A sticky situation…

Ok, ok let’s start off with a JOKE!

Question : What’s round, brown and sticky?

Answer : A stick!

Lol! Hahahaha! 😂

Er.. maybe not…  I just needed to start this blog off with a small chuckle cos I've injured myself.  Again.  Do not read on if blood and damage to human appendages would upset you.  You have been warned...

Now that the North Yorkshire 200 has been attempted my legs are fully strong and so over 40 mile per day rides out are quite regular and no real issue to do.  Me and the five bar gate go everywhere together.  As a road going combo we're pretty heavy man.  In fact I wouldn't rate the chances of the next tractor we run into as the crash damage caused by a fat bloke and five bar gate combo would be the hardest insurance claim to explain for sure.  Yes, yes, I am very heavy and so continue to have problems getting off the bog after a hard days riding.  But that little problem has normally gone by the start of the next day. 

The fact is that I AM A FAT BLOKE!  Strange innit when one looks at oneself in a mirror you see really only what you want to see; that is a bloke with a few more pounds than normal on his now groaning skeleton but really I'm the same as I was when I was in my 20's aren't I?  Er, no Wayne.  Unlike the great fibbing mirror that I have at home a camera never lies.  I am reminded in a not so glorious way just how old and blubbery this body really is... courtesy of London Alan's recordings from the NY200.  No wonder you never really get to see me in my video's.  It's horrible mummy!  I don't like it, please take me home - said the neighbour's kid during a home showing of my latest video. 

Part of the fun of riding a bike is finding new routes.  For sure the rides around North Yorkshire, especially  around the perimeter of York are a little boring now.  So much rubber has been laid down on the local lanes and cycleways that I think I can now see where I have been before I get there.  

Maps are a curse.  I trawl Google and Ordinance Survey Maps to try to find something, anything a little more stimulating in the York area and so have started to ride more bridleways when I find them.  For a while now I've been aware of one that runs from Fulford paralleling its once world famous golf course on a route that takes me across the A64 and into the wilderness beyond.  So today's the day.  I'm gonna ride it and see what it is like.  

A right turn through a hedge just beside the golf course takes me on to a smooth back road only accessible from the club's private car park; a road that parallels the fairways all the way to the 18th hole.  This is a long long golf course, rarely more than one fairway's width wide so it's a fair scoot before I reach the footbridge over the A64.  The course is absolutely packed today.  I assume that my bright red flashy rear light is completely messing with the handicaps of at least half the golfers out today.  

My crap nav is like a myopic kid without glasses so takes me to all the wrong places as it squintingly meanders around the course.  I stop on a down ramp with a beautifully pristine 18th hole laid out in front of me.  With a gentle thud a white ball lands not more than 10 yards from my feet followed by a distant shout of 'fore!'.  

Bugger it, the crap nav has gone wrong somewhere.  There's no way a bridal path would cross this beautiful green so I start to look around.  Just then, through the trees, I spy a flash of a white cycling shirt and helmet.  There!  There it is - on the other side of the fecking fence!  Yes, there it was, neatly camouflaged by a big sign writ large in grey lettering on a forest green background up against the hedge (so yes, invisible) that told me that I should have gone left and so was an idiot for cycling into the middle of the 18th hole.  

I'm back on track.  It's not too bad really.  More applicable to mountain bikes methinks but just slow down a little, Wayne.  Yes I've still got approx 35 miles to go today but it is for sure less boring doing this than just riding the same old same old every time.

The path narrows and there's a fork.  To the left looks to be the more 'used' section of the route but it's the bit I think that would just take me on a big loop back into Heslington.  Or right.  Into the bushes.  The crap nav looks at me with it's one myopic red eye and robotically says, go right, Dave, go right.  So I do.  

Well, whilst legally you can use a bike on a bridleway its not always the best idea.  I was born an idiot and the intervening years have not made me any better so I press on.  This 'path' is only just visible with high scrubby growth to both the left and the right.  What looks to be a type of conifer plant, mixed with nettles and bramble, has leaves that rake my forearms like tiny razors.  Ooohh, they're sharp.  The front wheel rides in a gulley that has not been formed by the hooves of horses.  Bridleway?  Nah, there's no way anyone would be cruel enough to bring a horse along this section of path.  I have repeat flashes of the much nicer path that went to the left but no, this is the route, Wayne.  Plough on.  See where it goes.  

