My Last Bike Ride (the journey to Hell)

Let me be honest – I am probably one of the least fit people I know. I am not a member of a gym, I do not go swimming unless I am on holiday and I do not have a penchant for jogging. In fact, my exercise is pretty much limited to an energetic burst of dancing at the Christmas party, and lugging my wares around for hours on end during lengthy shopping trips. 

Oh, and sometimes I pop out a few moves when I’m doing the dishes with my i-pod on.

It wasn’t always this way though.

Several years ago, my parents were clearing out the shed and came across the bike I had spent so much time on as a teenager. It was promptly offered to me, just in case twenty-one-year-old me would be enamoured with the thought of reliving my youth and becoming a bike lover again. I remember being rather taken with the idea, and picked the bike up as soon as I could, my mind a whirl with the new life I was going to adopt aboard my rediscovered two-wheeled transportation.

On the first Monday of my bike-ownership, I woke with excitement at the prospect of cycling into work. It was a sunny day, and I was relishing the thought of spending time outside before being stuck in an office for seven hours. I leapt into the saddle and headed off down the road, exhilarated by the feeling of wind rushing through my hair.

Aside from one nervous moment I encountered whilst crossing a very busy roundabout, the journey went sweetly. I arrived at work in a buzz of energy, noticing with surprise that I had barely broken a sweat, despite covering a distance of 3 miles. There was an important reason for this, as I discovered to my cost on the way back home.

I have mentioned previously that I currently live at the top of a hill – as I have always done during my time in this city, built as it is on seven hills, a geographical phenomenon which makes it practically impossible to not live on a hill. The important detail I had failed to realise until it was too late is that the journey into work had been almost entirely downhill. I don’t know how I missed this fact, but I know how stupid I felt when the reason for my speedy acceleration towards complete body hurt became apparent.

After a mile I gave up with two wheels and proceeded to push the bike up the consistently uphill road, shooting evil glances through the windows of the cars whizzing past me with such ease. A mile and a half later, and I had completed my transformation into a quivering, sweating wreck who was seriously questioning whether or not she was physically capable of making it home

I trudged on, all too aware of the sun beating down on my hunched form as it forced one leg in front of the other, cursing the moment I said ‘yes’ to my parents’ offer of the bike and letting myself become enveloped in an unrealistic dream without fully considering the logistics of the plan.

By the time I made it back home, I felt like I had sweated every last drop of water out of my body and doggedly threw the bike into the shed before crawling up the steps leading to the back door, the last obstacle between me and my greatest desire: water. 

After gulping down a glass of liquid heaven, I spent an hour and a half standing in the shower, trying to muster the energy to reach the soap that was located on the edge of the bath, before dedicating the rest of the evening to the task of staring blankly at the TV in a haze of self-inflicted fatigue. 

 

How I crawled up the stairs to bed that night is something I will never know, but I awoke in bed the next morning with my body clenched into a mass of seriously disgruntled, under-prepared and overworked muscle. Even the tiniest movement seemed to use the entire network of muscles in my body and it somewhat unkindly chose to respond with pain – I could barely lift my arm to slap myself in the forehead while proclaiming a loud ‘doh’ at the easily avoided mess I had ended up in. I spent that day mostly in bed, tenderly hobbling to the nearest tap as frequently as I could manage to keep a glass of water nearby, and generally feeling very sorry for myself.

I got the bus to work the next day...

...and haven't sat in the saddle of a bike since then. 

Bridezilla Goes for a Bike Ride - and I talk about hair accidents

I am lucky enough to not have to work Mondays, and until recently, I mainly spent them with my mum, being a lady that lunches and shops and talks wedding stuff. However, like all good things, it couldn't last forever - Mum has changed job and she is working Mondays at the new place. I am delighted for her - she always jokingly said she wanted to work at this particular place (and there is a good chance they make wedding cakes, which is excellent news for me and Fiance) - but it does mean that I now need to find ways of entertaining myself.

Today for example, I have mainly been scoffing at the poor quality of daytime TV, whilst simultaneously talking myself out of cutting a fringe into my hair (which by the way, is finally moving away from black towards a very dark brown instead - albeit very slowly). I know the sensible thing is to book myself an appointment at the hairdressers and let a professional do it, but that means enduring the mind-numbing conversation that neither of us particularly wishes to make, with the alternative being a very lengthy awkward silence if one does attempt a jabber-free wash and chop. So I have been putting that off for about... well about a year, in all honesty. But I would like a new fringe to accompany the new colour and as a result, I have only just managed to manhandle my willpower into agreeing that it is potentially a very bad idea to do it myself. This is hopefully a sign that I am finally learning some things are best left to the people who know what they're doing.

While the majority of my hair experiments have gone as planned, there are plenty in the back catalogue that have not. Like when teenage me decided that my addiction to Sun In should finally came to an end after a year and a half, and that an autumnal brown would be a much better colour instead. The very blond shade of blond that I had achieved from the lightening spray did not go autumnal brown. It went pillar box red.

That was my first ever self created hair error. I thought I would learn.

I did not. A few years of brown/black later, I decided wanted to be blond again. Hey I'd done it before, everything would be fine, right? Wrong. The last colour hadn't completely faded, but had started to grow out, which left a rather unusual result on my head. Not unexpected, now I apply logic and hindsight to the situation, but at the time I was horrified to see myself in the mirror sporting a white blond one inch strip where the naturally coloured roots had been, the remainder presenting itself as bright bright orange, and the entirety adopting a texture that can only be described as reminiscent of a straw bale.

At least if it was all one colour it would have been consistent, no matter how awful. But it felt like that white stripe was there to spite me, to remind me how stupid I was to think I was able to handle such a drastic change by myself.

Despite my own personal mishaps however, it was an incident that happened to a school friend of mine that really set the smackdown on my 'gah, do it, cut yourself a fringe' attitude. Realising her fringe was due a cut, and rather than mentioning it to her mum in order to get a trip to the hairdressers sorted, she decided to do it herself. And she sneezed just as she put scissor to hair.

While I am still not sure I have entirely quashed the voice that says 'just do it' , this tale in particular has kept me on the straight and narrow. For today anyway.

And now that my disasters are out of the way, it's on to see what is awaiting Bridezilla today as she goes for a bike ride. Things will go wrong, but at least her hair doesn't appear to have suffered any disasters...