Fail to plan…

…Plan to fail, big time!

As the afternoon turned into night, and then into rather late indeed, I cursed myself for being so bloody stupid. I was waiting for a recovery truck to come and fetch me and my bike. At first, I had been given an estimate of four to five hours. Not great, I thought, but decided to wait. That was at 4pm. Then I was informed that the truck would be with me at 7:20pm. It didn’t turn up, so after a while I called them. Apparently, it was now an hour away. An hour passed and no truck appeared. I called again. It’s just half-an-hour away now, I was assured. Deflated, I stopped calling them, and settled into a long wait. I was finally picked up at 10:30pm.

I was livid. Not just with the recovery company, but mostly with myself. The reason why I was in this mess was nobody’s fault but mine. And I should have known better.

My need for recovery had been created by a puncture while out on a bike with tube-type tyres. I didn’t have tools, a spare or a puncture kit with me. In short, I had no way of fixing the tyre.

I was stranded in a village only about 20 miles from home, and even closer to two large towns, so had I known from the start that the recovery was going to take that long I could have made other arrangements, for example find a safe place for the bike and arrange a pickup at another time, or taxi home and hire a van for a pick up, or just buy a box of matches and be done with it... But that’s not even the point. This would not have been a problem at all if I had been prepared for it. All I needed to do was to carry basic tools and a spare tube with me. But I didn’t. And my blood pressure paid a high price for that.

A few months ago, I had a puncture while riding in Scotland. That time it was a tubeless tyre, and I had a plugging kit with me, so I was back on the road in half-an-hour. This time, I had fallen in the false sense of security because I was so close to home that carrying repair equipment seemed like overkill. But a long wait is a long wait, no matter how near or far you are.

While I was waiting… and waiting… and waiting for the recovery truck, I suddenly remembered the feature that we have in this very issue. The one about essential kit that people who know better never leave home without (see p. 32). We had talked to several people who spend a lot of time on their bikes, and really know what’s important to carry and what isn’t. They all had said they carry a tyre repair kit with them. Every last one of them.

I had put that article in the magazine just a few days earlier. It was painfully fresh in my mind. I could almost list the items that everyone had mentioned from memory. But I hadn’t had the sense to take the advice and pack the items that I needed. I was a fool. A damned fool!

So, don’t be like me. Don’t end up waiting for hours at the side of a road when you could be riding into the sunset. Read the article, and let me know if there’s anything our experts have forgotten, because for my next ride I’m taking all the kit I can carry. If you see a biker with a kitchen sink on the back of the bike, give me a wave.