22/11 HSLCC Friday Night Ride- Through And Off

Kie Makes It Look Easy!

Great to see young Kie Smith out with us on the Friday night ride on a cold but almost windless night. It was an extremely dark evening with no moon light getting through the thick overhead cloud. The decent down battery hill was particularly scary for Kie who had never done it before and has only a mediocre front light. On reaching the flat road near Pett level we realised that Nigel wasn't with us. just then I received a text telling me he had punctured and would be back with us in five minutes. We decided to ride back to him to give him some extra light and moral support while fixing the puncture. As we rode up 'little Battery' I think we were all hoping that he had punctured near the bottom of the hill and not the top, LOL. fortunately this turned out to be the case and as we arrived, Nigel was just packing up his tools. Turns out he had ridden into a nasty pothole, this had caused a blow-out but unfortunately it had also put a dent in the front wheel. Nigel was gutted by this , as only a couple of weeks ago he was singing the praises of his new wheel set having had the wheels hand-built at Handsome Bikes. Despite the wheel damage Nigel was able to ride and we pressed on through to Rye, once again deciding to give the reserve a miss due to the stones we assume still cover the path (I will try to get down there in the next week or so to check it out). It being kie's first Friday night ride and with only a basic front light we decided to do 'through and off' all the way up the long drag to Broad Oak. Simon took control and we rode together trying to keep a fair pace with riders riding briefly at the front before the rider from the back came through to take over. This was something new to me and used to struggling at the back I actually went too fast on the one downhill section (gravity assisted) of the road as well as failing to prevent the usual habitat of speeding up at the end when the lights of Broad Oak appeared.This is something we will need to work on as a group to improve but It was good fun and did make the long drag seem shorter than normal. From here it was back to standard riding as we swept on down the silky smooth road decent from Broad Oak through Brede. Myself Simon and Kie were again thwarted by the temporary traffic lights which are still present down at the bridge before the turning. Kie is riding better and better each week and dropped me before we had even gotten to the base of Stonestile and was soon gone and out of sight.