Back In The Saddle In New York City
My back circle skids out from under me on the rain soaked leaves, my body lunges forward as the pedals spin freely in the split subsequent it takes the tire to find fresh purchase, I brace myself in the drops, stiffening my arms and arrest my prisoner. My balls come to rest millimetres from the crossbar. Leg muscles that have laid dormant for more than twenty years have screamed back to duration, pain courses through my calves, my thighs, my abdominal muscles, my back, my forearms, my lungs. Fuck, everywhere hurts. Yearn Hill Road is kicking my arse, again. I’m soaked, a mixture of sweat and rain, covered in mud, the required wet stripe from my ar*e to the nape of my neck, cold and hot at the same time, short of breath, despite swallowing up superior gulps of precious, beautiful, polluted New Jersey air. Strangely, I feel more alive than I have in years.
At 44, I’m back in the saddle. After years, misery, decades of struggling to justify spending the best part of a week’s wage on a bike I finally bit the bullet and put down $800s on a screw up one's courage to the sticking point framed road bike. A retro styled number from Bianchi. Cages on the pedals and down tube mounted shifters intimate it’s not that different to the bikes I rode in my teens and early twenties. But, even though it’s the base model in the Gran Fondo – Italian for Big Fondo, I hypothesis? – range, it’s by far and away the best bike I’ve ever owned. Until a few weeks ago that last sentence would of ended, ‘…by far and away the win out over bike I will ever own,’ but I’m hooked, I know this is just the start. After a few short months I’ve extended my usual ride from 10 to 20 miles. My day feels incomplete without a ride – there’s a joke in there somewhere my Mrs may or may not cognizant. I feel the healthiest I have in years, despite the pain which, in fairness, is temporary, I’m sleeping better, much wagerer and, rather than altering my diet, I’ve developed a twisted logic that means I can justify fry ups, curries and the like by chastity of exercising excess calories away. Life, as those cheesy t-shirts smug fuckers everywhere in is good.
