Chapter 1: ENOUGH OF THE PROLOGUE...

I have had, in my life, 7 bicycles, not counting toddler style disposable jobbies but definitely including the solid rubber wheeled one with the cranks actually attached to the front wheel’s axle on the grounds that it was the first bike on which I was able to move around, unassisted, on two wheels (once the training wheels had been removed).

I am aware that this is not very many. Indeed, as I read through some of the industry magazines that I am currently amassing in alarming numbers, it seems quite a few people these days have a collection exceeding that number all at the one time (with the full suspension and the hardtail and the dirt jumper and a road bike for fitness training and gosh I really need a klunker to muck around on and my old hybrid for shooting down for the paper and milk and so on and so on).

In all that time I have only ever moved onto a new bike through absolute necessity. I grew out of my first and second bikes, number three got nicked by the local yoof gang (and subsequently paraded in front of me disguised with an appallingly bad paint job – bastards), numbers four and five got ridden into the ground, number six – stolen again - and it’s number seven that I’m currently toiling around on after a long lay off.

And it’s really not that bad of a bike. It’s a bit heavy (but still lighter than my daughters screamingly pink Mongoose that seems to have been fashioned out of a solid block of steel) creaks a bit and the derailleur’s need adjustment more than I would like but it’s still better than the vast majority of those I spotted cruising the 10km speed limited streets of Toowoon Bay Holiday park over our Christmas holiday.

So it’s not a small thing for me to say...

I would like.  A new bike.

A shiny and quite expensive bike, probably with full suspension, certainly with disc brakes, that looks cool, can be ridden with some confidence on trails the young people would refer to as ‘Gnarly’ and that I would absolutely NO WAY leave unsecured in the foyer of my block of units to get flogged by some bike thieving bastard who thinks it’s the height of hilarity to crap on the our landing on his way out.

Inconvenient then, that selling this concept to the other ‘members of the board’ as a logical and fiscally responsible option presents certain....challenges. For starters, my wife’s history with bikes can be summed up as – Got on bike. Pedalled bike into stationary car. Replaced two front teeth lost in resulting impact with porcelain ones that made her feel like Bucky Beaver. Also a day 3 years ago creaking around the Western Plains Zoo on the atrocious wobble wheeled nightmares that otherwise fine establishment has the gall to rent out to its unsuspecting customers.

I think I could get the 7 year old on board were it not for the fact that bicycle shops are not known for the wide range of Barbie paraphernalia and/or cuddly stuffed toys necessary to ensure she will spend more than 2 minutes inside one without demanding loudly and insistently to leave. 

My arguments must be watertight. My logic impeccable. My bullshitting off the scale.

NEXT: Rationales are like arseholes....

Prologue Part 5: A SHORT DEVIATION FROM PLAN A...

We have these thorns out here, I think their actual name is Blackthorn. Their informal name – what we call them when we’re pulling them out of fingers or arms or legs – starts with and ‘F’ and ends with ‘ucking fuck, OwOwOw Bastard!’ And they are everywhere (in addition to their almost armour piercing pointyness, I’ve always thought they would go off like an absolute bomb in a bush fire so there’s that also).

As previously mentioned, it was one of these nasty pieces of intelligent design that had quietly lodged itself in my front tyre and despatched my entire stockpile of spare inner tubes in the space of 3 days.

At this point I have some miserable excuses to make. These include (in no particular order): we live quite a long way from the nearest bike shop, I did at this point have a full time job to attend and the fresh memory of my recent arse kicking at the hands of what 10 years ago would have been, quite literally, a 5 km ‘ride in the park’ had me less than motivated. In retrospect, these all point to the fundamental weakness of character that had led to me strapping on size 42 jeans to go to work every day but there you go. The bike, as mentioned, was back on the deck and once again gathering the dust dragged up our dirt road every time we pulled into the driveway.

However.

I did start to walk. First down to the gate and back. Then home from my daughter’s school when my shifts allowed it. Then to and from my daughter’s school. And so on and so on. I cut wood and pulled out feral scrubs (die Blackthorn die) and a couple of times when it was raining I even ran up and down the stairs inside my house. The belt came in a notch. Then another. Friends started to look at me funny, then (after checking discreetly with my wife that I wasn’t in possession of some kind of terminal illness) began commenting on my loss of weight. I stopped drinking soft drinks and flavoured milk entirely and adjusted my diet to one less suited to the maintenance of a herd of soon to be turned into bacon pigs.

