Wednesday 26 June 2013

Pedal Power

About 18 months or so ago, when I was actually working, I had some health issues on a trip to Cyprus.  The flight from Vienna took just under three hours, immediately following an hour and half from Warsaw.  When we arrived at the gate at Larnaca, I stood up to disembark and there was a shooting pain through both hips and I collapsed in a heap.  It was very unpleasant, especially the tut-tutting and laughter from other passengers as they shoved their way past me to get off the plane.  I eventually managed to hobble off myself, collected my baggage and limped painfully out to my taxi.  I spent the rest of that day laying flat on my back at the hotel, waiting for the pain to subside and my joints start working again.

Over the next two weeks, while on the island, I had several similar attacks, and spent a lot of time knocking back painkillers and hobbling around groaning like an old man.  The bank people were exceedingly pissed off and complained about my absences, which I thought was a bit much, especially when our German PM seemed to side with them.

Anyway, I got through it, and on my return home went to see an orthopaedic specialist on my company health insurance.  He wiggled the joints around a bit - quite painful, that was - and sent me for full CT scan.  This revealed that both my hip joints are basically falling apart.  The damage isn't severe enough to warrant replacement surgery yet, and he explained to me what I needed to do to manage it.  Basically, knock back three tablets a day, and if I need to - say after a long flight - augment them with painkillers.  It seems to be working.

He also kindly gave me a letter confirming that my Economy Class flights need to be limited to 3 hours maximum - this came in very handy a couple of months later when my company insisted I flew to Santiago in Chile, and were forced, very reluctantly, to pay for Business Class flights (and very nice they were too).

The final thing Doctor Bones demanded was that I exercise more, to keep the joints active.  He recommended swimming daily and cycling as much as possible.  Now given that I swim like a rock, and have a lingering fear of water more than six feet deep (courtesy of three near-drownings when I was a kid), getting my bike out of storage seemed the best idea.



Now I learned to ride relatively late, at the age of 11.  I tend to do that a lot: I was 25 before I learned to swim (and to this day remain weak, even though despite my fears I do enjoy it - especially in warm seas), and 30 before I learned to drive and passed a test (this was through sheer laziness - all my mates drove and gave me lifts.  Having kids put paid to that).  I learned on this little kids bike that belonged to my mate's sister, and I managed 10 yards.  Thrilled, my mate ran to my house (about 200 yards away) and dragged my mum out to see - I proceeded to ride all the way to my front gate, where I fell off and cut my knee.  This, too, is typical.

So that Christmas, my parents bought me my first bike.  It was yellow and red and had a single gear.  But I spent hours playing around with it - altering the handlebar positions, covering it in bubble-gum stickers, taking the mudguards on and off......I loved it.  At the end of the summer term, the following July, my mate and I decided to cycle to school instead of catching the bus.  It seemed like a good idea at the time - even though school was a good 15 miles from where I lived, and worse, the ride was pretty much all uphill.  So I puffed along on my one-speed bike, struggling to keep up with Graham on his 5 speed racer.......  But we made it, and arrived to a hero's welcome at 9:45 (we had left a 7:15....).  Going home would be a blast, all downhill......  Then I remembered I had two bags full of books to lug home.  I slung them on the handlebars, and puffed off.....  Less than three miles in, I gave it up as a bad job.  My mum wasn't on the phone and didn't drive, so all I could do was abandon the bike and catch the bus.  As luck would have it, I was about 5 minutes ahead of the scheduled bus time at Bidborough, so persuaded the local garage owner to look after the bike overnight, and flagged down the school bus when it came along.  I got home safely, and travelled back the next morning, again by bus, to collect the bike.  The ride home, downhill in the July summer sunshine was indeed a blast.  The thing to remember here was that I was 12......can you imagine, in this day and age, a kid of such tender years being allowed to do such a thing?  Different times for sure - much less traffic on the roads, and hardly any nutters around: I don't think the word "paedophile" even existed.

I spent a great summer out on that bike, with my mates.  We went everywhere, most frequently the six miles or so to visit my elder sister and her kids, living in a very pretty little hamlet in the middle of the Kent countryside, surrounded by fragrant hop-fields and fruit farms, where we spent hours playing cowboys-and-indians, or War, and got sunburnt.  Wouldn't happen now of course - cowboys-and-indians is old hat, and the only War games worth a light are on PSP or something.  But they were happy and innocent days, and I treasure the memories.



I ran that bike for about three years, I think, and outgrew it.  Then my dad replaced it with a second hand racer.  It was red, with drop handlebars and 5 speed Derailieur gears and incredibly slim and fragile wheels - I seemed to get a puncture every other week.  By today's standards, it was heavy and old fashioned, but it was good enough for me - I loved it.  Over the next 8 or 9 years, I rode it into the ground.  I kept it pretty much until I got married although the last few years it was gathering dust in my mum's garden shed.  After my dad died when I was 19 and I discovered booze, I was too pissed most of the time to ride it, and then all my mates passed their driving tests and I started travelling cramped up in the back of smoke filled Minis and Hillman Imps and Riley Elfs (Elves?).  Besides, you could hardly turn up at the Beacon or Clouds discos, or the Wiremill Country Club on a push bike and expect to pull, could you?  I have no idea what happened to that old bike - I guess my mum gave it away eventually, after I got married and moved away to my own place.

