WEEK 8: Get Well Soon

The South East bakes under a relentless sun and drought orders are issued in 3 counties. Buildings not owned by Government agencies are forbidden from being cleaned and clowns may not hose each other down, however badly they may need it.

And it’s pissing down in Warrington. Hurrah! It’s the wettest drought in recent history.

The Great Cycle God continues to smile on me, for each time I set off the weather breaks, or at least rains less heavily, so that I am rarely caught in the full fury of it’s downpour before I’m a few hundred yards from shelter. The sacrifices are clearly paying off. My only problem is ensuring my supply of Bicycle Virgins until the end of the rainy season. Perhaps I can import them from Beijing? Made In China. One Bicycle Virgin. Never Been Ridden.

Unfortunately, it seems the Great Cycle God’s good favour only extends as far as the weather. In matters mechanical I seem to be on my own. There was something wrong with my gears. I could feel it in my lubricating oil. I didn’t know exactly what it was but they felt unreliable. The gear changes didn’t always feel solid. Sometimes I didn’t feel confident about leaning on the pedals. I thought that I could occasionally hear little chinking sounds on the edge of my hearing. But when I looked at them, they seemed fine. A little row of sprockets huddled around the axle of my rear wheel like a pathetic bundle of lost puppies sheltering under a baked bean tin. But I wasn’t buying this sweet and innocent act! I started mounting surprise inspections at irregular intervals, lurking outside the door and then dashing in suddenly, flicking on the light to try and catch them with their cogs hanging out and groping each others locknuts. Dirty little sprockets. They must have heard me coming. I wasn’t fooled! There was something wrong and I would know what it was!

And the next day, I knew what it was. Came time to head home and I studiously donned my cycling garb. The weather was fine; a bit overcast and breezy but not too bad. Traffic was light. I mounted the saddle just as a glorious ray of sunlight broke through the clouds and a fresh scented breeze filled my nostrils. Ahhhh. I pushed off. Three yards later my rear wheel disintegrated. Ever slipped off the saddle and landed on the top bar? Oh yes, you know what I’m talking about.

So, eventually, I regained the power of walking upright and me and my bike mutually hobbled back inside where a committee of well meaning persons offered a variety of advice on the problem. The problem was that my rear wheel was hanging off by the chain. The solution turned out to be the application of a spanner to the wheel nuts. The committee decided I must not have tightened them properly when repairing the puncture. That was fair enough. It seemed likely. By the time I’d cajoled the wheel back into it’s place, the weather had turned and beyond the door was a solid sheet of vertical water. And by the time I’d pulled on my waterproof trousers and set off again, this sudden squall had passed and I was bathed in glorious sunshine all the way home. I always wanted my own personal sauna, and now I was wearing it.

Next day the wheel fell off again. Suffice to say that this was becoming a tad annoying. As were the mocking calls and whistles of some drivers and pedestrians when they saw my road side repair shop in action. I cobbled things together as best I could and ground my way down the road in first gear, the chain screaming and yoweling like a cat trying to go to the toilet through a sewn up bum. Every little bump and twist in the road threatened to derail the entire assembly again. I dreaded having to stop at red lights in case pushing off would be too much for the hub to bear. I never rode so gently in my life, as though the bike was made of rice paper and I was a 200 lb gorilla.

Well, tonight my bike slumbers in the local bike shop, suspended from a workstand like a cadaver on a meat hook. The gear hub assembly is knackered. It seems to be an internal problem, most likely a crushed washer. There is also some surface damage. One or two of the cogs are actually bent over, which I never spotted, and the cable guard is hanging much lower than it should, which brings the cable conduit into frequent contact with the chain, amongst other things. Bike goes into theatre on Tuesday when they will dismantle the whole assembly to see if it can be repaired. If not, we could be looking at transplant surgery, but the waiting list for 4 speed Shimano gear hubs is a long one. All we can do now is offer moral support. Grape, anyone?

WEEK 7: Eternal Shame

Bright and early one mid-morning afternoon I set off on my bike, luxuriating in the usual uncanny cessation of the downpour that had been pulverising the window glass into sand just moments before it was time to leave. Off I went down the road, stopped at the give way, patiently waited for bus driver and white van man, crossed the road and slowly freewheeled down the gradient towards the lights at the junction. I’m so practiced now I can vary my speed so that I arrive at the lights just as they turn green, then I increase my RPM, hit the next gear and am away sometimes before the first car has released his brakes.

