WEC 2008

Limpsfield Chart

Tyre interface

1 Gadget Chain

A balmy evening greeted 10 fully helmeted grimesters for this weeks ride to Limpsfield Chart. The 2 single speeders lead the way up the major hills and good progress was made until the Titsy decent, when things all went wrong for Flash.

Flash suffered 5 PITs at the bottom of Titsy Hill. He had to use all of his ingenuity to be able to accumulate 5 PITs all in one go (I think he only had 2 wheels, although it felt like more at one point). The first PIT was the back wheel snake bite with 2 punctures ("classic snake bite" said the GM). Once this was fixed and the wheel back on, the front was found to be flat also (that's 3 up to now). The double snake bite was patched "expertly" by Gadget and the GuvNor and the strong hands of the Earl slipped the tyre on with ease. GM provided the usual pumping (no Pink Floyd required on this occasion). Unfortunately that tyre had a catastrophic tube explosion (as a result of the "expert patching" making the count 4. Again after patching 100m down the track the front tyre failed once again making a grand total of 5 PITS. The Pork pie stop was taken during the 5th PIT. Spinner had of course given a demonstration of how to change a PIT with no fuss at all.

The PIT faffing put the arrival at the King and Queen before 10pm in serious doubt. Again good progress was made until Godstone, when the Gadgets lack of a handy plastic chain protector turned a benign looking chain jam, into a serious equipment failure, requiring the chain to be split and fed through the mech.

Half the crew had continued up to F**K 'em junction when confusion about the rules of grime resulted in a serious grimefailure 2 miles from the pub! The situation was rescued by the GPS Geko taking the stragglers back safely. Bernie played a joker as a result of a slow puncture that never made it to a PIT. The grimesters were all reunited at the pub. Granty appeared to take a leaf out of Lizs book and proceeded to kneel down on the floor of the pub and change his clothes, exposing his gash / scar for all to see, just like Liz had done in the curry house on the cops and robbers ride a few weeks back.

No prizes for guessing which looked the best for the casual observer!

The GuvNor