Try this for size

Recently I ventured South to visit some terribly aged distant-relatives. It seemed only appropriate to throw the treadlie in the boot on the vague off-chance of a ‘nice bike ride through some great countryside’. It occurred to me also, that in this modern world surely someone would have thought of a great way of mapping out a hypothetical ride in such an Orwellian landscape and immediately ping back to you the distance and altitude gains involved in the endeavour. No sooner had I taken the time and effort to imagine this magical software than a certain un-named search engine downloaded it to the screen before my very eyes. Viola! I’m tempted to wonder if the same might be true of instant and infinite finance…

Having sourced the reality of this cunning imagination, it was of course only good and proper to promptly map out a couple of mild-mannered day-trips and size up the relative (pun intended) efforts required to tick the jolly old trundlers off the proverbial bucket list. My initial thoughts on the matter were a two-dayer sandwiched around a restful sojourn over-nighting approx. mid-point at a bed-and-breakfast type establishment. Bagpipes on the front lawn at daybreak, outrageously hot shower and a gluttony of wild mushrooms for brekkie that sort of thing.

Company on this sight-seeing bonanza would be requisite, and as my mother has recently purchased an all-phototronic, fully-lighted, air-cooled electric pram replete with twin-engines and high-volume, scientifically-proven aerodynamic panniers, why, she would have been an obvious choice to even the village imbecile. Little actual effort would be demanded of her and I would be at liberty to sweat my merry way up as many steeply-sided hills as my foolish heart could possibly desire. In a word. Done.

Why it is that people have to come along after the fact and mess about with finely crafted plans, making alternative suggestions and failing utterly to enter into the spirit of the thing with vim and vigour, this I shall never know. But alas it is true, my dearest and quite probably nearest mother said no. Such a venture was a thing too far. Far too far, I seem to recall is what she actually indicated. I wonder, in hindsight, if perhaps the bagpipes were not to her taste. For certain it was not the proposal to knock off a mere hundred odd kms weaving up and down a measly few hills measuring barely a little more than thousand or so of those measurey things in altitude. What are they again, ahh yes, ‘metres’ I think is the unit specified by that august body, the International Organization for Standardization. 

‘Quandary, quandary, quandary’, someone once sung, at least words to that effect. I couldn’t have agreed more. How, at once to spend quality (or at least quantity) time with the aged and questionably firm, and to also sally forth under the azure pie-dish lid that stands in for a sky now and then. This is the question, not, as some may have argued over the years, anything at all to do with ‘be or not’ – rubbish. And neither is the answer blowing about in some frisky breeze lost to all, indeed not, the answer is simple as it is plain. As any half-witted diplomat could tell you, even after their fourth (or was it the fifth) glass of champagne, you arrange things to allow for a serendipitous having of the cake whilst eating also the cake. In this particular case the conditions were fulfilled neatly and with lasting happiness on both sides in the following manner, Firstly by driving the bikes to a far-off locale and engaging in a short taste-test of watching the wheels go round with the Elder-Matriarch on one day and then on another altogether separate turning of the solar dial a jolly what-ho jaunt about the back-lanes of the agricultural expanses by myself. 

This essay is to be focused primarily if not entirely exclusively on the latter of these twin turbulences. If any reader should so desire I will in future provide a short, referenced treatise on the former of these adventures, although in all fairness, advance warning of the likelihood of my omitting almost the entire portion of the journey such as was undertaken in the motor vehicle should be given at this preliminary stage. This will almost inevitably reduce the sum total of this secondary treatise to between one and three sentences, including a short if sweetly-worded introduction and slightly over-winded, droning conclusion.

The forecasting of the possible future weather conditions for the days that lay virginesque before me suggested at Sunday was the day of days and Monday was not the day of any day at all. Mad dogs or no, the desire to be out biking about in the teeming wetness, getting soaked to the bones and thoroughly not enjoying myself had not seized upon my grey-haired bosom here in the Deep South. Thus upon a fresh Sunday morning preparations were made for the excursion-a-la-premiere. 

Here you will see for your very self my good personage readying for the impending voyage. Note with glee the cheerful demeanour upon the radial shoulder-topper, the lightness of heart, the thickness of bottom, the thinness of thermal layering.

