Wednesday 30 May 2012

If you can't beat them, join them?

In which our heroine starts to consider a bike to call her very own...

Again, this has been a long time coming.  I've always been easily led, so I suppose it was inevitable that I would eventually start to think about whether I too should consider joining the dark side and getting my bottom on a bike.

The cyclist is being very encouraging, despite this being 'his thing'; I'm pretty sure he doesn't need to worry about me gatecrashing his position as the racer in the family - and I suspect his motives are largely driven by the fact that he wants to get involved in the bike selection process.

But if I were to take the plunge, it would not mean that for us cycling would become a couple-y pursuit.  Please forget any romantic notions you might have of those 'advert style' rides, where laughing couples in casually stylish and coordinated outfits cycle down a leafy lane simpering at each other without a care in the world.  Instead, cast your memory back to the dark place of that terrible Sunday.  You know the one; shortly after your 17th birthday, clutching your Provisional Driving License in your sweaty little hand and heading to the supermarket carpark with your silent and grey faced Dad in his Cavalier.  Remember the grinding of gears?  The yelling?  The silence? The hot hot tears of frustration?  From all involved?  THAT is what a bike ride with my cyclist would be like.  I can't risk that, I have kids to think about.  Strictly Riding Solo and no mistake.

Now then, to bike or not to bike; what does this decision ultimately boil down to?  I've made a handy list of the pros and cons currently occupying my mind -

PROS:
1) Thighs.
So I could say something far more worthy in praise of one of the many well-documented benefits of cycling, like 'General Health and Fitness' or 'Increased Life Expectancy', 'Setting a Good Example to the Kids' or 'Reducing Stress', but I'm afraid it would be a big fat bollocky lie.  And after all, this is my blog - what's the point of pretending to be something I'm not?  For me, it's all about the thighs.  And glutes.  Toned tummy - how I've missed you.  Muffin top, be gone.  See ya, bingo wings! Etc.  In my mind, this is how it works: 2 spins round the block = bum and legs like Gisele Bundchen (maybe 3, I'm not expecting miracles).

2) Cake.
My research has scientifically proven that cyclists are obsessed with cake.  And I like a slice* of Victoria sponge or caramel shortbread as much as the next person. Having seen my cyclist's Garmin uploads I would have to concur that cycling does seem to rather efficiently burn those cheeky little calories that are starting to gang up on me, and even leave a bit of space for some additional ones to be thrown into the mix pretty much guilt-free.

*4 slices.  And a cup of tea.  And a tube of Smarties to wash it down.

3) Nice People.
All the cycling people I have met have been nice.  Without exception.  I'm sure there's some knobbers out there, but I've yet to encounter them personally.  And one of the main things they all have in common is that they want you to give cycling a try, and they want you to enjoy it too, especially if you're a girl.

4) Loving it.
People are always going on about riding their bikes.  Rides they've been on, rides they're going on, weather and scenery and cakes and friends and foam rollers (?).  It all sounds pretty, well, FUN.

CONS:
1) It looks like bloody hard work.
Pretty self explanatory really.

2) The outfits.
I have no problem with the principle of the kit, I'm just not 100% confident I can carry off head to toe skintight lycra with a cushion sewn in the bum (unlike the cyclist, who actually makes that shit look hot).  Not only would I look like Mrs Sausagelegs in them, those shorts (which I've been told are absolutely essential from a bike comfort point of view) look like a short cut to WedgieTown from where I'm sitting.  I suspect people will point.  And laugh.  But will I be speeding past them too damn fast to care? Laters Dickheeeeeeeeeeads!

Probably not.  At least not right away.  But one day I might, and that would be sweeeeeeet.

3) It looks like bloody hard work.
Pretty self explanatory really.

