This weekend Joey, Mikey, Pete and Macca decided to squeeze in a 60 mile ride on Saturday morning so that they could get back in time for the Loins first test against South Africa in the afternoon. Guilford was the chosen destination as the team had been kindly offered some free electrolyte powder and water bottles from the UK distributor of Zym who are based in the town (visit www.gozym.com/). In the absence of "GPS Jim" (who was on holiday), Guilford was an easy choice since the team had ridden towards the town on a number of occasions and didn’t need Jimbo to guide their route... or so we thought!
Since we only needed directions to Guildford from Cobham (which we had ridden to on a number of occasions) the route planning was left to Mikey, but to great surprise he navigated the team through the most boring A-Road route most of the way from Putney (Michael obviously didn't realise Cobham was on the more scenic route towards Guilford). The route was extremely slow (mainly because of Mikey dithering over directions) that an extra hour was added to the journey. After a short chat to Zym's UK distributor (who, as it happens, has twice ridden LEJOG twice, with a best time of an astonishing five days!) time was duly running out and getting to the pub for the start of the Lions rugby match was in danger. The decision was taken (by Mikey) to ride back from Guilford along the A3.
Having ridden along the A3, one question arises – how on earth is a three-lane extension of the M3 not classified as a motorway?!?
After negotiating a couple of death-defying motorway-style slip roads with cars entering and exiting the A3 at 70mph, Mikey decided to flag down a taxi and get a ride home (granted he did have a double puncture from all of the motorway debris). Joe, Welly and Macca braved it out and made it home in one piece in time for the second half of the Lions game, with a smug Mikey waiting for them in the pub.
Three important lessons were learnt this week:
· Never leave directions to Mikey; · Never arrange rides around TV sporting fixtures; · Never cycle on a three lane motorway.
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