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| Jimmy and the Twins. Chris, me and Trevor. |
Bike kit, these days is pretty awesome. You can get some
really well designed and useful stuff, which varies massively in price and
complexity. From feather light frames that are made from the most exotic materials
like angels hair and cobwebs to gears that shift electronically (electronic
gears… on a bike? Who’d have thunk it?) to my personal favourite piece of kit, bike
pumps that are ‘fired’ by compressed air.
Regardless of how well kitted out you are, however, some
days, the fates just conspire against you. The gods will be looking elsewhere and
every thing that can go wrong seems to. On days like these you just have to
shrug your shoulders and sigh,
‘C’est la vie’.
Today was such a day. It was supposed to be an easy day.
214ks of pan flat French country side, with scarcely a pimple on the profile.
Mile after mile of flat and not much more. It should have been a piece of piss.
We managed to contrive to make it a precipice.
Our misfortune started early. Within 500m of starting one of
our group had punctured. Big Dr Col (one of the rider leaders), waved us on and
said he’d catch us up. After all 20 riders cannot fix a puncture any quicker
than 2.
‘Don’t worry about it, it’s just straight on’ he imparted.
So we followed his instructions and went straight through
the next round about. We were pretty much straight into the country side by
then and so we kept on keeping on. One of the team vans passed us with a toot
of the horn and a friendly wave. We were keen to catch up with the rest of our pals and ride
with them, so we pressed on hard, as we knew on a long flat stage cycling in a
group can save you significant time and, more importantly, effort.
All through the tour, the organisers have done an incredible
job of marking the course with arrows. We were getting concerned that we hadn’t
seen an arrow. However, we were comforted by the fact that the team van had
gone past us. Surely that meant that we were on the right track. Then after
about 15ks out of Fougeres, the van appeared in the other direction, to tell us
that we had all taken a wrong turn. They offered to take us back to the start
in the van, which after little consideration we accepted.
Chris, Trevor and myself clambered onto the van and found a
place to perch amongst the assorted luggage. We decided there and then that
although this was a set back, provided we didn’t have any more mechanicals or
other faff, then we should be able to pick up the rest of the gang, sooner
rather than later. We agreed, there in the back of the van, that there would be
no more mess ups.
After we had been dropped off, we swung our legs over our
steeds and pushed down on the pedals. I had barely managed one pedal stroke
when a stream of voluminous invective spouted from Chris’s direction. His brand
new, beautiful looking, Italian stallion has been causing him problems from day
2 of the tour. A ‘Singing’ bottom bracket and an inappropriate set of gears
being his main concerns. This has necessitated the De Rosa being granted a permanent
bed in the sick bay.
This time, however, he had somehow contrived to pick up a
puncture from his bike being in the back of the van. I thought that it was going to prove too myuch for Chris. Thankfully
he managed to keep a lid on it and further the van had a track pump in it,
so once we had changed the inner tube we were quickly on our way.
Another 5km down the road, Chris again turned the air blue,
using words that I never new existed – he is from Leith after all. I turned
round to see his bike already upside down and him working feverishly to remove
the back wheel. He had punctured again.
I cycled back to him and was able to impart the happy news
that I had a compressed air pump in my back pocket that I could use to get him
back on the road in a jiffy. Whilst this news wasn’t received with the
unbridled joy that I had perhaps expected, it did illicit a grunt of what I
thought might be gratitude. You see, Chris was in no mood for joy. He was an
angry man.
Whilst Chris and Trevor worked feverishly to get out the
inner tube. I, with a flourish produced my compressed air pump. Again, I didn’t
feel that my flourish was sufficiently appreciated by my companions. So, with a
further and more dramatic flourish I attached the compressed air canister to
the pump head and told the guys to stand back. Unfortunately through my
incompetence, or the poor design of the pump the canister exploded in my hand
and let the compressed air out at a gallop. I’m not sure if Chris and Trevor
were impressed by my flourish, but it certainly left an impression. For about
30 seconds the escaping CO2 generated enough ‘smoke’ that it looked more like a
flare than a bicycle pump, and I looked a bit like a prat.
‘Hmmm… I think that air was supposed to make its way into the
tyre’ I said apologetically.
We had to revert to the old fashioned hand pump to get us
back on the road.
We rode hard for the next couple of hours. Chris riding
angry as he was pissed off with life. Me riding angry because I looked such a
prat. Trevor, enjoying the tow
from two angry riders. We busted ourselves getting back to the group, but we
managed it.
What should have been an easy day became amongst the
toughest to date.
I’m not sure where it is recorded what bike Scott chose to
take to the Antarctic, so I don’t know whether he chose steel or angels hair.
Ill bet you he had the sense not to use a new compressed air pump, however.
From Tours,
N
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