(pic by Sue Pitman)So it was a short drive up to meet up with Adam Blake and Steve Jose before heading off for the Endurocross event in Devon. Now then, we were traveling along nicely along one of the A roads when an Ambulance came up behind with it’s lights flashing all over the place, obviously on an emergency call of some sort, so we pulled over and let the thing by like you do. But then as the road began to twist and turn a bit due to some of the sharp corners, we caught the bloody thing up! In fact it was going so slow, It was almost embarrassing, and it still had it’s lights blazing. The thing is the cars it caught up all pulled over to the side of the road to let it pass, so we followed the ambulance and went by them as well. Needless to say that Adam (who was driving) was now a marked man as the cars that we past weren’t impressed and one or two them decided to get their own back and overtake us! Not to be outdone Adam put his champ skills to good use and found the best line at the right opportunity and re-overtook them! It now turned out to be a game chicken to see who could get closest to the ambulance first without actually overtaking the thing. This battle of wits lasted about 10 miles with the irate drivers behind weaving from side to side right up our arse trying to get by us, but ‘Blakeys’ made of sterner stuff and held his own until the bitter end when finally the ambulance that been going like a tortoise with a broken leg, turned off and got out of the way. So then, a bit of high jinks before we even got there!
I’ve never been to one of these ‘Endurocross’ meetings before, two 1 hour races with a bit of a break in between, so I was looking forward to the racing even though I suppose you could say that it was a bit of a sprint compared to a proper enduro. A few other riders from down our neck of the woods were there, ’mad’ Jack Twentyman, John Pitman, Barry Weeks, to name but a few, I had a quick chat to everyone and then toddled off to the wooded section to watch the action.
Conditions were dry, so the racing was going to be fast. I was stood watching on fairly steep downhill section, but this proved easy to the riders as the ground was dry so not much action there then! I moved shortly afterwards to a nadgery little uphill climb for a few laps where some riders were getting stuck and having problems, nothing major, but plenty of action all the same. After a quick chat to Simon Thomas who there marshaling I moved back out into the open field to near where the lap scoring was to watch. After about 30 mins Steve Jose pulled over in front of us at the side of the track where I was standing, ’whats up then’ I said, ’can’t feel my right hand’ he replied. Steve was suffering from a chronic bit of arm pump and couldn’t hold on to the bike properly (to much of watching them porno dvd’s I reckon) so had to stop for a while until the feeling came back. He wasn’t the only one with problems, Adam went by me shouting his head off but I couldn’t understand what the hell he was saying, turned out that his brake lever had come loose and because of that he got overtaken for 3rd place right in the closing stages on the last lap, and Barry weeks chain snapped right at the bottom of a bloody hill on his last lap, so he had a nice push back to his van.
After about an hours break it was time for race 2 and another short sprint to the flag of an hours worth of riding. To be honest I was quite enjoying this, would have liked the course to be a bit more technical, but hey, I’m only watching so can’t complain. ‘Mad’ Jack Twentyman was riding like the only way he knows, ‘flat out and I don’t care about nothing’ and was leading the entire field up until the very end when he got overtaken with a lap to go and finished 2nd. Adam done well again and Steve had a better result this time around.
Now then, this has happened before, went to get the lads some chips from the catering van, and they’d flamin well run out! We packed up the gear and it was off to the nearest town to hunt for a kebab shop where we found one. Of course there was nothing wrong with Steve’s right hand now was there? Course not! He gripped that kebab like it was his last 10 pence piece and didn’t drop a morsel of it.
A good day out and quite an eventful one, enjoyed it, but would much rather be racing!
