Fat Lad’s Hope

Due to drinking commitments for the Saturday evening and the very high probability of a hangover on the Sunday I managed to drag Pete out of his hibernation long enough to recon for a future ride. Leaving the dry central heated abode to drag the skill compensator out of the garage I propped it up in the garden then went back inside to change. In the space of a week we seem to have gone from the full Winter kit into something almost, and I hesitate to write it for fear of tempting fate, Spring appropriate.  Gone was the full armed three layers to a long sleeve base layer, my Higher Ground Jersey* and a gilet.  I spun to Pete’s lazily and after much faffing we rolled out. In just one week the trails had turned from the slop and slime drive train destroying wet shite into a soul destroying tyre sucking brown glue.  In the woods and valleys sleeves were rolled up and the buff bunched behind my ears to spare overheating but on the tops the biting wind still sucked warmth from our core.

Fast forward to the Tuesday Pootle to the Res Raid ruined** and once again it was mild out*** and I went with a similar outfit as before. The ground however, oh my, it was tacky. Ever so slightly sticky. It was as if suddenly the wheels had been freed from binding disc prison and given parole for speed. Every now again we’d hit a deep puddle section of Winter but the flow was definitely on the up. With the increase in temperature the banter rose too. Despite mechanicals and still pitch black riding we laughed all the way round good chat with great people sharing the most amazing thing to do on two wheels. Most of all it give me good omens and hope for Summer. However it’s still only bloody February…

On other notes I am well aware I am behind with the RWC two half written missives sit lost in the digital ether. I’ll be sending out login details to those who don’t have them hopefully tonight. But finally one more thing the logs page is back. YAY, now you too can keep up on how few miles I actually do. Working for a living does that you see. It’s over there on the right (RSS peeps will have to visit the sandy brown den of bike love to see). Currently there’s only MMO’s available for Memory Map users but I’m in the process of converting them to GPX for pretty much everything else. Which when done will allow me to unveil another very cool toy…

Fat Lad

*Seemingly my Bike Chain one got lost in the post 😉

** Second mech hanger snapped in a very short space of time…

*** Though some of our supposedly Northern riders didn’t think so. Wusses.

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