When i was a youngen, I used to help my Uncle catch his stock horse. He wouldn't tie it up or put it in then yeard. He would let it roam about the padlock by using a gadget called Hobbles. They're similar to handcuff but go around the front legs of horses, they let the horse walk, eat grass and drink but not gallop away when you try and catch them. There is a point to this story. I usually zip my waterproof jacket to my non-waterproof pants and wear waterproof overpants that don't go higher than that zip. Again there is a point to this tosh. So the end of day one we arrive at the pub and I am 2nd last to arrive. Everybody else is loading bikes into the shed as I stop. It's a bit abrupt and I am really stuffed, the fork bounces back and the bike leans a bit right. I try and get my leg down but for some ODD reason, I cannot get my right leg out and down enough to hold the bike, It's going over and all I can do is shoulder roll away so it doesn't land on me. Bloody embarrassing thing to do with 19 other riders watching on. Anyway no damage to me or more importantly the bike. I couldn't understand why it happened, there was no hole, gravel for my foot to slip, no reason that I could see, and then it hit me. The wet weather pants had slid down to my knees and HOBBLED me when I needed to get that leg out and down. Lesson learned, I stopped zipping the jacket to the pants and that allowed the wet weather pants to get pulled up much higher. Never stop learning or at least I don't. The other thing I learned was just how impressive modern rubber is in the wet, 4 days trying hard to be stupid and only 1 slide, crossing double yellow lines and finding alpine road paint is very slippery. I also fixed my scarily poor front brakes in the rain issue. I hit the disc holes with a rat-tail file and got half an egg cup of fine brown powder out of them the rubbed up the discs with 320 wet and dry and cleaned the discs with brake cleaner and got a fair bit of black crap off them, and now there is a tiny bit non-braking for a second or 2 and then just as good as the dry. Makes long downhills in the rain much safer not having to rely on engine braking.