Ok I think I'm far enough down the page to now tell today's story and add some photos.  

So there I am bouncing along this meandering path.  My front wheel in and out of the groove when all of a sudden I hit something and with a wince notice a sharp stinging pain in my right shin as though I've been bitten by a racing snake.  Yes, a racing snake.  I heard it's bones crack as I ran over it.  I imagined it arching it's back under my front tyre and with a dying lunge stuck it's fangs into my shin before shrivelling up into a lycra encased tomb.  I hate racing snakes!

I'm still hip deep in the nasty razor stuff so press on.  The pain abates a little and yes, conclude that something has been thrown up by the front wheel and hit me in the shin.  The path clears a little.  I put my hand down to rub my shin which feels wet.  I check my hand.  It's smeared in blood...

I stop in a clearing and yeah, not only had I been punctured, a piece of something was still stuck in.   I guess that the front wheel had caught a stick that was across the rut which threw one end of it up just as my right shin was coming down on the power stroke.  So with one end of the stick pressed into the ground the only option was for the other end to punch into my leg.  

I'm in the middle of nowhere so my commando boy scout field injury training takes over.  Like pressing ones fingertips into a piece of meat I manage to grab the end of the shard of wood and with a small twist and a firm yank take a portion of manky stick out of my shin.  A bit stingy but didn't hurt that much.  The feeling was akin to pushing one's fingers into the Sunday joint.  Hard to grab at first and so I almost resorted to getting the pliers out of the tool bag.  But there was enough protruding for me to pull it out.  And then the bleeding started.  I pulled my sock up to compress the wound and pressed on.   

A few more photo's of the so called bridleway.  Defo not designed for me nor bikes!

I'm deep now in the darkest jungles of Peru menaced by swarms of bugs and the like.  I look at my right forearm on which has alighted a long black fly.  God knows how long it has been along for the ride so I shoo it off... and watch as a neat pinprick of blood starts to grow.  Fecking bloodsucking freeloaders.  That reminds me - stay single!

The nearest place for clean up materials was the Costcutter shop in Wheldrake.  After a bit of searching I found a small travel friendly box of plasters, some Dettol antiseptic fluid, some Kleenex tissues and a bottle of water.  Back out on the road I sit on a church bench and clean the puncture wound which now looks like this with the skin lid pressed back in place.  

What is it with me and leg wounds?  Do you remember when I glassed myself trying to catch a pint glass with my shin which left me with a manky wound that looked like this?  

Ooohhh angry innit?  I hope the fresh one doesn't go the same way but I'm not sure that all the bits of wood have been removed.  They're never long cuts, always bloody deep puncture wounds which take an age to heal.  

Anyway I press on.  The route takes me to Elvington.  From there to Bubwith where I stop in a sunny picnic spot for lunch and so get my boo boos out.  I notice that the fresh plaster has detached itself from my sweaty leg.  Looks like a piece of bloody pork.  Errr..  I put my shirt back on and press onwards to Skipwith.  I go across the common to Riccall which is still wet and where all the rabbits and moles have finally emerged from their wetsuits and are now frolicking about in bikinis being as the weather is much nicer.  Then it's back down the Route 66 pastry to home.  41 miles in all.  3.5 hours or so.  Averaging just over 12mph which 'aint bad considering the amount of time I've been low and slow in the jungle today.

Life is like a box of chocolates innit?  You don't necessarily know what you're gonna get until you open it up.  Try something different perhaps?  There will always be a memory in it.   

Anyway I get up this morning with a bit of a bloody mess.  A large scab has formed.  It's still stingy and a bit weepy so yeah perhaps there is still some wood in it.  All because on the day I retired from work I ditched trousers and started living in shorts.  I still have some pairs but they're only now used to protect the public from the sight of my legs when on walkabout in town, in the depths of winter, for some special occasions and for funerals.  So not a lot then.  As a result my lower legs take the brunt of it all.  Whether from gardening when the concrete post fell into my shin (OW!) or when I stand on the wrong side of the 2 stroke petrol strimmer which flings at high speed all manner of twigs and mashed nettles and bramble bits back at me (ooohh!). Etcetera.  

Yes I'm an idiot without trousers.  No I'm not a courtin' Mary Jane...

I think I'm gonna start wearing 'em again.

Ciao for now.

ps.

I'm working on the North Yorkshire video ride with London Alan.  More boring poopery to share in the next few days.  Take care - watch out!