 |
| Dan ready For His First Fri Night Ride! |
A great turn out of eleven riders on a perfect Friday night including the welcome return of Stu Hodd (who hopes to come more regularly from now on) and Dan Selmes on his first every Friday night ride.
Myself ,Derek , and Paul set off five minutes (by my watch) early down battery hill as we are all nervous descenders ,Malcolm also came with us as he was determined to have an easy ride and would stick with myself all evening. Simon and all the others set off at 7:35, five minutes after us.
 |
| Great To See Stu Is Back! |
Once the nervous group arrived at the sea defences we had a strong wind at our backs and ended up riding quite fast despite putting in little effort, however,we still thought the rest of the group would catch us up by at least the entrance to the harbour. By the time we entered the reserve there was still no sign of the second group so we rode more slowly through the reserve. At the 'dogs leg' I stopped altogether, deciding I would not go on until I at least saw their lights. After a few seconds I could see them coming down the long straight of the reserve.I gave chase to the rest of the first group and we waited a while at the road junction before deciding we might as well start the ascent up to Broadoak.
 |
| A Stonestile Virgin No More! |
Derek soon got dropped, but myself, Paul and Malc worked together as a mini chain-gang with partial success. Finally about two thirds of the way up Stu and Marcus came past us but Simon and the others did not catch us up until we neared the Broad Oak junction. Simon and the others were not impressed with how the evening had gone and I felt really guilty as only a few days before I had emailed everyone to remind them of the 'traditions' of the Friday night ride and yet had unintentionally split the group in two! With hindsight, five minutes was far too long a head start (even Pete Tadros would struggle to close that gap) and we all agreed that from now on, the nervous descenders would only set off one minute ahead of the others and would ride really slowly on the flat util the others had caught up (i.e nervous group set off at 7:34 and main group at 7;35).
After apologies had been offered and accepted, group harmony was restored and we continued together until Stonestile ascent. Here we were amused to discover that not only had Dan never done Stonestile on a Friday night ride, he had never ridden it it at all as so was 'Stonestile virgin'. As happened to Andy L a couple of weeks ago he was caught out in the wrong gear on the first and nastiest section of the hill but unlike Andy, Dan kept going and made it to the top so fully deserves the traditional first ascent photo!
No comments:
Post a Comment