Physics, Le Tour and riding up hills with beer.

Physics, and the application of, has never been my strong point. In fact we gratefully parted company in my early teens after I set fire to the school lab during an experiment and I’ve been happily oblivious since.
Riding bikes however, I’ve discovered you just can’t get away from the subject and the effect is has on daily life.

The Ghost of New Years Past: Argentina by Bike (Part 1)

I absolutely, definitely wasn’t going to write a ‘New Year’s’ post this year. As the dull, wet pall of January settles over us the last thing I want to do is make/write about well-meaning promises to myself (usually involving the reduction chocolate intake) which I resolutely know I’m not going to keep.

But I have written, and I blame Facebook. If you’re a user of you’ll know that there’s a ‘Your Memories’ feature, an impish bit of coding which means that photographs of you having a great time – holidays, parties, nights out etc pop up on their annual anniversary, usually coinciding, a year or so later with a bout of flu or a stressful work deadline. ‘Look’ it says, your life used to be fun.

And that’s what happened. Three years ago, before the ‘C’ (covid) word was even uttered I’d managed to swap the cold and wet of an English New Year to go cycle touring in the summer sun of Argentina, or so I presumed.

Bread and Gold

Today’s question: What do sandwiches, symphonies and a Strava segment all have in common?

So Rock n Roll: Riding the Brecon Gap

The Walrus and the Carpenter were walking close at hand:

They wept like anything to see such quantities of sand:

“If this were only cleared away”, they said, “it would be grand!”  

                               Lewis Carroll (The Walrus and the Carpenter)

 

These are the lines that are running through my head as I clatter downhill at an alarming rate, bouncing over boulders, through rock gardens, teeth chattering, limbs shaken from their sockets. In my version however the word  ‘sand’ is replaced with the word ‘rocks’. Ok, I know it doesn’t rhyme but you get the picture.

The Only Way Is Up! Mountain biking in the Shropshire Hills.

You can usually tell what kind of ride it’s going to be in the first couple of miles. 
Less than 5 mins after setting out I’m gasping away in my lowest gear, facing a 20% ramp of road that looks more like a wall. Hmmm, it’s definitely going to be an ‘interesting’ day out.