R O T H A R . C O M

Weeks ago I organised a ride out with some friends and family. Saturday morning came around and as I hooked the bikes down to load the car, Tyrrell’s bike had a flat on the rear. No time to fix it here, so it’s bundled into the car with a track pump and spare tube. It’ll get fixed on arrival at our destination.

We all headed over to Llandegla Forest Park in North Wales for a day of riding and adventure. We assembled around 11am, although Tyrrell didn’t turn up until after 12. Still I set about fixing the flat on his bike while we waited, managing to snap the tyre lever off my Hummer trail tool whilst I’m at it. The potential scowling from the majority that might have resulted from the tardiness of certain members of our group was offset by the quality of the Lemon Drizzle cake and coffee from the cafe at the trail centre.

In the end we headed off onto the trail. Chris and Phil on the burly Kona hire bikes that are available for rental through the shop and Iain on his classic Mongoose IBOC. It’s been years since I’ve seen an early 90’s mountain bike. Times have changed and styles have moved on, but back in the day most, if not all, of us had a low slung cross country bike of similar ilk. Iain wasn’t feeling too great and after seeing his breakfast, last night’s dinner and beer (that had accompanied a dismal England performance in the foot the ball World Cup the night before) again, he bowed out early and followed the Blue to get him back to civilisation quicker.

Everyone made it through all of the tricky fast sections with no major damage. There were a few bails, but no broken bones or bikes. When we stopped for some food just at the top of Badger’s Rise where you come out of the woods having just climbed up from a long black section, Tyrrell, my South Arfican mate, pats one of his jersey pockets and then goes pale. His car keys are missing. Cleverly he’s taken the key fob for his VW off the big set of keys so he’s just been carrying the small black device. In the back of his jersey pocket. Which he then discovers has a key fob sized hole in the corner of it.

We head back up the trail to where about 15 minutes earlier he’d gone over the handlebars to inspect the local flora. No sign. We then scour that entire section of black. No sign of it there either. Tyrrell heads off to let the rest of the group know whats happened while I go and do the Dave the Fox section very slowly scanning for the missing key. It doesn’t help that the key is the same size as pretty much every stone and pinecone on the trail.

I regroup with the others. Tyrrell has phoned his missus who is with the four kids at Chester Zoo. She is not too impressed with the news. He’s then headed off to go round the trail in reverse looking for the key. As two other riders who were taking a break at the same spot helpfully pointed out, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. Pretty much everyone winces at the prospect of having lost the car keys.

Iain turned up back at the centre to remember that Kathy has his keys, wallet and phone and she’s out walking with Clayre and Isobel. He’s stuck waiting, cold and alone until they get back an hour later. He’s gone by the time the rest of us eventually get back to the visitors centre. No one’s handed any keys in. We have some late lunch. Then a drink. Then some cake. About 4pm I phone Tyrrell and remind him the trail centre closes at 6pm. Unfortunately so does Chester Zoo. And the AA don’t do a return to home service for lost keys. Around 5.15 Tyrrell comes back. He’s scoured the whole route he’s ridden. In some cases more than twice in each section. Still he didn’t find his keys, but he did find me a new tyre lever for my Hummer.

The situation’s explained to the staff at One Planet Adventure. It’s agreed we’ll leave the Touran in the carpark overnight and pick it up tomorrow with the spare keys kept in Manchester. The girls have made it to Chester train station via a taxi by the time Kathy and I drop Tyrrell off. We don’t envy his journey home. We collected his car this morning following a lengthy discussion on the way there most centred around never losing a set of keys again…

Photos from the ride and the walk the girls did are up on Flickr.

Last night on the way home I hit every single traffic light on green. No stopping. No slowing down. Just a flat out, quad burning, big ring turning, sprint from the office to home. Boy did it feel good.

Today my chain fell off again on the way into work. All I can think is that my immense power has stretched the chain or that once again the twin chain tensioners have failed to stop the bloody thing trying to escape. I swear this bike doesn’t like me and to be honest, I don’t really like it anymore either.

