Tour de Farce
Filed Under Journal
Today, I bought myself a new bicycle. Actually, I’m using the word “new” quite wrongly: (a) the bike itself is a second-hand model, and (b) it isn’t actually replacing any other bike, as I haven’t owned anything with pedals since I passed my driving exam in 1996.
As I attempted to climb on for the first time in well over ten years, my right calf - unaccustomed to such exertion thanks to years of living behind a desk - immediately cramped up. My mind raced how I could nonchalantly explain away my sudden grimacing and grunting to the perplexed bike salesman, but in the end the best I could come up with was “Cramp!”
Eventually, I managed to clamber aboard. As I took the bike for a test spin around the block, I realised the old saying “You never forget how to ride a bicycle” is quite accurate. I also discovered that there is a very good reason why the phrase doesn’t include the word “gracefully”: the first couple hundred metres were exceedingly wobbly.
It also didn’t help that I was too busy concentrating on not falling over to even consider trying to change gears, so for the first few minutes I laboured away in a gear evidently designed for conquering almost-vertical Alpine trails: for every three dozen pedal rotations, the wheels moved about an inch. The previous owner obviously took the “mountain” part of owning a mountain bike very seriously.
But eventually, I managed to ride around with something almost approaching aplomb, and figured out how to switch gears without having to stop and inspect the controls. At this pace, I’ll be in the Tour de France next year! After all, I’m twice the man Lance Armstrong is… literally.
Oh wait, did I say “Tour de France”? I meant… “pub”.
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