Good people of the forum

Yeah, it has crossed my mind. I even looked at where the -new- place is this week.

Normally I'm busy and every other time I just can't be arsed :)

This week the missus flew home early Friday morning so I didn't think going out the night before was wise. The week before we were in Scotland, the week before that we were getting ready for Scotland, etc, etc

Yeah, realise The (Acton) Swan isn't as convenient for you,
and,
the restricted range of beers on offer can't compete with the
appealing, ever-changing stock at Pint of Hops.

I was in PoH on Fri. There's a new guy in there or at least he's not the usual guy. They've got taps on and some seating there now. I'm feeling pretty rough though after last night - Dodo then over to a mate's place. I think next week I have 'old work' drinks somewhere in the city on Thu.

Oops, I thought this was the Wests thread last night. :) I've only just seen the rest of it.

almac68:

Green tea meet ups with @Oliver Schick @cliveo

Yes, we need to have another one sometime soon!

psg1ben:

Big love to @Oliver Schick for keeping me company while being slow af on my 1 and only London Classic/Cobblemonstėr riding a bmx

And generally being a badass

Ha, cheers, except I thought you were being the badass. As for being 'slow af', you only dropped me up every hill. :) This is, admittedly, not all that hard, but I certainly had no complaints about the speed. By some distance my favourite edition of the Londoncobbleclassicmonster.

KT_Bee:

@Oliver Schick for tempting me out of tagging retirement …

That was fun, and great to ride with you on the Jubbly ride!

My favorite forum rides/memories were led by drug addled, endearingly unpleasant and acerbic individuals.

Oliver Schick ?🤔

And I thought I might get lucky and not be identified by the reference, but I guess I only get lucky when I lead rides. :)

@lowbrows muchas gracias

I find myself flattered and grateful for comments made about me in this thread.

I won't mention any particular individuals, but I can honestly say that all my personal contacts with forum users have been positive.

For the record, when I first posted on LFGSS I thought it might be a useful medium to find recruits for my club. This never really came to pass - various Hounslow members have posted on here, but we've only really acquired one new member and I think he would probably have come to us in any case.

However I believe I've learnt a lot from a younger generation on the forum, and some of that I may have been able to pass on to the many old fogies who inhabit my world. By the same token, I hope that I have managed to bring some small fragments of wisdom back from those elders to inform people here.

One thing that strikes me about the posts on this thread is that the good memories almost all come from face to face meetings in the real world, rather than on line chatter. This is probably inevitable, but perhaps it tells us something useful - that the olden days clubroom meeting and club run can't be replicated digitally.

With this in mind I propose that we organise a meeting for all those mentioned in this thread. With the winter almost upon us, a pub in central London might seem an obvious choice for this, but with the Covid infection rate rising so rapidly maybe that's not such a great idea. I suggest a meeting next Spring with a ride to a country pub. The first thing that comes to my mind are venues a little to the North of London, meeting perhaps at Hertford and going North into the lanes. So we might call this proposal:

An Easy Day in May

Let's hear if you think this is a good or a bad idea.

Go on , I'll bite.

@hatbeard, @6pt, @laner, @dropout, @fox, @edscoble, @tricitybendix, @Cupcakes @whateverxanderiscallednow, @OldSkoolRacer, @ChainBreaker , @Mickie_Cricket and numerous others for welcoming me into forum beers and going on forum rides during an incredibly difficult period in my life. You guys, probably without realising it, helped me pick myself out of a dark place and start to get life back on track...ultimately leading me down a path to meeting @avellana who somehow has tolerated being my wife for the last 7.5 years :D

Yeah yeah, and @velocio for enabling all of that to happen...

And @hillbilly for teaching me how to really skid

You'll be lost in a box next time we ride there

There are too many to mention. You know who you are and I love you all and am grateful to you for everything you have done for me these past 13 years.

While time might not allow me to set out my litany of forum saints, there are a few who should be mentioned specifically.

Big Daddy Wayne, Dwayne and Fiddy come immediately to mind. Sorely missed but never forgotten.

Well said Mr O

Hope all’s well

Very well thanks. Hope all good with you too xx

@clubman is a gent and so is everyone else who has sold me cheap good quality lightweight parts

We need to do beers again now things are easing up.

Also think loads on that list are no longer here...

Also think loads on that list are no longer here.