4) Skill.
Contrary to popular belief I can ride a bike.  That is not to say I have any bike handling skill whatsoever.  In fact, I think it would probably be reasonably accurate to say I have all the natural bike riding ability of a duck.  A slightly chubby and self-conscious duck, whose shorts have gone up its bum.  I would be a Chopper and/or Whopper, and I'm not sure I can handle that.  Also, there is a very strong possibility that I would get to a set of traffic lights, not be able to unclip my foot and go slowly over sideways like Del Boy playing it cool at the bar.  Which would be hilarious if you are the twat in the Audi watching, but I expect I'd cry.  Also, Im a scaredy cat.  I am scared of falling off the bike.  I am scared of cars and traffic - both the possibility of them squishing me and of nasty men leaning out of the window and shouting mean stuff at me.



So what to do?  I suspect the key is not to get too carried away.  Do I really need Di2 on my first ever bike?  A carbon aero frame?  Probably not - what's good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander.  IF I do decide to lycra up and get my bum on two wheels I'll need to match my bike to my abilities.  And thus make sure I get one with a bell and stabilisers.




Saturday 26 May 2012

Kit and Caboodle - part 2: Jewellery is for wives, not bikes.

In which our cyclist spends an inordinate amount of time fiddling with his bits, because the bits are the best thing about being a cyclist.


One of the very first lessons I learned about cycling was when the cyclist bought his bike.  Except he didn't, because cyclists don't buy bikes.  They buy a frame, and wheels, and gears, and saddles and stems and bars and all the rest of it.  It's not a bike, it's a handpicked collection of parts; and so much greater than the sum of all the individual components as it contains the indefinable ingredient of you.  My cyclist revels in the fact his bike is unique to him.

And the best bit about it? The individual components can be changed whenever time and finances allow.  Recently, a new headset was added.  A proud picture was subsequently posted on twitter, however following the tiniest touch of criticism our cyclist decamped to the back yard in an arse with a hacksaw for 2 hours worth of swearing to 'slam the shit' out of it.  And the new headset was the latest in a series of component changes.  Like the tale of the broom that has had 5 new handles and 3 new heads over it's lifetime, the bike evolves.  And the components are getting blingier; a new chain (gold), pretty pedals, a nokon cable set - the cyclist has been buying his bike jewellery.  A lovely friend of mine pointed out that jewellery was meant for wives, not bikes.  The cyclist disagrees.







The purchasing of new components is however a long and tiresome process.  Firstly, once the cyclist has it in his head that a component change is on the cards, there's the research phase.  This involves many hours of contemplation, comparison, visits to websites and forums, cross-referencing of magazines and blogs, and minute examination of group test articles with allowances made for tester bias and results accepted or rejected based on whether or not the cyclist deems them 'bollocks'.  He hasn't made a colour-coded wall chart yet, but I expect he would.

Phase 2 is of course, attempting to find said component at the best possible price.  We're back to comparison and web surfing here.  A sticky moment can come if you wish to actually eyeball said component prior to the actual commitment of purchase.  Obviously, the best prices are usually obtained from online retailers who work out of a warehouse because, overheads.  However, this can mean finding the item in question in real life to have a little dribble over is tricky.  There have been a couple of sundays written off to the fruitless trawl of bike shops within a 20 mile radius trying to find an example of an X in the glass cabinet near the cash desk where the good shit is.  This phase also includes the fairly complex maths of P+P and stock levels.  Availability of a product is always key - as once the cyclist has his mind set on a component, he absolutely cannot race until it has been added to the bike.  If he can't get his sticky paws on it immediately we will be subjected to a sulk until said item has arrived.

So, the bike is bitching.  Admiring glances are cast its way at races.  She is your absolute pride and joy.  So you must look after her.

The cyclist loves cleaning his bike.  Loves it.  He doesn't like cleaning anything else, but cleaning the bike is part maintenance, part catharsis.  There is a special stand (I have stubbed my bloody toe on it so many times), and nothing in the house can have a greater purpose than serving the cleansing of the bike.  All cloths, sponges, tea towels, bath towels and clothing left lying around are fair game when it comes to bike cleaning.  Also lost to the general cause of bike maintenance have been a NARS make up brush, 3 pastry brushes and once, memorably, my toothbrush (I had a spare, but that's not the point).

