Well, the New Forest Charity Bike Ride was... interesting... started well with a nice crowd around our pair which were neatly polished up and gleaming for their big day. A 20km ride was the order of the day, no small feat, but we had confidence.
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Well, the start was good with only one minor glitch, as they look virtually the same I'll refer to them as the numbers on the front. 405, or "Sods Law" as we affectionately refer to it as due to it's knack of finding something to go wrong every single time was running well, 406 almost immediately developed a sticking rear brake although I'd brought plenty of tools so a quick pit stop and we were underway again. The going was fairly flat for the first couple of miles so we were still feeling in good spirits. That changed after about the 6th kilometre when we suddenly saw a slope in front of us on about a 20% gradient! Well, a quick smoke break and we were underway again, albeit pushing as we were both too exhausted already to contemplate such a hill...
![](https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/1382851_600145640024319_85929886_n.jpg)
Now. 406 is a really reliable little C5, never really fails and was doing well, but it's a little slow. 405 flies, but was still going strong. As we approached the halfway point and having negotiated a couple more hills we were all doing well and stopped for a quick bottle of Lucozade before starting the second 10km. That's when things started to go wrong. To begin with, we were directed the wrong way and added about another 2km onto the route, then the first battery drained leaving us with one decidedly dodgy one left to complete a reasonably long distance ride... and then it was offroad. We'd heard there was a "short section", but this was bad. Forest stony path littered with huge potholes, 406 coped well, but 405 was really getting bounced around. To add to it, the hills started getting more frequent and ever steeper. Well, we finally emerged back out onto the main road completely drained and looking forward to finishing when I suddenly felt the steering on 405 go a bit loose... and then it happened. I came to a screaming halt on the side of a main road. I thought that the front brake had seized on, something I had the tools to fix, but it was worse than that. When I took the front moulding off I could see that it had dropped. I removed the front wheel and it had lost all bar one of the ball bearings! It was so bad in fact that the cone was nothing more than a twisted bit of metal, and we weren't going anywhere. Sods law. Well I remembered that we'd been told a local repair company would offer a discounted rate for roadside repairs, but guess what? No phone signal. I decided to find a marshall point, but we were so far behind everyone else by that point that the first two had been vacated!
Out of total luck a couple of miles down the road (I was riding 406 with my wife waiting with the stricken 405) I saw a woman collecting the signs, I told her what had happened and after a bit of deliberated she took me back to get my car to go back and pick up the C5s...
![](https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/1209404_600147033357513_1938153625_n.jpg)
Well, we completed 17km of the 20km, totally exhausted but a great ride!
Next time, we'll do the 10km instead
![Roll Eyes ::)](https://c5alive.co.uk/forum/Smileys/default/rolleyes.gif)