Today's ride was to be another utility trip to the homestead, via the now standard route made up mostly of NCR5.
I intended to leave at about 16:00 as this was when the chance of rain was forecast to be lowest; however as the afternoon rolled on the changing forecast, sporadic showers and ominous clouds in the general direction I was heading meant I ended up sat on my hands for a few hours. During this time I used a freshly-found piece of software to download all of
Thomas H's epic Techno mixes from Youtube for the journey
Forecast said rain at 18:00 and all good by 19:00, however it looked clear at 18:00 so I chanced it.
Not in the best of moods I rolled into town to get some cash; thankfully the smackhead who approached me while I was waiting for the machine to spit out my slavery-tokens kept her distance and gave up on her pitch when she saw I'd got headphones in. Not feeling very charitable currently and I'm certainly not going to give money away only to go straight into the pocket of some scumbag heroin dealer.
Headed north out of town with the strong gusting wind mostly across me, but with a reasonable 12 O'clock component too. Mixed it up with what few cars there were over the Peartree roundabout as the cycle paths are sh*te and I resent getting off every two minutes to cross the carriageways.
By the time I'd got to Woodstock I'd become consciously aware of how nasty my drivetrain felt - as soon as acknowledgement of this fact ascended beyond my lizard brain I instantly hit the brakes and checked my rear derailleur. Sure enough after waxing the chain yesterday I'd
yet again managed to route it outside the retaining tab on the cage
So now I was stuck with a bike that I needed to fix as riding it any further would cause more damage to the cage. In the end I managed to split the KMC link by holding it above / resting one hand on the chainstay while gripping the kinked chain and applying downward load with the 2mm allen key on my multi tool. This wasn't before I'd spent a good few minutes shredding my fingers trying other methods.. at least they'll heal, unlike my RD. On the up-side it only took me 10 miles to realise my cockup this time, what the cage already damaged (although dressed down and re-painted) after my last cockup. I definitely need to create some sort of fail-safe routine whenever I've refitted the chain..
Relieved to be back en-route but still narked at my own stupidity
again, I continued along the cycle path. At a break to cross a road some utterly selfish prick had parked their car in the mouth of the opposite path's entrance, blocking it almost completely so one wing mirror got a slap for the priviledge. I was close to letting all the tyres down tbh - wtf is wrong with people?
A bit further down I sounded my bell well ahead of time to make my presence known as I approached a woman and her two tiny fluffball "dogs". She used the advanced warning I'd given her to do precisely sod all, allowing one of the little rats to run right in front of me meaning I had to bother the brakes. To add insult to injury in true tiny dog fashion the gobbly little swine then chased me yapping furiously. In retrospect I wish I'd given it a dousing from my water bottle but thankfully for my rodant-esque foe my brain doesn't work that quickly.
The rest of the journey was fairly uneventful and I managed to avoid the rain save a few spots blown over from a passing black cloud.
All in all 24 miles and 800ft at 13.7mph and 138bpm - significantly more exertion than last time due I suspect to the slight headwind component and my less-than-stellar state of mind; although that's eased a bit now in the afterglow. Finger's crossed the weather holds over the weekend or I'll be stuck in the village of the damned
) and was still in my face as I turned back northwards.
The Team Pro was always quite sensitive to adjustment so I don't expect it to be right straight off.
