8/4/2023 0 Comments Coffee rush![]() ![]() Onto the Trench and the Cow Ranger and Jimmy Mac rode off the front while the rest of us followed at a more sustainable pace. I dropped onto the back alongside Not Anthony who was hoping we wouldn’t be called to the front until we found a tailwind, but things obviously don’t work like that and we were called into action soon after scaling a very slimy and slippery Mur de Mitford. Two groups were called for, but this time we struggled with numbers in the first group, so after a bit of hesitation I leant myself to the cause and 8 of us formed the vanguard for the day. We’ve been having a remarkably consistent 20 or so riders each week for the past month or so, and this Saturday was no different. I completely ignored the bit about getting home again, but in the end, as Chester Bennington once observed, it didn’t even matter. I picked out the most important bits, the climbs of the Mur de Mitford and the Trench, then missing Middleton Bank en route to a cafe stop at Capheaton. ![]() Jimmy Mac briefed in the route which had to avoid a closed Berwick Hill. I could have told him he would lose before he managed to grunt the Raleigh a couple of inches off the ground as, not only is it replete with innumerable racks and rails and cages and fittings for bags, but its also cast entirely from pig iron. This time we received a lecture on wheel wear, with instruction for anyone riding Shimano wheels to periodically “run their finger over their rim hole.” Well, whatever floats your boat.įor some the rain had prompted an early return to the purgatory of winter bikes, which found Richard of Flanders pitting his steel-framed, pannier rack-equipped Genesis in a weigh-off against Goose’s Raleigh Panzerkampfwagen™ touring bike. He then prefaced a comment with that immortal phrase involving grandmothers and egg-sucking, which invariably means you’re going to be told something you already know, much in the same way someone saying “no offence, but …” is just about to mortally insult you. OGL didn’t sound all that sympathetic when discussing Aether’s tumble last week, implying it was his own fault for riding with too much pressure in his tyres. (Surprisingly it was me and we had to have an unscheduled jacket doffing stop an hour or so into the ride.) A few minutes later he pulled his back on, but I decided to stand pat. ![]() I took my queue from the Cow Ranger and removed my rain jacket once he’d determined the worst of the rain had passed. To counteract this we had an intense round of “what size are you wearing?” and even some physical swapsies as people tried on various bits of kit for fit. You know when normal-sized blokes are ordering in XXL that something’s been lost in translation. There, with a new order of unofficial club kit imminent, people were still trying to get a grip on Santini’s Italian sizing, which, while not quite as severe as Castelli’s, still lends a bit of a gamble to any order. Another Saturday, another brush with early morning rain that had me stopping to pull on a rain jacket halfway across to the meeting point. ![]()
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