Aperitif
Meme bar
- Location
- ...I don't have much idea - really.
I sent you a text this morning. If you think I'm going to praise you in public, you have got another drink coming.
Cheers.
London-Edinburgh-London 2013: The thread
- Thread starter Arch
- Start date
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I sent you a text this morning. If you think I'm going to praise you in public, you have got another drink coming.
Cheers.
Aperitif
Meme bar
- Location
- ...I don't have much idea - really.
That's going to be a tough ride 'home' - come on John.
martint235
Dog on a bike
- Location
- Welling
Come on John mate. I've seen you so often in the last few days. You can do it.
mmmmartin
Random geezer
Those arriving now utterly shattered. Been a tough day in heat with headwinds. Still warm outside. They're drinking gallons on arrival. We'll be up all night so by 6am it'll be a dialogue of the shattered and we won't understand each other.
Am hanging around outside looking for Tim.
Am hanging around outside looking for Tim.
Mice
Guru
So Peeps - where are DeckerTIm and Redflight Now? Must be so close to the finish!
- Location
- The TerrorVortex
Jolly well done to all!
phil_hg_uk
I am not a member, I am a free man !!!!!!
A volunteer report of sorts, from the half-way point at Edinburgh ...
LEL was one of those great experiences restoring one's faith in human nature (if you are a cynical what's-it), both with regard to the riders and my fellow volunteers
.
It all started on Sunday, when we pumped up hundreds of airbeds
n the two large school gym halls and layed them out in rows for those wanting to sleep or at least lie down for a while, put up metal barriers in rows as bike parking for several 100 bikes at a time, put up signs and arrows, etc.
The riders didn't really start arriving in great numbers until late afternoon on Monday, apart from the first couple of dozen or so ...
I ended up spending >24 hours straight at the control, from 6pm on Monday to 8pm on Tuesday, with only an hour half sleeping/half dozing in the school staff room on an airbed, between 6 and 7 AM. We had been assigned shifts, and I was due a 10 hour break between 2 AM and 12 PM on Tuesday, but there were too many people arriving throughout that period, and it was too much fun (seriously
), and so I just stayed on ...
When I arrived, the bed booking system was just being set up on a big whiteboard, 1 side a big map of the beds layed out in alphabetic rows with numbers counting along the rows (does that make sense?), and the other a time table of 15 minute slots starting in the evening and lasting until Tuesday late morning. Anybody requiring a bed would be asked when he (or she - but in the minority) wanted to be woken up, the time written below their allocated bed number on the map, and then they were shown to their bed with a head torch in the dark rooms. It would have been amazing to do some sound recording in there, it was quite funny to walk through a dark sound landscape, with 3D breathing, snoring in varied volumes, pitches, rhythms etc (and the odd fart thrown in). I suspect there would have been a smell landscape, too, for anybody with a basic sense of smell, which in this case I was quite happy I don't possess, so I wasn't bothered . There was a constant stream of people arriving throughout the night, checking in, eati.ng, drinking, having showers (towels provided :-) - and commented on as luxury and compared with the handkerchief sized ones found at other controls (
). Clearly Audax people are a self-sufficient lot! The bed people (three or so of us) were constantly either booking somebody in and showing them to their bed, preparing the 15-minute wake-up cards or count down the rows with the head torches to wake people at the right time. Amazingly it seemed to work flawlessly, with people being woken up at the right time ... there were a couple of occasions where I found a bed was already occupied, once we managed to track down on the plan what had happened, and the other was me mis-counting ... phew! We must have had 300+ people sleeping at Edinburgh for anything from 1 hour to more generous slots of 6-7 hours ...
Most sleepers were very easy to wake, some already lifting their head on our approach, only very few asked us to amend their booking and let them have a bit longer.
By 6 AM I really needed to lie flat for a bit, so that I could keep going throughout the day, and went upstairs, where we had set up a volunteer sanctuary in the staff room, with a few airbeds & blankets. There were a couple of people fast asleep in there, and I managed to drift in and out of sleep for an hour or so, it was bliss just to lie down. I remember a rendition of "Happy Birthday" intruding into my dreams, it turned out that was real, with somebody being serenaded over breakfast (no doubt with cake which was provided round the clock).
