This was the year that wasn't...

This year wasn't the year for riding to Vienna, and wasn't the year for a lot else.  

Yeah, the Vienna ride has been put on the back burner until a vaccine is available so perhaps that'll be summer 2021 then.  Which has meant that this also wasn't the year for the coast to coast warmup ride and wasn't the year for the pre big-one 250 mile cycle ride from London Alan's gaff in Kent back to York.  A completely banjaxed year cos of the Covid crisis resulting in a general shutdown of the tourist and service industries.  The army have been called in.  It's like I'm a cameraman in the film Cloverfield, this time in real life but without the rat runs and explosions in some dystopian rubble strewn cityscape.  However, like the film's monster I'm pretty sure that this microscopic fecker is going to get all of us before my camera battery runs out.

Don't get me wrong.  I fully support what has been done to get this killer bug under control except I fundamentally disagree with having the schools and universities open.  They're places for asymptomatic infestations, where the lice that are children congregate and swap germs with their non-adult ways.  For sure then taking Covid back home to mum and dad and granny and grandad.  Well that's my opinion anyway.  Sadly now well over 50,000 dead in the UK and over 1 million globally.  We'd have fared better with a World War.  And we've yet to crawl our way through the long dark winter nights.  

I don't know about you but the need to self isolate is having somewhat of an emotional effect on me.  I am single and so live alone.  Sans for the tick tock of the clock and the plethora of crap programmes on TV and the habit now of going to bed at 9pm cos there is nothing else to do there is the saviour of some volunteering work and my magnetic trainer.  With some top tunes in my earphones I'm keeping semi-fit and semi-sane.  I apologise for the content of this blog especially now as the demons crawl out of the darkest corners of my mind, hopefully with some of the long lost nicer memories too.

Nonetheless, endless days of isolation have been filled doing other stuff which has been sat up high at the back of old dusty shelves in the house and in the farthest corners of my mind.  The latest fettle has only taken 20 years to do but I've finally done it!  A carriage clock.  Given to me by my mum to fix.  One of her Christmas presents from the 80's or 90's with corroded battery terminals on the quartz drive.  That's all.  However, it's been sat lost, forgotten and unloved for many Suns.  The money pit extension though has had me sorting through lots of old stuff whereupon I uncovered the clock, in pieces, in a drawer at the back of nowhere.  Really couldn't believe it.  I had got as far as dismantling it but then promptly forgot about it.  Yet all the pieces were still there.  

Of course that particular make and style of quarts movement was hard to find.  But find one I did.  With a new set of 'moon' hands.  I carefully and thoroughly cleaned all the bits and reassembled it.  Forty year old glue had set rock hard and resisted all cleaning solvents but a combination of petrol, WD40, soap and spit (ugh!) brought it up almost like new.   There is some tarnish that cannot be removed without damaging the clock face but I'm ok with a bit of age in a face nowadays.  Nonetheless, it's now back together and working.  

Sadly I cannot give it back to my mum cos she passed away 19 or so years ago.  Sorry mum.  But you knew I had a reputation of not quite getting things done.  Too easily distracted onto other projects.  Like my home today, there are things in half dismantled states of repair waiting to be finished.  I guess I don't like getting to the end of things.  Like this life.  And with cycling.  It's the journey not the destination that matters.  

I also found a video project which like the clock was sat in pieces in a dark corner of my laptop waiting to be rediscovered.  Here it is, kinda now finished.  A 200 mile ride around North Yorkshire.  This was the pre NC500 practice run in May 2019 to simply check that me and the bike, especially my arse and legs and the Rohloff hub, were ready for the hard riding to come.  

I now know for sure that I rather enjoy riding in remote places.  Off the beaten track stuff, on quiet green lanes and bridleways.  However the Koga thing which I use for touring, which for the second time has an oil leak on the supposedly indestructible £1000 Rohloff hub and which is again away for repair, is just not the right bike for that job.  The more I ride the happier I feel, especially now with a bit of low and slow off road in the mix away from all the high speed hard smelly stuff that could splat us cyclists like flies on a windshield.  

That has been reflected in some of this years bike rides.  No, it's not mountain bike territory but to places where gravel bikes, that is racers with chunky tyres, might congregate.  A bit like the tracks in the video.  

For example, I've had a few rides out with my mate John, you know, Mary Jane - the Bingley fakir on her full suspension e-bike? She has encouraged me to look for a bit more of the 'off piste' stuff.  Surprisingly there's plenty to keep me entertained around York.  However, and contrary to my persistent discouragement, Mary will continue to ride on public footpaths with her electric powered off road golf cart, always prepared with an excuse in case we come across a disgruntled rambler.  'Get off moi path!', they roar when poked with a rather stiff bike. 

The latest ride this month was with Mary from York towards Leeds.  Mary had freewheeled downhill on her mains powered electric vibrator from the Bingley hills to York and was looking for an excuse to irritate me.  So when she suggested I ride her, er with her, I suggested I follow her on her return home with me peeling back towards York at about the half way point.  

Over half of the ride towards Leeds must have been on green lanes and bridal paths with a stiff head wind on a route that only could have existed in an excitable racehorse's brain.  'The ride gets a little easier darling Wayne 'she said whilst climbing a steep gnarly section of rock and mud to the west of Tadcaster.  'Nope, no it doesn't. No.  Your not gonna catch me out again young lady', I muttered betwixt gasps and aw-feck not agains!

We stopped for lunch at the top of a high hill with an impressive blue view to the east across the top of Hazelwood Castle.  Lovely place for a house we mumble as the sausage rolls are pushed in.  There we are, two 58'ish year olds now chomping on ham salad sarnies, dribbling a lot cos of missing teeth, chatting about what time has done to our bodies.  Unusually Mary opens up and says she has a problematic slippy gland.  Oh yeah?  One which apparently Dr Fudge can feel with is longest index finger when inserted with a wince and which now has a Treasury Tag fitted to encourage the juices to flow and so make it a little easier to go to the toilet.  Don't know about you but when I think of Treasury Tags, you know the metal ended stringy things used to bind looseleaf paper together?  Well, has me also thinking about the metal rods and plates affixed to old building walls to stop them collapsing.  All I know now is that Mary gets an erection whenever she goes past old Georgian houses and Libraries .  

That's it.  I'm fedup of not having the right bike for the job.   I know, cos Mary has lent me one of her off road bikes, that they are so much better with their wider grippier tyres and fork suspension for riding off road.  So I've been in touch with Bikemonger at Ripon to ask them to help me with the build of a bespoke off road tour bike.  Something for the mad dream of a New Zealand trip and something that I can use as a fun bike for my green lane urges in and around York when not touring.  More on that to follow later.  

Most of my riding this year has been around the green and pleasant lands in the Vale of York with the occasional scoot up to the top of the rim for a peek over the edge and then back down again.  Like playing in a petri dish shaped skate park some 40 miles wide.  Unlike Mary, I ride without an erection as for sure that interferes with gear changes.  

Well that kinda sums up this year.  I'm back on the magnetic trainer.  Headphones in.  Staring into an infinite blackness through the bifold doors into the invisible garden beyond.   Hot and sweaty.  Dreaming of 2021.  Of warm bright days in distant places.  Riding my bike.