Sunday 28th December 2008

A beautiful day to go for a ride and get rid of the excesses of all the Xmas celebrations. Tinkerbell, Silverfox, the Dreaded One, English Mark, Geez, Tinks Bro and Mother Ted all met at mine about 9.15. After a bit of fixing of me (I had my contact folded in my eye and needed Mother Ted to assist) we set off up the Rapaki. Everyone was riding quite well except for me, I was feeling every bit of Chocolate and drop of booze over the past few days. The top section was tough as I watched everyone pull away, but enough of me moaning. We found Sandals and Helmut just before the last haul on Rapaki. We all survived and regrouped at the top. The dreaded one did his usual puffer billy act so I set off around Witch Hill followed by Silverfox and Tinkerbell, I thought everyone else was following and after discovering that the were not, I thought I would keep going so as not to hold the team up. Silverfox and I headed up to Castlerock still no sign of the others at this point so we flowed on down, bombed it well, got all the hairpins and felt good for it. I decided to keep going to the beginning of John Britten. The others must of had lunch as I got there and had to wait quite some time. I felt a lot better for pushing harder. We all caught up and headed to Greenwood for the blast down. Flowed well around the top cleaning all of it. We were all spread out by the ruins so I waited for the tailenders. Sandals and Mother Ted started on down. Flowed well with both of them cleaning it all. I took it easy but made sure we all got to the road. Decided to go down Captain Thomas and someone was going to go by the road so I acted as a guide. That someone rode most of the track except the most technical rocky bits. We got through the gate and hit the last rock. I said,"You can ride this" and so she did. Showed Mother Teds language at its best. The team watched as she rode the rock swearing as she went. Sandals laughing so much she nearly fell off the hill. Made the whole ride worth it just for the look on Mother Teds Face. We sat for coffee at Dot Com then The Dreaded One laid the challenge. 3 minute head start and a race back to Rubberjaws. He lost by 5 minutes. Made us all pump hard on the way back and will ensure that no one races Mother Ted on the flat for a while. Everyone ate chocolate and biscuits before heading home.