OK, I have a whole bunch of posts half-done and awaiting the final push to force them into shape and spewed out to an indifferent world. The problem is that they are all rather complicated and serious, which is a difficult look to sustain around here. In the meantime, things need to keep inching forward.
So, speaking of inching forward, here’s another cycling rumination.
Yesterday we took a little excursion down to Bungendore, where apart from the thrills of grocery shopping at their superior IGA and a look in at the pet shop (where the only lonely little furbaby was a fox terrier cross pug for the eye-watering sum of A$3,500), I stumbled across a bike shop. After a difficult and uncomfortable ride on Sunday, chatting to the personable proprietor was a definite enthusiasm infusion.
The relationship with pedal power goes back a long way. Many many years ago, in another century, on another continent, and as a seven-year-old person, I joined the droves of Bulawayo kids cycling through the suburbs to school in our uniforms and wide-brimmed canvas hats. It wasn’t exactly an epic ride – maybe 4km – but it was hot in summer and freezing in winter, and there were definite hazards along the way.
Of course, tarrying home with your friends on their bikes was a major part of our social life. We would stop at a petrol station for ‘penny cools’: long, narrow plastic sachets of sugary juice which could be frozen or consumed as liquid. In their liquid state they could also be deployed as a crude water pistol by nipping a small hole in one corner with your teeth and squeezing firmly in the direction of your friends. Or, low be it spoke, there were spit-chases, which I’ll leave to your imagination. We were young, OK?
Hydration strategies are much more sophisticated these days. And since those days, a procession of bikes has passed through my doors, to be stolen or sold or donated as situations changed. They boasted every frame material: steel, aluminium, carbon fibre and titanium. There were skinny-tyred race machines and knobbly-tyred mountain bikes; bikes with suspension in the front, suspension in front and back, and (gasp) no suspension at all.
On these machines I could build on the skills honed on those treks to and from school, dodging penny-cool juice and phlegm, traversing tarmac highways and dirt roads, carrying a bag of books, a rugby ball or cricket bat, sports kit, and a Tupperware sandwich box or two. Kids these days just don’t get those opportunities.
Over the years, it’s been a fantastic way of getting around, a source of huge enjoyment – especially mountain-biking in North Wales, Yorkshire and the South Downs – and a notable low-impact contributor to fitness. It’s cemented long-term friendships and broken the ice with new colleagues in new countries. And there have been events: centuries, triathlons, duathlons, treks and races – and the people were always welcoming despite a lack of speed or talent.
So to today’s ride. Just outside town, looming its shaggy tree-crowned summit 907m over the hardware warehouse, is Mount Gillamatong. It’s a pretty dominant feature and a great aid to orientation. There are a couple of ways to attain the summit, but from town you can just see a dirt road heading straight up the hill like a surgery scar. This is where I met my Waterloo on Sunday: cranking straight up the slope in gale-force winds was a miserable and ultimately doomed pursuit.
Much the wiser, today I plotted a course around the side of the hill, where the gradients are gentler. Morning dawned clear, cold, and absolutely windless, so after a carbiferous breakfast of sourdough banana pancakes with strawberries and yoghurt, it was time to harness that new-found enthusiasm. After the usual fiddling about – mainly to do with removing quite a large stick from between the front two chainrings, it was go time.
It was lovely. The landscape to the west of Braidwood opened up, bathed in soft winter light; occasional flocks of sheep gathered around their new lambs and hustled them away from the slow dayglo apparition that panted glacially by. The rolling terrain was perfect for shocking one’s quadriceps out of the disgraceful veal-like consistency they have assumed over too many years out of the saddle.
Recent heavy rains have carved broad gullies over the road, which have been filled with sharp, black rocks – conveniently for me as it compelled me to stop and lift the bike over each obstacle. Being at the bottom of a slope, these would be unpleasant to negotiate at speed: burst tyres and an excursion over the handlebars would be the mildest penalty.
My vintage GPS unit kept switching itself on and off again, rendering measurement of time and distance moot. On the map you can see an unlikely cross-country route in a dead straight line which is where the satellite lost sight of me. Or I of it – whatever: all I know is, taking that unlikely path would’ve been rough, bumpy, and scary to the sheep en route – likely to earn me a rumpful of buckshot from an angry farmer.
Turning off near the Braidwood Water Treatment Plant, it was downhill at a thrilling 40kph, which I can tell you on a dirt road replete with ruts and pebbly bits requires fierce concentration and pennycool-dodging skills. And cold! Now I know why those riders of the European classics used to stuff newspapers down their jerseys when descending. It went straight through several layers including epidermis and muscles (such as they are) and chilled the very bones.
Then back to town on the Bombay Road. Past a postbox at the roadside helpfully labelled ‘letters’ but with no house in sight; a runner in shorts who passed with a curt “G’day” (they really do say that here). Back in town I realised the GPS had failed and so I did the loop again – only for it to crap out again. But really, the whole point was to erase Sunday’s trauma, which definitely happened.
I’ll have another crack at the surgery-scar road after a couple of months’ rides like this. As we know, cycling is about suffering, so toiling up that hill has to happen – you can’t live in the shadow of Gillamatong without having a go.