In this next snapshot the sails have been set, trimmed, filled, trimmed again, and in fact trimmed nigh on constantly for the 3.9km that lie under the hull. A sum total of 80 vertical increments have sunk beneath my commanding pedaling. Most of the roading surface has been of a modern construct and thus manageable in defiance of the creeping gradient. Some of this thoroughfare veneer was of an archaic, shifty, unstable nature (I fear the locals bandy the term ‘gravel’ about in this matter) that compelled me to much gear re-aligning.

A comparative hop, skop and half-hearted jomp away is the where the next view belongs relative to the previous port of call. No sweat, it is possible that I recall no pedal motions were demanded of me at all to get here. Indeed it may be better to note the distance accrued in smaller increments of measurement, say 5000Dm.

This next photo may give evidence of a small edge of strain, the roading type being all of a metallic nature, and with my tubular inflation rate at close to or possibly a modicum over the maximum permitted by the manufacturer. This had been done this in order to reduce the rolling drag somewhat, knowing without knowing fully that at the end – so to speak – it would be a firmer, more robust, supplementarily stern and forceful seat beneath my behind, which is to say behind my beneath. 3.3km, one and half thousand kilojoules, 125ml of water, 100 vertical metres up and 60 back down again.

In this visage we see the return of the much loved, greatly appreciated and sorely missed tarseal. By now a total of 13.8km have gently lapsed into infinity and my bike and I are now 60m lower than the foundation of my mother’s house. A gaggle of road-bike riders looking fresh, dapper and much as a retailer of lycra-garments would very much like to imagine the world, have hoofed past me waving cheerily, hardly bothering to crank their crankshafts and moving at only a little under the motorised-vehicle speed-limit for the area. There is a word that aptly describes this situation and my feelings toward these fellow bike-brethren but it escapes me just at the time of writing.

A quick peek at the next stop which is just down the road, spitting distance really, although I don’t mean to encourage such behaviour and for myself I have never quite managed a hoik over the one thousand metre mark, and so the phrase may be ill-applied here.

Egads! Water, who put this here without appropriate planning permission. Of course I jest, I knew it would be here, I was not surprised, nor alarmed, nor fearful for my life. That it was frozen over was however amusing. Amusing that is until I got to the real river another hundred metres further on, and was obligated to hoist my shortened trousers to the level of the pre-natal connector and even then scarcely avoid wetting them anyway. With a subtle, and if I am forced to say as much, elegant move such as a ballerina might effect, I lifted poetically upon as many metatarsals as could be mustered and tiptoed to the furthermost bank of the surging torrent.

Be careful this next Daguerreotype does not deceive you. You see me smiling, you see me relaxed; is there a hint of smug there, un petit uppitiness you ask. Maybe, but it is nowt more that a rapidly diminishing façade, a mere rush of fructose to the synapses.

This next vista catches me at a moment of innocence, blissfully unaware of the embarrassing faux pas that awaits me, looming menacingly over my head, impatient to seize me in its wiry, unclean claws. Instead of veering left as I should have done, as anyone else would have done, as a child bereft of it’s candy would still have retained the cognitive wherewithal to have unerringly done, I turned right, and went right on going right until there was very little right left to be gone on with before being left in the right mind that I was right away from where I had left off. I think perhaps you begin to garner the outline of the idea there, if not and for further explication hesitate not to contact your recent-most English teacher.

This headshot shows just how things are hotting up now, with an hour and half under my armpits, 19.1km, 240 of vertical ups balanced carefully with just about the same number of vertical downs, I’m warming to my task. The negligence of the previous intersection’s navigation are behind me and definitely to the left, I mean right where they should be. Much of the recent roading surface has been satisfactory although steadfastly stationary whereas if it were to have moved in the useful way that say a conveyor belt moves I should have been frightfully grateful.

This setting has me struggling to measure up, you can see I hardly made it into the frame at all. As I leave this spot I start from a position some 70m below where I began this morning – so you can understand just how much of a struggle it was to get into the shot. It was all downhill along this road which is biking terms means it was awful, as you are fully cognisant of having your near future necessitating you climbing back up all those same vertical increments.

