Is It Friday The 13th?

An unheard of change in the bad weather, and a break in other activities for both Jon and myself (marathon training for him, DIY for me) meant that we could get a ride down to Surrey in today. So we donned our finest fluro clothing, and thus looking like a couple of Vini Fantini rejects, we pointed our bikes south-west.

On arrival we dropped down from Headley towards Box only to be waved down by a group of cyclists that had stopped ahead of us. They warned us of a huge amount of ice on the road which tempered our speed immediately, and therefore probably saved us from a nasty accident.

Our planned ride came to a full stop towards the bottom of Ranmore however, when we came across a puddle that was around a foot deep in the middle of the road. A quick conference, and it was decided that we'd backtrack to Box and do a few laps instead.

Fate farted in my face once more however, with a puncture at the foot of Box. Once the inner tube was changed, I decided to use a CO2 cartridge to re-inflate it, having never used one before.

It did not go well.

I opened the valve too far, which meant that freezing CO2 was sprayed over my fingers, giving me a couple of nasty blisters. The old-school method of using a pump was used to complete the inflation process, and we were on our way. Jon went away from me on the climb, as he was to do on the next 2 laps as well.

At the top, we continued on the road for lap 2, when suddenly I was on the floor. I'd hit ice on a shaded part of the road (albeit at a slow speed), and the front wheel disappeared from beneath me. As I picked my self up, someone else did exactly the same thing behind me.

We managed 2 more laps before hammering the 30km home in the sunshine. 91km ridden, 1,300m climbed and hopefully all my bad luck gone in a single ride.