Friday, 04 March 2022
Simon writes: Today's ride nearly didn't materialise, and only made it to the starting line, AKA the CTC Cambridge rides list, at the eleventh hour.So, it was with a generous helping of trepidation that I awaited, optimistically, for a torrent of applications to have my inbox overflowing.
Well, thanks to Rachel, Anne, Jacs, Phil, and Tyrone, a tidy group of six assembled at Brookside to head for the delights of Days Bakery in Ashwell.
Come to think of it, Tyrone suspects that he may have applied erroneously for a different ride, a theory supported by the lack of automated email from him, and the pleasant, if partial, surprise to see him arrive to join us.
Actually, Rachel brought us a mechanical conundrum, in the shape of an inner tube with the valve screw broken off. Should she change it now, or wait until it lets the air out, if at all? She said she'd much rather have Phil and me do it now than wait for it to fail on her way home on her own. Easy! like fixing a puncture, knowing that there was no culprit embedded invisibly in the tyre to have to find.
Ashwell was exceptionally warm and sunny, and after coffee and lavishly-sized Eccles cakes, Phil and Rachel elected to return, while the remaining four trekked the second leg towards Nuthampstead.
We were to within a half mile of lunch at The Woodman Inn, when Anne's chain snapped. Both of us had the same Topeak cycle multi-tool... and both missing the same essential part of the chain-link splitter. So Tyrone rode ahead to update the Woodman staff, and enquire about cycle tools, while the remaining three finished the last half mile at a walking pace.
Fortunately, Stewart at the Inn has a mate with a working link extractor and was happy to go the extra mile to fetch it for us while we ate, and a simple task it was to take out the broken link and join the two ends before leaving the car park.
Fait, not content to have thrown those two at us, also had Jacs' pedal clip reverse engineer itself in Thriplow, ably reassembled by Tyrone armed with a screwdriver, and Tyrone's handlebar stem loosened itself on the DNA path approaching Addenbrooke's.
But, to start a sentence with a conjunction, none of this phased any of us, or detracted from a satisfying 62 mile day's cycling. Simon