It's technical

2 and 3 March – Zinc and castor oil is a godsend – I was recommended to use it quite some time ago but was too arrogant and lazy to get it but on this morning I needed to try something or I wouldn’t be working that day.  Found an interesting potential race and did a good deed for the day – as I was leaving 15 Castlereagh I said ‘Howdy doo!’ to a young member of the Call who was entering and was disheartened to find that he’d just popped his tyre so I gave him a spare inner tube.  And my heart grow two sizes.  Went to the Opera Bar for the first time in a few years (inadvertently wearing the old uniform) and saw a loud big boat leave the harbour and was very well fed.  Saturday involved a relatively rushed morning to get from McMahons Point to Redfern to Central to Wentworth Falls for a day of mountain biking – first sign of something really going wrong was when I asked which platform I needed to get on for the Blue Mountains trains and the very laconic ticket seller told me what I always dread when I’m at the train station – you’ll be catching a Rail Bus (from Blacktown).  Me and the housemate had our velocipedes with us so tried to confirm that we’d be able to take them on - ‘They can’t refuse you, they have to provide the service” followed by “They can’t refuse you, they have to provide the service.  He then told us “There goes your plans for the day, brother, there goes your plans for the day”.  I wasn’t going to let a double talking ticket seller ruin the afternoon so we took the long route and got there in a bit over two hours and after a frugal lunch with the Blue Mountains crowd including a pantless, strangely friendly, Ethan it was head to the hills.  The plan was to try the Helena trail, a slightly more “technical” course than the previous one I’d done, the Anderson.  It started very well, the familiar trail being fast and tough but an inopportune flat tyre started me thinking that the day might not turn out as pleasantly as it might have. Switching with a spare didn’t help and every time we found a hole and pumped it up we found a different hole (five separate punctures in the one tyre) after eventually fixing this we carried on until the “technical section” caused me to fly over the handlebars and this was followed by more holes in the back tyre including one in the rubber around the valve.  Some passing cyclists who obviously had heard of the previous day’s good deed (giving the courier a spare tube for those who haven’t read the top of this entry) through the grapevine of the Brotherhood of the Wheel gave me a spare tube which lasted for half an hour before popping multiple times itself (and yes, I checked the rim and tyre).  There were also  a few other technically assisted crashes (and not just by me).  At several times I found myself declaring surrender but there was really no other option but to fix it and carry on going – the climb out was going to be horrendous anyway and there was no way I was going to leave the bike down there so it really just had to be fixed.  The constant delays meant we came out just as the sun went down (and before the full moon came out with all its associated whackos) and another agonisingly slow journey back to the homestead – lots of loud and unpleasant types on the train (maybe I’m getting old but young drunken girls urinating on the steps inside the train in front of other passengers is not considered good manners these days, is it?)