Sometimes things seem to happen for a reason. For the last month or so I have had moments on a bike where I didn't feel as if I was firing on all cylinders. Most of the time was able to write it off to not enough: sleep/food/drink. Then my body refused Coffee so that and reading an article on Singletrack and doing some 'net searching on the rash on my side I went to the Doctors. It would appear that at some point (possibly whilst drunk in the Scottish Highlands) I made an unwanted acquaintance with a Tick and from this I appear to have now got Lymes disease. The antibiotics seem to be working but it has meant that I had to bail on doing the Dave Lloyd Mega challenge this weekend just passed as anything more than about an hour in the saddle leaves me feeling like I have ridden a century.
So to make up for this I decided to go out for a bivvy on Saturday night, the evening rolled round I jumped on my newly fettled fixed(a week off work left me with time to play with bikes more than normal) and off I pedalled to the north downs to hopefully watch the sunset and fall asleep in a nice meadow. I arrived at my choosen spot to see heavy cloud rolling in from the south a light spattering of rain in the air and too much cloud to witness the sunset! Nevermind, I rolled out my sleeping kit, discovered how slippery a wet thermarest can be when you are in a bivvy bag on the not ideal gradient. The rain left and the midges arrived so hunkered down and shielded as much as possible from the bity ones I drifted off to the land of nod.
Only to awake a couple of hours later to the realisation that my mind had decided sleep was not an option, I lay there for a while, witnessed two shooting stars and a saterlite whiz past. Then decided I was probably best aborting the mission and riding home. As I was packing my kit away a pretty horrific scream emerged from the woods in the distance, I doubled my packing speed fired up my shiny new Maxx D (cheers Rory!) and tried to get out of the woods as fast as possible on damp chalk and 23c road tires (geriatrics shuffling for the bus have been seen to move faster) From this point on the night improved massively, I love riding around deserted roads late at night, the temperature was spot on, the sky crystal clear and I was riding my bike :-)
Bikes are amazing!
