Everything stops without tea...

Tea - the lifeblood of NoVisibleLycra rides. Not to be overlooked again!!!

NoVisibleLycra discovered that tea is at the centre of its cycling universe. Without it, life just isn't the same. This Sunday, due to some mild texting confusion, tea was not produced for the Sunday ride to Westerham. Andy had been expecting friends from work to join the ride and thought it probably best that we all visited the tearoom on the green rather than try and squeeze four cups of tea out of the NVL flask. In all honesty, it would have been fine: we would all have had one mug of tea each. Normally, Andy and I have two mugs each.

Anyway, I'd received a text saying 'don't worry about tea', so I didn't. If I'm on honest, I was expecting The Saturdays. I figured that somehow, Andy had spoken to their management, possibly sent them a link to the infamous 'hot tubs' post and, well, they'd said they might join us on the ride.

But when I arrived at Warlingham Green, there was nobody there except for Andy, although I still held out a glimmer of hope that they'd be waiting for us in Westerham.

Another problem was the time: we had agreed to meet at 7am instead of 7.30am and when we reached Westerham at 8am, everything was closed.

"Oh, I didn't make the tea," said I, reminding Andy of the text he'd sent me.

There was no sign of The Saturdays and then Andy let the cat out of the bag. "A couple of guys from the office were going to join us, but I think the early start put them off," he said.

"Oh," said I, concealing my disappointment.

To make matters a little more disappointing, the bench behind Churchill's statue was wet so we decamped to the benches in front of the underwear shop, a timely reminder of The Saturdays' absence.

Andy brought out the cereal bars, but without a mug or two of tea our lives were clearly empty and our 'tealess' state nagged at both of us. I gazed up at a clock perched over the shops to our left. It was 8am. By five past we were ready to leave.

"It's not the same without tea, is it?" said I.
"No, you're right," said Andy as we pedalled out of Westerham towards the hill.

It was a good ride, though, and Andy and I bade farewell to one another at Warlingham Green and then went our separate ways.

When I reached home it was 9.15am and we'd been all the way to Westerham and back. A combination of no tea and an early start provided a valuable brownie point back home as I'm not normally expected until 10.30am!

Next Saturday, Andy and a couple of pals are riding from Caterham to Brighton and back. It's an 80-miler, says Andy who's done it before, and while I'd like to join them, I can't due to other commitments. Hopefully, we'll ride out together on Sunday.

On the weather front, by the way, we got a mild soaking on the return trip, despite television weather forecasters saying that Sunday would be a scorcher. It wasn't cold, but it was generally overcast and grey.