I am reliably informed that the phrase ‘we nearly have
enough tent pegs’ means exactly the same thing as ‘we don’t have enough tent
pegs’. However, I am very much a glass half-full kind of person and really
prefer the former, it sounds so much more positive. We are only a couple short
anyway, I’m sure not enough to compromise the structural integrity of the tent.
In the absence of any sort of evidence either way just sheer optimism is usually
enough to get around most problems and this is the strategy I have adopted on
this occasion, I’m sure it won’t be too windy.
With our campsite nearly finished (or not finished if you
are one of the pessimistic nay-sayers) it was time to have lunch and then start
wondering where Jon Hobson had got to. He is a thoroughly nice chap and it
would be great to have him racing with us, we just had no idea where he was.
The remaining third of Team GB was supposed to have landed
in Milan, which is about four hours north of the race track at Finale Ligure,
or about an hour and half for an Italian driver, at 1815 on Wednesday. It was
now mid afternoon on Thursday and there was still no sign of him. He was
however entering onto the spirit of our muddling through and so was travelling
with a mobile telephone which doesn’t work abroad.
After a delayed flight he had arrived at Milan to find that
the hire company he had booked a car from wouldn’t accept his credit-card and
so he had to find another at short notice, at a cost of lots of time and even
more Euros.
Having eventually acquired one he then decided to enter into
the spirit of Italian driving as well. Going at any speed less than 20 above
the prevailing limit will result in a large queue forming behind and lots of people
attempting to overtake, whether it appears safe to do so or not. He did mention
one particular overtake he did, in proper Italian style, only to find someone
else overtaking both him and his overtakee at the same time.
Due to the delay in getting hold of a hire car he was on the
road quite late and so he had an overnight stop before continuing, arriving at
the racetrack on Thursday afternoon. He turned up with his hire car nearly
intact (or not intact if you insist) Having met an Italian coming the other way
on a moped rather quickly and on the wrong side of the carriageway he had
little option but to wreck his wing mirror on the railings at the side of the
road jumping out of the way. We decided that the hire company probably wouldn’t
even notice, none of the Italians ever look at their mirrors anyway.
For more stories of car-related shenanigans you will have to
wait for my ‘van incident’ article, Jon wasn’t the only one breaking
things.
He is racing singlespeed for reasons of simplicity and reliability,
there is very little which can go wrong on a bike with only one gear, as
singlespeeders constantly remind those of us with geared bikes. Carole and I
sat and watched him spend an hour or so dismantling and reassembling his
dropouts in an attempt to keep his chain tight before the simple and reliable
bike was deemed to be working well enough to go for a ride around the course.
After about five minutes it became apparent that the chain
was nearly tight enough, which is of course another way of saying that it was
not tight enough, and so a quick trailside repair of the simple and reliable
bike was carried out before we continued with the lap.
Most of it was marked out by this stage and Jon professed
himself to be impressed with what he saw. I was very pleased to note that I had
been practicing everything which was marked out over the last few days, there
was nothing unfamiliar to me on the course. They had however removed one of the
cliff-top descents and the following climb, nothing too difficult but a nice
fast blast along a narrow rocky path which I enjoyed a lot.
The famous corkscrew final descent remained, which is an
enormous amount of fun. Jon nearly crashed here (did not crash here) doing
exactly what I had done a couple of days previously. There is one particular
rock which just invites a little jump, not a big one but it’s just right for it.
However, it does mean that you arrive at the point where you really want to be
braking about six inches above the ground and no matter how good your tyres are
they are going to find it somewhat tricky to get any grip while up in the air.
There was a final quick check of the bikes, lights, drinks,
food and all other related items and then it was dinner and off to bed, the
last time we would see one of those for a while.
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