I can't get no Enlightenment satisfaction

With last week’s blizzard whiteout stretching the length and breadth of the nation, I was obviously unable to use my bike for travelling to work and had to resort to flexing my boot soles back on terra firma for the first time a while. Of course, this consists of trudging an eight mile round trip just so I can saviour working in subzero temperatures within a forty foot metal container with no heating, a fantastic experience I suggest everyone should sample at least once in their lives before they die from the onset of pneumonia. Ah, the need to earn money and survive in a consumerist dream world, balanced against developing a life-threatening disease if you choose to work!

On your daily bike

As I bike to and from work each and every day, I have ample time to observe the minutiae of everyday life unfolding before my weary, weather-buffeted eyes in all its unusual and unexpected ways. Most of the time I ride quickly past certain events and happenings without showing any more interest than a quick side glance across or the break of a smirk upon my face; just occasionally however, I do feel a need to stop and offer a helping hand, and this is what happened just the other day as I cycled back from work during a cold morning sprinkled with winter’s first frosts.

Cycling vs Fate: in need of a new God?

Yet again, I’ve experienced the brunt of God, the Gods or whatever universal energy force may exist out in the nether regions of the ether, pissing on me from up on high and having a good old time laughing its/their balls off at my expense whilst the last drips land. This disruption usually occurs two or three times a year at specific months and after many years of scrutiny and realisation, I try to prepare as best I can for the coming onslaught of Fate’s dice-throw. As I’m still limited to travelling to work using the age-old transport method of the bicycle, this is usually the weakest link in my so-called life and it is most likely to be one of the contributing factors towards my tri-yearly stresses. So it comes as no surprise that this month’s boiling rage has arrived with a plumb and has been ushered in with yet another cycle-related extravaganza of pain and suffering for myself.

A tale of two Bicycles

As mentioned in previous blog entries (see "Cycling..." for more details) I have for now - over the last 6 months at any rate - been cycling to my place of work in what I like to refer to as an “enforced fitness regime”: this phrase basically means having to use a bicycle for a ten mile round commute into my job and thus enduring a physical workout I actually have no say in. Now, please don’t get the wrong idea and think I’m complaining about pedalling hardships without gaining some benefit from all this cycling; now I’m half a year into this perpetual sloggery, at an age where the good times are long gone and my belly's future does indeed appear bleak, I’ve noticed my once slack shape has tightened somewhat and I do feel quite fit, although not quite as a fiddle.