The cyclist has also taken to fashioning rudimentary tools in the pursuit of bike maintenance excellence, like a chimpanzee trying to reach a particularly succulent but troublesomely well-hidden grub.  Exhibit A, the attachment he has created for the soldering iron from a filed-down teaspoon to remove old tub glue from his rims.



Some of the cyclist's bike tools.  You might like to note that in the best traditions his set of Allen Keys has someone else's name on. 

So the bike is clean.  And the house is filled with the aerosol whiff of GT85, because the bike lives in the front room.  But that's another story...

Saturday 19 May 2012

Kit and Caboodle - part 1

In which our heroine's washing basket fills up with lycra and she learns you can never have too many gloves...


At the moment, my cyclist is racing his bike on average 3 times a week.  This means I am permanently washing crazily expensive padded lycra gimp-gear (that is the last time I will refer to it as gimp-gear, I promise).  This is a sample conversation:


'You are washing my stuff separately on a 30oC delicates, aren't you?'

'Yes dear'.

But of course I'm bloody not.  I am, in fact, frantically opening kitchen windows and fanning the door to clear the clouds of steam emanating from the washing machine and humming loudly to try and cover the sound of the 'Mega-Super-Spin', which is threatening to dislodge the taps and shake the tiles from the walls.  Then getting said kit out of the machine really quickly to hide the fact the load also contained 3 sets of the boy's school uniform and an oven glove.

Washing this lot at 30oC!  You are having a LARF, cycling brands my husband favours.  Have you seen what these cyclists do to their kit?  These bibshorts need a boil wash and no mistake.  Mud, blood, tears, sweat and chain lube are not coming out of anything at 30 degrees.  And yet, that's what all the washing labels in all the garments are insisting is the absolute maximum temperature they can be exposed to ('Warning! This top will dissolve if you dare wash it at 40oC!' 'We cannot be held responsible for what may ensue should you put this on a coloured cotton wash!' 'Hand-wash only or face irreversible damage to the space-time continuum!' etc).



This is most of the current kit roster - though there's bound to be something I've forgotten:  Three lengths of bibbed bottoms - shorts, full length tights, and a cropped capri pant length thing called a bib-knicker.  ( You are not allowed to snigger at bib-knicker.  You are a grown up).  Also, leg-warmers, for a mid race / ride leg transformation.  Training socks, racing socks, oversocks, overshoes, gore-tex overshoes.  Short sleeve jerseys, long sleeve jerseys, arm-warmers, over jackets, rain cape, gore-tex rain cape.  Not forgetting shoes, glasses, assorted lenses for the glasses, and helmet.

Now, let's have a little chat about base layers.  Base layers?! 'S a vest, innit?  We are in glorious possession of three types of base layer.  Apparently, at least 2 of them are 'sweat wicking'.  Well, that's just disgusting.  Where precisely does it 'wick' the sweat to?  One of the base layers is not only 'sweat wicking', but it's fabric is 'technical'.  I can only presume this is for wearing when you have to go round a lot of corners, as I'm now pretty sure through watching Eurosport that this is what 'technical' means in a cycling context.

And socks.  Socks. Socks socks socks socks socks.  The brand my cyclist favours prints the ambient temperature-range design parameters on the sock itself.  I can't work out whether this is risable or genius.  Either way it's worked, as we have a sock for any temperature you could possibly expect in the UK and several which are hopeful rather than likely.  If you can find the matching sock you need, you have hit the sock jackpot.  If not, whatever the temperature, one foot will always be in perfect besocked comfort, while the other either freezes or swelters in a 6-12oC 'Early Spring' sock (the Blood Type O Negative of cycling socks).

And finally, to gloves.  I have been informed that you can never have too many cycling gloves.  These are the gloves my cyclist recommends you have :
  • Short fingered racing gloves (you should really have a couple of pairs of these)
  • Long fingered racing gloves
  • Long fingered cool weather/ evening training gloves
  • Thermal gloves for winter training
  • Waterproof gloves
  • Gloves that are bought because you like the gloves.

