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“Go on, fifty quid”
“Alright then, twenty. Look, it’s quality, this is”
“Ten?”
“Look, here’s a tenner. Take the sodding bike, I never want to see it again”
So the conversation with the security guard at work could so easily have gone today as I rolled into work on my Galaxy covered in muddy slush under a threatening sky the colour of dirty Tupperware.
Winter is a difficult time to cycle. But last week I bought myself a Citroen 2CV, which is like that car the Flintstones drove only less sophisticated, and I’m far from convinced of its ability to start in the cold, at least until I’ve treated it to an engine rebuild. So when I looked out of the window at lunchtime and I saw the snow I thought “gadzooks! what better day than today to cycle to work?”
Well. It started badly – I struggled to even get the bike out of the back yard without ending up in an ungainly tangle of limbs and handlebars on the pavement outside my house – and it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t going to get better until I’d got to work and left the bicycle somewhere I couldn’t see it, perhaps at the bottom of a deep hole or under one of the lorries. Within a mile I was soaked through and freezing cold. On the other hand, most of the motorised traffic gave me plenty of room, but as this generally involved putting their nearside wheels in the track of slush left by cars going the other way – leading to me being regularly showered in a curtain of filthy slush – it was what the term “mixed blessing” might have been invented for. Riding downhill through what in happier times I like to think of as the Forest Chicane was a bit like I imagine being a speedway rider must be like: both wheels kept trying to step out, often simultaneously, whenever they hit a recalcitrant patch of ice. My dynamo kept slipping, my hands and feet trebled in weight as my gloves and shoes went beyond wet, my beard froze, my bike started to look like something the Michelin Man would have proposed to and when I finally got to work the shower didn’t respond to my increasingly strident commands to supply warm water. On the other hand, I was able to ride past a long queue of cars waiting behind a lorry that had slithered into a ditch and I got a smile from the policewoman directing the traffic around it, so that was nice.
Would I do it again? Well, it’s still snowing, I’m still at work and though my cycling kit is spread all around the cab to dry, I don’t relish the thought of putting it all on and cycling home in the icy 3am darkness. So no, tonight I won’t be doing it again … I’m very much afraid I’ve bottled it and arranged with the chap who drives the truck on the day shift to cadge a lift home with him when he comes in at 5am. Discretion is the better part of valour and all that: I really don’t want to end up as just a frantically waggling pair of legs sticking up out of a roadside snowdrift at 3am. And yes, I am a bit nesh. But I’ll certainly be cycling again when the snow clears up. Assuming that security guard will sell me my bike back.
Till next time,
Reborn Commuter.
EDIT, four hours later: Ha! I cycled home in the teeth of the ice and the snow! If you’d told me 12 hours ago that I’d be doing that I’d have laughed hollowly before trying to block out your voice by hitting myself repeatedly on the ears with a bicycle inner tube, yet here I am at home in my cycling kit. How did that happen? I hear you ask. Well, I never really like not riding back from somewhere I’ve ridden to, and the weather had stopped being quite so horrible, so I thought I’d brave the ice. And I must say, it was quite fun, even if it was a bit lairy at times. But I’m still looking forward to the summer.
