Stan is an arse

Mein Got in Himmel!! The day is nearly here, Saturday at 0530 I will be at the beginning of the end of this journey.

In reality if I had just handed over £1,500 to the British Heart Foundation I would have saved myself 5 months of shit. But I wouldn’t have a seriously fine Steederinho as I do now, the Specialized Pitch Dark Phoenix, I would be ratting around on the original Steed which was not a patch on this bike.

Also I wouldn’t have friends. Now every Tuesday, work commitments permitting, I blast around the Downs for a couple of hrs and the sink a couple of Guinness in the Thomas a’beckett pub. We discuss the evenings ride and relive the crashes and getting lost in seriously spooky Clapham Woods (there is something wrong with that place), and the number of punctures that Deadly gets. And Deadly Dave gets load of punctures, sometimes 2 a ride. Which leads me onto the penultimate subject of Richards Crazy Idea…..punctures.

There is a puncture god, his name is Stan and he is a vengeful god who is poised to strike at the moments you are most vulnerable.

Such as when you are 50 miles from home, he’ll throw a flint shard through your tyre and make you walk, or mid winter in the freezing rain burst both front and rear tubes and make you forget to pack the spare, thus ensuring a trailside puncture repair with numb fingers. Bastard.

He also smites mercilessly those who mock the afflicted, such as me, (and clearly Deadly Dave also). I like a good laugh, and sometimes there is nothing funnier than someone’s tyre exploding, but I stifle through fear of the Puncture God…Stan. No Stan has bestowed on mankind a way for a chosen few (who have a spare £50) to have their cake and eat it – the “Stans No Tubes Conversion Kit”

What this kit basically does is remove the need for an inner tube, as it is the piercing or splitting of this that causes punctures. Tyres are much tougher and less prone to piercing, and by using a tyre sealant called “Stan’s Juice”, you have a very effective puncture resistance. It is however a sod to fit, a story i will save for another time and guess what happened the 1st time out?

Yep – sidewall of the tyre split and I got a puncture.

Damn you puncture god.

But now we are fixed with new tyre and ting, Steed is raring to go, and I am as ready as I will ever get. I have a secondary cause now, as the BHF is important but didn’t really push my buttons, I am also raising money for my daughter’s school, Laurels 1st School Worthing in support of their appeal to raise funds for outdoor play apparatus. The most recent Ofsted report highlighted that they were a bunch of weaklings and needed to build upper body strength, and I think a decent set of Monkey Bars is a must for any Junior School.

I have broken the route into 5 legs of 20miles and each will need to be completed in 3 hrs;

1. 20 = 3hrs
2. 40 = 6hrs
3. 60 = 9hrs
4. 80 = 12hrs
5. 100 = 15hrs

I am anticipating legs 3 & 4 to be the hardest, as they are the mile I will have to grind those out and find a way to keep smiling. I’ll take a video diary and record my thoughts and feelings at the end of these legs.

So, there it is, the next blog will be your humble narrator commenting on the success or failure of this epic adventure.

One thing is for certain….it will be emotional.