Note:
The cyclist doesn't actually like wearing gloves.  If he can get away without wearing gloves, he will.

Tuesday 15 May 2012

Stage Races Baby, Yeah!

In which our heroine gets her knickers in a twist and her Sky+ filled up with highlights footage.

My cyclist told me, once I'd finally grudgingly admitted that watching cycling on the telly wasn't akin to cruel and unusual punishment for shoplifting employed by the likes of Al Qaeda and probably was better than Emmerdale after all, that I would eventually grow to love the Classics above all other races.  While I won't deny I enjoy these races, I still prefer a good solid stage race to get my teeth into.  Paris-Nice? Why don't mind if I do! etc.

And yay!  It's May! So thanks to the Giro, and now AToC, the Skybox is full and I'm not even kidding.  I've just had to delete 2 entire and unwatched series of The Wire just to make room for Jersey Shore (I think we'll all agree as to which is the more seminal televisual masterpiece).  But oh! The palaver!

Dearest Eurosport, home to the cringworthy Sidi adverts that make me feel like I want to dettol my eyes and the gruntiest of Eastern European Women's Tennis, a question for you - and this is important: How hard exactly is it to timetable a highlights programme for the same time every day?  ITV4 manage it (when they cover the races, that is) - 7 'til 8, after The Sweeney; we all know where we stand.  Wrangling with Eurosport and the Sky+ gives me The Fear.  The sodding thing won't series link and I don't know why, and the coverage on at 6pm on Tuesday and 11pm on Wednesday, and somehow we've got Stage 5 twice and no Stage 6, and here's 45 minutes of Ladies Curling that I'm sure I didn't order.  I have to sit down every couple of days and go through the listings with a fine toothed comb, setting to record each of the installments individually, hoping against hope that I don't fuck it up.

Oh god I haven't set it up for the Tour Series yet...

But anyway.  The Giro.  I've got a horrible, terrible dirty little secret.  I'm not really 'getting' it, and I couldn't work out why.  It all started so promisingly.  I LOVE a TTT.  LOVE, with capitals and italics and everything.  Generally, TT's are my absolute favourite stages anyway - Race of Truth and not half - but a TTT?! *Claps hands and reaches for the Ferrero Rocher*  But it's all fallen apart for me a little bit since then.

Now, this is worrying me.  You see, I've read ProCycling and I know full well the Giro is supposedly the connoisseur's Grand Tour.  Thems what knows these things says this one is the best.  This is the sophisticated Green and Blacks 70% Organic Dark Chocolate to the Cadbury Twirl of the Tour de France. Oh! So obvious!  But me and the Giro just aren't working out, and it was last night, while discussing this very topic with the cyclist and a glass of wine and watching Stage 1 of the AToC that I worked out why.  You see, it's not the Giro, it's me

I'm new to all this, not steeped in the romance and history of it all; a major aspect of the sport which seems so important to so many and that I really haven't got my head around yet.  I like my shit flash and brash, and frankly I'm not going to apologise for that.  I watch Grey's Anatomy, not Casualty.  I couldn't care less for gritty Ken Loach dramas - I want Bruce Willis crashing a police car into a helicopter.  So there's the Giro... and then there's AToC.  AToC, with its riders I actually recognise (Oh! I like him! Oh! And him!), its shiny clean all-American glow, and (and this is more important than it probably should be) its Tupac soundtrack (shake it shake it baby).

I understand all the reasons why the AToC exists (basically it boils down to selling stuff) and all the reasons why there are so many big-name riders over there (basically it boils down to selling stuff).  But I have no problem with selling stuff.  Sell away!  The more stuff you sell, the more races there will be for me to watch!  The AToC seems (to a newbie at least) a little more easily accessible than the Giro. 
[Please note - even I am aware that AToC is not a Grand Tour.  My comparison of the 2 races stems from the fact that they are running concurrently, not that they are equal in status.]

