How do you know when you’re about to get ill? Is it a period of short-temperedness? A niggling scrape in your throat? A sudden need to eat everything you see? An urge to watch Loose Women? For me it often takes two parts. The first is a ride where i seem to have more energy than ever, and everything is wonderful, and then a ride where all my power has gone. I’m struggling along, barely able to keep up with the catalogue full suspension bike under the drunk in the builders’ hat in front of me. My legs ache and everything makes me angry, especially red lights and hills. Can’t they see I’m already having enough trouble without them adding to it? Could they not torture someone else?
Let’s not even mention all the things which would normally be annoying anyway, but which are now multiplied in evilness. I barely want to keep going and the bus has never seemed so appealing. Just imagine being able to sit there, perhaps even dozing. I‘m jealous.
The next day my head is a mass of blocked sinuses and I’m good for no more than sitting on a comfortable sofa with the TV remote propped feebly in my hand, not even able to enjoy a day off work and with my bikes taunting me from the wall. Every time it feels like it was just a bad ride until my sofa-based reflection reveals the truth, it was the start of something and suddenly all the riding in the world doesn’t make me feel any healthier. Everything’s blocked and sluggish and I’m going nowhere.?
With a crashing segue this brings me to the traffic. Yesterday the traffic lights were out on a major London junction on my way to work and, combined with roadworks at the next junction, this served to reduce the flow of vehicles to, well, not a flow at all. Cars, busses and lorries were at all angles across the road and going nowhere. It served to change my mind about my use for the traffic management systems I have fictionally ordered. I now think that all the traffic should be directed to build a giant gridlock. There is very little more satisfying than weaving your way through stopped vehicles, squeezing round bonnets and trackstanding to find gaps as you leave the cars behind, it has something of the feel of driving anywhere where there are no roads, like getting on a car ferry, or driving a car in a field, a freedom and a break from the norm as well as the satisfaction of getting there quicker.
Also if I directed all the traffic to one place I could drive anywhere I wanted on clear roads. Until I wanted to go to the place I’d directed them to, of course. Maybe that’s how council bosses plan their roadworks and diversions.
If it does all go wrong, and you do get stuck in traffic you now never have to be without In Cycle Entertainment (I.C.E?) as you can keep your iPod, phone, GPS, personal DVD player, Old-school tape Walkman, and probably your laptop fully charged and running with this exciting development. I'm not sure how many gadgets you should safely fit to your handlebars as you ride, but it's good to know that if the commute gets too boring you can have a good film to watch on the way. Might I suggest BMX Bandits. If that's not enough then there's always this different form of I.C.E. which you might find even more distracting.
As a final thought for the day, it seems that worrying about whether you are using the right kind of bike to ride to work is irrelevant when you look at this and this. Time to start commuting on a trials bike then.
A
Let’s not even mention all the things which would normally be annoying anyway, but which are now multiplied in evilness. I barely want to keep going and the bus has never seemed so appealing. Just imagine being able to sit there, perhaps even dozing. I‘m jealous.
The next day my head is a mass of blocked sinuses and I’m good for no more than sitting on a comfortable sofa with the TV remote propped feebly in my hand, not even able to enjoy a day off work and with my bikes taunting me from the wall. Every time it feels like it was just a bad ride until my sofa-based reflection reveals the truth, it was the start of something and suddenly all the riding in the world doesn’t make me feel any healthier. Everything’s blocked and sluggish and I’m going nowhere.
With a crashing segue this brings me to the traffic. Yesterday the traffic lights were out on a major London junction on my way to work and, combined with roadworks at the next junction, this served to reduce the flow of vehicles to, well, not a flow at all. Cars, busses and lorries were at all angles across the road and going nowhere. It served to change my mind about my use for the traffic management systems I have fictionally ordered. I now think that all the traffic should be directed to build a giant gridlock. There is very little more satisfying than weaving your way through stopped vehicles, squeezing round bonnets and trackstanding to find gaps as you leave the cars behind, it has something of the feel of driving anywhere where there are no roads, like getting on a car ferry, or driving a car in a field, a freedom and a break from the norm as well as the satisfaction of getting there quicker.
Also if I directed all the traffic to one place I could drive anywhere I wanted on clear roads. Until I wanted to go to the place I’d directed them to, of course. Maybe that’s how council bosses plan their roadworks and diversions.
If it does all go wrong, and you do get stuck in traffic you now never have to be without In Cycle Entertainment (I.C.E?) as you can keep your iPod, phone, GPS, personal DVD player, Old-school tape Walkman, and probably your laptop fully charged and running with this exciting development. I'm not sure how many gadgets you should safely fit to your handlebars as you ride, but it's good to know that if the commute gets too boring you can have a good film to watch on the way. Might I suggest BMX Bandits. If that's not enough then there's always this different form of I.C.E. which you might find even more distracting.
As a final thought for the day, it seems that worrying about whether you are using the right kind of bike to ride to work is irrelevant when you look at this and this. Time to start commuting on a trials bike then.
A
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