncertainty raged all around him.

To have survived this, a second and even more blatant false start and further delays, before toying with the rest of the field and then destroying them with contemptuous ease had to be one of the highlights of the Olympic track cycling.

OGL said that he’d done some work with the British Track Team and suggested they were inflating tyres to 240 psi, with mechanics approaching very cautiously with the air hoses and treating the tyres like unexploded bombs.

He also mentioned they were using Dordoigne tubs, which I remember from my youth, along with some very poor jokes about how they gave a very bumpy ride, going “du-doing, du-doing, du-doing” as you rode along. Simpler times.

Crazy Legs jabbed a thumb into Caracol’s front tyre and winced at its all-round flabbiness and flaccidity. “It’s for improved grip in the wet!” Caracol argued.

A quick conversation with the Prof helped us to determine that the wind was either blowing from the North West or perhaps the South East, illustrated with exaggerated arm movements that looked like he was trying to land a fully-laden bomber on a pitching aircraft carrier-deck. We thanked him for his erudite wisdom, very, very useful.

At precisely 9:15 Garmin time, there was a general movement toward bikes and someone intoned, “Gentlemen, start your motors.” With numbers somewhat reduced by the poor forecast, 21 lads and lasses pushed off, clipped in and set out and I dropped toward the back and slotted into line.

By the time we reached the first major junction the rain had started in earnest and everyone took the opportunity to pull on rain jackets. A fairly uneventful, if wet first hour passed by until our progress was punctuated by a puncture.

While we waited, the Monkey Butler Boy started insisting his saddle was too low and he wanted it raised. The Red Max was having none of it, but it took OGL’s intervention to settle the debate. With the Monkey Butler Boy perched on his bike, OGL quickly determined that, if anything his saddle was already a smidge high (smidge: a technical expression, generally used to cover the range between 1.5mm to 2.5mm.)

The Monkey Butler Boy seemed to accept this decision with good grace, prompting us to wonder why children treat their parents as foolhardy lack-wits. The Red Max said he was used to this, having two daughters who would never listen to him once they turned 5. I suggested he’d had a good run, as my two daughters have never listened to me.

OGL confided one son in his late thirties had finally, belatedly, conceded, “You know Dad, you were right all along.” The Red Max was confident he would never have to admit this to his Dad, simply because he had to all intents and purposes simply turned into his Dad.

Somewhere around this time the rain eased and stopped and I had the opportunity to take off the rain jacket, but reasoned the rain would be returning fairly shortly so didn’t bother. Ok, everyone makes mistakes.

Repairs were quickly effected, but no sooner had we pushed off to resume our ride than Caracol was pulling over with his own puncture, discovered before he’d even managed to clip in properly. Surprisingly, this turned out to be his rear tyre, not his super-soft front one.

This time I lent a hand as we swapped out the tube while discussing tyre choice and Mad Colin’s assertion that a torque wrench was the best and most useful bit of kit he’d ever bought. Repairs made, Taffy Steve lent his mighty frame pump to the task of forcing air into the tyre, and I estimated Caracol’s most strenuous efforts probably managed to get the pressure up to a massive 50 psi.

Re-starting again we had maybe a half hour of trouble free riding before Aether pulled up with another puncture and a small group of us circled back to help him. It was here that the Prof began to illustrate his uncanny levels of prescience, declaring that the car we heard approaching would be a 5 cylinder, Volvo S40 in sapphire blue, while it was still hidden around the bend. Impressive…

… and ruined only by the fact that the car was a small, non-descript and very beige Renault hatchback.

As another cycling club whistled past in the opposite direction with a series of hearty “How do’s!” he then pondered why they all felt the need to sport matching, hipster beards. I could only shake my head in wonder as I hadn’t seen a single beard amongst them.

Repairs made we pressed on again. Quickly rounding a corner, we passed a large open lay-by which would have been the ideal spot for the club to wait for us while we repaired the puncture. It was empty however, so I assumed they’d had enough of punctures for the day and decided not to stop.

Immediately after I rode past a large, stone-built house to find the rest of the club pulled up and pressed tightly together, waiting on the narrowest, muddiest and steepest verge you could possibly imagine. Cyclists, eh?

It was determined we’d wasted enough time with punctures and everyone seemed keen to head straight to the café without splitting the group, so we set course for the Quarry Climb.

A quick scamper up the climb, a dive down to the next junction and a large front group started to assemble and accelerate for a mass hurtle toward the café. The Red Max appeared on my inside and we did a quick swap so he could launch his trademark kamikaze attack down the middle of the road.

