Hammer And Tongs

Much to my own surprise I live through the cycle ride in. Not anything to do with bad drivers, I can cope with them, more with the fact I still don’t feel 100%, although that might have something to do with the jalapeños on my pizza last night.

I still stop to offer assistance to a chap with puncture as he was flying the cyclists’ flag of distress, e.g. he’d got his bike upside down with the wheel off. He tells me he’s fine and has the repairs all in hand. Good job really, he had a MTB and if I’d offered him a spare inner tube it wouldn’t have been much good to him.

I have an MTB encounter of a different kind on the way home. I momentarily get stuck behind a guy on a commuter bike who is taking the slow way up the hill, that is pedalling frantically in his lowest gear and crawling up it at something approaching walking pace. Whilst I wait until he stops wobbling enough for me to negotiate a safe way around him, a chap on a MTB overtakes both of us. He’s taking the more serious and faster way up, that is dig in, grit your teeth and go at it hammer and tongs in a high gear.

So now I have to give chase to him which shouldn’t have been a problem, had he not been some prodigiously fit geezer who probably liked the challenge of winding up folks on road bikes. Got him eventually and then saw him turn off just afterwards. Ha, yes we all do that when we don’t fancy a battle. Of course he may have lived down there I suppose.

After a session in the pool, I get home to find that Daughter has joined L in town. Turns out not to be a Mother-Daughter bar crawl but instead they hit Top Shop's 20% off student sale armed with Daughter's NUS card but I bet it’s still not as cheap as Primark.