Had a few laps around the block with Darkerside on the front end of the Morpheus, after it had been indulged with Bike Works TLC in the form of an oilchange in the hub. There's no pictures of that because I'd forgotten to take my camera off the 2 second delay setting, so LaidBack only took pictures of his own feet.
We swapped so that Darkerside could get a feel for captaining, and there are pictures of that because I'd figured out the delay thing. I'm not going to publish them because I was wearing my mercilessly honest lightweight Lycra top today and in the recumbent position I look like Jabba the Hutt, if Jabba the Hutt had been vigorously wrestling with Slimer from Ghostbusters in an eye-searingly dreadful piece of 80's nostalgia homoeroticism that probably exists in slash fiction somewhere on the bad internet.
After that, we consulted my OS map collection and went off on our merry way to West Linton. There was a slight delay at the beginning because I had a senior moment and completely failed distinguish which one of the three southcentral roads we had should be on. Mr and Mrs OS came to my rescue and the ride began.
The unfortunate thing about heading west out of Edinburgh is that you need to go through much more guff to get to the pretty bits, compared to the east. Going out that way you've got maybe eight miles of the Innocent or Duddingston Road, Portobello and Musselburgh, and then it all gets a bit Enid Blyton. Going west it's fifty percent more distance, and it's got vastly more drivers thundering past you on their way to be disappointed by furniture.
Once all the nastiness was behind us, we had a pretty blimmin' lovely ride. The road though Deepsyke Forest can be an utter scumbag if there's a headwind, but today it was barely a breeze, and the sun picked out the Pentlands just as prettily as you could wish for.
One tearoom stop in West Linton later, we went over the rolling hills, past Lamancha, round the lovely new surfacing by Gladhouse, thence up Temple, Eskbank and back to LBB. Holy muffins, we live just north and west of a gorgeous place. (adjust co-ordinates if you're not afflicted with Edinburgh)
Darkerside was on his fearsomely decked out Kona Sutra tourer, a device with no mean turn of speed but looks like it could survive a zombie apocalypse.
I was on wee blue floofy, my daily commuter, for the first run over ten miles it's had for about eight months. That was definitely the most adventurous ride it's been on as a fixed gear.
I think the distance was just right, because on the last climb, the relatively humble Minto Street, I could feel that my legs had reached their limit of being asked to run anerobically as I honked out the saddle.
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