Disasters all come along at once.

Some good cycling this week, clocking up some last minute miles before the day (10 days to go) I don’t intend to do much next week apart from stuffing myself with pasta and rice :-). Did a nice run out through the surrey hills and on descending into Cranleigh village I gently apply the brakes and almost end up over the handle bars. The front brake grabs on the wheel rims and I am all over the place. Checking the front wheel, I can see from the “worrying wobble” that it has buckled (typical- 1 week before the big event and a major malfunction). I have no idea what I hit or when, I don’t remember any large pothole or anything untoward but hit something I must have. I limp the bike into the village and found a cycle shop ! bonus. The guy takes a look at the wheel and says its probably fixable but he can’t do it this week – great. He suggests another place about a mile and half up the road. I limp the bike over to the other shop at Smithbrook Kilns Great little cycle shop hidden away in the business park, they have a large workshop and staff that know their stuff. I ended up getting a exact replacement wheel (he had all the Mavic range in stock) while they take a look to see if the old wheel is repairable. The most dangerous place to be with a credit card is in a cycle shop with a broken bike. I end up getting a new rear tire to match the new one on the front and a water bottle replacement (the other one flew off when I almost went over the handlebars and it ended up under the wheels of a passing van)

So eventually (with my wallet a lot lighter) I continue the ride on new wheel and tires and manage to rescue the end of the day. I met up with another cycling chum (Keith) who had just returned from the Tour de France where he watched a couple of the stages in Corsica. I showed him a few photos of my ride with Marco Pinotti attempting to impress but he manged to outclass me with this

If we can extract the DNA and add it to mine. ?

Yeah he managed to get a Peter Sagan’s throwaway from stage 2 of the Tour. Can’t beat that for a souvenir.

Ride details (including all the detours) are here as usual.