Most days I avoid the potholes along the margin between the resurfaced tarmac and the messy bit where three generations of road surface collide opposite a bus stop. Near where new grates for the drains have been shoehorned in there are several deep holes that I like to avoid as they rattle my panniers and squash my gonads. This morning Mr. Bus Driver didn’t leave me any room so I had to grit my teeth and take the plunge.

CLUNK

Hmm… that was heavier than usual. Probably just something loose in the panniers.

Across the junction and onto the cycle lane, the surface here looks like someone dropped a pebble in it when it was wet and the ripples expanded all the way up the road. It’s not a problem. Mostly it’ll just rattle loose objects in your panniers.

GA-DUNK GA-DUNK GA-DUNK

Aye? What? What’s doing that?

Very slowly my clueless monkey brain begins to come to terms with the physics involved and concludes that no, my branch is not being rattled by a Sabretooth Tiger and that no, I’m not being humped by the local Alpha Male. It’s something much, much worse! Stop, get off, bend down, squint at rear wheel. Oh my God! I’ve got a flat!

ARGH!

When did this happen? How did this happen? This morning? I haven’t gone a hundred yards yet! Why did I not notice this earlier? Oh the shame of it. Having to get off the bike and turn around and wheel it back home past all the drivers I just swished past at the lights.

It’s been a long time since I repaired a puncture and never on an internal gear hub. 45 minutes of creative swearing later I was on the road again… and it was raining. I will admit that I was a little less than careful and considerate the second time. Visibility was down, the rain was turning everything into a grey static haze, my front tyre spewed a fountain of water ahead of me and the speed of my passage streaked the raindrops left and right across my lenses. I sped down the cycle lane, flashed past near stationary traffic and came to a sliding, skidding, splashing, squealing halt at the lights. Panting heavily, eyes glazed from oxygen deprivation, I stared around me, taking in the three other lines of waiting cars across the way. I watched the lights turn and spotted an opening. They’d switched seconds too soon and I could get across before anyone else! And I was flying again, carving through the rapidly forming puddles like a horizontal power shower, my trouser legs soaked and the taste of acid in my mouth. Imagine how surprised I was to get pulled over by a Police car.

Mr Policeman was not very impressed. He pulled up beside me after I had stopped, wound down his window and gave me a stern talking to. The lecture included words like stupid and references to brown jam. I very quickly came down off my speed high, nodded, tried to look contrite and agreed with him completely that I was a prat and assured him that I would be much more careful in the future. All the while cars were passing by and drivers were getting an eyeful of an errant cyclist getting a good dressing down. How marvellous for the reputation of cyclists everywhere. This only increased my sense of embarrassment even more.

I slogged into work against a sudden headwind and even more driving rain and slunk off to the kitchen to mope over a cup of tea.

WEEK 6: Death By Cherry Blossom

Green things are growing, flowers are in bloom, mammals small and large are getting randy (some of them have been watching the wood pigeons rutting in the tree outside the kitchen window) and so it’s no surprise that my route to work, once so barren, is now verdant like the hanging gardens of some biblical city. The branches of tall bushes and the boughs of trees are so heavily laden with new leaf growth that where they lean outwards and downwards over garden walls and fences, they create a serious hazard for your average cyclist, zipping along with his head at just the right height to snag a tree limb with his throat. Cherry blossom is evil stuff. It’s so dense it’s like approaching a huge cloud of candy floss moored to a tree. It always grows on corners where it’s guaranteed to reduce your forward visibility around the bend just when you need it the most. I think you can see where I’m going with this.

Oh yes. As I said, from a distance the pernicious pink stuff reaches out so far and so low that your view of what lies just 20 yards beyond is completely obscured. It’s not until you cautiously approach the outer limit of the blooms radius that you can make out the legs of pedestrians on the far side, and then you have to duck so that your chin is almost resting on the handlebars. But in this manner the careful and considerate cyclist may avoid a collision – unless he’s very late for work!

Red light ahead, divert onto the pavement, over the pedestrian crossing, back onto the road, stopped traffic behind, road clear ahead, shift up to next gear, bastard headwind, check watch, feck feck feck, this bits downhill, use it to shift up, argh my knees, work it, work it, lorry behind, blind fecker’s in the cycle lane, speed up beat him to the lights, too late, gone red, onto the pavement, no pedestrians, smooth surface here, pick up speed, corner ahead, take the outside line, nice and easy, nice and easy, CHERRY BLOSSOM CHERRY BLOSSOM! SOUND GENERAL QUARTERS! BRAKE BRAKE BRAKE! TOO LATE, I’M GOING IN… ARGH!

