With a mandatory SLJ appearance at a wedding decreed last weekend, I could only accept I’d missed the perfect Saturday for a Bike ride, or … I will begrudgingly accept, found the perfect one for any outdoor nuptials. So, another potentially fine day this time around was not to be missed, even if a club run isn’t really the ideal preparation for another little TT tilt the following day. (I’m guessing).

My ride across town was enlivened when I was passed by a motorcyclist wearing a Pikachu helmet – to be fair it didn’t make him look like Pikachu, rather he appeared to have a terrified Pokémon clinging for dear life to the back of his head. Made me smile. Then, if that wasn’t enough excitement for the day, I rode through the aftermath of what looked like a major police raid on a house in Denton. Exciting times.

I was on the final run to the meeting point when James III hustled past while totally blanking me. I couldn’t work out how I’d offended him, but maybe he’d picked up on the evil thoughts I’d harboured about the long, grey aero socks he was wearing a fortnight ago and my subsequent silent, sartorial disquiet?

Andy Mapp had devised another long, somewhat convoluted, and quite “climby” route for us this week, which included a rare ascent of Ritton Bank and elicited one or two complaints that some of his rides had people taking on almost 700 metres of climbing. Oh, the horror …

Bloody hell, the Garrulous Kid was back, recently graduated after 4 years of University. I can’t believe it’s been 4 years already, as I told him, it seems like only yesterday that we were all cheering because he was going away …

While the numbers slowly built, until we had over thirty cyclists strewn across the pavement and blocking the path, we kept a careful eye out for the Enigma. We thought we were going to be rewarded when we saw a cyclist glide effortlessly around the corner, before commencing a majestic, stately cruise by, but … this was a woman … on a Road bike … wearing a Burberry Mac? Could this possibly be the Enigma reincarnated? Had this transformation been, as Another Engine suggested, prompted by British Cyclings’ declaration of a new “Open” race category? Does the Enigma now embody a riddle wrapped in a mystery? We simply don’t know.

Once again we had the perfect bell curve of rider distribution with low numbers in groups 1 and 3 and an overly swollen second group. I’ve no idea how we resolve this, but dropped into group 3 to try and balance things out.

There, I had a quick catch-up with Sneaky Pete, fresh from acquiring a new knee (or half a new knee as he insisted) and feeling his way back into riding. I was also labelled an instigator/agitator by Taffy Steve, which is perhaps the nicest thing he’s ever said about me.

It was a splendid ride in glorious weather and good company and everything was going swimmingly as I pushed onto the front and we started the descent down Curlicue Bank, a narrow, rutted and gravel strewn drop that runs parallel to the Trench.

There wasn’t a lot of room, but I passed a group of riders working their way upwards, reached the bottom, and had started climbing out the other side when I heard shouts behind and the Hammer called me back as someone had gone down.

It appeared that the Ticker, descending just behind me, had run full tilt into one of the riders coming up the other way and was now curled in a foetal position in the nettles by the side of the road. The rider he’d hit was lying higher up clutching his shoulder and swearing angrily. I knew it was bad when I found the Ticker’s front wheel completely detached from his bike, alone and abandoned in the centre of the road.

Carlton, G-Dawg and the Hammer managed to slowly extricate the Ticker from the bike and started to assess what damage he’d done. Remarkably nothing seemed broken or dislocated, but he’d taken a bang to the head, cracked his helmet and seemed badly concussed.

“What happened?” he asked. Then again, at least half a dozen times in the next few minutes, having no recollection of the accident and unable to retain any details when he was told.

Bar a sore shoulder, the other guy also seemed to have escaped major injury and, as far as we could tell his bike was unscathed too. The same couldn’t be said for the Ticker’s, the front forks had sheared completely away, which explained how his front wheel had become detached.

The other guy was phoning home and arranging for pick-up, while a good Samaritan passerby loaded the Ticker and the remains of his shattered bike into a Range Rover and took him to the nearest village, Netherwitton.

The rest of our group made our way there to join him shortly afterwards. The driver seemed mightily relieved to see us because the Ticker kept asking him what happened and he didn’t know how to answer. Carlton orchestrated an ambulance to get our fallen rider to hospital and checked out, with Taffy Steve providing the key “what3words” to ensure they could find our location.

