I like navigating on rides but I find it hard to navigate friendships though. Route finding your way across the landscape is much easier than route finding in social situations.

I also have a bad reputation among my cycling friends for leading rides that are always a bit more than anyone wanted.

The thing is that I like planning where we go. Control issues, probably based on insecurities. I am not sure that anyone else enjoys me planning where we ride.

Usually I only get the chance to lead when no one else has a better idea, or has somewhere urgent they need to be….or perhaps they have just remembered that they need to stay at home today because someone is coming to see them, someone they had forgotten about until this point and can’t ride today once the route is published.

I plan rides very carefully on RWGPS to avoid hills (I think so anyway), include interesting new lanes and to provide a level of challenge appropriate to the age group (60-75) and fitness levels (varies) of the gentleman’s cycling group I ride with, when they let me. I do like a bit of a challenge though and maybe add in a few dozen more kilometres of distance or a few hundreds more metres of height gain than other people’s routes.

I was allowed, unusually, to plan and lead a ride yesterday. It didn’t go well.

Messages began to appear straight after the ride.

“I really must learn to read messages more carefully. I have only just realised something. I thought today was a Dave H ride with the possibility of the odd ‘unnecessary hill’ not a Dave P ‘special’ with relentless climbing and vast distances. 😱😱”

I am Dave P. The destroyer of perfectly good days out.

I had a flashback image of the author of this message. When we were part way round the ride and after a long series of savage hills with headwinds all day long whichever direction we went.

He was hunched over his bars and sucking hard on his inhaler.

“I didn’t know you were asthmatic”. Good. I sounded sympathetic. Well done me, I am definitely learning the rules of social intercourse.

“I haven’t needed to use it before!” was his somewhat curt response.

The group were very quiet. Avoiding eye contact with me. I was sure I had done something wrong but, as usual, not completely sure what it was.

Several pairs of eyes are on me. “How far is this cafe stop you planned?”

It was still at least another hour away. I look away feeling troubled. This isn’t what I expected today.

Aha! A nearby sign indicates a different cafe just up the road. Fortunately it was not only open but it also had a free table. The mood lightened. I felt the first waves of warmth towards me. The group turned towards me as one over the coffees and asked:

“It’s been a very…...(long pause: I avoid eye contact) umm… a very interesting route so far. Lots of lanes that we haven’t ridden on before. They do seem to go up and over rather than around obstacles though. Unnecessary hills maybe? So, is it much further as it does get dark in a couple of hours?”

We continue the ride after the cafe stop. It seems to be even colder and windier than before.

I also seem to be alone at the front.

There is a gap between me and the others in every sense of the word. I can hear conversations behind me. I slow to let them catch up and the conversations stop. I have no conversation starters left at this point and the gap opens up again.

My wife has instructed me in the art of conversation. “Take an interest in what people are saying, maintain eye contact, listen and…..are you actually listening to me now?“

I do tend to just listen to the beginning and end of sentences and guess the rest. My mind wanders. It does cause me some problems though when I guess wrong and say something inappropriate or just don’t respond because I have lost the thread. I am so easily distracted. I mean to listen but my thoughts go elsewhere in the gaps between words. I wish they didn’t but they do.

The hills begin to ease. There are longer stretches of flatter road and the views open up on either side as we follow an open ridge line. We are crossing the ‘clay country’ now and the hillsides have been turned into vast open cast mines, vivid white scars of decomposed granite where the china clay has been extracted. It has been a bitterly cold day but there are just a few clouds in an azure sky and from time to time where there is shelter from the wind, it can feel almost warm. Almost.

Shade cold. Sun warm.

Alternating bands of temperature as we pass through the cold shade of oak and hazel woods and then the sudden warmth in open pasture from an unshrouded sun.

I sense a warming to me too. The group have recognised where we are now, on more familiar roads. They no longer feel as if we are a very long way from home. I have navigated them across new lanes and different landscapes to a place which is less than an hour to our starting point. And it’s mainly downhill with the wind behind us. Hooray! Success!

The mood has definitely lifted in the group. I focus really hard on listening to the conversations. I think they notice. I am no longer on my own at the front. Now I am at the back.

We get back before dark and, as is customary for our group, we depart with handshakes and best wishes and everyone looking forward to next week’s ride. They make eye contact. They smile. They pat my back and we all head off in different directions home.

I think it went well.

Some more messages arrive in the morning:

Actually it was a great ride along roads I have never been on before and a few of those lovely surprise when you realise you know where you are. Thanks Dave P👍👍

A great ride Dave P. I slept well last night!!!

Maybe I can be a proper human when I really try. I have navigated friendship successfully today. I slept well too.