Having fought the strong inclination to sleep beyond 6am on every working morning this week, it was with galling irony that I rolled easily out of bed, wide awake, at 5am this morning. A more familiar feeling was drawing the curtains open to gaze out upon grey skies, this morning's dullness accompanied by a pervasive, cold drizzle. "Never mind" thunk I, "We're not riding for at least three hours, it will have cleared up by then". Sure enough, by 8.45am we were setting out in 6° air with that cold drizzle coming down a little heavier than it was three hours earlier.
So began my second People's Grand Tour of 2012, although this time it will be OUR People's Grand Tour as my son, Finn, will be riding along with me as often as is practical. I'm used to doing most of my riding alone, so it's probably not surprising that I hugely enjoy our father and son bike rides, partly because I have a companion, and partly because it's Finn. He's the boy equivalent of a Jack of All Trades - he loves doing lot's of activities although never to obsessive levels, but when he plays he does so with full on gusto and enthusiasm. So this PGT will be tailored to suit that element of his personality, meaning that we'll be varying the types of cycling that we do.
Originally day 1 was planned as a fairly flat road loop of around an hour on a route that could be trimmed accordingly. We were to be constrained by Finn having to be in school for a guitar lesson at 10am, so we needed to be out by 8.30 and stick to the hour time limit. However, the unwelcome claws of the Murdoch empire reached in to our lives by offering free Lego Batman figures, a double attraction to a 12 year old. The downsides of his excitement was that firstly (and worstly!) I would have to buy The Sun, and secondly (which we only discovered after doing the firstly) that we would have to go to W H Smith to pick up the figures using a token printed in the rag. That is why our first stage ride was changed from a spin around picturesque local lanes into an urban expedition into Wolverhampton City Centre. Furthermore, leaving at 8.45 meant that we were under a degree of time pressure if we were to ride for the hour minimum that we have set ourselves.
The fortuitous side to our ride into town was that after Finn realised that his (usually well placed) faith in his internal heating system had been misplaced, leaving him with cold knees, we were easily able to make the familiar detour into Fred Williams Cycles to pick up a pair of knee warmers for him. This was probably our quickest ever visit to Wolverhampton and beyond's finest cycling emporium, but with the knee warmers in place we headed back out into the drizzle for a 2 up TT home, arriving chez nous by ten to ten and getting to school a quarter of an hour after that, only 5 minutes late for the lesson. Unfortunately we'd only ridden for just over 45 minutes but, far more importantly, we both enjoyed the jeopardy tinged adventure AND snagged a Lego Batman jet ski.
Steve's ride data - http://app.strava.com/activities/8868679
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for reading Roulife. Please feel free to add any comments.