First up, MBR1: We got 60 miles of it done (taking in 2134m of climbing and with barely a road crossing to break up the off-roadiness of it all) before steve’s leg gave up. We cleared the Pennine Bridleway section and got round the MTL section, all of which was frozen solid and therefore wonderfully fast (if a little sketchy when random sheets of ice appeared underneath you!)…in fact if it hadn’t been so cloudy we would have been able to see people at Peel Tower. Neither of us felt at all tired so there’s no doubting that we’d have finished the ride if we’d remained injury free.
You Click = It Big
But enough of such cheeriness, back to some misery. Sunday’s ride was one of constant, inch deep, wheel sucking sludge. The kind of gritty sludge that makes everything hard work (esp when combined with a headwind) and mens you don’t get anywhere for your efforts, except to a slightly muddier state. This was kind of depressing after Friday’s frozen skimming across miles of track and was made worse by the existence of other people.
“other people have a right to exist” i hear you cry. Well I’m sorry but most of them don’t. They are too thick
“why haven’t you got a bell”
“I HAVE got a bell, i HAVE been dinging it, YOU are too dozy to notice”
“uuuh”
or
“Oy! You nearly hit me then”
“That’s because the four of you have managed, by all walking side by side, to block the entire BIKE PATH”
“Yeah, but you still nearly hit me”
“Would you rather i rode right next to your baby in the pram?!”
“err, no”
“then one of you, F-KING MOVE, just one, i don’t mind which one! Have some manners and let people past you”
“F-k off i’ve got a right to be here”
“You’ve got no right to block the entire path to people going the other way”
“yeah, but…”
“But F-king what?!”
“well, i…”
(this happened several times, despite riding towards people dinging said bell continuously)
and don’t get me started on the dog walkers with no control over their dogs…who then think that it’s the cyclists fault when the dog won’t “heel”, or runs off after the bike despite their cries for it to stop…
It would appear, on Sunday’s evidence, that these people exist purely to annoy anyone around them with their ignorance and absurdity (i’ve often wondered what would happen if one group of such path hogging people met another group walking in the opposite direction..would there be a mexican stand off?) and as such i feel they are ripe for the slaughter.
If you purposefully block my route past you (i’m not talking about if the track is too narrow for one person to get past another, i don’t mind waiting in those situations) i will slice your head off with a sword. If you fail to notice me slowly riding up behind you dinging the bell on the bars of the bike, or asking to get past i will slice your head off…and if you dare to proclaim “you should have a bell” when i’ve been furiously ringing it at you for several minutes i will dice your entire body into tiny little pieces while screaming at you.