I was lost in a blizzard of billions of tiny soft pink things swirling in every direction, plastering my lenses and gluing themselves to my clothes and tyres. A dense, dark mass swished by my head. A branch? Dozens of tiny whips lashed at me, scittering over my helmet like claws raking a chalk board. The blizzard grew thicker as I ripped even more blossoms free. I had no idea which way I was going or how fast or where I would end up. In the road? In the fence? Just as I thought I would emerge under the wheels of the lorry I burst out the other side into daylight, my vision clearing just in time to catch the look of horror on the face of the unsuspecting pedestrian who very nearly became extremely intimate with my front tyre. Still on the pavement, still moving at speed and still extremely late for work (and too cowardly to stop and apologise) I pedalled on, sparing time only to glance over my shoulder and call back,

“Sorreeeeeee…”

I have an image, very briefly registered, of a tall man in a suit holding a briefcase, staggering backwards and slowly becoming engulfed by a gentle falling rain of millions of tiny pink blossoms, like the fallout from a powder puff bomb.

I arrived at work late, sweaty, exhausted, agonized and bearing multiple small lacerations, but did I get any sympathy? Hell no. I suffered merciless piss-taking the whole day because when I got there I had a big, beautiful cherry blossom flower lodged in one of the ventilation slots of my helmet, right over my left temple.

For the record, I am not New Age, I didn’t leave my grass skirt at home and I do not know the Hula Hula dance.

WEEK 5: Worship The Great Cycle God

Every serious athlete is superstitious. They believe in luck and fate and the power of ceremony, but more than that, they believe that they can bias the outcome of the competition in their favour by appeasing fate through an act of obeisance. And so, before each trial of physical stamina, skill and strength, the professional athlete performs their warm-up rituals. Call it a meditation, call it Zen, call it the conscious manipulation of biochemical processes. Whatever you call it, they do it, and if they get it wrong, they lose. Because they believe they will.

I believe in physics. I believe that if my unprotected cranium strikes a poured concrete kerb stone with just a few newtons of force, it will split my skull and damage my brain and change my life forever. So I take the obvious precaution and encase my brain bone in a layer of expanded polystyrene beneath a polycarbonate shell. However, this won’t protect my body from being crushed by 2 tonnes of steel, plastic, rubber and inattentive Homo sapien, so I wear a high visibility vest and mount lights on my bicycle frame and attach reflective strips to the panniers. This won’t save me in a collision, but it helps to mitigate the risk of one occurring. Even so, there may well be occasions on which I come off the bike and don’t strike my head and am not run over, but suffer minor injuries which could be debilitating, especially injuries to the hands. I can lose skin from my shin or my shoulder and still function day to day, but damage to a complex instrument like a hand can be very painful and hard to heal and make simple tasks difficult. So I wear leather gloves with impact foam built into the lining. Finally, I wear wrap around sunglasses with polarised lenses to keep insects and airborne detritus out of my eyes and prevent me from being blinded by the sun or reflections off surfaces.

And so it is that each time I take to my bike, I first spend 5 minutes packing the panniers and donning my equipment. I have a routine now. After I’ve arranged the baggage into a reasonably aerodynamic bulge on either side of the rear wheel, I start with the high visibility vest. Then the sunglasses are removed from their case and hung around my neck. They’re replaced with my glasses and stowed securely in a pannier where they won’t be crushed. Then the helmet goes on and the sunglasses are fitted with the arms over the chin straps. Finally, the gloves. These are actually fingerless rappelling gloves with a suede palm in addition to the impact foam over the knuckles. The only downside is that it takes a little longer to get a snug fit, but the few extra seconds are worth it. Now I wheel the bike to the roadside and prepare to mount. The gloves and sunglasses are my amulets of confidence; I do not fear low, whip-like branches, tiny bullet-like flying insects, crushing encounters with bollards in tight corners or reaching out in emergencies for purchase on abrasive surfaces. My helmet is inscribed with the holy word ‘Bell’ to ward off evil spirits and strike terror into the hearts of Light Jumpers. The high visibility vest is my most powerful talisman. Across it’s surface a secret sect of bicycle monks have etched the holy incantation ‘Scotchlite: Reflective Material’. And so, I have completed my ritual.

Praise be to the Cycle God.

