Peloton news. G20 – the Pyrenees
A much more reasonable start to this year’s tour. No crazy-early alarm clocks, just a nice trip to the airport with only hand-luggage and a gently grumbling Macca.
Our favourite plane man had unbeknownst to me fired a very early warning shot regarding our mode of transfer on arrival in France.
At 5.50am, whilst shooting the breeze on my couch, McEvoy had enquired as to whom I’d booked the hire car with. The one which would take us to resort.
‘I dunno….it’s on the App’ sayeth I.
I had a quick look. Whoever the third party was, they had a stunning 6.5 out of 10 rating. Not quite M&S levels of service, granted, but still it’s on a trusted App, we are only using it to transfer, I’ve got insurance, it’s France for fucks sake. It’ll be quiet and I’m a capable and experienced driver…. Well, we’ll come back to that last bit shortly.
We get to Gatwick with ColMac and Drip in tow and await the arrival of HRH.
The first of many 2019 tour errors soon became massively apparent.
We’ve got two gingers on the trip. Fuck. How on earth did that get through the vetting process? I sent my beloved co-chair a text
‘JT, I’m at LGW. We’ve got problems…..’
Before too long Drip and HRH are bonded in conversation which carried over onto the flight. By the time we were at 30,000 feet they were each answering the others questions before they had even been asked. It was like listening to 2 people taking it in turn to read out just the answers on a bunch of Trivial pursuit cards.
Macca whispered to me whilst transfixed by this sight. ‘What’s happening over there?’
‘They are becoming one Macca, they are becoming one’.
By the time we had landed things had progressed further. They were now communicating with eyes closed with just index fingers lightly touching. Silence. Occasionally dripping would meow.
When we got to Toulouse we started the hunt for the hire car counter. The twin gingers (Twinge?) followed gently behind in a glowing orange aura.
Whilst all this was going on, I’d failed to notice that Macca had entered a worrying (and just about controlled) mental meltdown.
‘Where’s the hire car counter…? It’s off-site isn’t it… remote.. we’ll need to get a bus… not even in the terminal…what were they called again?’ he blurted out in staccato perfection.
‘er…. Gold cars’… sounded good to me. What could go wrong when you’ve got Gold in your company name?
Within minutes we were at the Gold counter waiting to be served.
Macca had moved to DefCon level ‘Blind-Frenzy’.
He’d got straight onto his iPhone and had a full list of every negative customer review for Gold cars. I’m in the queue and he’s jabbing the phone at me and saying ‘look’ in a high-pitched squeal, ‘Maureen from Romford….. she’s 97… and this is how they treat our British citizens..!!’
‘They’re going to sell us extra insurance and then steal all our money’.
At this point I was starting to lose my legendary zen-like calm.
Macca connected with his iPhone again and dialled up a quote for a Hertz rental car equivalent.
‘Look, we could have had this one’… and with that, he was gone. Off to the Hertz counter.
I queued quietly on my own. Drip had temporarily disconnected from the Twinge umbilical cord and was trying to locate Macca to gently nudge him toward the exit.
Right, I thought… time to get this car booked and get the hell out of dodge.
My turn came and I presented myself at the counter with my usual finesse. My mouth opened to speak and just as I was about to wish the nice lady a very good morning Macca arrived on my shoulder, phone gripped in fist and launches a barked question at the unsuspecting clerk.
‘WHY DOES YOUR COMPANY HAVE SO MANY BAD REVIEWS?’
‘WHAT DID YOU DO TO MAREEN!?’
Macca was metaphorically wrestled to the ground by airport security and tied to the nearest pillar using clingfilm and then gently tasered… (this was how my mind was dealing with the situation at any rate).
The rest of the mini-peloton looked onward in apathetic bemusement. None of them gave a flying fuck about the arrangements on the basis that if it all went wrong, I’d be the one getting all the shit and would subsequently have to get us out of the hole I’d dug.
3 pairs of peloton eyes would say ‘your name on the form, your fucking problem sunshine’.
Anyhoo… after the drama of the hire car counter (which went perfectly smoothly), we picked up the car (which went perfectly smoothly), and got ourselves in and ready to go (smooth… perfectly).
I then started to drive. Dear fucking god where the hell has my driving ability gone?
I tried to change gear twice with the door handle and got completely befuddled with the clutch before a near impalement with a coach at the very first roundabout.
There was a flurry of uncensored ginger telepathic communication in the back seat which I am sure ended with Drip saying to HRH ‘if he kills us now, I want you to know I love you’.
