[Closed] #TOTW- Be on time – or early – for group rides. Do the faff the night before

Ha! My freehub died on the way to our ride this evening. Ended up being 15mins late after running back home and swapping bikes, didn't matter though as someone else had child issues and was also 15mins late. All kept up to date within our WhatsApp group though so nobody was hanging about in the cold.

How about on trail faffing? People who have to play with their layers, or their suspension pressures, or their tyre pressures (and they always need a gauge to do this, not a quick squeeze), or their layers again, or adjust their helmet straps, or dig out a snack, or adjust a seat post or brake lever position (probably with a tool that requires assembly and digging out of a pack)… at every gate, or top of climb, or turning… At least with car park faff you can just sit in your car and wait for them to get it over with, but on the trail you’re left hopping from one foot to another trying not to scream in frustration!

Just as bad if not worse.  Just have your bike sorted and ready to go.  OK I am a bit obsessive ( who me?  could you believe it?) with bike maintenance but either you are ready to ride or not. sort yer bike out beforehand

You can have faffing at the end of the ride too. I once had a puncture about 10 mins ride 40 mins walk from where we had left the cars. The guy whose car I had gone in said he'd go and fetch the car to pick me up rather than mess about fixing the flat. He was so long faffing about changing and sorting his bike that all the others had left and I had walked back to the car park.

Jerry.
Jerry was never late for a ride.
However, at the top of every hill, Jerry would let air out of his tyres for the descent.
At the bottom of every hill, Jerry would then top up his tyre pressure for the climbs.
There was a lot of faff during a ride with Jerry.

Kids is the reason that our Monday Night Pub Rides start at what some people regard as the weird time of 8.15.

Did start at 8.15. Bloody kids growing up and gaining some independence means they start a bit early for me nowadays. The arseholes. 😁

I had someone turn up to a ride late with no chain and a box fresh new one, and then expected someone else to fit it. She was late because she'd been to the lbs on the way and then wasted time wondering/arguing why they couldn't drop everything to fit it there and then.

It's not the worst job, but while it was being sorted she insisted on watching and learning instead of getting kitted out. More than doubling the delay.

Then to cap it all, the chain jumped like **** all ride, she sort of blamed the guy who'd fitted it, was firmly told that cassette and chain often wear together, and then she said that the lbs had said the same but she'd thought they were ripping her off.

I did laugh heartily on boxing day this year when the biggest anti-Faffer in our group arrived after the 6am roll-off slot and announced he'd forgotten to even bring a water bottle for a 100km ride. I had to loan a bag and now have the opportunity to faff as much as I like for at least the next year.

and are always in a rush to get home to “keep the Mrs happy”

That might be a euphemism, hence the rush to get back 😎

Sadly rarely the case in my house, I just need to remember the famous war cry "Remember lads, if you get home early, they never remember, but if you get home late they'll never forget!".

Sadly for this reason coffee stops are a rare treat these days ☹️

I once took my roadie friend on his first mtb ride round a muddy trail centre, he had to keep stopping to take pictures of his clagged up bike to send to his Dad!

There’s a clue in the title - Organised Ride.

I’m in the ride starts at 10.00 type. Get there when you want but, we leave at 10.00.

Allowing extra for unforeseen circumstances is all well and good but as groups get bigger, there is a strong chance at least one will get held up through no fault of their own.

This leads to others getting annoyed and the group falls apart. Ride starts at 10 - one day at least I’ll be the one playing catch up, but for most of the time it’ll be great.

I prefer my own company 😂

can’t be arsed to make the effort to get somewhere when everyone else is getting there

This sums it up for me.

Have a mate who, without fail, will always arrive with his bike needing some attention, adjusting or putting together.

He travels down from Berlin to Munich for a week in the alps or even Finale and its inevitable that at least half a day of the holiday is spent fixing his ride.

It's not like he's even got a full time job to worry about.

Does my head in.

I don't mind a little bit of lateness or faffing in the carpark every so often, but I want to maximise my time on the trail in the time I have available between work, family and domestic commitments.

I despise avoidable faffing on a ride though.

Whats that? Your gears don't index right? Should have looked at it at home. Brake pads need changing. Ditto. Surely you don't need to adjust your suspension pressure for every single descent? The list is almost endless.

You're stealing my ride time.

Pretty much, I dont ride in groups bigger than about 4 or 5 because it seems to be that beyond that number, some kind of faff critical mass is reached and you can be sure that something is going to happen.

Serial faffing 🙄….

Rider A stops for a faff, everyone waits and chats. Ready to roll and suddenly Rider B realises they need a faff - “won’t be a minute”. Ready to roll again and Rider C needs a pee!

Faffing should be a parallel activity!

Some rides, all I seem to say is “shall we go?”

I’m caught between 2 extremes.

My regular riding buddy is pathologically late. I have come to accept this, and plan accordingly, started factoring in 20 mins of lateness into plans.