Clothing purchases were required. The number of ‘X’s’ preceding the ‘L’ dramatically reduced.

More videos of lunatics riding very fast down cliff faces were consumed.

By a happy accident, the local (and by local I mean less than 50kms away) bike shop was all out of normal inner tubes but:

‘Hey you can try these thorn proof ones if you want....’.

‘Did you say ‘thorn proof’ sir? You did? I would very much like to try them. Yes indeed’.

Back on the bike. Down to the gate and back and surprise! Riding up steep hills is A LOT easier when you’re not carrying the equivalent of 15 litres of water up the hill with you.

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is how I started riding my bike again after 9. Long. Years.

NEXT: DOWN TO BUSINESS...

Prologue Part 4: WHERE IT IS MADE CLEAR I AM IN NO WAY WHATSOEVER – AN ATHLETE.

Replace the flat tire. Drag the bike off the deck (again), stop briefly to tell my wife that she should come and look for me if I’m not back from the front gate in 30 no make that 35 minutes, and off I go.
I should point out at this point that 35 minutes to the gate is in no way as lame as it sounds. It’s 2.5kms of dirt road (a dirt road that has led several of our friends and family to include a car shuttle service in their ‘Conditions To Visit’ riders) there and back and while it’s almost all downhill on the way out, this of course means it’s decidedly not, on the way back.

As a test of my wife’s ability to follow (possibly life saving) instructions the activity is a complete failure, as when I drag myself back up the stairs gasping and wheezing like a 60 year old picture of obese decrepitude (as opposed to the 44 year old picture of obese decrepitude that I actually am) 45 minutes later she is sitting on the deck finishing off a cup of tea. When I am able to put words together in sufficient numbers to point out her seeming lack of care for my well being, she claims (possibly with some validity) that she could hear me coming as of about 10 minutes ago on account of my loud and persistent wheezing cough and was therefore aware that I was still alive.

If I’m going to be honest I’m not exactly filled with confidence by the whole affair. While I made it out to the gate in relative comfort, I was forced to dismount and push on three occasions on the way back despite liberal use of the Granny Gear (the easiest gears on a bike. In short - a lot of pretty easy peddling for not much forward motion with an accompanying hit to your manhood ). Admittedly, I’m still suffering from the chest infection that brought my totally crap state of well being to my attention in the first place but still – My frank self assessment at this point is - Spineless Joke Of A Weak As Piss Couldn’t Exercise My Way Out Of A Soggy Bag Farce.

But the next day I get back on again. And the day after that. While the really big hill at the beginning of the ride back continues to kick my arse three ways from Sunday, I make it up the one closer to home (on account I suspect, of the psychological boost given to me by the fact that it’s, um, closer to home) on at least one occasion. Just as I’m feeling pretty chipper about the whole thing however I get another flat tyre. And 2 more immediately following that before I realise there is a thorn stuck in my tyre that is happily puncturing each new tube I throw in there.

All of which is totally arse. The bike goes back on the deck.

But wait....

NEXT: PLAN B

Prologue Part 3: GET OFF YOUR ARSE YOU FAT, SOON TO DIE BASTARD...

There are many things about having a 7 year old (particularly my particular 7 year old who is a total LEGEND) that are just fantastic, like smiles, games, Christmas, a totally legitimate excuse to exponentially expand your own childhood Lego stash and (some days) watching them getter smarter on an almost hourly basis. One of the unavoidable downsides to the whole business is that sooner or later they hang around other kids, who have spent time with other kids whose brothers Mum’s defacto’s sister spent some time with a kid who was sick. So they get sick. And then you get sick.

Which is why one day when my wife was busy doing something else, my daughter and I found ourselves at the surgery of the local GP looking very sorry for ourselves and hacking up green stuff in sufficient quantities to cause all the other people in the waiting room to actually push themselves through the walls in an effort to get away from us.

Now I’m not sure if there’s some kind of standard operating procedure that covers the presentation of 40+ year old males to your standard semi-rural Doctors Surgery. I’m assuming however, they don’t get their hands on us as often as they would like because once she had spent 38 seconds diagnosing our shocking chest infections and another 25 seconds writing up prescriptions for a bucket load of anti-biotics (and probably taking into account my crap blood pressure, triple digit pulse and really quite alarming BMI) she ordered one of every blood test she could think of.