That was it for a good few years, really until my kids were in their teens.  Then one year, I got a particularly good bonus at work, and spent it on mountain bikes for the whole family, a five-berth frame tent, all the cooking gear, sleeping bags, and roof and carrying racks for the car to carry it all,  One Friday in August, a hot sunny day, we loaded the lot onto my company car, a Montego 2.0 GTi estate in British Racing Green (very possibly the best car I've ever had), and at 4 the next morning we headed off to Cornwall for a two week camping holiday.  Despite the load (remember there were also five of us - two adults and three teenage boys - plus all the rest of the baggage....food, clothes, footballs and the like) the drive was a pleasure and the car remarkably did over 100 mph on one stretch of the M5 - everyone else was asleep and I just couldn't resist giving it the welly.  We camped at a site just outside Portscatho, on the Roseland Peninsula, a lovely little fishing village we knew very well, having stayed there for several years in different apartments and cottages.  It's still one of my favourite places, and I have many happy memories from it.  I do wonder what it's like now - I haven't been there for a good twenty years - but at that time, the mid 90s, it was still small and undeveloped and there were many good beaches and secluded coves in the area that we used when the weather permitted (this being England and Cornwall rain was, shall we say, not unheard of even at the height of "summer").

The first few days were great, hot and sunny, and we hit the beaches - cycling to them of course.  Then on the Wednesday we were sitting on a beach, eating sandwiches after a swim, and spotted a black line on the horizon.  It grew and thickened, and rapidly turned into what were clearly storm clouds heading in our direction - but slowly.  We had another three or fours on the beach as planned, then headed back to the camp for dinner.  And the rain came.  It arrived shortly after we did, huge pebble sized drops that pounded on the canvas like bullets, accompanied by gusting winds, thunder and lightning.  Camping in Britain can be such fun.  And the rain continued, unabated, for the next three days, by the end of which were cold and fed up and everything we had with us was as waterlogged as the campsite.  The end came when I unzipped the sleeping compartment at 8 on a (still) wet Saturday morning, and saw a huge puddle in the middle of the groundsheet that was just turning into a stream and carrying with it out the doorway a plastic cup.  Water was dropping from several places in the tent roof like a bathroom shower.  Fuck it, time to go home.   We spent the rest of the morning packing everything up and loading the bikes onto the car, then gingerly I backed out of our pitch on to the stone-and-dirt site road (that was now running water like a woodland stream).  It was very difficult, and I came very close to getting bogged down in the mud where previously the car and tent had stood......the boys had to give me push at one point.  Another half hour and we would not have been able to get out at all.   It turned out that we had experienced the worst spell of weather in living memory - a month's worth of rain had fallen in 48 hours, followed over the next 24 hours by half of September's average.

I haven't camped since.  The tent was ruined and remained stored in the garage loft until I divorced and threw it out along with so much else as we cleared the family home.

But the bikes were fine, and continued to be used.



I gave mine away when I moved to Poland, and after a couple of years here, we bought new bikes.  This time I bought a state of the art Scott Mountain bike.  18 gears (that 8 years later still confuse the hell out of me!).  Heavy duty off road tyres.  I added a kid seat on mine, so I could take the babies for a ride.  For many years they were relatively little used, but over the past three or four years they've come out of the moth-balls and been hammered a bit.  Kuba got a bike so he can come along and Ally graduated to the baby seat, but now she too has her own bike and loves it (still on stabilisers, but she rides to school every day when the sun shines), so it's turning back into a family thing again.

I'm fortunate that in the Warsaw suburb where we live there is a big network of cycle paths (including one running past my front door) and ten minutes ride away is the forest on the southern edge of the city that has many miles of cycle paths in it too.  This means we can ride safely, without risking life and limb at the mercy of useless Warsaw drivers, who as bad as they are at least manage to distinguish between the road and the cycle path.  Mind you, some of the numpties on their bikes aren't much better - on the way to school there is a stretch of path that forms a little S-bend, part of which is obscured by overgrown bushes so that as you approach it from one direction it's blind.  Not that that stops some people - typically overweight blokes in lycra, shades and headphones - thrashing round the section at high speed with no consideration that anyone may be coming the other way.  I've not had a collision yet, but had a couple of close shaves - now I sound my bell as I approach (just in case it's a] heard, and b] listened to).  

This is something I've noticed on my frequent rides.  Most men of a certain age seem under the impression they are Bradley Wiggins, or Chis Hoy or someone.  They wear the lycra shorts, gaudy nylon "team"shirts, helmets and wraparound shades, and charge around as if they're on the Tour de France or something.  They're not: they're largely overweight, look stupid and are a danger to everyone else on the path.  Similarly, many drivers seem to believe they are Robert Kubica, and drive like they are competing in an F1 grand prix - not a good idea on the average ill-repaired and over-crowded Polish road.  Not that a single one will accept they are anything other than the best rider/driver in the history of the universe.  Delusional and dangerous.

But despite all that, I love getting on my bike.  Doctor Bones was right - it's doing my joints the power of good.  Very rarely now do I have the sort of pain and stiffness that I had increasingly for a number of years until I saw him and took his advice.  I've cut down on my cocktail of tablets, and feel much fitter all round.  I've lost weight (not a lot) too.....for the first time in years.

So if any of you are feeling a bit heavy, a bit stiff, a bit under the weather - to paraphrase Norman Tebbitt, get on yer bike.  It will do you the power of good!

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