Drink and Ride?

I would like to tell you a story. It is the story of a man’s silliness for want of a better word, I’m sure you will come up with a few descriptive words of your own after reading.

Picture if you will that rare occurrence, a hot, sunny, summer Sunday afternoon in rural England. My partner and myself decided to make the most of the fine weather and go out for a bicycle ride.

We set off, along the A19, a main road in our area, and cycled north toward the village of Askern. Along this road is a small village lane which leads to a beautiful old manor house by the name of Owston Hall. This beautiful old building  is now home to Owston Golf Course, with a lovely restaurant and bar.

My partner, lets call him Twit to preserve his anonymity, thought it would be a good idea to stop for a drink as the weather was so hot. It being a little early in the day, and me not wanting to end the day drunk, I opted for a nice glass of orange juice; Twit, however, thought a pint of beer would be a good idea.

Now you’re not slow so I’m sure you can guess where this story is going. I’ll not bore you with all the details of our journey from Owston Golf Course, via Carcroft Social Club, the Woodlands Hotel, and the Park Club to arrive at our local. All I will say in my defence is that I didn’t drink alcohol and did my best to dissuade a very stubborn man from drinking any more.

Suffice to say that after around 5 pints of beer my deer, beloved, Twit still thought he could ride his bike just fine.

Now… anybody familiar with Highfields Lake, just outside of Doncaster, will know that there are some rather steep paths around the lake, which lies rather lower than the main road close by.  At one end of the lake there is also access to a public footpath and cycle lane which will take you back toward Bentley, which is where we live.

See in your mind’s eye a rather inebriated man, on a rather large mountain bike, freewheeling down one of the aforementioned steep paths toward the access to the track which will lead him toward home, or rather toward his local.  This wouldn’t be a problem if he had clear access to this track, unfortunately this is not the case. The officials of this wonderful country have an ingenious way of keeping teenagers on scrambler motorcycles off the tracks and paths meant for ramblers, hikers, cyclists and casual walkers; they put in place a series of small metal tube like gates which don’t actually open, they are spaced in such a way that they are easy to walk through, and relatively easy on a cycle so long as you are moving slowly and have the correct pedal lifted to avoid the smaller tubular structure which is the really gritty part of this design.

Lets go back to Twit, he’s freewheeling quite rapidly toward a metal tubular construction that is designed to prevent access to faster two-wheeled vehicles. Realising quite abruptly that he needs to reduce speed quickly he clamps his hands frantically on his brakes. At this point I am a little distance behind on my own cycle as I have been braking steadily throughout the downhill journey. I hear a rather amused voice giggling as he shouts to me; “I have no brakes”

In what passes for wisdom in an inebriated mind he comes to the conclusion that using his feet is a good idea. Unfortunately for a tall man he has disproportionately short legs which didn’t at that point wish to comply and reach the ground.

The result being that he resorted to putting his foot on the lower metal tube and attempted to lift his cycle over it without dismounting first. I’m sure you’re aware that this is just not going to work. My wonderfully intoxicated man toppled backwards from his cycle, which landed perfectly unscathed still on our side of the tubular construction, which had indeed achieved it’s designated purpose. As for Twit, well, he landed flat on his back, sliding head first down the embankment of a small ditch running along the track; with his legs raised and bent as though still on his cycle and his hands still frantically clutching the brakes that didn’t work and were still not working on the cycle lying ten feet away. As he slowly slid backward still repeating over and over the slightly hilarious (to me at the time) words “I’ve still got no brakes”

At this point I was laughing so hard I had to dismount my own cycle and leave it next to his on the path. Just as well I did as I then had to haul up a very large, very drunk, very silly man from the bottom of a ditch and attempt to explain why walking his cycle would be a good idea at this juncture.

I overlooked the fact that, as Cupcake Brown will tell you, “alcohol talks to you”, and at this point in our story alcohol was telling Twit that he was fine to ride his cycle the rest of the way home.

I’m sure you can imagine how the rest of our journey home went, all I am going to say is he came off his cycle twice on the cycle track, when he completely missed the bends in the path and ploughed headlong into the grass verges, once on exiting Bentley Park at the far end of the track and again outside our local club; where he forgot that stopping the forward momentum of the cycle meant he really should put at least one foot on the ground. Keeping both feet on the pedals results in meeting concrete with a resounding thud.

Thankfully, and unbelievably, my beloved Twit was not hurt by any of this, unless you count his pride being bruised at the ribbing he got from a few friends who were sitting outside the local club as he made his comic arrival.

The moral of this story, if you’re going on a pub crawl by cycle, stick to soft drinks. Twit was very lucky not to be seriously hurt, and although his antics were highly amusing that day, it’s not big, it’s not hard and it’s not clever to drink and ride.