After the Christmas feast on Christmas Day the ride hold Ridgehill Road for us to tackle. I wasn’t feeling too bad, although the turkey and the Christmas pudding with Brandy sauce (well, more Brandy than sauce) should pay its tribute. Soon after the split we were heading along at a nice peace rolling through. As we turned on to Gooseberry Hill Road one of the other riders already asked me who put a hill into the Saturday ride. I ensured him that we aren’t taking on Gooseberry today and that Ridgehill Road is a lot nicer.
As the hill, or should I say big bump appeared ahead of us I thought I give it a try and see how much turkey and Brandy sauce the other guys had on the 25th. After maybe 300 or 400 metres I regretted that decision as most of the fast guys overtook me leaving me with more metres to “climb” somewhere in no-man’s-land. Catching my breath back on the top, Matthew (I think his name was Matthew, please correct me if it wasn’t) and I tried to chase the other boys down.
Initially with 3 people we started to chase down the others. We were catching up a few people on our way towards Hazelmere sitting around 40 km/h. I was just back at the front, as we were doing turns, when I heard the noise which you don’t want to hear on a bike ride. Lindsay had swerved into Mark D’s back wheel. He came off the bike almost immediately leaving Mark with two bikes. Lindsay’s handlebars had locked the back wheel and you can’t really ride with a blocked back wheel and another bike attached to your own. Luckily there were no cars around and neither Lindsay nor Mark had serious injuries, just a few scrapes. The bikes however had taken some damage. One front and one back wheel had considerable buckles in them. We sorted some issues with the brakes and rolled back to Perth with an easy pace. The rest of the ride wasn’t that eventful, but I guess we had enough excitement for that day and ride…
Heiko
its ok ive been called worse than Mathew…
Not my favourite ride this one, but one that i’ll remember. I went to the front on ridgehill rd, and went straight instead of left at the roundabout. Couldn’t catch the front group, but worked hard with a few to try. Then the crunch – Lindsay touched my back wheel and went down, leaving his bike neatly wedged in my back wheel – at 45km/h (I checked on the Garmin when I downloaded). I kept thinking “I’m going down any second” but in spite of being off the saddle, with both feet out the pedals, somehow I stayed upright.
My back wheel was badly buckled – but we both limped home, and I managed to fix the wheel by replacing two spokes. Lindsay’s elbow and hip may take a bit longer to repair…