Losers

I don't visit this place very often, but dear God post a warning people!!! I thought YAL had died. Got all upset (never met him, I dont think), til I skimmed the first couple of posts. As you were :-).

I have a number of people on here to thank for my early rides (geared not fixed, cos still a coward). One of the numerous memorable ones is @clubman pushing up up an incline, with Bernie pulling me, on the Oxford Town and Gown ride. Fairly certain I did a gentle, sideways fall onto a grass verge cos was wiped out, having done a Friday night ride, but felt energetic enough to ride to Oxford. Not one of my better ideas, but I look back on that ride with fondness and a certain amazement that this old woman did it. Bernie also escorted me home from Victoria station cos I was toying with getting a cab instead of riding. A blessed man and I hope he's ok.

Ahh, this is a lovely thread. Loads of people here I think warm fuzzy thoughts about all the time, and it's weird to think that you all had such a huge impact on me when I was only actively riding for about three years. But in that time, it was lovely.

@youramericanlover always had a smile and a massive hooning whipskid. @almac68 and @Bernie as a crack team of ride organisers who were always so supportive and made me feel welcome when I definitely didn't belong on the kinds of rides we were doing. @esstee always just the right mix of soundness and cynicism. @branwen has always been there for a chat, and was one of the people who helped keep me from going fucking insane during a major health crisis. @OneLessCardigan is one of the kindest people I know, and I want to be like him when I grow up. @Dammit and @TW both also just hugely generous people, in both practical and generosity of spirit terms. @BareNecessities has gone from being shy-and-retiring out-of-towner to, like, the well-deserved king of the fucking forest, heh. @TheorySwine probably doesn't even remember me but he put up with some right shit from me because he made me feel so comfortable being ostentatiously rude to him (this is a compliment). I won't tag him, obviously, but our lad from Wigan as well - extravagantly insulting. If I can't be OLC when I grow up, maybe I'll try to be Will instead.

Forum ladies like @hats and @KT_Bee and @cafewanda and @mands and @Doctor_Cake gave me a sense of community with other women, which might sound like a small thing but given how blokey the forum is, and cycling more generally, it was really helpful for me to have them around me.

So, so many people. People I haven't mentioned, people I met on rides whose names I didn't even know, people I've never met but have a gigantic wellspring of respect for. Obviously the big joke is the internet's friendliest bike forum, but for real - people here have had an outsize impact on me in only a short space of time, because I was longer out of the forum than in. I saw a thread somebody had bumped today with a post in it from from TWELVE YEARS AGO. Where the fuck did all that time go?

@bothwell
aaawww it is really lovely to hear from you, we certainly had a blast with those magical mystery tours in and around London, also Belgium and Italy, with plenty of bantz, sense of adventure, ever trusting, it was @braker who said on our first ever visit to flanders that all we needed was a draft of Irish whiskey and a photo of Sean Kelly in the back pocket to get us across those cobbles / climbs .. sending you lots of love xxx

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Bernie and I still talk about the Oxford Town and Gown ride, the chimney sweeps from London, Mary Poppins, a day filled with wonderful memories, far too many forum names to remember to get our man to the start line and steal the show..

I dreamt that I married a chicken in a summer bonnet last night. Woke up with feathers in my mouth and corner split from my pillow. Not sure what this means

Hah! All I needed was Braker. I could have wept for gratitude on that trip to the Ardennes when he quietly checked in on me, saw I was struggling with the headwind, and just quietly moved into the gap in front so I could draft him and he never ever embarrassed me about it afterwards because he is a TRUE GENT 😭 I mean, I didn't, because I didn't have the energy for gratitude-weeping. But I could have.

I think you are fucking ace @bothwell

This

Ahhh bothwell, you're fucking fantastic! I was thinking about you just the other day as I came across a great photo of us outside lmnh.

Glad to hear that.

@bothwell, @hats- those womens rides included a Rapha 100 one gloriously wet Sunday(?) that we didn't quite finish cos possibility of drowning on the roads. We may have soaked through some train seats on the journey back and decided to finish the mileage back in London. If it wasn't on that Rapha 100, I certainly did that years later when I got a punture on my Brompton whilst out at Richmond Park with another group of women, took that bike home and switched to another bike. Finished the mileage at about 11pm. Yes, my family and non-cycling friends thought I was crazy and they weren't wrong. Only cycling would get me to behave in such a way. LFGSS is where it started, so thank you all.