The Season, Part 3

A trip to Cowes is particularly de rigeur for serious Seasoners. However if Twats in blazers and gold braid don’t float your particular boat, then just drive off the ferry and keep going South East until you arrive at Ninham and the Wight Diamond Mountain Biking festival. Masochists can ride the Enduros (don’t think, just follow the orange arrows), whilst philosophers do the Navigator. This involves finding checkpoints distributed in devious locations around the Island, and thrusting your dibber into a control box. Each checkpoint has a points value, and the winner is the rider (or riders) who can score most points in the available time (Seven hours on day one and five hours on day two). Planning and navigation can outweigh fitness and speed, so it helps to be aware of techniques such as trying to do the uphill bits on the road and descending on the off-road tracks.

This is what the Ammonyte looks like four and a half hours and one puncture into the second day.

Knackered

In the evening local bands play in the Big Tent, and silly games such as miniature adventure races and water rocket building competitions ensue, whilst Much Beer (supplied by the Hogs Back Brewery) is consumed.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf

For the record I scored 510 points on day one and 290 on day two, and came nowhere in the single Vets category. Trouble is the Vets are generally tough gnarly old guys who have been doing it forever. Next year I may go back to racing the Fat Boys in the single male category.

This year we lucked out with the weather, whilst the Southern UK suffered a monsoon, it only rained overnight, though that did lead to a fair simacrulum of Passchendaele on Sunday. It was somewhat ironic then that a thorn chose to trust its way through my tyre whilst I was on the manicured roadway
of a purpose-built cycleway that followed a beeching’ed railway. Oh well, there’s always next year.