COLD WEATHER CYCLING HC - BLACK STUBBORN DERBY 2018-2019 WINTER
It's time to get rolling! Snow has fallen, but the weather is dry!
The due to storm and wind postponed Black Stubborn Derby of Autumn 2018
IS ABOUT TO BE RELAUNCHED...
... COMING SOON!
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The preparations are in full swing!
We have 4-5 participants by now.
I'm in - let's make a date!
We should also do a post about clothing / winter biking essentials...
Definitely!
NEXT RUN 2019-01-20:
21:00 @ Nyugati Pályaudvar / Railway Station West, Budapest
Come to lane 1-9!!!
Meeting at the Nyugati train station tonight 20:30 at the ticket hall! Getting the 21:07 train!
It's a full moon - and a very special super wolf blood moon! There was a snow warning but it's looking clear.
Zebegeny. 22.00. Snow, ice. Temp -3C. Let's go! We leave the station and I have a wobble on icy cobbles. Getting used to the contra brake, DeerMan tell me it's as bad as it gets. Cobbles, ice, inverse camber. How wrong he will be.
22.45: nagymaros, some weird tree with LED bike lights all over it. We stop because BikeInfantry's bike is causing trouble. He arrived at the rail station with the handlebars drooping, held on by rope...dunno how I will be able to go uphill he says.
00:00 : camera freezes, we are in a snow field. Temp -6C. We resort to a pick-me-up. Unicum and left over hummous and crackers. The no food/ drink rule is broken. It's uphill, snow, ice. Our lights are weak. We have a full moon, and this may be our only God tonight.
01:10: coming hard into a turn, disoriented, BikeInfantry breaks hard on black ice and hits the tarmac. I miss him by millimetres. He is relatively unhurt. The bike is not. We each have had scares, ice under crunchy snow, we have held on through the snowfields now this. BikeInfantry's crank is bent and hits the frame at each revolution. We resort to desperate ingenuity. A lever fangled from a Monet snow stack of fencing coppice, heft and split, between crank and frame, forces the crank straight and the chain wheel turns free. Hurrah! The Bicycle Boys are off!
01:45 : Vac prison. BikeInfantry's chain falls off. We get oily and spring it back in place. BikeInfantry starts off again and the chain wheel, crank and pedal shear from the spindle. We are fucked. It's -8C. Vac prison is 40kilometres from Budapest. The last train left hours ago. We are fucked.
02:00 we eat the remainder of our meagre supplies. Our water is frozen almost solid. All dogs but the prison dogs are behind us. But we have 40 kilmetres to go. Three men in a boat, only two bicycles to mix a metaphor. We set off hand in hand. We decide that one of us will sit on the one pedal bike and be pushed and pulled for the remaining 40k. In -8C. No food left. Frozen water. This is not for the faint hearted. We are brothers in arms. We are musketeers. But we feel like this could not get worse.
03.15 : the unmarked police car stops abreast, the cop gets out, unhurried. Wearing clearly marked clothes. Ok stop he says, I say may I help you? He says police I say oh hello. The others arrive.where are you from, oh English, I am Scottish, and the other one he doesn't even speak hey? Oh well. I see no breach of the law here. But what are you doing? I motion to the crank and pedal on the bicycle rack. Our Oscar. Lying down. I am conscious of Easy Rider. They may kill queers here. We are cycling while holding hands. But we are the Bicycle Boys. He let's us go. I've been following you since God. Here we are practically in Dunakeszi.
04:00 highway. Cars, trucks, little light, quite scary being pulled along. I think we admit to ourselves we are tired. It's possibly -10C. It's a low point. We are not dressed for this.
04:45 Vaci Ut. Still. Again, does this never end? The bike path is broken, single lane, between lampposts, cross the street, disappear . The rain looks like Mono-sodiumglutamate like ice shards. It's bitter. It's so cold. BikeInfantry's beard is iced up. The bikes are iced up. Does this road never end? Just keep going. I want to stop. Gentlemen, I am going out, I may be sometime. I am dreaming and freewheeling. This could be the onset of hypothermia.
TEXT BY T.G.
Moral lesson learned: sacral justice
The 1965 Steyr Puch Waffenrad, which retired itself turning it's crank, Kettenblatt and one of it's pedals into a trophy /cup of victory (for the coming SUMMER RAD™ tournament) is now waiting to be fixed up! It also taught us the importance of companion- and comradeship!
Through it's demise we gained insight into a Glockentretlager - how it's engineered!
(posted in subject ~ Dr. Glockentretlager)
Rad No. 6 pays its' respects...