I haven't given up on the Giro just yet, though.  There's still plenty of time for me to fall in love...

And I suppose that's another of the things that's so great about cycling - it really does cater for everyone, from the lifelong aficionado to the daft blonde who can't work the Sky+.

Friday 11 May 2012

A day at the races - part 2

So your cyclist is going round in circles with other cyclists.  What now?

You may find yourself on the side of a hill on a cold sunday morning.  You may ask yourself, well how did I get here.  Well the bottom line is I love my cyclist and I want to support him.  And the people you get supporting other cyclists at these races are kind and friendly and inclusive, you will always find someone to chat to.

Although they will sometimes be in attendance, I like to NOT always take our kids to the cyclist's races for various reasons.  Firstly, sadly, they get bored.  Secondly, your cyclist will have filled the car up with all the essential kit items he absolutely needs, but which for mysterious reasons only he can explain will never make it out of the bag.  This leaves precious little room in any vehicle for small people, and the vast arrays of crap that they too will inevitably require.  Thirdly, it gives you immunity to use your 'special cheering words' during the race without having to explain what a bellend is and why they shouldn't say it in front of their Grandma.  Fourthly, you have to watch small kids like hawks at races, for their own safety and that of the riders.  


I always find crits are the most fun for attending en famille; Daddy swings past every couple of minutes and as a spectator you have a much better feel for what's actually going on in the race.  Also, they tend to be of a shorter time duration, so are more likely to hold everyones attention, and sometimes they are in town centres so you can do a bit of stealth shopping and hide it in the car and the cyclists never even notice.  (If there's space in the car that is.  But I've found you can usually get a pair of jeans and 3 t-shirts under each child if you bribe them with a muffin.)  From a spectators point of view, the crits tend to include some of the more entertaining swearing from the riders; the doppler shift lending particular added comedy value to the word 'Dickheeeeeeeeeeeead'.  This is Sparta, baby.

Sadly, your cyclist will not always finish his race.  If your cyclist has the misfortune to get a puncture or a mechanical and have to climb off he: will have been going brilliantly  / it's the best he's felt all season / he would have got top three, definitely - delete as applicable.  Always agree.  If he crashes, it was: the other guys fault / the trees fault / the roads round here are rubbish / the weather was in his eyes - please select your option(s) from the list.

Post race, watch the riders come back in to the HQ.  Generally, what has happened on the road stays on the road, even if they've been screaming their heads off at each other for 100k there tends to be a grubby and slightly battered lycra-clad battlefield camaraderie.  Like if they were X-Men or something, but they had been ill.  The races I have attended have been brilliant on the post-race set-up tea, coffee and cake in glorious abundance.  Your cyclist will require refuelling pretty much immediately - in fairness they burn thousands of calories.  We take a protein shake bidon for after the race.  I have an extraordinary innate ability for making up protein shakes, I can get them extra lumpy.  Usually after a cup of tea, a piece of cake and a chew of his protein shake, my cyclist is fit to hold a conversation and contemplate peeling off the lycra and facing the real world.

Once he's summoned up the energy, your cyclist will have a little wipe down (a cyclists bath) with his very pro eau de cologne water spray and a handtowel he brought with him for the purpose.  If (when) he has forgotton his handtowel, he will use his underpants.  You or he will need to unpin his race numbers and hand them back in to retrieve his license - I LOVE doing this cos sometimes they let you rummage through all the licenses to get yours and you get to spy at everyones pic and they all look like serial killers.  Finally it's on with the sweatpants and trainers, and home! (To Burger King!)

And if you're lucky, you'll get to wash his kit...

Monday 7 May 2012

A day at the races - part 1.

In which our heroine bravely faces full-frontal male nudity in a village hall car park at 9am on a Sunday morning.

They're not shy, cyclists.  And God, I love my mirrored aviators.  It's like Mr Ban knew.