MrsTH, also a regular riding partner, is mortally fearful of being late. And builds 10 minutes of leeway into every part of a journey (travel time, fuel stop, any other stops etc).

I’ve spent hours waiting to start bike rides…

My riding group just has a tacit agreement that if we say we'll meet at 7pm, we really mean 7.10. They're always 'late', I'm always 'late' but we all arrive at the same time (7.10) and there's never any faff. I'm never quite sure how many of them are aware of this protocol, and I don't rock the boat by asking.

Faffing is part of group riding. I can fondly remember many trailside repairs and incidents over the years. If I want to just ride non stop I'll go out on my own. When hanging out with good mates I'd probably be just as happy to spend the time faffing, tinkering and having a laugh as going for the ride.

Depends on the level of faff. I've had pals turn up with barely a rolling frameset to build into a bike for the ride albeit, it was a weekend away but still they had to build it on the Saturday morning while the rest of us were ready to go. Slightly taking the michael.

I'm completely of the 'it doesn't matter' type guy.

I have a riding mate who in the last 20 years has only turned up on time once... but 99% of our rides start at my house, so i'm sitting at home drinking coffee waiting instead of being standing round a car-park... so i really don't mind.

I don't 'do' the big groups... if i have a group of people riding, they've got kids too, which instantly brings instant faff time as kids are, well, kids.

I'm a lot less time poor than most though on here it seems.

...they had to build it on the Saturday morning while the rest of us were ready to go. Slightly taking the michael.

I'd have just suggested they catch us up at lunch time.

Our club rides are quite social and include a fair bit of stop and go. I'm actually quite grateful for it as it allows me to catch my breath.

But turning up any trying to undertake bike maintenance at the start of the ride is unforgivable.

Another bugbear: arriving at friend's house, ready to go, and they insist on offering you a coffee. You feel slightly rude refusing, "No thanks, I had one before I left...cos we were due to be riding at 10...". Then have to watch them make the world's slowest coffee for themselves, and drink it, before getting their gear sorted. Probably obvious I frequently choose to ride alone!

The bloke who always faffed the most on our rides surpassed even himself when he fitted a cartridge BB in the car park before a ride once (BITD)..............

Faffing is part of group riding. I can fondly remember many trailside repairs and incidents 

This illustrates the fact that some people don't understand what faffing is. Neither of those is faffing ( although a carside repair probably would be)

Things breaking whilst riding ( assuming a modicum of maintenance has been kept up) is not faffing.

An incident is not faffing.

( though they could turn into faffing)

arriving at friend’s house, ready to go, and they insist on offering you a coffee. You feel slightly rude refusing, “No thanks, I had one before I left…cos we were due to be riding at 10…”. Then have to watch them make the world’s slowest coffee for themselves, and drink it, before getting their gear sorted

This however is faffing, and is completely unforgivable.

I like to think that I faff in a considerate way because if I have something that I know that I'll have to tinker with before we set off I'll get there very early so I can be done by the agreed departure time.

My mate is always late for everything, kids play a small part now, but he was useless before he had them also.

It isn’t unusual to turn up to his at the agreed time for a ride to find him mowing the lawn or washing the car because he had a ‘spare 10 mins’. Today was his finest hour, I was supposed to meet him 11ish for a ride in the sun, he messaged at 11 to say he was in Banbury (we live in Loughborough) and was finally ready to go at 4:45! I’d been and done by then, not waiting anymore.

If you think bikes invoke faff in people you should spend time with climbers. Especially trad climbers eyeing up a route they might find a little spicy.

It's fine to ride with faffers if you have all day and aren't fussed about making any particular target. But when you have a full time job, a family and time is limited and precious then I've no time to wait for faffers.

These days I mostly ride either early in the morning at the weekends or in the evenings mid week. Probably why I mostly ride solo.😁

definitely the patience for faff decreases once kids come along. If there's a window for riding and some 20-something turns up late and then faffs because they only got in from the nightclub in time to change and come out again there's amusement but not much sympathy.

Also see 'can we delay until later because it's drizzling' texts 30 minutes before the agreed time.....that's one thing that having kids trained me to do - if the riding slot allocated by SWMBO is Saturday and back by midday please then that's when I was riding and you can tolerate all kinds of crappy weather if it's that or nothing 😉

As for the late in ride mechanical or why don't we stop for a coffee and bacon sandwich / quick pint..... at least at that point you can choose to decline and carry on home. In that respect, the group ride is a bit like sex; it's lovely to finish together but sometimes you just need it over with so you can get home to the wife.

If you think bikes invoke faff in people you should spend time with climbers.

God yes. Back in the early parenting days I had a meeting in Sheffield finish early once so stopped off at Burbage on the way home to Manc to do some soloing. I bumped into this group a few times as I worked along the edge, generally sitting about and faffing.