Everything got strung out and a small gap opened to the wheel in front, I didn’t feel any pressure to jump to close it immediately so only slowly started to accelerate. I then felt Mad Colin’s giant mitt on my back and he gently eased me across, closing the gap in an eye-blink with his turbo-assisted aid and a minimum of effort.

A few more tried to jump off the front, without creating any real gaps as we swarmed down the road in a compact, buzzing and rattling thrum.

Somehow I found Captain Black’s wheel and since he’d begun tearing it up on the café sprints recently, decided it was as good a place as any. I still felt comfortably within my limits and think I had a couple of gears left as we started passing other riders on the final run down to the Snake Bends, where I rolled up within the first half dozen or so riders.

And the most valuable lesson from this madcap escapade – sprinting in a rain jacket totally defeats its primary purpose of keeping you dry.

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop

Crazy legs noted wryly that now we were all sitting indoors, the weather was miserable and cold and there was zero chance of us being assailed by wasps … not a single person had bought anything accompanied by that ultimate wasp lure – jam.

This was in direct contrast to the past couple of weeks where we seemed to be having jam with everything, even the ham and egg pie, before sitting outside and deliberately taunting the pesky critters, who had revelled in and grown over-excited by our largesse.

Crazy Legs revealed that last week the little boogers had been so bad that the Monkey Butler Boy had been ostracised from all the tables for having a too sticky, too sweet cake. Pressed into service as a makeshift, sacrificial wasp decoy, he apparently played the role with remarkable aplomb, until they actually started to notice him. At this point he squealed like a prepubescent schoolgirl, hurled his plate into an agitated mass of the wee beasties and ran away. Allegedly.

Son of G-Dawg commented on the sprint where he felt everyone had played a part taking a few turns on the front, he’d apparently missed me lurking among the wheels and fearful of ever sticking my nose in the wind.

This brought back fond recollections of the one time we had somehow managed to force the clubs worst inveterate wheelsucker (yes, even worse than me) onto the front to lead the sprint out. Known simply as the wheelsucker, he wasn’t allowed to drop back, even as the speed slowed to a snail’s pace and we ended up almost doing track stands to keep him in place, while I’m sure he must have wondered why everyone behind was giggling so much.

An oblivious Prof was fascinated to learn we had a codename for a particular rider and wondered if we had others. “Well, Crash-Kill,” I addressed him directly, “Just one or two.”

Caracol then made the cardinal mistake of asking which brand of tyres he should look for if he wanted to replace his current worn set. Amongst cyclists this is almost as dangerous as playing pass-the-parcel with a live hand-grenade or, even worse initiating the hoary old Campagnolo-Shimano-SRAM debate.

Of course he asked three different people and got three completely different answers. Crazy Legs suggested Continental Grand Prix’s, Son of G-Dawg said Schwalbe Ultremo’s, while as a loyal Vittorian I naturally stuck up for the Corsa Evo’s.

Captain Black was questioned about a recent holiday in Spain when he’d managed to get some sneaky miles and much climbing in. Crazy Leg’s was surprised to learn the Captain wasn’t on Strava, so of course declared it never happened. As the Captain made to protest Crazy Leg’s looked straight through him. “Who said that?” He asked me, “Did you hear something?”

We had been slightly distracted in the café by the appearance of an older, rather rotund gentleman cyclist wearing the tightest, skimpiest, briefest pair of cycling shorts known to man, something so tasteless in fact it would put a mid-80’s footballer to shame.

Crazy Leg’s was so perturbed by the sight he’d given the feller an extra 2 metres of space in the queue, while I wondered if he’d worn his garish and jarring fuschia, navy blue and moss green Lampre-Merida jersey to try and distract from the disconcerting display, err… “downstairs.”

I now came out of the café to find G-Dawg, Red Max and a few others cavorting around with their shorts legs rolled right up to their crotches, exposing huge expanses of lily-white thigh above their tan-lines in bizarre tribute to the strange feller. Thankfully good taste prevailed and shorts lengths were restored before we rode out, or anyone thought to whip out a phone and preserve the disturbing images for posterity.

Never mind sock length – what the hell’s the UCI doing about shorts length?

The good order on the way home was disturbed when a TT’er went huffing past, in an aero-tuck and with a serious game-face on. This predictably flipped the switch to send the Red Max into loopy Labrador mode and he immediately gave chase and everyone got pulled along.

