Thursday n’ Friday miserable knickers, antibiotic exhaustion with a splattering of despair and a reminder of what it was like 3/4 years ago (every activity was punctuated by repetitive sitting ‘n lying) and ‘I thought I’d got past that’ thoughts.
Saturday, delivery of cake ‘n goodies courtesy of me Mum and a friend (cooks like a goddess) and a raincheck on a ride in the SLK (rubs hands). Peer at the mobile which mostly gets ignored to find a day old, but still doable invite from a friend who habitually disappears for months, nay years on end and then pops up like a jack in the box when you least expect but often most need. Cue a ‘Minor’ Adventure cross country to Bledlow Ridge via Missenden, Kingshills, Naphill, Walters Ash, Loosley Row et al. I couldn’t face Wycombe and it was too lovely not to make the most of the skies. Sans map, following my nose. In the nick of time for supper at the local then back for an evening wine and natter followed by a peaceful nights kip. No motorway drone or kids squawking (actually I mostly like the kids, just in not in ‘my’ mornings).
Home, decide to try and ride off supper. The sun’s shining it’d be rude not to. Run into loads of folk doing the Offroad Sportif. Now it was late in the day so the people I met were obviously doing the long loop and tired but after about the fifth ‘pack’ of team- lyrca clad idiots had tried to ride me off the track, and my cheery hello’s had fallen on deaf ears and stoney faces I was beginning to feel slightly miffed. I harbour this strange idea that it’s polite to hold a gate open for other riders not just barge through it yourself. It’d also be rather nice if you shut the f**king things after you. Especially when you’ve just ridden through what is clearly a farm yard complete with cattle grids. I came across an old gentleman looking baffled and windswept. Like a load of miserable, hairy-arsed, ignorant, f**kwits had just ridden past at speed..
Now I know that the world is full of c**ks and preportionally there’s going to be just as many on bikes but it was a lovely day, the trails were dry, you expect more surely..
Deployed sarcasm instead of smiles ie told one lot it’d clearly been a bad day given the number of miserable faces I’d seen (including yours). Cue blank look and drool. Persistence won and I finally managed a nice natter with roadie biting his off-road cherry and a few others further along, which left a better taste as I twiddled past feeling just ever so slightly smug on the crosser.
