I was out for a ride with my friend Bernard last week. We took a route that neither of us had taken for years, with rolling hills, a lot of very quiet lanes, high hedges and overhanging trees. It was the perfect terrain for making potholes.
And the trees meant they were very hard to see. And the hills made sure that on a descent you could build up enough speed to hit them really, really hard. The one I hit nearly threw me off – I just about managed to catch myself, and then managed to stop safely with a front-wheel puncture.
Of course, I didn’t check. And I didn’t check for the very simple reason that carbon rims are rather expensive to replace, and also because I needed something to ride home on. This is not what a rational, risk-management-aware rider would do, or even a rider with a source of free wheels and a readily available lift.
HOW TO… TAKE AN INTEREST IN THINGS THAT AREN’T CYCLING
All too often in life, you will find yourself trapped in a conversation with someone who wants to talk about something other than, say, the Giro d’Italia. They might not want to talk about cycling at all. You can make things easier for yourself by translating into cycling. Say you’ve been summoned to talk to your child’s teacher about the fact your child is copying all of their homework from other children and denying it.
Simple. Just imagine your child is a bike rider sneakily hanging onto the team car, the rest of the class is the peloton, and the teacher is the head UCI commissaire. A 200 Swiss franc fine and relegation to the back of the day’s stage is the appropriate punishment and you’re going to have to accept it. Who is cooking supper? That’s just a case of who is going back to the team car for bottles, so the answer is just whoever is worse placed on GC.
Oddly, the hardest thing to translate into cycling is other sports. Try coming up with a breakaway-versus-the-peloton-at-10km-to-go metaphor to explain football, for example. The only solution in these cases is just to keep talking about bikes till the cricket or football fan gives up. You were probably going to do that anyway.
Dear Doc
Word reaches me of two riders who were spectating at the Tour of Britain last year. They went by bike, and proudly wearing their Ineos Grenadiers kit. Only after the stage had finished did something occur to them.
The most direct route from the finish area to the hotel that the team were staying in went up a narrow lane, on a steepish climb. So they waited part way up the climb until an Ineos team car came into view, complete with a roof rack full of bikes. They then rode up the hill in front of it, taking up enough width to keep the car just behind them, with a mate taking a picture of them doing it.
A photo that they now use to demonstrate to the credulous that they once rode for the team.