Next day they rang me back. Which is never that good. There was a lot of red on those printouts. And she was very polite and I’m in a position to know what all those red numbers actually meant and I really really shouldn’t have needed to be told and LOOK, is that a 7 year old child you’d like to see graduate high school? Is it?

Get off your arse you fat, soon to die, bastard.....

NEXT: CUE ROCKY MUSIC

Prologue Part 2: JUST LIKE RIDING A BIKE...

.....is nice in theory. In practice, I dug my 1990something Mongoose Hilltopper SX out of the cave (and I’m talking an actual cave here) it had been sitting in for 5 years, got it serviced, left it sitting on the balcony for another 6 months, got it serviced AGAIN because some of the gear changes were a bit ratty when I rode it for about 20 metres along the balcony that surrounds our house, watched a SHIT LOAD of YouTube videos featuring lunatics launching themselves of cliffs in Utah for motivation, hopped on, rolled down the first bit of our fairly long, gravelly dirt driveway and fell on my arse as soon as I deviated even slightly from a straight line. Which my 6 year old daughter thought was piss funny.

Got up (manfully ignoring the bits of flesh flapping about on my calf) pedalled about 5 strokes back up the driveway and my rear wheel, lacking any purchase whatsoever due to my woefully inadequate tyre choice, spun out from under me and deposited me once again, on my arse. Which my 6 year old daughter thought was.....you get the picture.

Just like riding a bike.

Fortunately I had spent quite a few hours prior to my 6 year layoff riding all over the place on various bicycles so I was aware that being ejected from the saddle twice in a minute and a half was not in fact the way the whole two wheeled, chain and pedal thing functioned in normal land, so instead of immediately returning the thing to its cave (or to the bottom of a deep hole) I swapped my road /trail tyres for a set of trail/road tyres on the recommendation of a local bike shop and gave it another shot.

This was much more successful. I made it 400 metres down the driveway and all the way back without suffering any kind of major cardiac event whatsoever.....though my thighs felt quite funny and did not seem entirely capable of carrying the rest of me up the front stairs for quite some time.

Bravo for me.

And the bike went back to sitting on the balcony for another 4 months.

NEXT UP: MOTIVATION....

Prologue Part 1: PLEASE SELECT THE MANIFESTATION OF YOUR MID LIFE CRISIS...

Tricky thing picking a Mid Life crisis and not to be entered into lightly. Choose unwisely  and you risk ridicule - wedging your gut into a set of outrageously colourful one piece leathers and wobbling off up the Pacific Highway on a motorbike worth more than your first three cars over which you have no control for example - financial ruin - ‘Hey! Climbing Mt Everest seems like a totally cool and manly thing to do’- or even death -Hey! Continuing to climb Mt Everest with that giant storm approaching and the embolism and the hallucinations and the...F**k my foot just froze off…...

An ongoing emotional attachment to both my (beautiful) wife and (beautifuller) child effectively rules out an affair, the development of a serious drug/alcohol/golf habit or embarking on a 3 year solo journey of discovery through the Australian outback, Amazon Rainforest or Cartel Infested Streets of Jaurez.

I did get a banjo for my 40^th birthday, but apart from the subsequent purchase of a so far unread ‘Learn to Play the Banjo’ book (with accompanying CD) and a tuner that allows me to be totally shit at playing the banjo in tune, the music option also eludes me.

I can however ride a bike.

Good to know facts about cycling vis a vis a Mid Life Crisis.

1.    Bikes don’t cost all that much (compared to a Porsche say, or a new set of Carbon Doohicky Super Whack Golf Clubs) whilst still allowing for a certain level of absurdity required of a Mid Life Crisis.

2.    There is ample opportunity for ridiculous attire.

3.    The pursuit of cycling and all its attendant paraphernalia can be justified to your beloved on the grounds of physical wellbeing (until your new interest leads you to begin throwing yourself down rocky hillsides or off jumps or other stupid stuff...).

4.    You will catch no diseases off a bicycle nor will it become pregnant to you requiring an elaborate dance of deception between it and your family involving secret penthouses, trust funds, hilariously wacky Christmas time slapstick mix ups and an inconvenient deathbed visit from your illegitimate (bicycle) offspring.  

So. Decision made.

NEXT UP: JUST LIKE RIDING A BIKE.