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All those that didn’t attend last night missed a real insight into another side of cycling.
Obviously, there were a few very talented competitors, their names were spoken in hushed tones as they arrived.. ‘Isn’t that Peter Lloyd over there?.. Is that Ollie Simon?.. Oh God, there’s Nick Brown, do you think he saw us.. ’ that sort of thing, but a real eye opener was the range of bikes on show. There were some amazing machines, tubeless tyres, disc wheels, tri-bars, pointy helmets, everything. We Dynamos came mostly on regular road bikes, except Flapjack who, as usual, rode a Mark 1 Dandy-horse fresh from the museum and Beloved Chairman Rees who rolled up a brand spanking new Stealth Black Scott which prompted Huw’s phone to go into meltdown as he frantically speed dialled Pembrokeshire Bikes demanding that they send the very latest models of everything to Neyland immediately. But the real surprise was Roger…
Let me explain. When I was a boy, my dad, who was a bit of a handyman, used to build my brother and I bikes from old frames that he’d found on the tip and various odds and ends he picked up cheap. This meant our bespoke bikes were certainly one of a kind and he could generally be relied upon to update our steeds to keep pace with whatever accessory was in bike vogue at the time. Well, I remember just after the Raleigh Chopper hit the streets that my brother and I wanted the Chopper style handlebars. My dad could only find one set of Chopper bars and these he put on my brother’s bike, I had to make do with something my dad called Cow Bars. Basically, the Cow Bars were similar to today’s mountain bike handlebars, but much, much wider. To this day I have a spookily long arm span in relation to my height, a quirk that more than one medical professional has put down to me having to frantically grapple for the brakes whilst my arms were doing the splits. Anyway, the Cow Bars experiment was quite short-lived due to an unfortunate incident where I managed to scratch both my dad’s and our neighbour’s cars simultaneously. My brother’s Chopper-style bars, on the other hand, proved a huge hit and lasted considerably longer, in fact, I’m not sure he would ever have taken them off if he hadn’t impailed his little boys bits on said bars after suffering a speed wobble on Thornbury hill whilst showing off to his mates by standing on his saddle. After this brush with Social Services my dad took the fertility-threatening bars from my brother’s bike and put them on the top shelf in his workshop. And that was the last I thought I’d see of them,.. so imagine my surprise when I saw what Roger was riding on Wednesday night.
Roger’s travails with his Orbea are well documented, no carbon left in Spain to build the beast, infuriating rattle when travelling over 20mph (not really a big problem for him, that one), inability of said Orbea to wait for teammates etc, so it wasn’t really surprising that he decided to ride the time trail on his winter bike. What was surprising was the fact that he had decided to swap the shopping basket at the front for my brother’s old Chopper handlebars, not only that but, rather ingeniously, he’d turned them over and fashioned them into extreme tri-bars in the hope that they’d offer him some aerodynamic advantage when in the tuck position. The use of a couple of old colostomy bags from the failed He-poo experiment as elbow supports was inspired. I’ve got to be honest, I’m not sure exactly what benefit he gained from his ‘tri-bars’. When he passed me, on the other side of the road during the actual time-trial, he seemed to be struggling to stay in control with his hands gripping the upturned Chopper bars down by the front axle and his nose rubbing on the tyre, still, the slight seepage from the colostomy bags certainly made life difficult for the queue of cyclists looking to overtake. Graeme Obree eat your heart out.
I understand he is looking to create a homemade aero-helmet in time for the next round in a fortnight. A word of advice for anyone with a pet armadillo living in the Greater Princes Gate area, best keep them in for a couple of weeks.
Last night was fantastic, bloody well done everyone who took part. I’m really looking forward to the next round.