Pendle Witches Velo 2013

Have my first event of the year under my belt with the completion of the Pendle Witches Velo on Sunday.
The 53 mile loop around Lancashire and the Forest of Bowland took place on a beautiful day this year - a bit chilly at the start but the hills mean you soon warm up!
It was a bit blowy too for the final ten miles as we turned east and into a bitter headwind. But, beautiful scenery, well organised, friendly and for charity - a proper grass-roots cycling event.
Lots of interesting vintage bikes on show at this event - check out the photo gallery on the site in the coming days - you might even spot me pushing 53-12 up the nick of Pendle*.
The field of 220 could have been many more but it is capped. remember to get you entry in early doors for next year.

*not really

Nice things to lock your bike to #7

Sadly underused in Nottingham

Sad demise of the Saddleworth Cyclery

Really sad to report that the Saddleworth Cyclery in Uppermill has closed its doors - wish I'd have got in there more often than I managed in the past couple of months...

Mobberly Eight - pints

A group of intrepid riders do this every Good Friday - I think the eight refers to something other than the nine pubs en route - hope so...

Wind

That is all

Staplegate day 2

The source of the staple (see yesterday) has been identified and the forces of the repressive state apparatus have been mobilised. As suspected it was sabotage. Some bellend has taken to distributing staples on the bridleway just next to St Werburgh's Road station - by the bike lockers.

Third from the top, officer

I know this as I've now hoovered up four of the buggers with my bike tyres.
Now, it's not for me to speculate on the motives of whoever is doing it but save to say, it's directed at cyclists. The scandal, which is threatening to eclipse the fact that we no longer know what's in our food, has been termed staplegate - by me, just then.
I don't know why, but I get the feeling its a woman doing it - based on zero evidence. If it was, that'd be even worse somehow, don't you think?
If it was just some gobshite bloke, you'd just think exactly the same of him as you probably would anyway: you're a gobshite and you always will be.
But if it was a lass: a mother, a sister, a daughter it would be so sickening.
Ah well, cup of tea I think.

The cycling Gods

Cycling doesn't have Gods obviously, but believing in two-wheeled deities does conveniently explain some of the more challenging events which afflict the rider.

So, for example, as I was pulling an office staple out of my front tyre last night, I thought about whether my bike had been sabotaged - often my default suspicion - by biking gods or just that bloke who blocks me in with his wheelie bin.

Hmmmm, maybe time will tell.

Superstition afflicts many people and sports people are very susceptible. Pro riders never pass salt between one another for example. I remember hearing about a football player who, while driving to matches, had to press his thumbs on the steering wheel of his car between every lamppost on his journey 11 times. That's insanity that. It might have been Carlton Palmer.

That's fate that

I know people who wont say the word 'puncture' for fear of irking 'the gods' into delivering a spree of flattening experiences, presumably as punishment for uttering the arbitrary name given to an pneumatic tube which has lost its air by a non-standard method.

But why doesn't it work the other way around? Why don't cyclists greet each other with enthusiastic cries of 'limitless power', 'effortless efficiency' and 'explosive climbing'. Surely if the Gods were at work they would be powerless to resist your utterance of the mystical incantation: maintain 90rpm up this hill in this gear.

Might give it a whirl on the way home.