Tell us about your weekend ride

Worst ride ever. Bigpaintbrush says it's in the bottom ten.

Good points:

• Rode with the aforementioned Bigpaintbrush, HMS and Benj (always a pleasure).
  
• HMS and Benj were good enough to head north to us so that we could roll around Essex - very civil of them.
  
• Riding bikes is nice and the banter at the tea shop was top quality.
  
  

Bad points:

• I've been off the bike for about 4 weeks and approached the ride with all the fitness of Bernard Manning. Benj was feeling crook and HMS had a hangover.
  
• Going up slight slopes felt like the bad old days when i first started riding.
  
• Bigpaintbrush's bibs split down the arse so he was winking at us until we could borrow some packing tape at the tea hut in Epping to save his blushes.
  
• Got a bit lost (not the end of the world).
  
• We did a big fall off. Something to do with greasy roads, a car and a load of ruts in the tarmac. The only one not to fall off was teflon Benj. Bigpaintbrush fell but was inexplicably fine. I cracked my skid lid open and gave myself something of a headache and have a bashed up hand. The worst of us was HMS who clattered his elbow enough to make riding / changing gear etc pretty tricky. He also got too intimate a look at the front of an oncoming car. No impact but enough to make him go pretty pasty and contemplative. Car driver was shocked but a good bloke. He was driving slowly and carefully enough to avoid us when we all tumbled in front of him.
  
• Cut the ride short because half of us couldn't use our handlebars properly.
  
• Took a 'shortcut' back to town and ended up on a shit path by the North Circular - worst route choice possible.
  
• Got home at least an hour earlier than planned and Mrs Wrongcog had a cry because I had a booboo (guilty now).
  
  

Crap! All's well though. We don't think anything's too banged up. Back out next week.