Well, that was fun, in a sadomasochistic sort of way.
So, my cunning plan of providing rower40 with good train karma by bringing a freshly-fettled spare bike worked perfectly, and we successfully rendezvoused at Euston and made short work of the ride over to Victoria to catch the Box Hill Express with about 5000 other cyclists. We felt a bit out of place amongst all the blingy lightweight road bikes, until TimO joined us with his reassuringly muddy Kaffenback
With a saddle-swap and luggage redistribution effort, and the application of several tonnes of locks that nobody wanted to carry all the way round to my bike, the tandem was ready to go. We did a couple of laps of the car park without killing anyone to prove it, then made use of the excellent bacon bap and significantly less-than-excellent toilet facilities before setting off.
My only previous tandem-stoking experience was a couple of laps of Hyde Park Corner with wheeledweenie (occasionally of this parish), so obviously it made total sense to choose this ride to have a proper go at it. It made even more sense to do it on a heavy, over-geared bike with flat bars that I suspect may have been forged in the fires of hell. And plenty of luggage (we had redundant tool kits etc).
(we evidently missed a D-lock)In spite of all this, it went rather well. We were never going to be fast - the main objective was to get round without killing anything, especially my knee. My GPS log says we did the route in just under 4 hours. That included several stops for fettling (mostly my seatpost height, but for bonus comedy points I did manage to clamp my glove in the Garmin bracket while adjusting its angle and then fail to loosen it off without assistance), a couple of drawn-out bonk-ration breaks and a bit of cramp-relieving. So I'm not sure exactly how much of that we were moving for.
While we did manage to ride the vast majority of the climbs, the now legendary '24" gear' put in a few appearances, mainly on account of cramp, but also because we just plain ran out of gears on a couple of the really nasty bits:
I was very good and didn't scream on any of the descents, even the ones with full Alton-Towers style unexpected (from the back seat at least) dips. During the odd hairy moments I opted for closing my eyes rather than steering the bike or going for the somewhat tempting third brake. I believe rower40 was employing a similar strategy at the front
It was noted that we should have brought a false beard so that rower40 could do a more convincing Wowbagger impersonation. It was also noted that that would probably involve still being in the pub for lunch.
The actual pub came later, after deciding that it was far too cold to be hanging around outside when pubs are warm and tend to serve salty food and beer and so on. We returned to Ryka's and collected my bike (which hadn't been even a little bit nicked), then a speedy ride up the A24, during which I discovered my bike had weird floppy-about handlebars that moved. It was a surprisingly large degree of brainfuck given how little falling-off it caused. We safely arrived at the pub, deployed our many, many locks, and got to the important business of beer, twitter, and chevron-counting
[1]:
After a couple of hours of that, rower40 and I made a break for the train to London, which we'd left it a bit late for. He'd sensibly opted to join me on my booked train to Mordor Central, on the basis that the tandem would fit in the Pendolino without too much fuss, compared to the distinctly marginal effort of the East Midland HST. After a quick (for people on heavy bikes who've just completed this sort of insanity) sprint up to Euston, we were able to confirm that this was indeed the case.
I last saw rower40 in the bowels of Mordor, in search of a tandem-friendly train to Derby.
A surprisingly fast, if slightly damp, ride home and I was reunited with such simple pleasures as curry, a reasonably hot shower, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatories. For my back (which suffered from the bar position) more than my knee(s) - which appear to both still be working, in spite of fairly epic amounts of grinding.
At 85km and 1271m total of climbing, that's my first 'proper' ride this year. It was great to see people for what felt like the first time in ages, and even better to think that I might well be able to do more rides in future without actually breaking myself.
Many thanks to rower40 for having the idea in the first place, and to Kathy and Tim for providing moral support at our fairly tectonic pace.
[1] I make it seven singles, one double, and one downhill chevron. Assuming downhill ones are negative, that adds up to seven: making the route a stargate.