Just then No Hoper happens by. He is riding a mountain bike hybrid, a cheap mountain bike derivative designed to look sexy to people who find studded tyres and derailleur sets with astronomical numbers of gears a turn on. He is wearing a dark coloured track suit, a base ball cap and a bling watch. He’s carrying a supermarket carrier bag in one hand, steering his bike in a wiggly course up the yellow lines of the gutter with the other and looking back over his shoulder at me and smirking. It takes me a moment to realise what he finds so amusing. It’s my equipment.

As I watch him meander uncontrollably along the margin between gutter and road surface, I don’t share his amusement. Even though his frame is about the right size for his height, his saddle is lowered so far that the crotch of his baggy tracksuit rests on the top tube, which means he is in danger of smacking himself in the sternum with his own knee caps. His tyres look semi-deflated, probably intentionally. The carrier bag waves in every direction, creating a hazard to pedestrians and himself and compromising his balance, which already exists on a knife-edge. He doesn’t seem to know exactly where he’s going from one minute to the next and wanders along in the gutter, then swerves onto the pavement, then makes a hasty turn and dives over a pedestrian crossing without even looking for traffic, then back down into the gutter, his tyres millimetres from the kerb. If he was a pedestrian, people would assume he was drunk.

As I watch him totter off into the distance, blackening the reputation of cyclists far and wide, I debate whether or not he is, instead, a Laughing Fool.

WEEK 4: Thighs of Steel vs. Headwinds from Hell

I was struggling up a very steep bridge near Gatewarth Tip which must have a gradient of something like 3:1. I was heaving myself along at all of 3 metres per minute into the ever present headwind, oblivious to the fine view of the huge, flattened mounds of my communities collective waste that stretched away on either side. So engrossed was I by my physical exertions that not even the breathtaking vista of the early morning sun glinting off the slab sided monoliths of Lever Bro's and Zeneca impinged on my internal reverie of lactic pain. Most people, upon witnessing the heavenly shafts of sunlight burning through the thick, gungy smog emitting from said monoliths would be transfixed by the exquisite refractory qualities of this months Illegal Emissions... but not I. I was engrossed in witnessing first hand the disintegration of the human patella under extreme torsional stress. My mind was a dull blank, my vision blurring at the edges, my breath heaved in gasps, my knees and thighs transmuted into jagged saw blades rasping across sand paper. Everything in the Universe was reduced to one single point of clarity. My arrival at the top. There it was, ahead and above me. A hemisphere of dark grey tarmac bulging upwards to meet the light grey sky. And I was consumed by that single purpose. I could not stop, I could not slow down. Gravity clawed at me from behind like an insatiable beast. The wind pummelled me from in front, smothering me like a drowning man wrapped in a heavy, clinging, waterlogged sheet as he sinks deeper and deeper into darkness, further and further from the bright light of the surface.

Then I was overtaken by Sunday Cycling Poof.

Sunday Cycling Poof is a little like Poncey Cycling Git, except that Sunday Cycling Poof only comes out on sunny weekends and Bank Holidays. He is a strictly casual cyclist who spends his spare time day-dreaming about yellow shirts and watching DVD's of long convoys of sweaty, lycra clad men with shaven legs and bronzed complexions streaming along the roads of rural France. Like Poncey Cycling Git, he has all the gear, but unlike Poncey Cycling Git, he has no idea. He has no innate purpose in life other than to show it all off to the world at large. At least Poncey Cycling Git is going somewhere. He's a bona fide commuter.

Having said that, all this pointless pedal bashing has done wonders for his muscle tone. Barely had I struggled halfway up Mount Agony than Sunday Cycling Poof creams past me, his deeply tanned shaven calves so well defined they cast their own shadows. His legs move with such a regular and powerful rhythm as to make a steam powered locomotive envious of their easy grace. The sound of his chain sighing over the cogs of his incredibly expensive, top of the range, feather light racer combines with the smooth hiss as his highly priced, over-engineered tyres caress the road to create an effect that is almost hypnotic.

And then he is gone. Vanished ahead of me. He has already crested the bridge and is free wheeling down the other side. The sweet sound of his superb machine is lost in the torrential roar of the headwind slamming into my face, overpowering my senses with the reek of decay and the chemical flatulence of the nearby monoliths as they squat among their own wastes. He is mocking me. I know it. As he so carelessly and needlessly swerved around me to overtake on this otherwise completely empty road, he was silently laughing at my high visibility vest, my lumpy, shapeless waterproof jacket and my bulging paniers drooping from either side of my rear wheel like the saggy ass of an elderly house maid. It was like a convertible Ferrari F430 driven by a New Money Super Chav, decked out according to the lastest clothing fad and sporting an Ibiza tan, overtaking a 15 year old Volvo estate driven by Mr. 2.4 kids, 2 dogs and a mortgage.