As I shot out of the Mad Mile and turned for home, my drive-train started to grind a little, hopefully just a consequence of the rain and accumulated grit and crud. And then to make matters worse, someone granted the puncture fairy visitation rights. I felt the front tyre go sloppy as the rim started to rumble on the tarmac and had to stop for a quick tube change.

So, a bit of a stop-start, frustrating day and a somewhat foreshortened ride, but at least it wasn’t as wet as predicted.

YTD Totals: 4,603 km / 2,860 miles with 45,572 metres of climbing

An Epiphany on the Road to Dinnington

Club Run, Saturday 27^th February, 2016

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 97 km/60 miles with 940 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 4 hours 10 minutes

Average Speed: 23.3 km/h

Group size: 16 riders, no FNG’s

Temperature: 6°C

Weather in a word or two: Brittle

Main topic of conversation at the start:

Eschewing his love of all things esoteric, eccentric and vintage, the BFG rolled up and right into the 21^st Century on a new bike made of all things carbon, with added carbon and featuring absolutely no naturally occurring or biodegradable substances whatsoever. No wood, no leather, no cotton, no latex, nor steel, no cork, no bamboo, no graphite, no ivory, bone, ambergris, yak hair nor elephant scrotum. What? My world was instantly turned upside down.

His new love is a second-hand, immaculately kept Scott Team Foil in a size that’s so big it can only be referred to by a series of Roman numerals – in other words it’s as big as the Superbowl, although I see even the all-encompassing pomposity of the “World Championship” of American Football has had to admit defeat and dumb itself down as its fans couldn’t cope with Peyton Place Manning and the Denver Broncos winning Superbowl L.

Apparently the BFG was in serial domestic trouble on several fronts, it was bad enough that he announced he was buying a new bike, Mrs BFG is almost used to that, but she got a shock when he spent 100 times more than he usually does and then turned up with just a large lump of plastic – he might as well have traded his money for a handful of magic beans…

Then he was caught gazing lovingly at Mrs. BFG throughout the evening, only for her to finally realise his eyes were actually directed over her shoulder and into the conservatory where his new, shiny bike was sitting and winking back at him. Oh dear.

It reminded me of the time one our guys bought and fell in love with a super-smart Dolan with a custom paint job. “Does it sleep in the same bed?” I innocently asked.

“Oh, yes.”

“Doesn’t your wife object?”

“Well, no, she’s too busy standing guard downstairs.”

Taffy Steve then recoiled in absolute horror from the saddle on the Scott Foil which was nothing but a thin sliver of razor sharp carbon fibre and “just not right.”

Like signalling the end to an uneasily held ceasefire, a number of riders turned up on their best, summer bikes seeking to rival the BFG’s new mount in the bling stakes. Their argument, it’ll officially be Spring in a few days anyway. Then OGL turned up to inform us that Shouty had slipped over on black ice mid-week and broken her femur, so it would be fair to say winter isn’t over yet.

I was hoping that OGL might adopt a mock Churchillian voice (the PM, obviously, not the stupid insurance dog) and intone with suitable gravitas, “No this is not the end of winter. It is not even the beginning of the end of winter. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning of winter …”

It was mentioned that the Prof was absent because he was in the Lakes where he was promising to do some hill intervals with beZ. Someone then wanted to know how often he would need a pee stop and whether his records would need adjusting for “micturition time.”

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop:

Perhaps celebrating a new job, Keel not only devoured one cake, but then went back for a second slice. His choice was warmly applauded by Taffy Steve who displayed an encyclopaedic knowledge of the calorific content of all cakes and confectionery, declaring anything with Bounty as an integral ingredient was likely to be up there with the best.

Meanwhile the venerable Toshi San is still looking to find a new club in the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire. He rejected the last one as too effete when he learned they’d bought custom-mudguards in club colours and spent all their time posting photos on Faecesbookof their café stop tea and scones. I naturally couldn’t resist sending him a text with a photo of my cake and coffee, but being a total Luddite he couldn’t work out how to open the attachment.

IMG_20160227_112746769

We discussed commuting and the fact that lights, more lights and brighter lights were good, but never seemed to be enough to protect you from inevitable SMIDSY incidents. I’ve been quietly impressed with a new Veglo Commuter X4 rear light I’ve got slung on my backpack, I think it principally works on a WTF basis as drivers slow down to try and work out what the hell it is they’re approaching. Meanwhile, Taffy Steve recommends a directional, helmet mounted light you can shine in drivers’ eyes to try and shake them from their myopic inattention.

