Adventures
Tuesday 30 June 2009 | By jamie
That's Gav, Max, and Miller up to some French trail action. See the next Ride UK for more on that one.
My clutch starting slipping early in 2009. This is not a cool situation - you have to make like an OAP and basically accept it from every other driver on the road. Not the ideal time to drive from Pagham to Lyon to Montpellier to Barcelona and back. I'm sure the French have a national sport known as 't-bone les ros beef' cos we nearly got run off the road twice and every time I ventured into the slow lane some cock would make sure we got stuck behind a caravan and with little clutch left you just gotta deal with it.
There is more to Lyon that the curve wall and those cactus trannys but the French had (another) national holiday (no shops open) and Shane got a flat fairly early so not too much happened. We stayed in Montpellier for the whole of the FISE since Shane wanted to enter and met up with Max and Gav - actually we squated their apartment since Miller had flown home with a bust up shoulder. We ate a lot of bread, drank a fair bit, and chilled in the sun. There was various incidents involving angry locals and Platt nearly died at least once - and gap to pegged an item that eluded him last year. Shane clocked at least one good clip I can think off, the unlikeliest maths teacher in all of Arizona even smithed to nozza in the contest which made a pleasant change from all the double whips. We arrived in Barcelona to find (much to my dismay) that Julian had moved out of the city and up the side of nearby mountain - with a clutch on it's last legs this was not cool. On the first day we rode around looking at all the rinsed spots (as you do) and had an incident with Metro security which ended with Julian punching the guy with the dog and us getting tucked up. The rest of our short stay we battled with flats, injuries, hills, and Champions League celebrations "don't stop at the lights"...no problem when your clutch is clinging to life. At one point my clutch got towed from outside some university on the outskirts of the city to right underneath the Morgan Wade gap to pegs spot and I was 200 euros poorer. Shitlist.
Shane goes over to pegs at a 200 euro spot!
By the time we got back to Blighty I had even less clutch and Shane only two days left. We were only at the trails once (for less than hour) before leaving for mainland Europe but Shane had managed to over-rotate a three and leave the dog leg dangling - resulting in a loud crack. He soldiered on but after trips to Rom, Horsham, and Gravesend was back in AZ with a torn ACL. Ouch! Mastroni quotes Day Day quite a bit "mo!" and arrived with a gammy knee, so Shane and Mike shared a brace "mo!" Mike's knee seemed to get better during his time here but he never got to try everything - he did a lot of cool wallrides but was effectively clipped in during this stay. The final few weeks for Mike and Alex are kind of a blur. Tonash took over as tour guide while I was at work and Platt found some dead man stunts on their travels. GSA Chris Russell took them to other spots and my clutch got rinsed some more on trips to Portsmouth, Guildford, Crawley, and London. At this point Alex and Mike had become virtual locals. Platt had an enviable network of mawi wawi vendors while Mastroni had established some expertise in where to find obscure breakfast cereals. Alex celebrated his 23rd birthday by getting thrown out of my local pub (while Ack humped the bouncer) and dicing with death on a hangover toothy that only made sense to one person on this planet. You'll have to wait for evidence of other stunts !!
My clutch finally stopped working yesterday. One day after Mastroni departed from Heathrow. Better Fernhurst than Las Ramblas I guess!!!
Alex - London street pop