With great sadness
Well that most certainly is.
I got to know Don a bit on various rides over the last few years, mainly the Elenith, BC and PBP. Not well, but just a bit.
I first came across him on the Elenith, and he looked like he'd just come off the allotment - certainly in comparisons to the way everybody else was dressed that is. "That bloke's having a laugh right, he's surely going to ride dressed like that? " Well. It turned out that comparisons such as these can be very surface and superficial. One needs a bit more knowledge before you can make judgements like I made on that day. But judgements we all make, all the time, with little knowledge. It's just the way it is sometimes. It became glaringly apparent that he got round those rides just as well as anybody else. Regardless of attire. And had been doing for some time.
One very amusing incident that I'll ever forget, happened on a subsequent Elenith few years later, at the Bullith Wells control. As regular riders will know, there is an outside toilet at the control, with a very respectable frosted glass window [at least there always was]. As you do, I needed to perform essential duties before continuing the ride and found Don waiting to execute these very same bodily functions before me. So we meet, in the queue, and waited together, talk a bit, and he points out that, "there's already somebody in there [pointing to the toilet] I can see them moving around". Ok fine, so we chat for a bit. And time passes. And them we both kind of think, 'well, as much as chat is nice, time is also audax time, and we need to get going'. So then we think, 'well....what's going on in there, are they ok?'
So Don, getting concerned and impatient, moves back and forth, closer then pulling back, then back a forth a bit more, then, moves towards the door, pauses, thinks, pauses again, then turns the handle - and.....it opens....and there's nobody in there! There never was all along. LOL! Sometimes we spent time, not metaphorically, but literally, looking at our own shadow in a window reflection!
We laughed afterwards.
That control will always have that memory for me.
Happy days.
My Audax career has been very short in comparison to others that congregate here, but I'd never be sorry about meeting Don Black along the way.
Thoroughly decent, no nonsense kind of bloke.
My memories of riding long distances are enriched because of knowing that guy.
Condolences to his family
RIP