I also put in a good word for slime filled inner tubes for commuting, I’ve stuffed a couple onto my ratbag MTB under some slicks and they’ve saved me from having to stop on at least 3 occasions this month as I criminally ignored perilously worn tyres. The only problem I found with these was one seeping wound on my front tyre that sprayed my overshoe with acid green slime before finally sealing, so my foot looked like it had been caught in an unpleasant snot explosion.

With Richard of Flanders out on his new Genesis winter bike, Taffy Steve was lamenting the absence of Crazy Legs as he wanted to see if he could infect a Genesis earworm on him. I somehow suspect Crazy Legs loathes Genesis however, so perhaps the outcome would have been an obscure, unrecognisable Genesis P. Orridge opus rather than a full-on Phil Collins whine. And there perhaps is the last time Throbbing Gristle and cycling will ever sit comfortably side-by-side in the same blog.

The Waffle:

As I slung a leg across the Peugeot I was peppered by a sudden burst of hail and assailed by here-we-go-again thoughts, only to be pleasantly surprised when the shower quickly passed. And that was pretty much it for the day, which would turn out to be bitterly cold, but crisp and dry and thankfully ice free.

Half way down the hill an exaggerated hissing usually reserved for the pantomime villain, announced a front puncture and I pulled off the road for repairs. Great start. Conscious of time ticking away, I got back under way and checked my options – press on quickly and hope I could make up lost time, modify my route, or head home and drive to the meeting point?

It had been a fairly slick (well, for me anyway) tyre change, so I decided to press on, but modify my route slightly and use a different bridge. This helped shave around 3 or 4 miles off my journey, but at the expense of bit of high speed traffic surfing along a stretch of dual carriageway.

Back on track and back on time, I started to clamber out the far side of the valley, noticing at this point that I was comfortable apart from the very end of my right index finger that was throbbing with the cold. Odd. Still, it looked like the long-sleeved base layer, thermal jersey, jacket, glove liners, gloves, bib tights, socks and overshoes was about right. Despite the first appearance of “good bikes” at the meeting point it’s still most definitely winter.

I uncharacteristically dropped behind Laurelan and Taffy Steve at the front as we pushed off from the meeting point, clipped in and rode out, chatting with the Red Max as we negotiated the Great North Road Cyclemaze.

We were just agreeing how hard winter had been on brake blocks, with stopping at times disconcertingly variable, when a car unexpectedly whipped around the roundabout toward us. Max nipped across in front of it to the accompaniment of squealing horn, while I got to test my recently recalibrated brakes to their full extent. So far so good – only the slight sideways slide had me at all worried.

With their stint done on the front, Laurelan and Taffy Steve swung over and Max and I slipped through as we took the road to the Cheese Farm. By tacit agreement we both upped the pace as we climbed Bell’s Hill reckoning there was too much chatter, giggling and downright enjoyment going on behind us. Did people really think we were out here for fun?

Over the top, Max rotated off the front and I took up the pace with Rab Dee and then Laurelan again. That worked well as when the call came up that the pace was too high I could immediately and unfairly blame her natural enthusiasm. It was around this time that Taffy Steve remarked that although there was a load of shiny, lightweight “good” bikes out today, they had all been noticeably absent from the front.

Looking back later I discovered that riding on the front with a forward pointing, imitation GoPro made for some very boring shots of empty roads, although I’ll readily admit that the alternative, a series of photos of cyclist’s arses isn’t all that much better. I’m working on trying to fix the camera to my saddle rails pointing backwards, then I should at least be guaranteed lots of shots of my club mates gurning and making obscene gestures behind my back.

At one point we ran up against a Closed Road sign, but OGL airily waved us through and informed us it wouldn’t be closed to us! The arrogance of cyclists, no wonder all the drivers hate us. Still this time he was right and we made it through without the embarrassment of having to turn back or indulge in a spot of impromptu cyclo-cross. We stopped briefly to split the group, with a larger than usual contingent of amblers escaping to take the direct route to the café.

The rest of us pressed on for a longer, harder, faster run that almost immediately split into two groups, with all the shiny summer bikes all pressed to the front and driving the pace.

It was here that I found myself clinging onto G-Dawgs rear wheel and being jeered by the grinning, demonic face that appears on his backside whenever the lack of oxygen makes me light-headed.

I swear he wears those evil-looking, gimlet-eyed, demon-possessed Castelli trews just to taunt me and has his ass-saver deliberately positioned to look like a giant tongue blowing me a massive raspberry as I slip despairingly off his wheel.