At one point early on in the journey, I drifted the car toward the right (something I’d done subconsciously, I suspect in an attempt to place my body in the middle of the road).
I had started to edge us toward an 18-wheeler in the next lane. I could see HRH in the rear-view mirror edging in to the middle of the car whilst breathlessly mouthing ‘watch out’.
White-knuckled hands gripped the wheel as I steadied myself. Drip, after further telepathic liaison with HRH suggested we listen to some music. No sooner thought than done, HRH racked up some impressive tune-age on the multi-media and we settled in to our journey to the Pyrenees.
Now this particular hire car was blessed with a behemoth-like engine of 1.0 litres of petrol frugality. Barely enough power to progress much past a standstill. With 70 stone of Peloton meat and gravy aboard, the thing struggled. The useless fucking clutch had zero feel and as the engine generated the mechanical momentum of a spinning 5p piece, so stalling was a regular occurrence.
4 of the 5 car inhabitants saw stalling not as a consequence of a shit car and 5 fat blokes, but more as an aching lack of talent on my part.
We entered resort and got to within 25 yards of destination when a tricky hill-start was required. Handbrake on, gentle rise of revs, I’ve got this. I’ve got this…..I didn’t have this.
I was about as far from having this as you can get whilst remaining in the same country.
The engine squealed, the clutch slipped, massively. NWA was turned down on Spotify and all we were left with was the stench of burning clutch.
I had a sinking feeling that I’d properly fucked the hire car.
Anyway, announcing your arrival in a plume of melted friction plates is how we rolled in team Gold car.
Greetings aside, quick sit down and then to the job of bicycling.
And so we return to the annual highlights list. A snap-shot of the rides and the riding from this year’s Grande Tour. But before we get to that, some stats.
• Day 1. Lac d’estainge. Shortest ride at 32k but 3rd for overall ride gradient.
• Day 2. Col des Tentes. A punchy 96k but a bit bleak on arrival at top
• Day 3. Tourmalet. 101k. Great ending with really steep gradient for the last few hundred meters. You can see why it’s used on the tour so often. Fairly bleak riding through the town halfway up. Unrelenting 2 hours of climbing at over 8%. Brutal. Sensational ride home though through some beautiful countryside though
• Day 4. Col d’Aubisque via Col du Soulor. Probably the ride of the tour in terms of utterly breath-taking scenery. Beautifully ribboned and freshly tarmacked road on the ascent, which I spent all my time on just thinking about the future descent. And then a jaw-dropping ride along a precipitous drop all the way to the top of Aubisque. A hard slog. Particularly on Soulor when a mid-teens ramp halfway up punches you right in the kidneys and jabs you in the eye for good measure. 2nd for overall ride gradient with 2.62% average for the total ride. Ouch
• Day 5. Hautacam. Short out and back. 38k. God, that was one punchy climb. Kilometers click past and are either 8,9 or 10%. Felt unending. Overall ride average gradient of 3.1% made this the most climbiest rider per K we did.
The experience and the stories
• Good accommodation at the Pyrenees cycling lodge. Although Mark, our host, was somewhat perturbed to find Twinge v1.0 curled up and asleep at the foot of the front door on day 1. Twinge v2.0 preferred the comfort of the nest
• Formal police notices issued for a range of offences including; the leaving of new tour top on the back of the chair overnight….shocking. The public dissing of one of the team whilst he was out on the hill. Police notice issued following a ‘whistleblower’ incident.
• Yellow cap went to HRH on his maiden tour, but he was run very close by the impeccably dressed ColMac who, in my view, nailed the best single day performance with his well-judged blue accents matching the tour top perfectly. There was no suggestion of Twinge vote irregularities. Well, none were verbalised at any rate
• JT won orange on the fact that he pulled his thumb out of his arse a couple of weeks before tour and did 2 or 3 turbo sessions. Everyone agreed that this sullied the good name of the Orange cap and that perhaps we should remember last year’s benchmark winner when awarding in the future. General shock and disappointment all round. At least one person cried.
• The group as a whole consumed 18 complimentary fun-sized Mars each and every day.
• I accounted for 17 of the above
• Perfect weather
• I’m not saying that sharing a room with Macca is like drawing the sleep equivalent of the short straw…….. this year’s tour saw ear-plugs land. At last we can now embrace our favourite flyer like a long-lost brother..snore onward little one, snore onward
• Biggest tour disappointment was the e-bike not running out of juice. At least 8 people prayed daily for this to come to pass
• I only fell asleep twice this year at the various lunch stops… once in a deck chair next to ColMac whilst holding a pint (which I subsequently spilled on myself)…oddly enough, this incident went completely unobserved. Second time was at the top of Aubisque and lasted a nano-second. Not only was this observed but it was also filmed. Cat-like reflexes of the Pittock
….and so much more besides.
