Mechanical-o-rama

Night ride last night was one of the best ever, a proper good laugh. Simon, Johnnie, Giles and Trio We met at the barn and headed for winter hill and the banter began, Johnnie's awesome mud tyres, cushions, BMIs, pisstaking of gears (and singlespeeds), incidents of velophilia, golden showers, dogging, polar bears, the usual. Up and down to the pike and along georges lane to winter hill tarmac climb, 1st mechanical. Somehow Simon's chain had popped out of the rear derailleur cage, never seen that before, had to remove lower jockey wheel and put it back in. Up winter hill and Giles and Si were chatting and began pulling away from us. Si has only been up there one or twice, Giles never and neither knew where we were going so obviously Johnnie, trio and I backed off and switched all our lights off :-)
The steep descent off the back was fun, very rutted, very slippery and chaos ensued. I went over the bars (ran it out) Johnnie crashed right infront of Si and Si mounted him and we all got out of shape and sideways at some point. The track over to lead mines was muddy too but we made it down then I tried to ride the slab bridge, down the 2 big steps over the slab but then no chance of getting up the other side. I stalled and tried to put my foot down but there was nothing there and I nearly fell the 8 feet down to the stream. I just managed to cling on to the hillside. On the climb from the stream my gears exploded, rear derailleur in the spokes job, so I had to adapt a singlespeed (hey I'd been meaning to SS that bike anyway) Sorted that while trio handed out the mince pies (superb!) set off again but it wasn't long before trio got a flat. 9:30 and we were at the furthest point from home, a late one then. Trio got out her dinky pink pump (not a euphemism), it was smaller than her tyre levers, I didn't wanna be there all night so I had a go with mine - will pump for mince pies :-) Down the steep bit at the end which everyone managed, some with more drama (and screaming) than others. We cut the ride short after all that but it had been a lot of fun. Fortunatley I managed to limp home without further incident. Out till 11, on a school night too!