Turf Zone – Restoration
The time is silly o’clock, about 1.00 am in the morning. The location is the camp site in Dalkeith Country Park, to be precise I’m sitting on a silly recycled plastic (why not simply use sustainable timber?) bench under a large tarpaulin, some 4.08 km (2.54 miles) as the crow flies, or 5.69 km (3.54 miles) as the kick scooter scoots, or kicks, or kick scoots, or whatever, from home. My mission this fine night was to take all 14 zones, that’s including zone NewtonChurch which is not strictly inside the park, just a short scoot outside the old estate walls. However, this was not to be.
Tonight, has been a clear case of not following the legendary guidelines of PPPPPP, Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. However, one might say the fourth “P” is highly accurate, with the addition of an “ing” at the end, and a following “down” as well. Why? Well, when I say my present attention is watching the rain running steaming off the sides of the tarpaulin. No, that’s not accurate, torrents of rain are plummeting off the tarpaulin. To say it’s pissing down does not do justice.
My planning failure was not checking the weather forecast before venturing out tonight. It had looked perfectly fine the previous afternoon when I checked, ideal for a turfing kick scoot in DCP. However, not only did I not check the forecast again later, but I also decided to leave my waterproofs behind as they were deemed unlikely to be required. Guess I got that wrong as well!
The scoot down from Bonnyrigg was great, not too hot and not too cool, right in the Goldilocks Zone for night turfing. The scoot down through the trees from the town gates meant I did not really notice the rain starting, only when I left the cover of the tree canopy and joined the road to zone Restoration, did I notice the pitter patter of increasingly heavy rain drops. As it didn’t seem too bad, I continued onwards, hoping it would not come to much.
However, after taking zone Restoration, I set off along the road for the next zone, DoNOTCrossEsk. But by the time I reached the camp site rain was falling in earnest. I needed shelter. And I knew just where to find that. The tarpaulin seating area where the tents are pitched. I have the habit of always noting where shelter might be found during my turfing sessions, as you never know when such shelter might be required.
Now I had a decision to make. Do I continue onwards and hope the rain stops or call it a day, or rather a night, and head for home. After 10 minutes or so, the rain was actually worse and without waterproofs, only a t-shirt, shorts and a non-waterproof Pertex jacket, the thought of another 10 miles kick scooting in the rain was not attractive. Mind you, neither was kick scooting the 5.69 km (3.54 miles) back home in the rain, but better than 22.83 km (14.19 miles) distance of the overall route I’d planned.
So, home it was and fun it was not. First to get wet and chilled were my arms. Wearing only a short-sleeved t-shirt under the non-waterproof Pertex jacket, it didn’t take long to soak to the skin, though my main body remined only damp. My shorts didn’t seem to get wet and that was probably due to most of the rain falling on my bare head, down my neck and onto to spectacles. Oh, how I hate my specs getting wet. Normally, I wear a baseball style cap which keeps them reasonably dry but not tonight. Strange, my bare legs didn’t feel wet and even felt warn, likely due to my energetic kick scooting to get back home. I felt like a drookit rat!
Now, to finish, the final episode in my quest to build the ultimate turfing bicycle and the last component to be upgraded, the handlebar stem. You might not think there’s much you can do to a handlebar stem but the one thing you can do is add one with built-in suspension. Enter the Redshift Shockstop Suspension Stem. And what a difference it makes. The stem pivots along its length by up to 20 mm and small swappable elastomers absorb some of the vibrations transmitted through the frame to the handlebars.
It does not replace something like a proper suspension fork but on gravel, worn tarmac roads and even the odd bump or two, become much more comfortable. The downside is the cost, £160.00 or there abouts but to my mind well worth the expense. I did consider a carbon fibre wheelset and upgrading the brakes to 4-pot callipers but decided neither was really necessary, or worth the costs involved. Back with more soon.
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