And yet... and yet, I don't envy him. I plod to work on my terribly domestic tourer each day and I plod back and sometimes I don't see a Poof, nor even a Git. Often I see another Plodder, plodding along, pushing into the headwind, steering carefully around oblivious pedestrians, dodging patches of broken glass or waiting patiently at the lights and then even more patiently waiting for the Light Jumpers before slowly, yet steadily and predictably pushing off and plodding on up the road. We Plodders always get where we're going. We don't get in anyone's way and we don't get cyclists a bad name.

And we don't show off.

Because we don't have to.

WEEK 3: Flies, Floods and Femme Fatales

The worst thing that happened today was absentmindedly pouring milk into my freshly brewed cup of Earl Grey. I say it was the worst thing because everything else had an up side, whereas my Earl Grey was all down the drain.

This morning started off quite good. No rain and bright, ambient light conditions instead of blindingly direct sunlight. A sign of the season. Spring is here, the birdies sing and bastard flies are congregating in their millions over the cycle paths. Perhaps not so much a sign of the season as a symptom of the miles of stagnant waterways and putrid ponds that litter Warrington, thanks to a generation of Architects Draftsmen who thought they were also expert ecologists and landscapers.

So, yes, I had more than one face full of flying fudge eaters... but on the plus side I had missed breakfast so was greatful for the nourishment!

If it ain't glass it's snails and worms! Rainfall round these parts has been above average this last week. All the mosquito nurseries have turned into torrents of heavy, clay filled muck that occassionally burst their banks. The aforementioned clay, on which this prehistoric lake bed is founded, also means that after a decent downpour the ground remains sodden for weeks afterwards. So, the morning after the biblical rains the night before, every stretch of tarmac and concrete is the scene of a lemming-like exodus of half drowned lower lifeforms.

The plus side is that the broken glass all gets washed off the roads and pavements and into the muddy puddles, which are then churned by further rainfall, which effectively buries it all as it settles. But as the fragments of lambrusco and shards of Asda's Own sink below the surface, so the invertebrates rise out of it to creep, ooze, slither and squirm in one last, desperately heroic charge across the macadam to meet a gruesome end in a squishy porridge of their own entrails beneath the uncaring feet and careless wheels of commuters. My journey this morning was accompanied by lots of little sound effects from the road surface as tiny shells imploded, rubbery flesh ruptured and viscera squirted at high speed out of minute prolapsed rectums.

Gentle reader, dry thine eyes and lambast me not, for I did my level best to chart an unobstructed path through this tide of tiny souls, but had I been instead equipped with stilts which tapered to a point smaller than a pencil head, I could not have avoided committing inverticide. Oh, the carnage! A veritable sea of crushed, mangled and liquified bodies littered the scene for yards and yards in every direction! Every time I close my eyes I hear a million tiny mouths gasp their last breath. Oh, the horror!

I saw a really fit bird today! Absolutely fecking gorgeous, she was. A squirty, creamy, spasming orgasm on long, lovely legs topped off by a perfectly proportioned buzom beneath an exquisitely crafted face with lips that made Angelina Jolie look like an Olympic class lemon sucker. Then I hit a lamp post, after which I sort of lost track of her.

Damn.

WEEK 2: Lactic Agony, Lethal Litter and Bad Language

Broken glass. Damn stuff is everywhere but never in the same place two days running. I don't know who or what is responsible for moving it around (I refuse to subscribe to an acquaintance's Gremlins and Pixies living in the gutters theory) but it gets moved wholesale to a new and unexpected location every morning. It is also very carefully and thoughtfully distributed right across every square inch of pavement and for 2 or 3 feet into the road, so there's nothing for it... slalom! If you're good you can spot a path through this minefield as you approach and weave through it like some crazy drunk, but be careful or you'll get pulled over and done for being incapacited whilst in charge of a velocipede.

The worst time is when riding into the Sun. The thousands of tiny fragments turn into one shimmering mass against the grey of the tarmac and as you approach, huge shards and bottle ends materialise out of the glare like vicious, transparent icebergs looming through a North Atlantic fog.

