Death Bycycle
At the moment I’m working away from my normal place of work, at a place where meetings are more popular than work and office politics is pretty much all the meetings are about. It’s a good 20ks away from home so I figured cycling to work isn’t really an option. However, I’m really missing my cycling and, well, any form of cardio exercise so I got the route of bikley.com and set off on Sunday to see what the ride was like.
I got a bit lost. It took me an hour and half to get there. I was a bit tired but ok, I’d left my backpack at home because I didn’t want the extra weight. Unfortunately I’d also forgotten any money, or any drink. My boiled egg and soldiers powered cycle was running low…
No problem I figured, I’d just take it easy and not get lost on the way home.
3 hours later I finally found out where I was, half way home; given the distance I’d travelled (64K) it fair to assume that at some point I must have been reasonably close to home then taken a wrong turn and headed off back the way I came. I was dying of thirst, soaking wet due to torrential storm that had been going for the last 90 minutes and my legs burning so bad I couldn’t stop moving. I’ve never had that before, I was chatting to a jogger nut today and he stated I had “hit the wall”. Man it was nasty, you know when you push too hard your muscles start to burn? It was like that but milder overall but with sharp pain to it. And what was worse is it would get much, much worse if I stopped. Unfortunately I was now massively dehydrated and too exhausted to keep going.
I got home in 4hours and 50 minutes. I did have to spend about 15 minutes on a park bench by a water fountain. I also had to make a quick break at a bus stop.
My legs just would not work, I arrived at the bus stopped, soaking wet, almost in tears, all I wanted to do was massage the pain my legs away and catch my breath. Instead I was set upon by a German woman. I have no idea what she was on about, but she was making the most of her captive audience
Her: “my aunt it vas zer daylight saving time, wiz ze bus had not noticed ya so now I must wait ze bus it is terrible I like my teeth do you see I have ze cat it is very intelligent”
Me: “gasp, gasp gurgle”
She didn’t have a cat with her, but she did pronounce intelligent in a perfect English accent, which leads me to believe that someone had told her the word “intelligent” is English for “dead”