Personally I don't think Wilkyboy (or any host) should bother Steve with anything other than refuelling, sleep and getting him back on the road the next morning.
Questions like "so, what went wrong yesterday then?" should be the last thing on a host's mind.
Quite so — I did ask how he was feeling, but not anything more enquiring than that.
Steve is extraordinarily tired: his entire desire when he arrived was to go to bed. He did the Strava thing because he had to, and he ate some chicken while that was happening (from main#2). We chatted for about 15 seconds about how hard double-centuries are (I did my first of the season a few weeks back on a ride with Steve himself), how you can't live on caffeine for extended periods, how it'll be so much nicer to ride in the spring, how he felt about having crowds following his every move, and how the Budget would affect us each personally ... actually, we might not have discussed the budget. But over it all, Steve just wanted to go to bed: I took him up to his garret within about 25 minutes of his arrival.
The only socialising we did was a quick chuckle over how quickly the first comment popped up on Strava after he uploaded his track — it took just seconds, get a life people
Steve offered — I did NOT ask — an answer to yesterday's question, though. It was simple: he needed to sleep. He stopped early so he could go to bed. Today he was in bed well before 10pm and his alarm is set for 4am (mine's set for slightly before that)
Steve also mentioned that he did recognise you Wobbly John
The catering went to plan: everything was cooked by the time he arrived, I thought it tasted delicious, and Steve ate what he felt like eating. There is perhaps something to learn, though, in that he didn't want the jacket potatoes, nor the big Spanish-chicken dish I cooked, nor any bread, or any cake, or anything else. Just some finger-lickin' chickin while doing the Strava thing, and three lots of protein recovery drink. His point was that he'd been eating constantly all day and wasn't hungry in the evening. Just tired.
He's taking the rest of the chicken thighs and a cold jacket potato as a picnic, along with a whole granola cake and half a fruit cake (although we'll see whether it'll all fit in his bag in the morning), as it's just much more efficient use of his time during the day. The remaining food will keep for the boys' dinner tomorrow (and probably Saturday — I may have over-catered
).
I've made a note to mention the eclipse to Steve. His batteries and GPSes are charging, his bottles are Nuun'ed, and his bike's pointing in the right direction. Nothing much else to do apart from wait for 4am to roll around.
