I've just surfaced from most of Saturday asleep, so I'll just explain some of the events which I was around to experience.
I stopped with the TECs to deal with the puncture about five miles or so before the halfway stop. Since we knew he had already had a puncture, we went over the rim and tyre scrupulously. It was not an easy tyre to get on, but not the worst I've seen, and after getting it all back together we used my CO2 cartridge to inflate it, we were getting ready to leave when <Bang>. We took it off, checked the rim and tyre again, put another tyre on, this time pumped up by hand, just in case the C02 pressure had been too much for it.
At this point we started to move off again, I was a little ahead, and since I was probably the slowest rider there, decided to plod on and get ahead as far as I could so as not to slow things down too much. At the first roundabout I locked back and saw lights coming my way, so assumed everyone was behind me. The next time I looked back, no one was in sight. I stopped and waited a bit, but no one else came. I decided they must have had a minor mechanical, since obviously there was no way that the inner tube could have gone again. When I got to the services I was somewhat surprised that I had got, paid for, drunk my coffee, eaten my doughnut, gone to the loo, and the trailing group still han't arrived.
Ultimately there were two more puncture after I had left them, but I don't think there was anything I could have done should I have stayed. The wheel and tyre seemed fine, so it must have been something that just poked out slightly under pressure, but it was far from obvious. I hope we never get another one of those, since generally we wouldn't be so lucky with Taxis.
At Stanford-Le-Hope, User10571 asked me to be TEC until Adrian caught us back up, which I was happy to do. As we passed wayfinders we told them to wait, since I knew Adrian, Charlotte and Liz (on the Tandem) and others (whoever the puncturees were) were behind us. A short distance on, one of the waypointers said he had overheard a conversation about Adrian taking a different route. Some phone calls later we had worked out that this was indeed the case, so with some buggering about, after about 45 minutes of waiting we had recovered as many of the way waypointers as we thought there were behind us (and from the previous posts it sounds like one of you went on the train, but Clive knew about that, so that was one which I failed to notice was missing!).
At this point I knew that I was definitely at the back of the ride (possibly excepting Adrians group, who I knew could find their own way, wherever they had got to). So, when stopping briefly on bread and cheese hill to de-coat and cool down a bit, it was a bit unsettling to have 20+ riders cycle past us.
It transpired that they had gone the wrong way at a roundabout (I'm not sure what happened to the waypointer), and had taken a while to realise this. Since we had waited previously at least 45 minutes, and had only gone slightly faster than the ride generally does (probably just a couple of mph faster than the normal average), they must have gone significantly wrong to have been that far behind, especially since their rate meant they easily passed us and disappeared into the distance.
Edit: Having read PippaG's post, which went up whilst I was writing mine, it appears the reason that there wasn't a waymarker was because they had overtaken the leader. This would appear to be a case of "Tough", since if you do this, you deal with the consequences.
When we met Matthew, doing final waypointing duty at the Cafe, I said to him that I thought we were the end of the ride, but I'd given up being certain about anything! I think we were actually the back then, I hope no one else managed to come in behind us, or I'll need to go and have a wibble somewhere!
I haven't mentioned the injury, since I didn't see any more than the injured elbow, and the paramedics dealing with him later on, but I think we've been very lucky historically to have not have had a prior injury worse than slight bruising. It's unfortunate for Andrew that he now has the honour of being the first "proper" injury of the rides history, but it sounds like things are already on the mend. It's inevitably a risk of any large group ride, and especially one run at night when people can be a little more tired than usual that accidents will happen. I don't think there's much that can be doin about this another than emphasis on taking care at the initial safety briefing. This isn't a criticism of Simon's speech, which is more than adequate, I'm just not sure there's much we can do to improve things, it's just "one of those things".
Possibly we do need a slightly more resilient mechanism for dealing with deliberately splitting the ride, so waypointers don't get left behind. The system did work this time, but partially more through luck. If the back of the ride does split off, then someone either has to continue to sweep up the waypointers, or someone up front needs to be told, so they can go back and collect them all. I realise this can be difficult on a ride like this, where it was light on experience, but we got lucky as regards not loosing anyone, so we need to be a little more careful in future.
If all that preceeding text sounds a little depressing in places, I'd still say that I enjoyed the ride, and think that all the people responsible, Simon in particular, but all those doing TEC and waypointing duty still did their normal exceptional jobs, and at the end of the day, we're all adults, and it's our own personal responsibility to be ready to deal with things when stuff goes wrong. I think even with sub-optimal weather conditions and a few unfortunate incidents, everything pretty much worked as it should, and hopefully most people had an enjoyable time.
Right, you can now return to the normal service of bad and possibly off-colour jokes.
