Drafting

No point to this really, so if you're busy pass it up, just thought I'd while away a little bit of Friday morning telling a vaguely interesting story.

I was riding home to Brixton from Kings Cross the other night, fairly late. I was knackered out. I'd had a hell of a day at work, then I'd been all evening bashing the drums (not even metaphorically, but actually) at band practice, and I just wanted to get home and into my delightful bed. Mother nature was taking no pity: the soft moist tissues of my eyeballs, nostrils and lungs were coated with sex wee from the ejaculating trees. A constant, dense, debilitating headwind had picked up speed all the way up the A3 from Guildford and was playfully buffeting my pathetic frame as I ground my way up long, straight durge of Kennington Park Rd. I wanted to be like The Banshee or AFL Dude and just HTFU but I wasn't, and I couldn't.

Then I heard a regular clicking and swooshing, getting gradually louder and closer and lo - a big man on a hybrid edged slowly past me, like a vast oil tanker slipping its berth. He was sweating, and he was a winner. He bobbed along like a nonchalant pigeon and slowly churned his big gear. Salvation! A quick spurt of the pedals and I was on his tail. Bliss - the tired part of me went "ahhhhh yeah - cheers mate". The small part of me, which knows no sportsmanship or gentlemanly conduct, a part I do not particularly like, to which being overtaken by any other bike always returns "does not compute" was plotting to hang an easy half mile behind this fucker and then rip him off on the incline towards Clapham North. Show him who he was tangling with. If I wasn't on my shit bi- oh yeah, look at his... well, if it wasn't on my one off-day of the year, he'd never have got near me - has he even heard of the Paris-Roubaix? Probably thinks it's a football team! Remember when Lance attacked up Ventoux in 2000? Should see me on Brixton Hill, motherfucker!

But the streetlamps betrayed me. Splaying across the orange tarmac beneath him, he spots the ghostly silhouetted appendage at one with his own. He glances over his shoulder and confirms it - a hunkering, grinning mug in his wake, like one of those queer fishes that trails around the majestic sharks and whales of the sea. Except don't they do helpful stuff in some way? Okay, maybe more like a cuckoo or a parasitic wasp. He swerves sharply, avoiding a non-existent pot-hole. Whasse up to? I swerve too - well I don't want to be exposed to that nasty wind, right? He gets out of his saddle and honks bit. Christ mate! I honk a bit too. Finally he turns and shouts "Oi get off! Do your own work! I've got a long way to go!".

For a second I consider pointing out some facts of physics and stuff, but I'm not that much of a twat I just banter and we ride side by side for a bit until he decides he's had enough and buggers off.

Usually I use drafting when I'm out riding with road buddies in a peleton and its helps everyone cos you rotate the frront guy and everyone benefits. Even if you're solo around Richmond Park or wherever you sometimes fall in with a guy and rotate for a bit to help each other out. On the street its a bit different, but in all seriousness, I would have probably drafted this guy for a bit, then passed him and let him do the same to me. But some people object to it instantly. I did say this might be boring but does anyone else ever get involved in this level of banality? Or are you lone wolves of the road?

Olly