I didn’t go online this weekend. This must be the first time in I don’t know how many months or years. I don’t know what was behind this: too many distractions? A kind of internet malaise? Hours spent in adoration of The Bike.
On Sunday at 7 am, I returned to the Cycling Club a little shame-facedly with my new bike, thinking that perhaps maybe that they wouldn’t notice it was new, but of course being bike people they did. In fact, men kept on cycling up to me, asking me about the different components of the bike, when of course I’m exactly the wrong kind of person to ask these things (‘um, I think there’s some carbon in it’.) Nevertheless, they seemed impressed that I had managed to buy the right sort of bike for myself (something of a relief!) They also seemed to be able to remember the exact make of my last bike (somehow disturbing, since they hadn’t seen me for a few weeks). And what gear I was in at the start of the ride as opposed to the finish. They do like to say things in general like ‘We averaged 26 kmh on the King’s Canyon ride last year', I’ve noticed. I asked one of them, ‘How do you remember all these things?’, and he said ‘It’s like stamp collecting’, which reminded me of the Asperger’s test, and how the supposedly instrumental, male brain is meant to fixate, magpie-like, on such things. (Admittedly, since buying a new car, I have become more interested in makes of car in general, which suggests to me that the male brain thing might just be a matter of acclimatisation.)
In case you are something of a stamp collector yourself, the bike’s a Giant OCR3. I’ve been mentally nicknaming it ‘The OCR’ or the ‘The OC’, after crapulent American soap Imparja is yet to screen. It’s genuinely very fast; I rode at the same speed with the cycling club that I did on the previous ride (you have to ride at a uniform speed) but with minimal effort, unlike my last ride on my old bike, which weighs a tonne. The OCR looks lightweight, especially with its skinny tyres, but it seems to fly over everything (there’s a lot of glass and crap on the roads out here). You do feel the bumps a bit more (I’m worried I’ll circumcise myself inadvertently one day).
The next thing is to get shoes with cleats and the pedals to go with them (looking at another $250 here at least), which will add at least another 1 kmh in speed, I’m told. But even without cleats, it’s still pretty fast. I’ve been invited back to the velodrome, to learn how to race – a bit scary, but then, I used to stand on my head all the time, so I’m good at falling over (fortunately, ‘my’ 60 yo codger seems to have left town). A youngster wants to train with me (phew); I thought she was about 18 at first, but since she has a serious job, I’m guessing 22, 23. She rides 300 km a week; I’ve agreed to just one weekly ride with her.
When I got back home from cycling at about 9.15 am, I had a strange craving for chips or something savoury like cheese and rice crackers. I licked my lips and they tasted salty, and indeed, my whole chin felt quite salty. Then when I went to the bathroom I noticed I had a white powdery substance encrusted on one cheekbone where the helmet strap had been. I flicked off the substance; sure enough, it was salt.
I seem to be covered in bruises at the moment. I think this is partly to do with burning around on a new bike, but also to do with taking low-dose aspirin (as recently suggested by sports medicine doctor). The bruises were a bit of a surprise; I haven’t had so many bruises since I was on warfarin (tho they’re not as bad). This suggests to me that aspirin might actually work (i.e. in thinning blood), which isn’t what some of the medical journal articles I read were saying…
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