I stopped with the TECs to deal with the puncture about five miles or so before the halfway stop. Since we knew he had already had a puncture, we went over the rim and tyre scrupulously. It was not an easy tyre to get on, but not the worst I've seen, and after getting it all back together we used my CO2 cartridge to inflate it, we were getting ready to leave when <Bang>. We took it off, checked the rim and tyre again, put another tyre on, this time pumped up by hand, just in case the C02 pressure had been too much for it.
At this point we started to move off again, I was a little ahead, and since I was probably the slowest rider there, decided to plod on and get ahead as far as I could so as not to slow things down too much. At the first roundabout I locked back and saw lights coming my way, so assumed everyone was behind me. The next time I looked back, no one was in sight. I stopped and waited a bit, but no one else came. I decided they must have had a minor mechanical, since obviously there was no way that the inner tube could have gone again. When I got to the services I was somewhat surprised that I had got, paid for, drunk my coffee, eaten my doughnut, gone to the loo, and the trailing group still han't arrived.
Ultimately there were two more puncture after I had left them, but I don't think there was anything I could have done should I have stayed. The wheel and tyre seemed fine, so it must have been something that just poked out slightly under pressure, but it was far from obvious. I hope we never get another one of those, since generally we wouldn't be so lucky with Taxis.
At Stanford-Le-Hope, User10571 asked me to be TEC until Adrian caught us back up, which I was happy to do. As we passed wayfinders we told them to wait, since I knew Adrian, Charlotte and Liz (on the Tandem) and others (whoever the puncturees were) were behind us. A short distance on, one of the waypointers said he had overheard a conversation about Adrian taking a different route. Some phone calls later we had worked out that this was indeed the case, so with some buggering about, after about 45 minutes of waiting we had recovered as many of the way waypointers as we thought there were behind us (and from the previous posts it sounds like one of you went on the train, but Clive knew about that, so that was one which I failed to notice was missing!).
At this point I knew that I was definitely at the back of the ride (possibly excepting Adrians group, who I knew could find their own way, wherever they had got to). So, when stopping briefly on bread and cheese hill to de-coat and cool down a bit, it was a bit unsettling to have 20+ riders cycle past us.
It transpired that they had gone the wrong way at a roundabout (I'm not sure what happened to the waypointer), and had taken a while to realise this. Since we had waited previously at least 45 minutes, and had only gone slightly faster than the ride generally does (probably just a couple of mph faster than the normal average), they must have gone significantly wrong to have been that far behind, especially since their rate meant they easily passed us and disappeared into the distance.
Edit: Having read PippaG's post, which went up whilst I was writing mine, it appears the reason that there wasn't a waymarker was because they had overtaken the leader. This would appear to be a case of "Tough", since if you do this, you deal with the consequences.
When we met Matthew, doing final waypointing duty at the Cafe, I said to him that I thought we were the end of the ride, but I'd given up being certain about anything! I think we were actually the back then, I hope no one else managed to come in behind us, or I'll need to go and have a wibble somewhere!
I haven't mentioned the injury, since I didn't see any more than the injured elbow, and the paramedics dealing with him later on, but I think we've been very lucky historically to have not have had a prior injury worse than slight bruising. It's unfortunate for Andrew that he now has the honour of being the first "proper" injury of the rides history, but it sounds like things are already on the mend. It's inevitably a risk of any large group ride, and especially one run at night when people can be a little more tired than usual that accidents will happen. I don't think there's much that can be doin about this another than emphasis on taking care at the initial safety briefing. This isn't a criticism of Simon's speech, which is more than adequate, I'm just not sure there's much we can do to improve things, it's just "one of those things".
Possibly we do need a slightly more resilient mechanism for dealing with deliberately splitting the ride, so waypointers don't get left behind. The system did work this time, but partially more through luck. If the back of the ride does split off, then someone either has to continue to sweep up the waypointers, or someone up front needs to be told, so they can go back and collect them all. I realise this can be difficult on a ride like this, where it was light on experience, but we got lucky as regards not loosing anyone, so we need to be a little more careful in future.
If all that preceeding text sounds a little depressing in places, I'd still say that I enjoyed the ride, and think that all the people responsible, Simon in particular, but all those doing TEC and waypointing duty still did their normal exceptional jobs, and at the end of the day, we're all adults, and it's our own personal responsibility to be ready to deal with things when stuff goes wrong. I think even with sub-optimal weather conditions and a few unfortunate incidents, everything pretty much worked as it should, and hopefully most people had an enjoyable time.
Right, you can now return to the normal service of bad and possibly off-colour jokes.
. Apologies to the people of Southend!
