Random thoughts about nightriding
Sometime during the course of the year it became the task of the first person to fall, write the ride report - It must have been after Krummel stopped riding, 'cos it would have been monotonous to have him write the report week after week :-)
It was easy enough to avoid being selected as the designated ride-report-writer: just keep the falls inconspicuous and witnessless.
But the dust, the Russian explaining his long absence, the slow speed down the foreign new sweet track, the invisible rock, the inattention to where you're riding (listening and chatting away, instead) all conspired to what the Russian called one of the more spectacular endo's he'd seen - although not by far anything like his legendary sabie-classic-endo (he took an hour to recover the bicycle) - but that's a story for another day, and for someone else to tell.
So I won the right to write the ride report - together with a lot of bruises, minor human-stan's loss and a few more scratches on the well-abused bicycle.
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It was a warm summer's night. There was no rain yet to turn the dust into mud.
Some people were recovering from the bull; others were at the banf-movies, some were in Turkey, and yet others' bicycles were in for a service – so it happened that there were only 9 intrepid riders for the Thursday-night-ritual.
Hardy greeted someone whom he saw on tv the previous week – the same someone was later seen wheely-ing up one of the hill challenges. It later emerged he's some or other duathlon-champ.
There was some new track (Can we do it again? Can we do it again?), some old familiar tracks; some ups, lots of downs, always around the searchlight that emanated from the Moo Mall (for Powergirl, to orientate her). There were pleas to go do last week's downhill-course again, but Hardy was firm: only when Eric is back from Turkey.
Cornwall downhill was very dusty, lots of loose sand, very low visibility and not nearly as much fun as it used to be :-(
The tunnel after it made up for the lack of cornwall-thrill, though.
Some more ups and downs - the ever-enjoyable sweet singletrak-downhill , the always-thrilling-always-fast ghostride track (with lights to light up the dust, as the moon was only a sliver).
We stopped at one of the favourite birthday-spots for oupa Gerrit's birthday party. Deekay's chocolate cake was remarkably intact, considering the abuse that it took in his backpack (including surviving a tiny little fall?). Blowing out of the candles, champagne, cupcakes, cappuccino-muffins - it was probably the first time that there was leftover cake after a D&D party!
Then some more ups and downs – the python, a tour de tar, some Vetseun, some Big Dipper, hot chocolate afterwards. As always, an honour to share the dirt with you.
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Thank you DK, for looking after me and checking if everything was ok after the minor endo :)
Note to self: next time you plan to go do the afriman duathlon, don't fall off your bicycle the Thursday night before. If you absolutely *have* to endo, then don't hurt you knee so that you can barely walk the next day. And if you can barely walk the next day, and it's about a week before G4, then listen to your buddies telling you *not* to go hurt your knee further by attempting to run 21 kay or similar. Not a good idea. For future reference.