At one point I heard one of them holding forth on the fact that this was the fourth evening that week that he'd gone out climbing. At this point he'd done precisely two routes. I was on thirty something and reached my target of fifty an hour or so later

I couldn't believe how little they were doing with such a lot of time.

I stopped riding with a local road club because even though I liked the social aspect I just couldn't bear the uncertainty. It was a bit wild-west though, the only thing pre-planned was the start time. Speed, distance, destination and size of group would all vary widely, often mid-ride.

I pretty much decided that I'm only interested in group riding on the road if there's less than 5 people at that point and part of that was the multiplying factor of people's mechanicals and lateness etc.

Having said that I once did a big ride in Yorkshire with a bunch of guys and it was remarked at the start how clean and well maintained my bike was and well organised I was compared to the others who all had bikes with various creaks and rattles emitting from them and were searching for their left shoe under car-seats etc.

Everyone's bike made it round the whole day apart from mine when the rear mech exploded into my spokes somewhere near Skipton.

Winter group weekend away in the Lakes, stopping in a YHA.
Everyone ready indoors with full Winter riding gear on.
About to leave the YHA and the one who is ALWAYS late and faffing and stopping and chatting to strangers- decides that now he's all ready and we are about to leave, that he now needs a poo.
We wait while he does a poo.
After some time he then appears robed only in a towel, to our questioning his obvious reply is that he always has to shower after taking a poo as his arse is so hairy.
We wait for him to shower.
Eventually we go a ride, where he rides in a tshirt when and its minus a million, turns bright red and continues faffing and stopping and chatting to strangers.

Social ride.. the time is when we meet, not when we set off. Though like Duggan I only ride with small groups, not interested in large group rides, as even I get annoyed by the faffing.

One of the guys in my riding group a few years ago was an nuclear-grade faffer. Came to a head when we were all meeting at my house at the time (Cumbernauld) to drive north to Fort William for a weekend's riding. When he was half an hour late I decided to phone him: He was still out walking his dog. He lived in Hamilton (at least half an hour's drive away). We stopped including him in invites for rides after that.

We had a "faff" pub once, The Blue Vinny in Puddletown, whenever we met there to start a ride something would go wrong ....

After the worst day at work ever in 35 years, I rushed to pub for the Wednesday night ride only to discover I had left my front wheel at home having removed it to get the bike in the car! Said I would meet the guys later, never did as I went home and opened a bottle of Single Malt instead.

A mate turned up only to find his rear tyre had exploded along with the inner tube, his bike rack was a little to near the exhaust on his Landy. Called a mate who was on route and got him to go home and pick up a spare tyre and inner tube.

Same bloke turned up with a flat tyre and found his replacement tube was actually for his road bike.

Someone else turned up and had left their saddle and stem at home having removed it to get the bike in the car.

A mate who was always late wasn't there at the appointed time so we rang him, "just finished breakfast and putting the bike in the van". The ride started 45 minutes late as of course he had some faff to do before we could leave. After this ride we always told him the meeting time was 30 minutes earlier than it actually was. He never knew as he was still late on most occasions!

At one point I heard one of them holding forth on the fact that this was the fourth evening that week that he’d gone out climbing. At this point he’d done precisely two routes. I was on thirty something and reached my target of fifty an hour or so later

I couldn’t believe how little they were doing with such a lot of time.

Yeah, but it's nice sitting on a flat boulder under Burbage chatting and soaking in the sun and views. Setting yourself a target of 50 solos or whatever sounds right at the other extreme. Sometimes it's nice to just sit somewhere pretty and shoot the breeze.

Not really the same as having to wait in some gloomy forest car park with your bike ready to go.

In that respect, the group ride is a bit like sex; it’s lovely to finish together but sometimes you just need it over with so you can get home to the wife.

Genius.....

“No thanks, I had one before I left…cos we were due to be riding at 10…”.

Don't have coffee at home and arrive early, problem solved. (Unless their coffee is vile stuff, them carry on as you do now).

Bin dun:

Rule 57: // The Ride Starts on Time. No exceptions.The upside of always leaving on time is considerable. Others will be late exactly once. You signal that the sanctity of this ride, like all rides, is not something with which you should muck. You demonstrate, not with words but with actions, your commitment. As a bonus, you make more time for post-ride espresso. “On Time”, of course, is taken to mean at V past the hour or half hour.

Looking through this, I'll glad I ride with my mates and not some in here 🤣
Some of the comments are so lame

We ride at ISH the same time, decide on a route in the car park, faff, stop and chat, eat, ride a bit more but most importantly have a laugh and blow off steam. The grippy is from 28-52 - some with kids, some with not. Main thing is we are mates

Mmmmm... Purest Green

Just came to post the same

Oooh, I can notice it! 😊👍

This reminds me of the famous saying;

"The man who never misses the train spends too much time at the station"