Fri Night Ride- Communication Breakdown

Having rested during the week I was well up for a Friday night ride as it seems were others . This gave  the club a solid turnout of eight riders.

The first time Dave B came with us a few weeks ago,  we had to give him a 10 minute head start, last week we gave him a five minute start, this week we decided to give him a three minute start. Hopefully he would arrive at Broad Oak about the same time as the front riders?

At the last possible moment Steve D appeared just as we were about to set off down
Battery Hill. It was a cold, fairly windy and moonless night. Paul is normally a nervous descender like myself but on this occasion he came flying past me and I soon became out of touch with the others. It was at this moment at the very bottom of the hill that my rear tyre rapidly deflated, damn!

After balancing my lights on some stones to help me see what I was doing, I was confident of being able to fix the puncture quickly relying on a CO2 cylinder rather than furious pumping to get the tyre inflated again. Feeling inside the tyre I immediately found the cause of the problem. A very fine needle like sliver of metal was sticking through the rubber and into the tube. I would have to dig this out before sticking the new tube in. Unfortunately there was nothing to get hold of to pull it out and it would not budge. This was going to take longer than I thought. I didn't want to hold up the others and as it was so near the start I decided to ring the others up and tell them not to wait, I would just ride on my own. I tried ringing Simon, Nigel and Paul but there was no answer, so I left a text message instead. I also tried to ring Steve but for some reason his name didn't come up on the phone. I was starting to get cold so turned my attention back to the tyre. I could not get enough grip to push the sliver through and out the tyre so in the end I just broke it off and used the flat side of the tyre lever to flatten it down, this wasn't ideal but would have to do. A couple of mins later and the tyre was inflated again and I could set off . It was at this point that Steve rung me to see where I was , I told him that i was happy to carry on my own but he insisted that as he and Nigel  were there waiting for me , so I may as well continue the ride with them.

Putting the hammer down I soon caught up with Steve and Nigel F.Rather than go through the reserve we thought it would be good idea to stick to the main road so that we would have more chance of reducing the gap to the others.Nigel F was the best of our little group and so myself and Steve stuck behind him all the way to rye and up to Broad-oak (thanks for the tow Nigel)

Big Improvement In Climbing From Dave!

Arriving at Broadoak we thought that either there would be no one there (perhaps they had read the text message?) or they would be there waiting. What we hadn't expected was the sight of Dave B all on his own wondering where everyone was. The patient Dave had been waiting about ten minutes and at first assumed that he must be flying to get there so much sooner than everyone else, lol. It was then that the penny dropped and we realised that the others must have waited for us at the reserve (the bit we avoided using the main road!), oh dear! More phone calls failed to achieve a response and we were getting colder. Eventually some lights appeared, the guys had arrived, as well as waiting for us they too had suffered a puncture! I think we all agreed that the problems we had were a mixture of lots of bad luck  and communication but thank goodness  we were all together now .

We were so paranoid about leaving some one behind that when Dave got dropped on The 'Doleham Cut Through', we immediately stopped and waited for him to get back in the group before heading onto Westfield.

Our ride along and up Stonestile  was interrupted by the flashing blue lights of an ambulance racing down the lane and Simon's chain falling off right at the base of the main climb

I think it is safe to say it was not a 'classic Friday night' but look on the bright side we all got back home safely, unlike whoever that urgent ambulance was for!