.....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....
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