This definitely wasn’t the day for fighting it out and I was content to sit up and let a sprint I had no hope of contesting unwind in front of me.

On the return home I fell in with the BFG who was weaving desperately from side to side to avoid getting muddy splashes on his shiny new bike. Although he was suitably impressed that I had a fully trained cadre of ninja ghost-writers willing to take up the cudgel of sardonic club run commentary, he wanted to know where I’d been malingering last week.

I explained I was ill, but had submitted the required sick-note, signed and in triplicate. This then set him to musing about what it might say and he determined that general creeping decrepitude, aged enfeeblement and moral turpitude were the most likely causes for my absence. Sadly, I have a feeling he had the right of it.

He then revealed that last week he’d been blown out the back on the sharp climb up to Dinnington. Hmm, I wonder if it was just coincidence that he then went and dropped a couple of grand on a new shiny bike and has since eschewed all things vintage and elegant for brash, ultra-modern, ultra-light race tech?

I let him go to flex his old legs and new frame chasing down the Dawson twins as we entered the Mad Mile and they began their own private race for first use of the shower. Turning for home proved to be quite pleasant going with the novelty of not having to batter away into a headwind and the final few miles back were ticked off smoothly and without incident.

YTD Totals: 1,034 km /642 miles with 10,306 metres of climbing

Banjaxed!

Club Run, Saturday 14^th November, 2015

My Ride (according to Strava)

Total Distance: 119 km/72 miles with 1,270 metres of climbing

Ride Time: 5 hours 06 minutes

Group size: 22 riders, no FNG’s

Weather in a word or two: Chilly. Gusty.

Main topic of conversation at the start: We discussed the paradox of how – despite spending hours together and the almost endless stream of incessant chatter – we actually know so little about our fellow riders. Sometimes this knowledge consists of nothing more than a name, approximate age and a thoroughly murky and probably incorrect brief bio, which will include only the most rudimentary understanding of job and family circumstances.

To be honest even this is a best-case scenario and there are people I been riding with almost every weekend for years whose name I’m still uncertain of. Having said that, I can probably tell you in infinite detail about what sort of bike they ride and recognise them in a crowd with their back to me while wearing a helmet and dark glasses, even, or perhaps especially if they’re dressed from head to toe in lycra.

This naturally led to musings about what it is we do actually talk about, along with the realisation (no doubt highlighted by the meanderings of this blog) that while we always find it massively entertaining, it never rises much above pure escapism: the ephemera of life and bikes and popular culture. So it was that the incomprehensible, barbaric and despicable atrocities in Paris overnight barely got a mention, other than to note that we didn’t really talk about them much.

Ever reliable, the Prof roused us from any dark, philosophical musings by turning up and asking around to see if anyone could lend him, “Ein 8mm kranken handle.” Or at least we thought that’s what he was asking for. I’ve no idea if such a thing as a kranken handle actually exists, or what it could possibly be used for, but I’m fairly certain that if I ever write a novel about an evil Nazi he’ll bear the moniker of Dr. Kranken Handel…

Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop: Crazy Legs took one look at my glazed eyes, corpse-like pallor and general state of complete and utter exhaustion and told me I looked like his granddad … who’d been dead several years.

We then discussed and tried to formalise plans to thwart one of our more annoying, inveterate wheel-suckers from ever winning the café sprint.

G-Dawg is doing some volunteering work for the National Trust that seems to involve chopping down and then up (into smaller pieces) very large trees. This brought us to the universal truth that no matter what saw you choose, at some point in the process it’s going to get stuck, the blade is going to bend spectacularly and your wavy cuts are going to look like something a skater would be proud to carve into the ice while performing the perfect double-salchow.

Ride Profile

The Waffle

The weather has taken on a decidedly chilly note, so thicker gloves, a skull cap and winter base layer were all added to the arsenal for the day. Things were however generally dry, a decidedly pleasant change from last week, with only an adversarial gusting wind to contend with.

While battling through the wind to the meeting point my ears were assaulted by the “thump-thumpa-thumpa-thump-thump” of a boy-racer, disco-car. Odd, I like to think I have a fairly wide taste in music, but have you noticed that whenever one of these cars passes you – and it’s by no means an uncommon event – you can never, ever identify the actual music they’re intent on mangling?

For this ride we were without OGL who was away representing the club at some British Cycling function, so it was left to some of the heads of state, G-Dawg, Crazy Legs, Red Max and Taffy Steve put their heads together and come up with a ride that wasn’t just one of our usual 4 iterations of the same old route.