Well, I'm not going to insult you, dear reader, by trying to suggest for one minute that I don't know where to look.  I know full well where to look, and the effort of not looking is blinking SUPERHUMAN.  And exhibitionist cyclists are just one of the things you need to be prepared for if you find yourself attending a race in support of your cyclist.

Ladies, please note I can only speak from my own limited experience.  If you are to attend (for example) a stage of the Giro and don't see Bernie Eisel's willy in a village hall car park before the stage start it's not my fault, I suspect it might work slightly differently at WorldTour level.  Or maybe not.  Might be worth a try, eh?

Races seem to be ridiculously early on a Sunday morning.  And generally (the ones up here anyway) they are in the middle of nowhere.  So be prepared to be up at bollocks o'clock, pale and bleary-eyed, making porridge; as prior to racing your cyclist you will need to 'load' him.  One time the cyclist requested pasta for pre-race breakfast.  He got it, but strangely enough it didn't hit the spot at 6.30am and porridge has been henceforth officially proclaimed the 'Breakfast of Champions'.

Pre-race, your cyclist will probably be stomping around in a right arse as he performs the rituals of Getting His Kit Together and Loading the Car; the ProTip here is to ignore him and watch cartoons as your involvement will not be required until a 10-minute round of Hunt the Heart Rate Monitor Chest Strap, and possibly a quick go of Where's the Car Key (You Had It Last).  Also, expect the drive to the race to be conducted in near-silence as he gets his race head on.

The race HQ is likely to be a Village Hall, with parking spaces for about 6 cars.  You will almost certainly be parked on a grass verge about a quarter of a mile down the road with someone's Punto up your arse.  Let me make a serious point here; ladies, do not go to the toilet in the race HQ before the race.  I cannot emphasise this enough.  If you're lucky, you'll be faced with the sight of a couple of 3rd cats doing their Chamois Cream face in the ladies.  If you're unlucky, you'll wish it had been the 3rd cats Chamois Cream face.  In fact, don't go to the loo at all.  These cyclists have no regard for the differentiation of the Mens and Ladies facilities.  Prior to the race there will be 60 fellas 'getting to race weight' in there.  And after they've all set off, the loos will be Glastonbury-level post-apocalyptic.  And they'll have used all the tracing-paper type bogroll.  Either go in the service station on the way to the race, or get to the HQ 3 hours before everyone else and ring yourself out and don't so much as suck a wine gum after that.  And if you require a caffeine hit because it's a Sunday and it's 8AM, you will be better off eating a spoonful or two of nescafe granules than having a coffee.  This is one of those times in life where dehydration is your friend.

So, back to the rampant nudity in the carpark.  A few tips: Focus on the middle distance.  For your own sake, NEVER casually glance through a car window; no good can come of it.  And if you are mid-conversation with a complete stranger about, say, the weather, or the road conditions and he starts stripping off and getting changed don't be too surprised.

As well as the exhibitionism, there will be a certain amount of posturing, pouting and preening going on prior to the start of the race as the cyclists puff out their chests and show off their plumage.  Ignore it.  It's not for your benefit, ladies, they couldn't be less interested.  They are trying to psyche each other out.  Some of it will work, most of it's bollocks. If you catch someone trying to psyche out your cyclist, you are well within your rights to give them evils.

Once the race has started you may find you need to get back in the car and drive for a bit to actually get to the race, as the HQ is often a few miles away from the action.  Make sure you have some form of entertainment for yourself.  The majority of races I have attended have been laps of about 9 or 10 kilometres, and mainly involve me sitting in the car for 20mins at a time between getting out and having a clap and yelling a few words of encouragement (keep them general in case you have accidentally mis-identified your cyclist and are cheering on someone else's.  I've heard this can happen.).  Take a book, a magazine, your iPod, knitting, Rosetta Stone Foreign Language CD etc.  And in the extremely rare event of the weather Gods smiling on the race, take some sort of folding chair.  If you do have a folding chair you will be far more pro at this than me, cos I always mean to take one and I always forget.

