Interesting experience yesterday.
Last week, I was up in Leeds for a couple of days, and took the opportunity of popping over to Huddersfield to rescue a five-years-garaged bike. I bought the machine (a mid-range Trek hybrid, for anyone interested) somewhere in the nineties.
[Aside: Hmm. When I was younger, people used to remark on my ability to remember dates. It was a party trick. Someone would recall a meeting, a football match, a party, a fight, from years before, and I’d say, “Ah yes, March Seventh, Nineteen Eighty Two”. But now? Now I’m reduced to saying “Er, somewhere in the nineties…”]
The bike never got much use, but then Huddersfield isn’t a great place for a novice cyclist. You spend your entire time either pushing the thing up hills, or freewheeling down the other side, screaming with terror. What was bought as an aid, quickly became a burden. I did manage a couple of decent weekend rides, but the struggle of getting out of the town into the countryside was too dispiriting (remember, I was a pallid, 40-cigs-a-day couch potato then), and eventually I did what 90% of bike-buyers seem to do – locked it up and consigned it to the back of the garage, to become a piece of redundant, melancholy sculpture. Punctured Aspiration Number 42.
Just recently, M has equipped herself with a bike bought cheaply through some work scheme, and it prompted me to salvage mine. The idea had been floating round the back of my mind since I started running: good, non-impact cross-training, and a chance to explore new routes.
The garage had become rather congested since I was last there. The remnants of my nineties have been augmented by those of a series of forgotten tenants, and I had to sort of dig through the back of some IKEA wardrobe, abandoned in mid-construction, till I arrived in my own Narnia, where the bike awaited me. Even in the gloom, I could see it was in a distressed state. Rather sadly, the once regal burgundy frame was now speckled with rust; the chain and gears had seized up, and the brake blocks had shrivelled and popped out, disappearing somewhere beneath the ankle-deep detritus.
The long-overdue TLC will come later, but first, it needed a good service. After getting it back south, I trawled the Yellow Pages before taking it into the Reading branch of Action Bikes. A full service, they told me, including replacing the chain and cassette would be about £130. If this was New York, I’d have barked ferociously: “Whatcha take me for, some kinda schmuck?”, and marched out. But in that rather pathetic way that British consumers do, I shrugged my shoulders. Sounded very steep, I thought, but what could I do? I almost apologised for wanting to leave it with them, and went home, waiting for them to call. It would take a day, they said.
Two days passed without them starting work on it. Good. By this time, I had a Plan B, and needed an excuse to get it off them.
I’d made a further trawl, this time through the Internet, producing the name of Bob Bristow, a local bike mechanic. Sounded like a good chap, so I called him. “Just pop it round this afternoon”, he said. So I rescued the bike for the second time in 4 days, this time from Action Bikes. They weren’t too happy. “We won’t charge you for keeping it overnight”, said the sullen manager. Rather cheeky. I thought.
I found Bob’s house, tucked away in a near-charming, residential part of central Reading that I didn’t know existed. Gosh. This is what the town must have been like before it was ruined by improvements.
He opened the door cheerily, and asked me to bring the bike into his garage-workshop. It was barely managing to cling onto itself as I winched it out of the back of the car. He lifted it into a bike stand and began a very curious examination. “Let’s see if the wheels are in true”, he said. He spun each in turn, but instead of peering at them, he put his ear close to the wheel and listened. The back wheel was OK but the front would need adjusting, he told me. I asked about the chain and cassette, that Action Bikes had insisted needed replacing (for only an extra £35). He ran his fingers expertly round each link in the chain, then across the sprockets of the cassette before pronouncing them to be in perfectly good health. “Nothing a few spots of oil won’t solve”.
He continued his astonishing diagnosis of the entire bike, his fingers gliding over every moving part, his extraordinary hearing catching at sounds that evidently meant something to him, if not to me. And finally I realised. Rather astounded, it suddenly struck me that Bob Bristow is totally blind. It’s a terrible confession, but my immediate thought was “Oh no, he’ll never be able to do this”. But then I made myself see sense. He’d already demonstrated his expertise and his dedication. And he was a professional bike mechanic. How could I doubt him?
Back home, I was sufficiently enthused to borrow M’s new bike and go for a 12 mile ride along the canal into Reading, and back along the main road, checking out the provision for cyclists. Pretty good, I’d say, and enormously improved in recent years. It’s now almost possible to cycle the whole way along dedicated cycle paths and cycle lanes, a la Holland. This is good news. Cycling on a main road these days is a perilous business. Imagine you’re a cat, having to strut across a yard filled with starving dogs. That’s what it’s like.
It was my first time on a bike in more than five years, and took a while to adjust. Bombing along the canal at what seemed like break-neck speed, wearing my GPS gadget, _colin, I was shocked to discover, on checking my pace, that this is how fast Paula Radcliffe runs a marathon. And not just for a breathless mile or two, like me on the bike, but for 26…
Today I considered a run, but instead settled for a trip to the pub to see the last football match of the season – the play-off final between West Ham and Preston. A disappointing, overawed display from Preston allowed the chirpy geezers to escape into the Premiership. It left me in a saturnine mood, if I’m honest. The Hammers had stumbled through the season, looking quite unsuited for promotion compared with some of the other sides I saw – Ipswich, Derby, Preston and Wolves had all looked silkier. But it has to be conceded, they pulled out the performances when it mattered, so I have to say good luck to ’em. If I’m honest, it’s only envy that stops me being more gracious…
