Monday, October 11, 2004

 

On a charge

Great outing yesterday. Sun was out which was a great start although my garden was a bit wet and muddy demonstrating that the woods would be hard going.

Ben arrived and we discovered a punture in his front, amazingly it was his original inner tube and the bike is almost 2 years old. Quick trip down to Halfords and all was solved. I have had a bit of movement in my headset the last few weeks and to my amazement following the instructions in 'Zeds' Bike maintenance book managed to solve the problem with nothing more than an Allen key. Yay me!

Needing to be at my parents for tea (Mum is Queen of the roast dinner!) left us with only about 1 1/2 hours which was a bit of a pain so we thought we would go find the end to a new route we started in Leigh Woods. For some reason, even though I'd gone out feeling a bit crappy, I was on a complete charge, busting through the initial singletrack like a man possessed. I was in a 'why go around obstacles when you can hit them head on' frame of mind. It was pretty dry but I was hitting the mud patches and big puddles hard and getting covered.

Needless to say I've been dormant for 2 weeks and within 40 minutes I was puffing like a smoker having throughly overdone it; glad I wasnt doing a days cycling! Ben wanted to ride the 'The Snake', probably the most dangerous bit of riding in those woods. It's so named for its staggeringly steep switchbacks and a top part that can bite. 2 Broken ribs and some nasty puncture wounds has led me to promise my wife that I'll only ride it with body armour on. (She is very supportive of my riding, so it s small price to pay!) Ben rode it clean and we met at the top of the hill.

We fired up some track we had only done once which was superb and linked up with the new trail, a technical track which was very muddy and left us down on the cycle path near the River Avon.

On the climb back up we met some extremely dodgy looking lads with a mountain board who looked like they had just 'borrowed' it from some kid who was probably now lying in the bushes somewhere. We smiled and put on our toughest 'awrite mate, we've just been beating up walkers' voices and hoped that they didnt notice that our combined bike value would fund their Speed habit for the next 3 months. Right on cue one of the lads fell off the mountain board giving us the opportunity to laugh with the other lads at the unfortunate meathead and make our escape.

Big hill back and time for a shower, day over all too soon.

In a previous post I promised to introduce you to some of the lads I bike with. Can't be bothered today, I'll do it another time.

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