Sadly, these were perfectly bland and unmemorable, so nothing like Carrizo Springs, Texas with its what3words combination of ‘huge-chunky-head’, Millard County, Utah’s ‘cats-with-thumbs’ or Kingswood, Bristol’s admonition to ‘shave-legs-fully.’ Nevertheless, the system worked fantastically well and a paramedic was with us within 15 minutes, so definitely a must-have app to take along on rides.

The wait only gave the Ticker time enough to ask us 15 times what had happened, with Taffy Steve at one point suggesting we should just make up random, bizarre answers to fill in the time and because our crash victim wouldn’t remember anyway.

Three or four of the group pushed on to complete the ride, while the rest of us waited. The paramedic diagnosed concussion and a call was put in for transfer to the nearest hospital at Cramlington for scans. Taffy Steve exchanged details with a friendly local who offered to keep all the pieces of the Tickers bike safe until it could be picked up and, with its owner now in safe hands, we felt we could continue on our way.

We’d lost about an hour waiting around, so completing the ride wasn’t really an option. We decided to climb the Trench and, after a little debate, settled on Kirkley cafe for our mandatory stop. A mile or two from the cafe, Liam the Chinese rockstar punctured but was determined not to delay us any longer and said he was just going to walk the rest of the way to the cafe.

I was convinced he didn’t realise just how far that actually was and tried to persuade him to stop and take the time to swap out his inner tube, but he was having none of it. We eventually left him to it and pushed on. It’s possible he just didn’t want a critical audience watching his amateur attempts to sort out the puncture (or is that just me?) and eventually sense prevailed, or the cleats on his shoe wore out, as he finally stopped walking to make the repairs and was able to join us at the cafe au velo.

It was here that I was shocked to learn that mild-mannered, gentlemanly Carlton had a secret past as a football ultra, and may, or may not, have been involved in some post-match vehicular destruction in his wilder days …

I routed home through Ponteland to shave a few miles off, arriving home only 20 minutes or so beyond what would typically be my latest arrival time, so not so late that any flares were sent up. An eventful ride with unfortunate consequences then, but certainly enjoyable in parts.

And, three people told me I had a very shiny bike.

It was a chilly and very unappealing early start to Sunday morning which found me traveling to Cramlington for the GTR Return To Life 10-mile timetrial. For charidee, no less, so at least my early start was for a good cause.

The event was being run on a new course to me, the M101, although it included stretches of the M102C I’d ridden last August. Like that event, this was almost exclusively on dual-carriageway so there was at least the opportunity for a good time. My one issue was it was on very unfamiliar roads where every stretch of dual carriageway looks identical to the next and I’h had horrible trouble finding the race start last time. Luckily, I was much better prepared, with my cheap, non-route-finding bike computer swapped for my iPhone with its all-singing, all-dancing navigational capabilities.

Using this, I found the start without any effort and, with plenty of time to spare, wandered off for a brief, very unscientific sort of warm-up. I stopped to quickly gulp down an energy gel, not because I felt I needed it and it would help, but simply because it had been lying around for far too long and was now irrevocably past its use-by date.

I rolled up to the line in good order and only had time to bitch to the starter that he shouldn’t have turned yesterday’s sun off, before he released me and I was underway.

Four and a bit miles in, I was passed by my minute man who blew past and disappeared quickly up the road. Then, as I completed the turn to start the return leg, I was passed by another rider who didn’t pull away quite so quickly and I was able to keep them in sight as a sort of visual spur for most of the rest of the ride.

Things seemed to be going smoothly until the final run for home when, under the shadow of a bridge, I clattered hard through a long, hidden divot in the road surface, hitting it with enough force to jar my tool tub loose. I paused momentarily while it clattered away, waiting for the dreaded rumble of rims that were no longer cushioned by a tyre full of air, but somehow I survived without a pinch flat. This was probably just as well as my spare tubes were in the tool tub which was now bouncing hopelessly down the road and lost to the traffic.

I completed the course at an average speed of 22.64 mph and in a time of 26:30, shaving another 15 seconds of my previous best and making me think a sub-26 minute ride is a stiff, but potentially achievable long-term target. With a long flat course and a good following wind, naturally. And a bit of drafting. Oh, and maybe some performance-enhancing drugs and a hidden motor too?

Family holidays are going to get in the way of the next few scheduled CTT events that aren’t too long or too hilly for me, but I’ll be back!