The bed business downstairs had tailed off when I got up, quite refreshed (amazingly) around 7 AM, and I started helping with the tea & coffee making & handing out, which was another full-time job for 2 people, but we never ran out of drinks, cups, sugar or milk, even though it was a close call a few times! Other duties included helping riders who had to drop out (
) to find accommodation or advise on travel options from Edinburgh, and of course chatting with people about their adventure while we gave them drinks, holding bits of bike while they were being re-attached with cable ties, etc. I also managed to help a guy who had broken the frame of his beautiful old-style steel racer just after departing from the control, to source a replacement from a new friend I had met only recently at the Edinburgh Festival of Cycling. He runs a small tourist bike rental business and arrived with a couple of possible hybrids on his van very quickly. But then they decided to see if they could get a welder friend of his to mend the bike - and the rider was back on the road an hour later! Still going at the moment, somewhere south of St Ives (T32). Phew ...
Other duties on Monday evening included offering some soaked people (VERY heavy showers) to dry their clothes and gloves etc. in the school's two tumble dryers, and I think I might have saved a Welshman's ride... (didn't sound particularly Welsh, but he and his pal were wearing Welsh Audax jerseys) he arrived and seemed quite disoriented and was not really making sense - he was completely soaked and might have been borderline hypothermic. I convinced him that he should have a hot shower rather than lying down and trying to sleep straight away, and that he could wear some towels and blankets while we'd dry his clothes (the only ones he had, no spares). Half an hour later he came back wrapped in blankets, looking like a different person and smiling and talking normally again, saying he'd just had the world's longest shower and was OK. You can see him wandering around in one of these photos by a fellow volunteer (http://mccraw.co.uk/london-edinburgh-london-in-pics/ - 3rd one down; He then had lots of food & drink and slept for a good few hours - if anybody knows who he is, I'd love to know if he made it back to London).
Other memorable people were the wife of a rider who had come all the way to Edinburgh to meet him, and we were all hoping he'd arrive before she had to catch her flight back south ... when he did finally arrive, he decided that Edinburgh was far enough and dropped out. He was later seen sitting on a chair and having his feet and shoulders massaged by his wife, with his eyes closed, I wish I'd taken a picture
.
Luckily we didn't have to do any cooking or serving of food, there wouldn't have been enough volunteers for that - the school dinner ladies worked in shifts throughout the whole time, and were very nice to the riders and volunteers, as was George, the janitor, who helped with everything from unblocking showers and toilets to emptying the bins and all the other "local expert" jobs.
For some reason I had expected that the volunteers would all be local, but there was Oliver from Germany, who hadn't managed to get a slot for LEL, as it sold out very quickly, who came all the way from Frankfurt and helped out from Sunday morning until Tuesday lunchtime (including through the night apart from a 3-4 hour sleep), before setting off to cycle to London with his friend who had managed to get a place on the ride. Katerina, a Greek student who had come from Newcastle to help, and to meet several Greek friends from an internet cycling club (a bit like Cyclechat, she had never met them in person) ... she had wanted to ride, but hadn't got a place either. Mark, a GP from Aberdeenshire and a seasoned Audaxer, Lolly from Hongkong, who had come to the UK to do some volunteering, Xavier from Spain who lives in Stirling, and then of course the locals.
I did manage to spot one CCer - Stevevw - the only wearer of a CC jersey! A real shame he had to drop out, but he seemed quite relaxed about it ... or at least there was no externally visible turmoil... will there be a next time?
I left around 7pm, leading a small Greek peloton to the local Travelodge, before finally going home, in the company of Katerina, who needed a bed for the night. I would have quite liked to help out Wednesday morning with dismantling the control, but sadly I had to go back to work instead, leaving the house at 7AM, on my bike, of course
- thinking of all the LELers still out somewhere on the road south.