Generally speaking, supporting at the race is pretty fun, providing the weather is not totally grim.  There is a blitz spirit camaraderie between the hardy spectators, dressed in everything they own and trying to remember which bidon's got the special energy drink mix in and which one's got the protein shake in. The worst part about being race support crew is being asked to run the gauntlet that is 'The Feed'.  I dread being asked to do 'The Feed', which appears to consist of playing chicken with 60 fellas doing 40kph up a hill while they swear at each other, with your eyes tight shut and one arm stuck out into the road.  You then get an empty bidon chucked at your head and 2 of your fingers broken passing across a full one, all while trying not to cry or do a wee.  If you're lucky, you'll only have to do it once in a race.  If you're really lucky, you won't need to do it at all, your cyclist recognising the abject terror in your eyes and deciding you'll only mess it up anyway and he's better off pacing the bottles he's got.

Thursday 3 May 2012

Finnegan, Begin Again.

In which we look at the event that got our cyclist back on his bike. Because they always come back.

My cyclist barely touched a bike in 10 years.  For 7 of those years he was with me. And as time progressed the realisation dawned that I would one day have to share him with the bike.  I watched it happen, saw the seed planted and the desire grow. It began to cast a foreshadow, so much so that there was almost a sense of relief when the day finally came and the bike came out of the loft.

I have no-one but myself to blame.  You see, I think it was our honeymoon that was the event horizon, and I had booked it.  Our son was 2 when we got around to getting married.  For our honeymoon we had a few days in the south of France, just the two of us with Oscar packed off to his grandparents, then when we got back we trotted off en famille to Center Parcs for a weeks 'Familymoon'.  I had never experienced the joy of a week at Center Parcs before, and full of good intentions had booked us some extortionately priced family based activities.  The most memorable of these was 'Toddler Dance' - a mini disco for the under 4's.  Oscar refused point blank to have any involvement in this whatsoever; he stood at my side glowering as only a 2 year old can.  Eventually, he selected the sturdiest looking child in the room, marched up to him, and in front of an array of assembled parents bit him square on the arm.  It was that kind of family break.  And in the best traditions it pissed down. God, it pissed down.

To add to the fun we had also booked bike hire, bikes being the official mode of transport at Center Parcs.  Bike hire was an eye-opener, for both of us and for different reasons.  Sensible, sporty, outdoorsy types will take their own bikes with them on a jaunt of this type.  I am none of those things - added to which I didn't then and I don't now own a bike.  The cyclist's bikes were at this point in the loft, out of sight and out of mind.  So we had a couple of nasty hire jobs thrust at us, with a toddler trailer fixed to the cyclist's for the little emporer to be wheeled about in.

But it was this crappy hire bike that was the first link in the chain of events that led the then ex-cyclist to becoming a cyclist once more.  This hire bike that reminded him just how much he had loved being a cyclist, and planted the seed that led us to where we are now.

It took the cyclist about 30 seconds to rediscover the joy of being on a bike.  Approximately the same amount of time it took me to be reduced to tears by the experience.  My thighs burned, my lungs burned, my bum burned.  None of this was in a 'good burn' way, or fun, or liberating, I was just miserable.  I spent about 2 days wrapping various items of increasingly bulky clothing around the saddle and myself and whining, moaning and generally being a little bitch about the whole thing, before giving up entirely and walking everywhere - often leaving 20mins or so before the cyclist so as to arrive at the same time.

It took another 2 years for the inertia to be fully overcome and the return to really take hold.  For the bike and the kit to come out of the loft and the situation to snowball wildly thanks to bike magazines and bike shops and bike websites and bike shows and bike catalogues.

The return to the bike seems to be a recurring theme.  Ex-cyclists don't stay ex-cyclists forever.  They dismount, retire, give up, turn their backs.  But whatever their reasons for walking away, be it the politics, the preparation, the pressure - it's not the bike.  Never the bike.  And it's the bike which lures them back, sooner or later.

So now the cyclist has returned to his first and, saving that which he has for our children, perhaps his truest love.  And this time it's on his terms.  Once a cyclist, always a cyclist.