The advent of a Due team riding the “A” distance had given the softer Coglioni what they though was a perfect excuse to get out of riding hard. Apart from the four who had completed the 5 Dams: Babel, Bif, Cookie and Spunker, only C.C.C.’s official puncture-meister Stuey was too slow to get his excuses in. Paddles had been spending the weeks prior to the event convincing anyone who’d listen that we were all endowed with the time-trialling ability of Fabian Cancellara, but the team spirit of the Freo Dockers circa 1995-2009. A little unfair perhaps, but it was enough to prevent anyone from volunteering to even the teams up. A five-man Uno was duly registered

Arriving in Lancelin on the Sunday morning, I noticed that someone appeared to be missing. Where was Cookie? I phoned to see how far away he was and, despite a terrible line, managed to ascertain that his daughter had been in a car crash. Mercifully she was fine but plenty of material damage had been done and he would not be able to make it. We were down to four. Appeals to the Due boys for an extra rider were met with hard stares at the ground and weak excuses. Mercifully the ever reliable Paddles was brow-beaten into foregoing a ride with his Saturday morning crew of Gaz and Boab and joining our depleted squad. Thank heavens that he did. The five of us made our way to the start resplendant in red.

Much talk had taken place prior to the ride about teamwork. A long overdue discussion had been convened, official rules and guidelines had been written up and we were hopeful of far greater team harmony than had been seen on occasion in previous seasons. One of the requirements of this brave new world was that each team should have a captain on the road. Using criteria that I never quite got to the bottom of, it was decided that maybe I might like to give it a go. “How hard can it be?” I thought to myself. After studying the route, I formulated a plan. Ride steadily to the first, and apparently only real, climb. Go easy up aforementioned first climb. Get rolling and see how we go. Piece of piss.

We rolled off into the beautiful Lancelin sunshine and almost immediately settled into a steady and very tidy roll. After a short time, the road began to start going up and, almost immediately, Stuey started to struggle. We took it nice and steady to the top, staying together well. Unfortunately, the road continued to undulate as we ploughed into the headwind through the first half of the lap. We maintained a comfortable pace, sometimes rolling as a four to give Stuey a break and sometimes as a five when he was feeling stronger (i.e. when we were going down hill). As we got on to the second, flatter part of the circuit, things picked up significantly with the wind now behind us. We were now going along very nicely all working well and apparently fairly comfortable.

In the distance I saw a blue team. It couldn’t be I thought, but as we eased closer, it became clear that it was indeed the Due boys. We chose to keep going straight past. All seemed good with the world as we approached the end of the first lap. To everyone’s great surprise, including his own, Babel suddenly announced that he would not be able to continue at the pace we were setting. This didn’t seem like the end of the world. We were getting back into the hard part of the course, perhaps we could change formation, put Bif and Paddles on the front, have Babel and Stuey tucked in behind them, with me on the back keeping an eye on things and work our way through.

It soon became clear that this was not a simple case of giving Babel a rest and he’d come good again. He began to look worse and worse and before long was limping along. To our chagrin, the Due boys had come past again and were disappearing over the horizon, but what could be done? Occasionally we tried a four man roll protecting Babel at the back, but he could not stay on, so we went back to the formation riding. The rest of the ride was an exercise in keeping together as a team. Salt was well and truly rubbed into our wounds when the Team Type One boys, our arch-foes from last year’s glorious Golden Spokes campaign, came rolling past. Paddles and I were reduced to shouting “Orange bootees” and “Golden Spokes” at them as they eased into the distance. It was around this time that Stuey noticed that Paddles was committing a cardinal Coglioni sin. His left sock was displaying the Champion System logo, rather than that of the venerable C.C.C. After suffering a torrent of admonishment and hilarity, he sheepishly explained that he had been going through his socks discarding worn out ones. Unthinkingly he had thrown out all his left-foot C.C.C. socks and was left with a collection consisting entirely of right-foot socks. It’s fortunate for him that the Golden Goolies committee is likely to react favourably to his having switched teams and having done such a sterling job for his adopted Uno.

We got to the end to discover that we had, as we feared, been beaten by a worthy Due side. We were a little (lot) disappointed, but pleased that we’d worked as well as we could as a team and all got home together.