In 2 weeks my joints have aged 2 decades. I may have creaked before, but now I groan too. These constant headwinds are a killer. I'm considering writing a stiff complaint to the Met Office. Also, my knees are considering Union action if their demands are not met. I think it'll go down to a strike because I can't find anywhere that will rent me half a dozen scantily clad harem girls with a knee fetish.

Now the juicy bit. I got a death threat today! Some meaty, bald headed bloke in one of those muscle man T shirts that are intentionally 2 sizes too small for your bulging manly physique was walking along the pavement with his wife. They were between me and a cycle lane which starts about 20 yards further on. I approached slowly from behind and enquired as to whether I might pass by. Honest, I was polite. I've seen some cyclists who aren't. This guy turns round and lets fly with a torrent of verbal abuse. In between repeats of "f**king" and "f**ker" and "f**k you" he suggests that I might use the cycle path on the opposite (left hand) side of the road. Unfortunately, this is across busy traffic and going in the wrong direction. He is unsympathetic when I point out that I'm heading for the other lane. His wife restrains him. Then, mouthy git that I am, I wish him a nice weekend. So he comes back at me, red in the face, screaming, bulging his manly muscles Hulk-like under his tiny T shirt and shouting that he'll kill me. Wife leaps in front and tries to head him off. I don't hang around to see if she's successful and take advantage of a lucky break in the traffic to leg it across the road.

Now, this was nothing to write home about, you'll agree. I hear worse for even pettier reasons, mostly from gobby youths, but as a cyclist, having someone suggest they're going to run you down next time they see you strikes a nerve. If those damn Mersey Waste container lorries don't get me, maybe this nutter will!

And tomorrow... the excitement continues!

WEEK 1: Day 4: The Agony Continues

Headwinds. In every direction! Is that natural? Or is it another example of the deleterious effects that large conurbations have on the local climate? Your average metropolitan area of between 2 to 5 hundred thousand people typically increases local air temperature by as much as 2 degrees! This is more than enough to create interesting and unique weather patterns in the locality, such as fecking bastard headwinds!

Another fascinating and extremely aggravating feature of this local climate is the daily pattern of wind changes. In the morning I travel generally North East into town. In the evening I return South West to the surrounding urban sprawl. Unfortunately, the wind adopts an exactly opposite routine. Maybe it works nights? Maybe it's the graduating temperature inversion across the Cheshire Gap between the Pennines and Snowdonia. Maybe the wind is just a contrary bastard that likes to really piss me off! At the risk of anthropomorphising what amounts to nothing more than a pressure differential, I'm going with the last option because this allows me to Curse the Wind in all manner of creative and debauched ways, when I'm not suffering from oxygen deprivation, that is.

My suffering was magnified by the fact that 5 minutes before I left it had been raining heavily, so I donned my cumbersome water proof trousers in addition to my customary light weight Regata jacket. The entire trip home was bone dry. Not only that, but my waterproof trousers are very bulky, so you can imagine the effect on my aerodynamic profile! If Mr. Poncey Wannabe Professional Cycling Git had showed up today, I think he'd have escaped me. That would have been a severe blow to my male pride. However, as it was, Mr. Poncey Git turned out to be a Pussy Git as he was too cowardly to venture out in conditions of horizontal rain and gale force winds. This boosted my machismo a few notches, which was a good enough reason to yet again triumphantly collapse in a sweaty, agonised puddle in the back garden when I got home.

WEEK 1: In The Beginning...

ARGH! MY KNEES!

Day 3 of cycling to work and while I've still got the puff, my knees are giving me jip. They're saying things like "You cracked or something? You ain't 16 any more!"

It's about 20 minutes one way, which is pretty good. I was expecting more like half an hour. Of course, I was really belting along. I mean, sometimes I even went as fast as 3 or 4 miles an hour! I nearly got a nose bleed! And the great Cycling God seems to be smiling on me. Every morning it's been blasting gale force winds and pissing down monsoon rains when I got up, but the weather has cleared just long enough for me to get into town dry before opening up again... except for this evening on the way back when it was head winds all the way, no matter which bloody way I was going! Even so, I made it back in less than 15 minutes! Well, after all, I couldn't let the posing tosser in his little lycra undies and his branded cycling gear and poncey little cycling booties get away from me, could I? I may have had 10 times the aerodynamic drag and been close to passing out from anoxia but the bastard didn't get away! Oh yes, I very triumphantly collapsed in the back garden when I got home. Yes! That'll show him! Hoorah.

I'm just sitting here now waiting for a call back from the hospital regarding my knee surgery.

And tomorrow... DAY 4