Good dry weather for the Friday night ride with a solid turnout of six riders. This included for the first time young Joe Kingman, rising TT star of HSLCC. Marcus was back for the first time for a while having returned from holiday, he was a little embarrassed to be wearing the jersey of a northern cycling club he
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| Its Easy For Joe! |
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| Who Are North Road CC? |
purchased recently in order to be allowed to ride an event, at least in came in a rather fetching powder blue! I was riding my Cannondale Caad 8 again but had fitted some lighter wheels to make it a more even match to my Giant Defy. Handling on this bike is really solid , so I was surprised to get so badly dropped down the decent of Battery hill but later discovered that Marcus had lead the second fastest decent of all time so no wonder I was dropped! Malcolm suffered a puncture on the nature reserve which Steve D and Steve B were unaware of but the rest of us stopped to give assistance. It was pretty windy through the reserve and it was a relief to start the drag up to Broadoak, with the wind now at our backs. I could feel the difference the lighter wheels made to my speed, that and the wind helped me to get my second fastest ever ascent up to Broad Oak, so this proves to me the CAAD is just as good as the Defy. At the top there was no sign of the two Steve's , I guess they got fed up waiting for us to catch up. I was concerned that the ride would be a bit tame for Joe but he said he really enjoyed it having extended it with a pre ride through battle.Joe and Marcus had worked together on the Rye-Broad Oak drag and managed to achieve the sixth fastest ascent of all time. In addition to that , Joe bagged a KOM for Udimore hill! At this point Joe broke away from us for home, telling us to expect him again next week. Just as we were about to set off down Broad Oak hill, a convoy of two massive tractors and carts rolled past, we waited some time to avoid us catching up with them but we must have misjudged how slow they were going because before too long we were stuck behind them This rather spoiled our usual eye watering descent towards the Doleham turning.
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| Ivan To The Rescue! |
At this point Malcolm realised his gear cable snapped leaving him stuck in a high gear which left him no choice but to skip Stonestile and struggle up the main road instead. Just by pure luck Malcolm was spotted by Ivan in his van on the way home from work, so we arrived near Westfield just in time to see Malcolm being squeezed in the back between lawnmowers and chainsaws for a handy lift to the top of the ridge, leaving the remaining three of to enjoy the dubious pleasures of Stonestile lane
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