Today I got out on my new bike for the first time, and the first time this year. Yes, yes, I know it is now late July but I have excuses, heaps of them.
My old bike and I had travelled a few miles together it is true. I had covered the
C2C Newcastle to Whitehaven cycle route in 3 days (180 miles). 3 gruelling days. In fact the most painful 3 days of recent memory. I learnt a lot about myself on the last leg of that journey. I was so knackered that I more or less had to walk a climb out of Carlisle and most of a hill top section because my legs just had no power left in them. At all. The mountains of the lake district were taunting me for being such a weak and feeble cyclist. For even daring to try to cross the pennines by bike.
My cycling partner had all but given up on me and we decided I would wait at Cockermouth to be picked up by our neighbour on returning with my team mate. The run into Cockermouth was largely downhill and I was spurred on by thinking of sitting in a pub drinking beer. Anyway we made such good time that my team mate insisted I carried on to Whitehaven. I made it but I couldn't sit down for several days. It felt like i had a large razor blade between my legs.

So me and this bike had some history. It's last few years had been a little difficult however. Part of this is due to my bike repair skills being pretty dreadful and being too mean to pay someone else to do it. When I was a lad my Dad used to do all that sort of stuff so I figured it was something that I ought to be able to do for myself. My final bugbear was getting the brakes to work properly. Or even at all. I had to anticipate my braking at the same range as an F1 driver but at 20 times less speed.

So this year I bought an inexpensive bike for my birthday and today was the first day without kids and rain so off I went.

I had several teething problems. Obviously the gear ratios are all to pot because I was puffing, heaving wreck after only a couple of miles and it was absolutely nothing to do with not having been on a bike for over a year! I did have a few problems with the gear changes but since this was straight out of the box it may need a little adjustment. My worry is that armed with a spanner I may turn a small inconvenience into an insurmountable obstacle. I shall make one or two more trips and see if I get used to the new gears or whether I will really have to get stuck in.

When I was a kid a bike with 5 gears was considered advanced. As a spotty teenager nothing less than 10 was required. My last bike had 15 ratios. I was never able to wholly convince the chain that it was in the best gear and my cycling was accompanied to the soundtrack of a lot of grinding of ratio's. Well now I have 18 ratios to be able to get lost amongst.

That's what I call progress