The best of bike intentions
Christ on a bike! Well, not Christ, but me, which is equally as difficult to imagine depending on your faith in both Christianity and me wobbling around on two wheels between cars.
I amone of life’s stop-starters. I give something a go, then fall back to old patterns. There are millions of us out there, which probably explains why there are so many self-help books on the shelves.
My latest plot to find spiritual contentment is to bike to work, which is probably the same reason Christ had a go on a treadly.
I love my bike. It was shiny and new once upon a time and it took me around several mountainbike trails. I continued to love it even after the time I wound my way through a forest thinking, ‘‘man, I’m good at this’’ just seconds before I slammed into a tree.
More recently I had hopped on my bike to do a 10 kilometre trail, turning back only 3km in because I was unfit, had flat tyres and a chesty summer cold heralding its wheezy arrival.
Undeterred, I promptly took my bike in for a service and just as promptly leaned it against the fence at home, hosing it down now and again to rid it of tell-tale cobwebs.
However, the stop-starter in me decided it was time to rise again. To become a person who bikes to work. Usually this is easy because ‘‘work’’ is actually the room next to my bedroom but I’m doing a contract in town.
City cycling is a whole different ballgame. There are cars to contend with, which are a lot trickier than trees, and concrete which is not as forgiving as a forest floor.
There is never a time where I am thinking ‘‘man, I’m good at this’’ when I amon the roads. I am not an experienced road cyclist and I have a healthy fear of cycling around the city. Overriding that fear is my hatred for Wilson’s Car Parks, and thus, I shoved my handbag into a backpack and set off on what should have been a 10-minute journey.
Fifty metres down the road I realised my tyres were flat. Not feel-the-wheel-rim flat but close to it. My fitness level is low but the soft tyres made it feel like biking through mud.
A few intersections up the way, I finally had the luck of a red light. I stopped for a rest and considered spewing or fainting.
By the time I arrived at the office, I had the face of a woman with an excruciating bowel blockage. Yet, somehow I considered it a raging success.
By home time, it was raining. Experienced cyclists probably look at the weather forecast before leaving the house in a dress made of thin material.
Two pedal revolutions up the road, my chain came undone. I looked longingly at the taxi rank but instead wrestled the chain back into place and started again.
A few minutes later, I narrowly avoided a car doing a U-turn.
Less than a minute after that I nearly went for a skid crossing the tram lines. Something inside me was dying. No matter, the wheels were for turning but the lady was not. I battled on.
Near my house there is a shopping village with a bike pump and a few tools. I was desperate to get there. The thought of roadworthy tyres was all that kept my sodden little body going. However, the pump was broken and I apologise to anyone near the
By the time I arrived at the office, I had the face of a woman with an excruciating bowel blockage. Yet, somehow I considered it a raging success.
Edgeware Village around 4.30pm on March 15. Your ears are not a toilet.
Next stop, the service station. No bike pump there either, so it was off to a friend’s house around the corner.
I was part drowned rat, part lobster-faced clown and in desperate need of a tyre pump.
‘‘Stand under the awning out of the rain while you do it,’’ she said.
There was no point. I was sodden. My thighs were burning and my face was in a similar state but it was a start. It gets better, right? You might not be able to reinvent the wheel but you can reinvent the person who sits on top of them.