I suppose from a marketing perspective, some one, some where thought that calling an energy drink Pussy was a good idea. After all most 16-24 year old men wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to drink from the furry cup if the prospect was that it might lead to better things. Thing is this doesn’t promise any such thing, but it does contain milk thistle. Which sounds to me like something that you’d find usually being eaten by Highland Cattle.

One of my students gave me some of this and told me to try it. They said it was like Red Bull, but tasted better. They were wrong, it doesn’t. The initial taste was of coconuts and became worse. I have a word of advice, avoid this drink. I suspect that drinking stagnant peat bog water might be a more pleasant experience. You certainly wouldn’t want to drink that twice either.

I’ll be sticking with Red Bull when I need an energy and caffiene boost.

A great day of riding with Tyrrell and Simon around Llandegla Forest Park in North Wales. We had sunshine, warmth and dusty trails. First timers at the trail centre my Cape Epic, South African team mate Tyrrell and Simon who’s the husband of a work colleague both made it around in one piece. Well there was a brief tree hugging moment, but no loss of limbs. More photos on Flickr.

The riding to and from work today has been bizarre. The day started cold and damp, so I ended up doning the same warm and waterproof combo that keeps me comfortable through most of spring and autumn. The afternoon saw the sunshine warming things up, so that the Endura waterproof 3/4s and softshell jacket were decidedly overkill and I was too warm riding back. The forecast is for the better weather to stick around, which is no bad thing, the summer has been later arriving and a bit of warmth won’t go amiss.

Drivers seem to have been reasonably sensible recently. The ride in is fairly chaotic nearer the office as there is a major operation underway replacing gas mains on various key routes. The outcome is that roads are randomly shut, others are now one way and lots of drivers are getting confused and lost. Which of course means plenty of last minute lane changes and cutting up of the bicyclist. I’ve been anticipating silly moves in most cases, so I’ve yet to loose my cool. The Cotic commuter is coming up for a year old now, so I’m going to sell it on as soon as the Bike To Work Scheme officially makes it mine. Any one want to buy a bike? One large, long Cotic Roadrat for Sale, one careful owner…

3 Gold Star Climbs in one day in North Wales was enough for me. I had to get off and walk part of the last climb, my legs just didn’t have the power left in them. Wayne and Lardy blitzed it and the fitness they’ve retained through the winter by their regular riding is really showing through.

Poor Neil was nursing a cracked rib from an off yesterday, but joined us for lunch. The weather was fine and it was a great day to be out. I was riding Bonty Big Earl wet tyres for the first time today. Fantastic tyres!

Today after almost two months I finally managed to get the Singlespeed back on the trails. The post mount adapter to expand the disc size from 160 to 180mm eventually turned up after about a four week wait, but then with the wedding and other things happening it wasn’t a high priority. So last night I thought I’d try and get the front disc on. Someone might have forgotten to actually check the disc hose was long enough to reach between the fork mount and the handlebar mount.

This morning I eventually managed to track down some hose from Bicycle Doctor. Now when fitting hose I’ve nearly always been able to reuse the olive and insert. Of course today when I just wanted to get out and ride one of the olives split in half. It was back to the bike shop to get a new olive and a spare. Then I just had to rebleed the system and get out on the trails.

By this point it was half four so I decided to just rip around the Goyt Valley and loop back via the bridge. I’d forgotten that the council had sanitised some of the trails in Reddish Vale, but I managed to find a few new trails on the way out. The loamy soils in the woods on the side of the valleys are pretty poorly drained, but the weather has been so dry recently that I decided to revisit some secret garden singletrack. It was great to find bluebells still in flower.

Tonight some guy who probably hasn’t seen his penis in the last 15 years becuase of his enormous fat gut tried to kill me. I was getting ready to stick a “Warning! Driver of this vehicle is a…” sticker on his Bentley when an even great feat of driver idiocy nearly took me out. A little Micra doing lane changes without the signalling or checking elements of mirror, signal, maneuver. Just as I was still contemplating the desire of the Nissan’s owner to trade paint with pretty much anything else that moved, they then slammed on the anchors and did a right turn across the flow of traffic into a junction. This was pretty intense, but that fact that they went through the traffic island on the wrong side of the road and continued to drive into the oncoming traffic for as long as I could see them, just rammed home the point. I was now back in the UK.