Cabbies, roads and a knicker (just the one)

Since my last post (my last blog post, not "The Last Post", that is), I've had two cycling sessions, both in Finsbury Park.  The first, on Tuesday morning (still feels like the middle of the night) was a struggle.  After the triumphs of Monday, my legs felt heavy, and that was just on the walk to the park.  James tried to persuade me that it would optimal for me to try to stick to the left hand side of the road in the park so that (a) I would get practice for the real roads and (b) I wouldn't get flattened by a speedy cyclist.  I told him in no uncertain terms where to go, as I was having enough difficulty staying upright without having to think about linear direction as well.  That said, I did make some effort to stay on the correct side of the road, which led me straight through some enormous puddles and almost upended me when I hit a couple of potholes one after the other.  I had "the terror" going down the really steep hill toward the end of the lap, but somehow recovered myself enough to complete:

The first circumnavigation of Finsbury Park without stopping, by me, on a bicycle.

Needless to say, after all that excitement I was far too tired to do any more cycling, so I did a quick cool down on the flat tarmac bit of the park and then we walked home.  Or rather, nearly home.  We got to the end of our road and James decided that now would be the perfect time for me to ride on a proper road for the first time.  On the public highway.  I need to explain something here - our road is a quiet, one-way, residential street which goes fairly steeply downhill.  It also has speedbumps.  And parked cars on both sides.  There are far worse roads to ride on for the first time, but in my mind, ours is not ideal.  In any event, I wasn't going to get away without doing it, so I hopped on the bike (OK, I'm lying, there was no hopping involved at all) and set off at a snail's pace.  I soon discovered that going over speedbumps is fun, but you also tend to pick up rather a lot of speed when you come off the top of them.  I overshot the house by about three car lengths and found myself in the unfortunate position of having stopped in the middle of the road.  It's a good job no cars were coming.

On Wednesday, I bought myself some more Lycra - as previously mentioned, I had looked around for some padded bottom-half clothing in order to protect from saddle soreness on the longer rides we're working up to (and on the static bike, which has the least comfortable saddle in the world) - and I found some great capri length cycling trousers from the nice people in Cycle Surgery.  Technically speaking, I believe they are a "knicker" (just the one...) and if you look inside they have a bright green bike saddle shaped pad.  It is, I am sure, nothing like wearing a nappy.  The fantastic thing about this "knicker" is that the legs are loose-ish around the ends so that, unlike other capri length sports trousers I've had, they don't ride up and cut off the circulation to the back of your knees.

Yesterday morning I was keen to try out my new garment (we'll call it that, shall we?  Much simpler), so we set off to the park in the middle of the night again.  However, this time we decided to walk a slightly longer route so that we could scope it out to see if I might be able to cycle there next time.  On the plus side, we saw only one car on the new route.  On the minus side, we saw three buses.  James thinks I'll be able to manage it, so next outing I'll be cycling most of the way to the park.

When we got to the park, I decided to do everything as though I were on the real roads.  I duly signalled to the right to show that I was about to pull off.  James burst into fits of giggles.  On the way home, he told me that it was great that I had signalled, but that my efforts looked a bit less like I was signalling to the right and a bit more like I was greeting an early- to mid-twentieth century German leader.  I'm convinced my exuberant signalling is the dancer in me.  Exteeeend, dahling!

My lap around the park was largely uneventful.  In fact, it was so uneventful that it was actually quite good fun.  I think I can do the park now.  Bring on the next challenge!

Yesterday evening I went for some work drinks and got a cab home.  The cabbie was chatty and we got on to talking about my cycling.  He thought it was hilarious that I couldn't ride a bike until a month ago and promised to cheer me on if he saw me out and about in my orange hi-viz, but then he said that I'd probably have the same reaction upon hearing he couldn't swim.  I didn't laugh at him, but it does amount to pretty much the same kind of thing - it's just something everyone expects you can do, but because you don't need to do it regularly, you never get round to learning.  However, we then got talking about what I do and what James does.  When I said that James is a software developer, the cabbie said he didn't know anything about that technology rubbish - he had never used a computer.

If you're enjoying hearing about my cycling adventures, please show your support by sponsoring me for the London to Brighton Bike Ride, which you can do by clicking on the Justgiving donation button on the right and following the instructions.