CYCLING: Bike Club - the first rule? (hic!)

Great news.
The local authority seems to have cross party support for putting cycle paths on the prom.
Finer detail is sketchy. And war has broken out in the local newspaper's letters page.
But it signals an attitude shift which could be very important to the future of the area where I live, I'll predict.

People might even think the town is a friendly, welcoming place.

And at the very least, parked cars blindly backing out into a petrified family of peddlers, forced onto the seafront road (the clear and present danger) may soon be a thing of a murky and distant past.

Thus ends the news.

--

Possibly more important:
Bike Club was this weekend officially born.

(Suggestions for the first rule of Bike Club are welcome.)

Its three members learned they are stupid enough to cycle in truly horrendous conditions if there is the promise of ale or wine at the other end.
This they know because it happened twice in three days which makes chance a less likely culprit.

Friday - newly official Bike Club night.
I learned you can download most bike maintenance information via the web - even while really quite drunk.
And Daniel learned not to put his finger between the cog and the derailleur if I am nearby and really quite drunk.

We then sat and Neil told us often how he'd just doubled his money on ebay with the Scott he was gleefully cleaning and preening for collection.

I put my bike on the new stand, forgot why and then Neil lifted it out because I was drunk and knocking things over.

We ate snaks (sausages, olives and chocolate brownies so plentiful we couldn't possibly hope to work them off if we spent the whole month on the saddle) and took the piss out of each other a lot.
It was absolutely fucking great.

Sunday, Bike Club outing day
Friston wanted us elsewhere almost as much as the weather and my hockey tired thighs.
But we are now officially paid up adventurers and must earn the respect we crave as such.
Proudly we ploughed up and down boggy tracks where gravity was no help in either direction - finding pleasure in small pockets and pain in prominence.

Squeaks reminded me about the oil I'd forgotten to apply on Friday night.

We bitched light heartedly - assuring ourselves often how easy this would be come the summer thanks to our dedication.

Neil, atop the wife's ill-equipped machine, fell at the third attempt. Upset we both missed it he re-enacted the event on a muddy track with surprising vigour and quite a thud.

Meanwhile Dan looked like he could go all day.
I felt the opposite - tried not to want to go home, but was delirious when we got there.
Don't tell the others... I may get kicked out.

The first rule of Bike Club: Drink less before and more after?

CYCLING: Tinkering and tyrants continued

We've brought a bike stand.
To save money and be more self contained during future trips three of us decided it's time, at the tender age of thirtysomething, to get some bike knowledge. We all chipped in.

I drank wine and got in Neil's light as he tinkered on Friday evening.
He fixed his gears and breaks and I can't say I know why.

I ate Chinese food and drank port as he used his new knowledge and a few You Tube how to videos to adjust my gears too. They're smooth as a James Bond pick up line now. It's a mystery.

I learned that as long as Neil comes on future trips I will be fine.

--

continued...

New to us sections of Friston forest opened out in front of Dan and I, each promising adventure and challenges unknown.

Once you're fit enough this is the unique freedom to mountain bike cyclist.
The day's destiny is unhindered by logic or habit or hill. If you reach a dead end you turn around. If you don't, you keep going, wide-eyed - riding at your limit.

The next path could bring jumps, glorious tree-weaving single track, frightening downhill or wide open leafy paths where speed has no master. Or it could be a boggy disaster like the one we took.

Ten painful minutes later I was pulling a gloopy mixture of mud and leaves from between the back wheel and frame. It had glued the wheel fast. My feet were in deep puddles.

Friston was in no mood for the fun we had planned it seemed.

I caught Dan up and we left her behind, headed across the angry road into a field towards the Cuckmere cleaning our tyres on reliable medow grass.
We have a right to roam, Dan said.
Fence. Barbed Wire. Another field. Another fence. Bugger this. Back across the road to our mistress.
She was more welcoming this time, and as the path dropped towards Exceat our wheels picked up speed enough to fan leafs in their hundreds into a rusty confetti.
We yelped.
We whooped.
There was no danger - no need for concentration. It's at times like this that you must make the sounds of gleeful boyhood. It's part of the reason you're here. So we did.

Forest drained we weaved further along into a fabulous path, more narrow and dusted with inviting obstacles which we hopped over or zipped around. The bare trees seemed to step aside graciously. Our hosts also welcomed in all the afternoon's half-light to see us happily through their home.
We caught our breath and thanked them with smiles.

Soon we were in the valley, splashing through more puddles. West Dean offered us the admiration of a small boy and an aggressive hill, but soon we bumped out onto the Road to Littlington where a pacey ale in the Pub's garden spurred us up and over the rut of the Downs and into Wilmington for our meeting with the Clobbys.

CYCLING: Tartan tyrants of Wilmington

You should try pushing the thing…, puffed David Dimbleby who was propelling a kart up the muddy Folkington track we were sliding down.
…It’s harder for the person at the back.

Peter Sissons. Did you see? Did you SEE? I whispered excitedly.
See who? I was too busy looking at the kid in the go-kart, said Daniel.
That looked like fun.

The track was a mistake.
If I was a cynical man I would blame the old couple dressed prematurely for Christmas day in all over green and red tartan and tweed.
They had seemed nice.
If they were senior members of the anti cycle lobby – Clobbys for future reference –, as we later suspected, they hid it well.
When we asked for a way from Wilmington to Wannock without risking our necks on the neighboring main road they’d hardly paused before suggesting we peddled back up the hill and hang a left.
There’s a track along to Folkington, then go down the lane, take a right and then there’s another across to the back of Polegate, they instructed.
They even smiled.
Mind you, it’s completely unwalkable, let along peddleable, they said to themselves with a wicked grin - but not until we were well on out of earshot.