Looking forward to a few new roads, another good turnout of around 22 lads and lasses gathered, before pushing off and clipping in. We followed the dark cabal of around a dozen or so of our Grogs onto the road, as they swept past intent on their own privately organised and exclusive ride.

I fell in with Sneaky Pete as we set out, sheltering at the back, catching up and learning all about his past misdemeanours and misadventures scaling mountain peaks, just for the hell of it.

This week it was Taffy Steve’s turn to test the sturdiness of one of his lights, gently releasing it from its handlebar clamp to see just how far it would bounce along the road before coming to a stop, at the same time checking it for impact resistance and durability.

We dropped the pace to await the successful conclusion of his retrieval mission, reformed and pressed on, carving a new, wide orbit around the Murder Path in order to avoid the Mur de Mitford climb.

As we dropped into and then climbed up out of the Trench, the bunch started to fracture and once we regrouped we decided to split, with maybe eight or nine of us convening for a longer ride, while the rest headed for a slightly shorter, but equally hilly alternate route to the café.

The Prof and G-Dawg briefly discussed possible routes, the Prof seemingly determined to circumnavigate the café to try and find a point where we’d have a full on tail-wind to push us home. Unfortunately this involved describing a massively wide, hilly circle all the way around the café to try and locate the precise vector where we would have the wind directly at our backs for the final run in.

Like some clichéd horror film, every time I turned around another rider seemed to have been picked off, disappearing one by one as they gave up on our ever widening gyre and turned inward to seek a more direct route to the café.

Finally I looked back to find the road behind was empty – it was just me and the Prof. I led up the hills, the Prof drilled it on the flat and we made decent time, but I failed to notice the needle of my internal fuel tank was ticking inexorably down toward empty.

glycol — Copped one in the old glycogen tank …

With maybe 15 miles and umpteen hills still to go I was struck by la fringale; the bonk, the hunger knock – in runner parlance I, “hit the wall” – a sad state of hypoglycaemia – where my legs were trying to draw down funds my body couldn’t cover. Call it what you will, the results are always the same – leaden, empty legs, total lack of power and a struggle just to turn the cranks.

The worst thing is I’ve no idea why this happened; it’s just one of those utterly unpredictable, inexplicable things we all love about cycling. I’d done nothing difficult during the week, my morning routine hadn’t varied and I’d had my usual breakfast. Once the groups had split I’d spent a little time on the front in the wind, but far less than many others, yet I was running on fumes.

Suffering mightily I gulped down the emergency gel I always carry and spent the last ten mile or so trying to stay glued to the improbably small rear wheel of the Prof’s eccentric cycling contraption.

A homemade mudflap of the less organic variety.

At least in this position I got to admire his hand-crafted, super-long mudflap which I believe he grew in his secret laboratory from a single, solitary cell. I only mention this because he was upset that it hadn’t merited at least a paragraph (his words, not mine) in last week’s blog.

Eventually drifting off the Prof’s wheel I reached the café last, utterly spent and only able to muster the most desultory salute to the shorter ride group who were already replete, rested and lining up to head home.

Utterly, completely and totally banjaxed!

I went for a double hit of cake (feeling crap has to have some benefits) and even went so far as to load my coffee with a couple of sugar lumps, hoping this would be enough fuel to get me back. After a brief rest I set out for home with the Double G-Dawgs, Crazy Legs and the Prof, sitting firmly at the back of this small group and trying to get as much shelter as possible.

Already running late for a trip away for the evening I modified my return route and split from the group early, jousting with some heavy traffic and testing the new tyres with a series of demanding detours along tow paths, pavements, cycle ways, car parks and woodland trails.

The new Schwalbes seemed to cope rather admirably with this rather unorthodox, often off-road journey and I dragged myself up the final climb to home, arriving only 5 minutes behind schedule and just about managing to escape the collective ire of the family.

Tiredness and familial expedience saw the Peugeot “ridden hard and put away wet” without its usual post-ride grooming. I hate to think what I might find when I finally pluck up the courage to open the shed door for our next adventure…

YTD Totals: 5,593 km/ 3,362 miles with 62,799 metres of climbing.

Sur La Jante

The Chronicles, Confessions and Idle Musings of a Club Cyclist

Tag: Peugeot

Me Gansy’s aal Clarty

A Plethora of Punctures and the Mass Hurtle

An Epiphany on the Road to Dinnington

Banjaxed!