Anyway that's enough rambling, it's getting late and I better catch up on a bit more sleep.
T
LEL was one of those great experiences restoring one's faith in human nature (if you are a cynical what's-it), both with regard to the riders and my fellow volunteers
.It all started on Sunday, when we pumped up hundreds of airbeds
n the two large school gym halls and layed them out in rows for those wanting to sleep or at least lie down for a while, put up metal barriers in rows as bike parking for several 100 bikes at a time, put up signs and arrows, etc.The riders didn't really start arriving in great numbers until late afternoon on Monday, apart from the first couple of dozen or so ...
I ended up spending >24 hours straight at the control, from 6pm on Monday to 8pm on Tuesday, with only an hour half sleeping/half dozing in the school staff room on an airbed, between 6 and 7 AM. We had been assigned shifts, and I was due a 10 hour break between 2 AM and 12 PM on Tuesday, but there were too many people arriving throughout that period, and it was too much fun (seriously
), and so I just stayed on ... When I arrived, the bed booking system was just being set up on a big whiteboard, 1 side a big map of the beds layed out in alphabetic rows with numbers counting along the rows (does that make sense?), and the other a time table of 15 minute slots starting in the evening and lasting until Tuesday late morning. Anybody requiring a bed would be asked when he (or she - but in the minority) wanted to be woken up, the time written below their allocated bed number on the map, and then they were shown to their bed with a head torch in the dark rooms. It would have been amazing to do some sound recording in there, it was quite funny to walk through a dark sound landscape, with 3D breathing, snoring in varied volumes, pitches, rhythms etc (and the odd fart thrown in). I suspect there would have been a smell landscape, too, for anybody with a basic sense of smell, which in this case I was quite happy I don't possess, so I wasn't bothered . There was a constant stream of people arriving throughout the night, checking in, eati.ng, drinking, having showers (towels provided :-) - and commented on as luxury and compared with the handkerchief sized ones found at other controls (
). Clearly Audax people are a self-sufficient lot! The bed people (three or so of us) were constantly either booking somebody in and showing them to their bed, preparing the 15-minute wake-up cards or count down the rows with the head torches to wake people at the right time. Amazingly it seemed to work flawlessly, with people being woken up at the right time ... there were a couple of occasions where I found a bed was already occupied, once we managed to track down on the plan what had happened, and the other was me mis-counting ... phew! We must have had 300+ people sleeping at Edinburgh for anything from 1 hour to more generous slots of 6-7 hours ...Most sleepers were very easy to wake, some already lifting their head on our approach, only very few asked us to amend their booking and let them have a bit longer.
By 6 AM I really needed to lie flat for a bit, so that I could keep going throughout the day, and went upstairs, where we had set up a volunteer sanctuary in the staff room, with a few airbeds & blankets. There were a couple of people fast asleep in there, and I managed to drift in and out of sleep for an hour or so, it was bliss just to lie down. I remember a rendition of "Happy Birthday" intruding into my dreams, it turned out that was real, with somebody being serenaded over breakfast (no doubt with cake which was provided round the clock).