G19, a Grande Tour and huge success. My thanks go to JT for wrangling the accommodation with usual Teutonic efficiency and a huge shout out to Damo for driving all the bikes over there, complaining decidedly little and pandering to many a disorganised cyclist.
However in drawing to a close this year, I’d like to highlight 2 particular tour performances.
Firstly Dripping. The lad has had most of the bones in his body removed and replaced with man-made replicas. He has the back of a 90-year old and the combination of the 2 have meant that any sort of reasonable training regime was nigh-on impossible. He wasn’t ready to perform. At times he could barely walk straight let alone ride. To top it all off he’d had an epidural to release the muscles in his lower back, an injection which effectively puts your muscles to sleep, a consequence of which must undoubtedly seep into the legs one way or another.
Early on Tourmalet, and I mean really early, first 15 mins I reckon, I passed Dripping who was panting and out of the saddle, wrestling his bike reluctantly up an unrelenting climb.
It took me 2 hours. Drip spent an hour on top of that defeating his foe. 3 hours of climbing at over 8% in that condition. I don’t think there was anyone present on this tour who would have had the mental strength to achieve what Dripping achieved. I would have thrown my bike off a cliff having doused it in petrol and set fire to it long before the summit. Amesy wouldn’t have even boarded the plane. Clemo wouldn’t have left the bower.
As pink cap performances go, Dripping knocked it out of the park with gritted determination and practically zero complaining (apart from when our host effectively called him a vagrant for dossing in the hall).
The biggest problem Dripping now faces is going to be awarding the cap next year. He has shocking form in this particular decision-making department. Last time he did the honours he overlooked Damo’s stellar tour and gave it to James, who had pulled his thumb out of his arse and had done 2 or 3 turbo sessions. I swear to god I think I’ve seen JT do the old Obi Wan Kanobi Jedi mind tricks on awards night more than once…’there’s nothing to see here… move along’
In a bold future prediction, the G20 pink cap odds are currently, Damo 3/1 (patience and service of Drip’s woefully cleaned bike), JT 2/1 (Jedi), HRH evens (blood is blood).
Before we finish, time to look at things through a slightly different lens.
A coupla months back, I accompanied JT and his chum Neil (inventor of the petrol engine) on a wee trip to Austria. This was prior to JT putting in his incredible 2-3 turbo sessions I might add.
As the wee-man and and I snuffled and puffed our way up Großglockner we both discussed the possibility of e-bikes on future tours. We saw families of all ages out on bike, often with the older generation right in the mix on their leccy MTB’s.
We loved being out on the bike but could feel the pain of the combination of hurt from lack of preparation, weight and age.
In a universe which sees entropy rule, moving order and structure slowly but inevitably into chaos, time is our enemy. We can fight and push but this ride is one-way only. It’s a big step to make decisions to tackle a harder path just to be able to enjoy the journey, but by chosing to go on tour with an e-bike this year, this is the path Moley chose. And he bloody loved every second of G20. Always smiling. Riding every mile. The e-bike enabled him to continue and properly enjoy the love of cycling in the big country with the boys.
He took a lot of shit for that decision. And indeed, can rightly expect to continue to do so. In fact, we are all still praying the fucker will run out of juice one day! But taking the piss is one thing, I actually think more than one of us looked negatively on the decision to do these rides on an e-bike. Almost as if it were cheating.
Now Moley may have had some assistance enjoying the trip, but he still had to put a shift in. And what else was he to do..? Not go, because he didn’t want to suffer and at some point, or even worse, fail over the 5 days?
Moley is the first person to take an e-bike on tour.
I want to ride as long as possible on a normal bike, but fuck me I’ll be e-biking it all the way if it’s a choice between doing or not doing.
Dripping aced pink on G19 with grit and utter determination.
Internally he said ‘fuck this, I’m going no matter what’.
Moley knew he would get a lot of stick for the e-bike choice.
Internally he said ‘fuck this, I’m going no matter what’.
That’s the spirit fellas.
G20, the summit, beckons. Majorca. The weekend of 25th April is looking likely. Gentlemen, clear your diaries. Gaudeix press release and invite to follow shortly.
Do 2 or 3 turbo sessions and a cap is more or less guaranteed.
Ride safely my lil fuckerinos….