4/9 Fri Night Ride - Autumn Twilight

With the Bewl water season officially over it was time for me to make a reappearance at the 'Friday Night Ride' . This would be my first one for several months.

Andy Now Rides A Much Better Bike!

The weather had turned surprisingly cold , you could really feel the change of the season into Autumn. Still, it was a beautiful still evening so it was surprising that only four riders were out. Never mind it was good to ride with Peter Baker and Dan S again. Also good to have  Andy Tester riding with us  who I hadn't  seen for years but recognised instantly. last time I rode with Andy he was on an old Carrera bike which wasn't very good, now he was on a carbon Basso which put my old CAAD 8 to shame. He was also a lot fitter than I remembered!

I made the most of the  evening light to help descend Battery hill, well aware that in a few weeks we would have to make this dangerous decent in pitch blackness.

Dan and Pete reported that the 'seagull smashing mussel shell' season had at last come to an end and we could now ride the Harbour without a 33% chance of getting a puncture. I forgot just how nice this section is and we stopped for a pee stop looking out over a lovely red sunset on a cool but windless evening.

Admire The View While Taking A leak!

Andy showed how much faster he has got and dropped the rest of us almost immediately on the Broad-Oak drag but working together as a peloton we managed to reel him back in about halfway up . Despite being the weakest of the four I felt pretty good and (helped by the others) managed to pull off my third best ever Strava time for the upper part of the drag .

Mystery Rider revealed As Mark Blaker

Somewhere near the finish we spied a rider up ahead, was he someone we knew?  He was riding a Giant defy (alloy) and had an enormous fluorescent backpack . We all stopped together at broad oak for a chat where the  mystery rider revealed himself to be Mark Blaker, a friend of Nicks. I now recalled coming across Mark before , as he commutes home from Rye and sometimes crosses our path. We persuaded Mark to ride the rest of the route with us , even though this would be tough carrying all his commuter gear.


Unfortunately at this point I discovered what I initially thought was a slow puncture. Not wanting to hold up the ride I used a CO2 cylinder to re-inflate it but the loud hissing proved that a replacement inner tube would have to be fitted. Being the second worst puncture repairer in the club (only Pete baker is worse)  this took some time everyone was getting increasingly cold . Our new acquaintance could wait no longer and set off on his own, but did promise to send us an email about joining our email list.






By the time we were moving again we were all feeling cold and didn't get properly warmed up until the strenuous  workout of Stonestile
lane.

Steve C