The thing about riding in the mud is that when the time comes it’s too boggy to ride, walking conditions are a thing of the even more distant past. Then you have to push the bike too.
They knew this, we agreed, up to our ankles.

Earlier we’d left cold Old Town and peddled a little too enthusiastically onto the Downs on the Seaford road.
Luckily, made lonesome by the weather, she welcomed us with a backdraft as we neared the top and saved our legs a little for the hack ahead.

Daniel was gleeful atop his shining new silver steed.
I was jealous and failing to hide it.

We’d planned a vague loop through East Dean, along the top edge of Friston Forest, along to Littlington. Pint, Chips, around to the Long Man at Wilmington and, well, home the safest way we could find.
We shot along the side of golf holes against the tide of drives and onto a valley cut which whizzed us between fields of shivering sheep to East Dean. Cars suddenly buzzed over our conversation and we turned off to take a back path up the steep side of a village made ghostly by Sunday and season.

Out we popped puffing plumes of hot lung air. And across the tarmac stream of growling metal once more. Kind walkers, Clobby Resistance Fighters, held the gate open for us and then our smiles of thanks widened as we saw what waited.

Continued…

Chase the couscous

If there is anything more irritating than dropping uncooked couscous on the floor I am yet to discover it.

CYCLING: Highwaymen and hijackers with hounds

Bottom of Firle Beacon

I should go up onto the ridge from here, said a dog walker to Dan.
The wind is south westerly and blowing a goodun up on top, you'll find it easier this way...

What terrible advice, we decided, and went the other.

Our starting point, Alfriston, oozes snobbery, and we figured later (peddling with the wind at our backs along the ridge), the dog walker had been out to get us.
Her malice was aimed at making us un take up cycling, we thought. Get off the paths... embrace dog walking and very bad advice giving instead.

Dan has to write about the South Downs... so, whatever the weather, we agreed in a warm Counting House pub on Friday, to head out two mornings' later to cycle a stretch of the South Down's Way.
Whatever the weather?, Dan said.
Fair outlooks are for the weak, we are MEN, I replied, standing up to shut the door some smoker had left open.
My word, that breeze has a nip.

The Old Coach Road to Lewes from Alfriston, with it's chalky, horse-worn shingle and lengthy sections of exposed, almost desolate track, conjures up visions in the mind-wandering cyclist nothing short of musket wielding highwaymen. You can feel yourself tracing the steps of children's TV-informed history.
Dan was on the same thread, and we discussed whether today's coastal muggers and thieves, becapped and driven by blind addiction, will be remembered with similar romance.

He took pictures for the piece and as we paused we wondered at the misty morning squall hugging our route, and the bursts of cold sunlight keeping it at bay. Green became its own rainbow and as the wind blew heavy clouds, their shadows changed everything before our eyes.

It's Firle, I tell you. It is. This is the road. We have to go up there.

The French cycle a lot, as we know.
The English less so.
I decided (and then thought I'd test the theory on Neil) that this was because we built roads straight up hills, lazily, and our neighbours chose the steady meandering route, making the pursuit more accessible and popular.
Neil looked doubtful.
I have no idea if there's an ounce of anything other than horse shit in this, but if the road to Firle Beacon is to be used as a measure I may have a defence.

At the top and the wind blew us so bitterly in the direction of our car the sweat instantly turned us to shivers.
The ridge along this stretch of South Downs offers very little. Unless you like a view. For those tiny few it is a baron paradise, with unobscured sights of distant silver sea and Weald in 360 degree widescreen, surround sound, supervision. It's almost too much.

Dan, who has been away for a while, did not try to hide his feelings.
They were expressed with untamed exclamation.

Two disobedient, cow-curious dogs, a brief and mutually unsatisfactory bike exchange and reunion, the easiest hills we've ever cycled up (thanks to the south westerly) and a hilariously steep track back down into Alfriston (where, break-locked, we skidded helplessly and in borderline hysterics to the bottom), and we found ourselves in the pub with an hour to spare for the Harvey's and cheese and onion crisps.

The dog walker looked surprised to see us.

Eddie

While I was in a coma my wife divorced me and took the money for the jump, said Eddie Kidd… I think.
He’s not in a good way these days – wheelchair bound and punch drunk.
His eyes still shine like motorbike lights though, I can confirm.

I live in a council house in Seaford, I’ve lost all my money.
How about an interview?, I said.
How much?, he said.
We don’t usually pa…
Buy me lunch, he said, smiling through a stare.
And a glass of wine.

Deal, I said.

Dare devil Daryl

Eddie Kid, he's a handsome fella, said Daryl, the only fishmonger I've ever truly loved... known, even.
He eats in my cafe on a Friday, comes in with his girl and carer. They live in Seaford.
One reads off the menu while Eddie sits in his wheelchair.

People stop to ask, Are you Eddie Kidd, all the time. People recognise him. He's a bit fucked. But he's still a great looking bloke. I'm not gay, but he sure is still a looker. His eyes dazzle.

We're moving along to the bigger unit at the end of the Enterprise Centre, Daryl, whose eyes really do dazzle, updated me.
It's got space for sofas where we can give people olives and tables big enough for paella dishes.
What's the point of paella without the dishes landing on your table?
We'll have a platter counter too, where folks can pick and mix oysters and prawns and all that stuff.
It'll be grand, but we're quite scared. We've gone from that little counter, and two dishes a day, to that.

It's daring. Eddie would approve, I should have said.