20 years in Addiscombe

[quote](PVT would have been there but his wife was giving birth)

[Sylv]

We need pictorial evidence marco!

[Stu Merckx Man]

awwwww marco.... that almost was emotional reading that

[Sylv]

marco sent me this photo of his first crash to post

[img]http://sellmic.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/falling_from_bike.jpg[/img]

[Rob C]

£89 for that!!! I always had my suspicions that GBs were a bunch of conning bas****

[Dominic]

Fantastic Marco, it reminds me of the club I belonged to (Paddington CC) 20 years ago, albeit I was slightly older. Going places you had never been before with people you had just met, coming back home absolutely stuffed having to use the lowest gear you had (42X18) to get up any bump.

Hanging on the senior members words and advice and never questioning anything or was that just me? One Saturday one of the blokes said, Dominic do you fancy a ride out to recce this hillclimb I'm doing tomorrow? Sure no probs. 135 miles later I got back home!!!

The thing that made me laugh the most in a nice way was you mentioning the clothing it was absolutely shocking My feet used to get so cold that I spent a small fortune then £80 on a pair of red Duegi goretex bootees, absolute bliss. Never did manage to keep my hands warm though

[Andrew G]

Fantastic reading Marco, always good to hear some of the history of the club.

Marco's 20th Anniversary, Paul's 35th in the same year! Cause for a celebration surely - How about a Beer Circus hat dothing to these 2 after the season has finished?

[Snoop Doug]

Hey that's great Marco, and well worth the write up, ahh those early days sound really special. Nice one.

Snoop, just about to hit yr 5.......long way to go yet.

[George]

Great memories and great to hear all about them.

[quote]Marco's 20th Anniversary, Paul's 35th in the same year! Cause for a celebration surely - How about a Beer Circus hat dothing to these 2 after the season has finished?

[Toks]

Reminiscing about back in the days is so cool. Marco you're a Legend now

[Jon H]

Eeee, when I were a lad... etc.

Great stuff Marco.

December this year will mark my 6th Agreeable anniversary, and I'm starting to feel like an old 'un, but that's nowt compared to 20. Just shows what a remarkable turnaround in fortunes the club has had in the past few years thanks to efforts of Marco, Monty et al.

When I moved to London and was looking for a cycling club to join I hunted around and on t'internet I found "The Agreeable World of the Addiscombe Cycling Club". The impression I got was that this was a bunch of people who, above all, enjoyed riding bikes. So I turned up on a clubrun, managed to hang on to Doug Rollins' wheel, and I was hooked.

[mrP(Boonen)VT]

Jon,
I remember when you joined, we were at a 25 at Broadbridge Heath, and saw a name on the start sheet that no-one recognised - Jon Hemming.

We chatted in the hall afterwards and no-one seemed to know the name - was he a member? was it a mistake? A time was posted but no sign of a stranger in agreeable kit - must be a mistake.

A few weeks later, another 25, same thing - who was this mystery man? Did he really exist?

Eventually, I think it was Doug knew what you looked like and we finally laid the ghost of Mr Hemming to rest.

The rest, as they say, is history

[kieran]

Marco, you were very lucky! When I were a lad of around your age, I lived in Kilkenny, Ireland, around the time of Roche and Kelly doing their thing in Europe. Now the thing with Ireland is that the various counties seem to specialise in various sports, e.g. Counties Cork and Kilkenny are the best hurling counties (like celtic and rangers in scottish football), Kerry and Dublin do gaelic football etc. So, for cycling the whole county of kilkenny was a cycling desert, there never has been a cycling club in the whole county and no racers have come out of it, even for the Ras. So while parts of the country went cycling mad, Kerry, Dublin, Mayo and other places, it passed kilkenny by completely. So cycling for me was purely for transport, when young to get us to the best places to swim, later to get to college and work, for many years until I moved to london. Its now almost 5 years since my first cycle with the club, thanks to you and your posts on the C+ website, a club that that actively seeking out new members using modern methods !!

[Sylv]

Should've first said thanks to marco

I'd been in the UK for a year and was riding my mountain bike mainly on the road, well my cross country rides were only as much as a couple of loops round Shirley Hills.

Riding back from the now closed "Fridge" bike shop in Penge one autumn Saturday I accidently bumped for the first time into Jason, on his downhill bike (which took me a while to catch up with!). We got talking and he told me he was going for a mtb ride the following morning with a local club, so I went.

There were loads of people there, including marco. We headed for the trails and for a long ride, I couldn't believe there were such great trails just down my road, I just hadn't explored them. I was ecstatic.

That was the first of many great rides with newfound friends, the pace was not always very high (we had to allow for Jason's ciggie breaks), but there were always comedy moments and some laughter.

marco was still racing in those days so once I'd told him I'd done a handful of races in France he quickly enroled me into the cyclocross season, which we travelled to in his dingy old yellow car. Then he got me to enter a time trial and a road race - both on the same day and still on my mtb.

I was also astounded at marco's will to enrol cyclists in the club. He'd see someone cycling on the other side of the road and would turn back to chat to them at the next traffic light and talk them into Addiscombe! Also remember the time he secretly plastered the walls of the Bike Show with home-made ACC recrruitment posters ...

[kieran]

Sylv, when was this? Was the Fridge the short lived bike shop near sydenham roundabout (had grills in the windows) or there was another shop in Penge on the road to Croydon (if coming from bromley/beckenham area)? Both now gone, including a bike shop in Forest Hill. I've only been in the area 8 years and seen 3 shops close.