First up a huge thank you to everyone that was involved in shipping my sorry ass off to hospital after my failed attempt at face planting while circumnavigating The Esplanade on Tuesday’s ride a few weeks ago. I have absolutely no idea what happened, just remember starring down at the ground with all sorts of fluids oozing from my face & wondering if my bike was OK! Then the sound of familiar voices brought me back to reality as well as the feeling that I had just gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson, and of course I knew that my new looks would most certainly resemble some poor bastard that had fallen from the ugly tree and hit every branch.

Once in the capable hands of the ED staff at Charlies my assessment confirmed a possible fracture of my little finger, quite a deep laceration to my chin with more superficial ones to my nose, eye, legs and arms, a miracle really. Once on a ward it was decided I would need a trip to theatre to clean and stitch me up.  And now I’m as good as new, well I did go down quite hard!

So, what did I learn from my close encounter with the pavement?……….A surprisingly great deal. It’s not until experiences such as this that you realise how amazing people are in such situations, and by that I mean the comradery that exists within SPR, I know it’s been said before but now I can fully appreciate what my membership supports, that team spirit, words cannot express the depth of my gratitude I feel towards the mad people that meet up, rain or shine, in pursuit of a common passion and that is to ride, thank you. The other point that came to light was how wearing a good quality pair of sunnies can potentially save your eyes from some serious damage.

Again a big thank you to everyone, you know who you are & stay safe out there, can’t wait to get back out with you all. Apologies for the delay in posting this, not sure what went wrong.

Lyndon