The bed business downstairs had tailed off when I got up, quite refreshed (amazingly) around 7 AM, and I started helping with the tea & coffee making & handing out, which was another full-time job for 2 people, but we never ran out of drinks, cups, sugar or milk, even though it was a close call a few times! Other duties included helping riders who had to drop out (
) to find accommodation or advise on travel options from Edinburgh, and of course chatting with people about their adventure while we gave them drinks, holding bits of bike while they were being re-attached with cable ties, etc. I also managed to help a guy who had broken the frame of his beautiful old-style steel racer just after departing from the control, to source a replacement from a new friend I had met only recently at the Edinburgh Festival of Cycling. He runs a small tourist bike rental business and arrived with a couple of possible hybrids on his van very quickly. But then they decided to see if they could get a welder friend of his to mend the bike - and the rider was back on the road an hour later! Still going at the moment, somewhere south of St Ives (T32). Phew ...Other duties on Monday evening included offering some soaked people (VERY heavy showers) to dry their clothes and gloves etc. in the school's two tumble dryers, and I think I might have saved a Welshman's ride... (didn't sound particularly Welsh, but he and his pal were wearing Welsh Audax jerseys) he arrived and seemed quite disoriented and was not really making sense - he was completely soaked and might have been borderline hypothermic. I convinced him that he should have a hot shower rather than lying down and trying to sleep straight away, and that he could wear some towels and blankets while we'd dry his clothes (the only ones he had, no spares). Half an hour later he came back wrapped in blankets, looking like a different person and smiling and talking normally again, saying he'd just had the world's longest shower and was OK. You can see him wandering around in one of these photos by a fellow volunteer (http://mccraw.co.uk/london-edinburgh-london-in-pics/ - 3rd one down; He then had lots of food & drink and slept for a good few hours - if anybody knows who he is, I'd love to know if he made it back to London).
Other memorable people were the wife of a rider who had come all the way to Edinburgh to meet him, and we were all hoping he'd arrive before she had to catch her flight back south ... when he did finally arrive, he decided that Edinburgh was far enough and dropped out. He was later seen sitting on a chair and having his feet and shoulders massaged by his wife, with his eyes closed, I wish I'd taken a picture
.Luckily we didn't have to do any cooking or serving of food, there wouldn't have been enough volunteers for that - the school dinner ladies worked in shifts throughout the whole time, and were very nice to the riders and volunteers, as was George, the janitor, who helped with everything from unblocking showers and toilets to emptying the bins and all the other "local expert" jobs.
For some reason I had expected that the volunteers would all be local, but there was Oliver from Germany, who hadn't managed to get a slot for LEL, as it sold out very quickly, who came all the way from Frankfurt and helped out from Sunday morning until Tuesday lunchtime (including through the night apart from a 3-4 hour sleep), before setting off to cycle to London with his friend who had managed to get a place on the ride. Katerina, a Greek student who had come from Newcastle to help, and to meet several Greek friends from an internet cycling club (a bit like Cyclechat, she had never met them in person) ... she had wanted to ride, but hadn't got a place either. Mark, a GP from Aberdeenshire and a seasoned Audaxer, Lolly from Hongkong, who had come to the UK to do some volunteering, Xavier from Spain who lives in Stirling, and then of course the locals.
I did manage to spot one CCer - Stevevw - the only wearer of a CC jersey! A real shame he had to drop out, but he seemed quite relaxed about it ... or at least there was no externally visible turmoil
... will there be a next time?I left around 7pm, leading a small Greek peloton to the local Travelodge, before finally going home, in the company of Katerina, who needed a bed for the night. I would have quite liked to help out Wednesday morning with dismantling the control, but sadly I had to go back to work instead, leaving the house at 7AM, on my bike, of course
- thinking of all the LELers still out somewhere on the road south.Anyway that's enough rambling, it's getting late and I better catch up on a bit more sleep.
T
Baggy
Cake connoisseur
- Location
- Where the chevrons are
Chuffy left St. Ives about 4 hours ago so hope he'll be at Gt. Easton soon. He'd made up some time and wasn't looking to bad. He was a bit whiffy though 
Must have seen lots of forumers this evening but didn't know who they were - I was mostly on washing up duty so not able to chat much.
Must have seen lots of forumers this evening but didn't know who they were - I was mostly on washing up duty so not able to chat much.
Pale Rider
Legendary Member
compared with the handkerchief sized ones found at other controls (
The towels were very small at Barnard Castle.
The organisers ordered - and paid for - larger ones but were let down by the supplier.
A couple of bales from Ikea was all that could be found at the last minute.
Baggy
Cake connoisseur
- Location
- Where the chevrons are
Well done to all! Chuffy arrived at 4.30am 
Mice
Guru
Red flight and Decker Tim finished LEL2013 ages ago - fantastic stuff! Well done - what an achievement. And well done to everyone for taking part - that's one 'eck of a ride.
