severe weather warning

I planned to go on a bit of a coker ride today. I'd worked out a route
and everything. Quite a long route, about 70-80 miles I think.

Now I have this rule, which is that if I say I'm going on a ride, unless
I'm dead or something close, I go out riding.

The only problem was that we had a severe weather warning last night,
warning of gales across the country, torrential rain etc. etc.

So of course I ignored this and went out for a pootle from Nottingham to
Melton Mowbray, Rutland and Leicester (intending originally to head
right out to Rutland Water and to ride back home from Leicester.

It was amazing, I've only seen wind that hard once before and that was
in the middle of the sea. Seing that kind of wind on land was
incredible, it was hard to walk at times.

Things I've discovered today:-

1) 80 miles is a lot to do in a winters day when the wind is gusting at
38mph. I had to cut it short at 50 miles and catch a train after 6 hours
solid riding.
2) When you're riding along in horizontal hail and insane winds, it's
jolly scary to come across a shoot in progress and be suddenly
surrounded by gunshot noises.
3) It's jolly hard to mount a coker facing into a gale.
4) If you fall off the back of a coker whilst riding with the gale, and
are very lucky, you get blown back on before you hit the ground.
5) Planning a cunning route that does 25 miles heading west is fine,
although possibly less cunning when there's a gale coming from the
west.
6) Having to pedal hard just to get down hills isn't fair.
7) Really big winds are great fun when they're behind you.
8) Riding in a sidewind really knackers your upper body.
9) If you turn your body right in a sidewind you can sometimes 'sail'
the uni and get help with riding forwards.
10) If your girlfriend is away, start your ride super early, so that
when she phones up to say "you're not going out in this are you?" it's
already a done deal.
11) You can ride an awful long way on a packet of 8 Chocalate Honeycomb
Energy Matrices(*).

Joe

(*)Those are crunchy bars to you. This message is brought to you in
association with Cadburys.


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Wow, sounds like you had a tiime of your life. You should turn this
story into a book, called "80 miles cut short" the story of a man on a
wheel. I would buy it. Although it sounded a bit frustraing the
ridesounded a bit fun... Who doesn't like being surrounded with gunshot
noises in the middle of a storm?


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RIP Unibiker
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But aren't you glad you didn't back out? imagine if you had, you'd feel
terrible.... But since you didn't, I bet you feel excellent! Well done!



--
James_Potter - betcha can't stick it!

my main man is the man whose main man is the man whose main man is
jagur.
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On Sat, 8 Jan 2005 12:11:10 -0600, "joemarshall" wrote:

6) Having to pedal hard just to get down hills isn't fair.

Well, it IS fair if you can spend that wind karma later on.

Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
--
It's impossible to get old when you ride a unicycle - John (what's in a name) Childs

Well, here in sweden, it's quite rough weather to (probably the same
system).
http://biphome.spray.se/nadasurf/bib.jpg

But since i live on the right half of the country, we only have a bit of
the bad weather.

00:33:48 lleberg !weather esnu
00:33:49 @mjew Umea Flygplats, Sweden (ESNU) [2005.01.08 21:20
(UTC)]
00:33:50 @mjew Temp: 30 F (-1 C), Wind: NE (040 degrees) at 13 MPH (11
KT), Humid: 100%
00:33:51 @mjew Sky cond: mostly cloudy, Weather: snow; mist,
Windchill: 19 F (-7 C)
00:34:20 lleberg !weather malmo
00:34:24 @mjew Malmo / Sturup, Sweden (ESMS) [2005.01.08 22:50
(UTC)]
00:34:25 @mjew Temp: 42 F (6 C), Wind: W (260 degrees) at 32 MPH (28
KT) gusting to 51 MPH (44
KT), Humid: 65%

00:34:26 @mjew Sky cond: mostly clear, Weather: -, Windchill: -


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lleberg - Level 4 unicyclist

I 3 my unicycle!
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joemarshall wrote:
*
3) It's jolly hard to mount a coker facing into a gale.
4) If you fall off the back of a coker whilst riding with the gale,
and are very lucky, you get blown back on before you hit the ground.
*


LOL.

I'd like to have seen the blown back on. Were you VERY lucky?

SArah


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sarah.miller - unicycist
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Brilliant Joe, it makes my ride yesterday sound like a walk in the park.
I did about 10 miles along the thames, and thought I'd be cunning by
riding west to east (with the wind). Needless to say it didn't help much
and I spent most of the ride battling a headwind or cross wind. The 10
minutes I was riding with a tailwind was blissful though.
Aside from the wind it was a glorious day, blue sky, sunshine, and not
too cold.

Paul


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I'm quite worried now. I'm going to end up following two weeks of being
chained to my desk (exams/revision) with going for a ride with someone
who cut a ride 'short' to 50 miles...

John


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What if the hokey cokey really is what it's all about?
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I really did get blown back on, the unicycle hit a little pothole and
fell in front of me, I fell off to the back and just as I was falling
off, I get blown back on.

As Paul pointed out, riding in a sidewind is hard as well as a headwind,
so you're only gaining 25% of the time when it's windy assuming you ride
a circular route, so wind karma doesn't really work on a unicycle.

It was one hell of a ride, pretty fun. I'm going to do it again when
it's less windy and try and get to Rutland Water and then back round to
Nottingham again.

I had to ride 15 miles on my way to work this morning as I had an errand
to do up in the north of Nottingham, that was a bit of a shock.

John - 50 miles isn't much in a whole day on a coker with silly cranks.
You should just think of the revision weeks as 'recovery weeks' in your
training schedule towards riding a hundred miler* in the summer when the
days are long.

Joe
* which obviously you'll decide you really want to do.


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Hi Joe,

What an excellent ride. And I do believe you when you said you got blown
back on. It reminds me of a ride I did on a coker on Long Beach Island,
New York last year. It was extremly windy on the island but I guarantee
your ride was a lot more eventfull than mine.

cheers and Happy near year,

from Deb in Australia.


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