More, more, more

Give me more, I say.

In our attempts to make the women's after work ride a regular Wednesday spot, two of us committed to the ride yesterday.  This time, I meant business.  This time I took the road bike. Not the cross bike of the high volume knobbly tyres with the flat pedals and the disc brakes but the mincing minnie road bike with its precious skinny wheels and tyres and colour co-ordinated detailing.  I like my road bike.

Speculatively, I thought, Caroline asked me at the start of the ride whether I had any time constraints. Oh, I thought, she's working up to telling me she can only play out for a couple of hours.  Not at all, it turns out, for on confessing that I have nothing to go home for any time soon, it turned out she was gently putting out feelers for my potential for a pub stop.  It was agreed.

Oddly, we did the same ride as last week, and not oddly, we did it faster, it being easier to organise two riders than it is four.  There's less waiting for folk who haven't made it through a green light, there's less waiting for folk who can't filter through traffic or can't descend or can't climb or can't ride a bike (ok that's a bit harsh).  This left plenty of time for the pub stop.  And if it hadn't, that's what lights are for.

It's a lovely part of the world, the Delph and Uppermill.

Arriving here always feels somehow a bit special in a low key way ...

Hartshead Pike

Quite special with a gentle climb in the summer evening sunshine.

We ride

A couple of the women at work have started adding a bit of a loop to their commutes home on a Wednesday evening.  This Wednesday past I realised half way through the morning - ooh, it's Wednesday, I wonder if they're going out, I wonder if I'd be welcome, and the e-mail query was sent. I confess, I was a bit euphoric to discover it was game on for that evening.  Imagine, a lovely sunny day, all the time in the world (lights were packed) and four women with bikes ready to ride together in the evening sunshine.  Lovely.

Genuinely, I was excited about it.  I don't often get to ride with women, or if I do it's mixed groups on mountain bikes.  There was a certain amount of special about the idea of this on the road.  Women, not girls.  Women doing their thing, uninfluenced by blokes, no supportive spouses offering to carry stuff, no men being asked for advice on routes, in fact, no fuss whatsoever, just women and their bikes.

It was lovely.  Hannah in charge of the route and each of us in charge of ourselves.  There was a mechanical, we sorted it in a nonchalant self sufficient manner.  No fuss.  There were undulating ups and downs and whooshy bits, there were riders on the other side of the road, some of whom nodded, smiled, waved and others who were far too serious to acknowledge us.

It makes me smile, how road riding folk view others.  We were just women on bikes.  Happy.

Material Girl

My nesting instinct is having to find some balance.  I acquire new stuff, but this means old stuff must go, and consistently for me over the years, I can't bear to throw stuff out.  Useful stuff.  But not to me.   I'm embracing the challenge of working towards moving house, and it's made me really think about how I want to live, and it's made me feel guilty and capitalist.  What right have I to be so acquisitive? I feel guilty about my one person space requirement turning into yearnings for other things, kitchen diners for example.  It seems my nesting urge is leading me into some interesting places.  

When did I ever actually look for a home for me? Never.  I've never sat down and considered me, and me alone and what I want.  I've had rented rooms, rented flats, and I've bought in conjunction with another person, but never looked at what I'd like, just me.  

Turns out I want a kitchen diner. Is that incredibly avaricious of me?  Also turns out I want a garden, doesn't have to be a big one, but I want green stuff in it, not paving stones and not decking.  I want to grow herbs and to sit on the grass and read.

To make this dream happen I'm freecycling once again.  If I can keep getting a couple of items a day out of the loft then maybe by the time I come to sell I won't be carting accumulated crap of years around with me.  Goodbye router, goodbye third sheet sander, goodbye mitre saw, goodbye old vax, goodbye double air bed, goodbye dual action pump, goodbye fisherman's shelter, goodbye campinggaz coolbox that plugs into a cigarette lighter.  Goodbye to these things which haven't seen the light of day in nearly a decade.  And hello.  Hello to my future where I only take me with me.

Pivotal moment

We never see them at the time and we never see them coming, those pivotal moments.  Sometimes it takes years for us to realise what just happened, the significance, that moment.

When was your last pivotal moment?  When was mine?  When will the next be.  It's one of the odd vagaries of life, the pivotal moment, one of the things you can't predict but yet one which memory cannot bring back either, not without some serious mulling over of Stuff.

Is your life what you want it to be?  Stepping back, is it, is it really, is this existence the result of conscious choices.  If you stepped back, just a mini step and saw yourself through the eyes of, well you, but younger, or older, is this it, is this the life you want to lead? You have choices you know, you don't have to await that pivotal moment where chance takes you one way or the other, and because pivotal moments are all bound up in memory, you can change them anyway, make them into something else, lessen their impact.

I suspect as I get older and things dull, things aren't as bright or as shiny or as important as they once were, perhaps pivotal moments lessen in frequency, perhaps because I now have more conscious control, I accept chance but don't always believe in its influence over the smaller things in life. There are many things I can't change, those exert that pivotal influence.  But most things I can affect, I'm not a victim accepting her unwitting fate.  If this isn't the life I want to lead then I know, with an absoluteness of knowledge, I know that I can change it. I might not be able to immediately create the life I want to lead, but I can move away from a life I don't want to lead.  All it takes is recognition of that fact.  Maybe that recognition is in itself a pivotal moment, but I don't think so.

Pivotal moments include a walk in the pouring rain with raindrops disguising the tears coursing down my face, and the action of walking side by side hiding the face to face recognition of the tears.  It was a long time ago, crossing the bridge over the M11 but it was a bargain I made with life.  And I lost.

Genesis 8

And after forty days, Noah opened the doors to the ark and lo he saw freedom, for no longer did he need to get out on his bike and mount up the requisite kilometres in order to complete the Strava Specialised Spring Challenge.  40 days of cycling.  40 days of challenge.  30 of it feeling fine, 10 of it feeling exhausted.

I note that a year or so ago I was riding the flatlands of Belgium, happily trotting out 30kph.  Now in the flatlands of Cheshire I am trotting out around 20kph.  I am tired.  I am looking forward to rest and recovery, beer, sleep, books, sunshine, legs not in lycra, bum not sat on a saddle, neck and shoulders in normal alignment.  I am looking forward to equating the bike once again with fun.  It'll all be over soon.  111km to go and 3 days to do it in.  Amen to that.