I planned to go on a bit of a coker ride today. I'd worked out a route
and everything. Quite a long route, about 70-80 miles I think.
Now I have this rule, which is that if I say I'm going on a ride, unless
I'm dead or something close, I go out riding.
The only problem was that we had a severe weather warning last night,
warning of gales across the country, torrential rain etc. etc.
So of course I ignored this and went out for a pootle from Nottingham to
Melton Mowbray, Rutland and Leicester (intending originally to head
right out to Rutland Water and to ride back home from Leicester.
It was amazing, I've only seen wind that hard once before and that was
in the middle of the sea. Seing that kind of wind on land was
incredible, it was hard to walk at times.
Things I've discovered today:-
1) 80 miles is a lot to do in a winters day when the wind is gusting at
38mph. I had to cut it short at 50 miles and catch a train after 6 hours
solid riding.
2) When you're riding along in horizontal hail and insane winds, it's
jolly scary to come across a shoot in progress and be suddenly
surrounded by gunshot noises.
3) It's jolly hard to mount a coker facing into a gale.
4) If you fall off the back of a coker whilst riding with the gale, and
are very lucky, you get blown back on before you hit the ground.
5) Planning a cunning route that does 25 miles heading west is fine,
although possibly less cunning when there's a gale coming from the
west.
6) Having to pedal hard just to get down hills isn't fair.
7) Really big winds are great fun when they're behind you.
8) Riding in a sidewind really knackers your upper body.
9) If you turn your body right in a sidewind you can sometimes 'sail'
the uni and get help with riding forwards.
10) If your girlfriend is away, start your ride super early, so that
when she phones up to say "you're not going out in this are you?" it's
already a done deal.
11) You can ride an awful long way on a packet of 8 Chocalate Honeycomb
Energy Matrices(*).
Joe
(*)Those are crunchy bars to you. This message is brought to you in
association with Cadburys.
--
joemarshall - dumb blonde
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