 In this scene, I had just finished scratching my head as to the way forward. As I was sure I wasn’t heading for Raincliff, however a short stint on the road and then I re-set the compass for a new direction and avoided ending up at the Raincliff campsite.

This landscape portrayal vividly reminds us of the time of the year. The frosty part. Frost lies heavy in the shadows by the side of the road even at midday, in fact I fancy it wasn’t just lying there, but having a fair old knees-up. I rather suspect it had been out all night partying hard and had no intention what-so-ever of slowing down all day and would probably just roll on into another night of debauchery again tonight.

 Image capture of a jiggity jog. Hard right then quick left. Had a chat with a couple of the local yokels from here-abouts. Once they had vented their desperate, excited hatred of dairy farmers and gypsies upon my tender ears, I bid them farewell or at least fare and made off to climb the 160m vertical remaining to the summit of the Mt Gay intersection.

This exposure catch me off the job. And I am not ashamed, the surrounding landscape was a picture of land scaped in a most efficiently pleasing manner. Trees lolloped about in mobs as trees should, sheep huddled about in clusters as they ought also. Much was good about the spot and much was good about the stop. The food was edible and so I ate it. Had the food been delicious then I would have enjoyed it has well, but that’s the lunch menu on a Sunday morning in the shops of the hinterland. To this stage I had biked honestly and exhaustedly. From here on in I would admit but only under terrible duress that I hoofed it on foot more than once.

These etchings depict the top of the world in my little world, this road represented the last of the climbing for a long while and would by its end take me off the mountain tops, off the gravel and back to tarsealed flattened goodness. In its 9km of twisty dusty length it would require me to elevate my battered body and bike 340m further skyward and then let me down, down, down to the tune of over-pressurised tyres hammering on corrugated road ruts a full 230m. Near the farther end I would encounter wallabies (small kangaroos) and would be forced to weave in and out amongst them. Not that they were alive mind you and consequently there was no great difficulty in doing so. Hot, dry, dusty roads dodging kangaroo carcasses – hardly sounds like I was in New Zealand at all.

This longshot captures a sore moment, where I have recently been informed by my happy little GPS unit that I have travelled a total of 45.1km. Which is nice if you like such numbers but in the context of trudging out an 82km ride this is not nice, it is awful, it is sobering, depressing and wholly ghastly. My bottom was on the verge of tears, it was on the verge of my bike seat, it was on verge of calling an ambulance. I wasn’t overly chirpy myself. Mercifully the next 20.3km also came with a freebie, a sweetener, a one-time limited offer, an at-no-extra-cost, an act-now-to-avoid-disappointment bonus of downward trending verticals, 140 of them. Ahhhhh. 

This closeup tells us that I’m cold, zippered up and hunkered down. 65.4 km behind me, the sun sinking low behind me, half a road-sign behind me. In front of me is a section of tarseal hillside that I will walk up, pushing my bike wearily before me. It is not a steep hill, I have not walked any tarseal to this point, but now, now comes the time for having to walk up gently rising tarseal hill.  In front of me lies a further 240m of unrelenting, brutal and stubbornly upward facing verticalness. Much of which I will walk. In front of me is the last 16,000 metres of my bike ride, I prefer to think of it as the last 16,000,000 millimetres so that I can tick them off more quickly as I inch forward.

This print puts under the spotlight that I have just managed to pedal almost all of a consecutive 7km and apart from the by now usual aching soreness am quite pleased with myself.

How this pic has the gall to smile (grimace?) I cannot say, having just walked up a fair old chunk road it shouldn’t have. Although maybe having just spent a fair old chunk of time off the bike seat the pic can indeed smile.

This likeness frowns at us, we might not deserve to be frowned at but there it is regardless. Harsh, set in its frowniness, disappointed perhaps yet still standing.

This image depicts a grim face, a face in shadow now that the sun has retired behind the neighbouring trees, a face with only less than 4km to go, 4km of swooping downhill goodness. A face that thinks it might just be able to hang on long enough.

This snap is happy one, happy but exhausted, happy but sore, happy and relived, but mostly this snap is about the things that don’t have the word happy in them. It is a snap taken seven and half hours after the first in this essay, a snap taken 81.5km away and yet simultaneously in the same place, a snap that has climbed in excess of 1,000 metres up and back down to this self same roost. Dunski.