My mighty mamils

These are no ordinary mamils. These are my mamils. My job this afternoon was to shoehorns these arsebutter enthusiasts from a small country road coming down the Dublin Mountains* onto a busy busy N81 jampacked with Audi drivers on Redbull. 
But to be fair, I was well equipped: a high vis vest, a little red flag and a whistle. 
Thankfully, and surprisingly, there were no casualties at my junction. In the last hour I saw quite a few mamils who wished they had never at any stage considered that the 100km Wicklow Mountains Challenge was a good idea. I'd bet that pints had been consumed when the decision was made to join. And pints were sweated off the hard way today, up and down country roads. 
All in all, 650 riders registered for the Repair Factory's annual fundraiser. And about 620 turned up this morning. Thirty no-shows had come to their sense once the fumes of whiskey and banter and I-dare-ya in the pub had evaporated. 

* they're just big hills really, but to these guys today they surely felt like mountains...