Thoughts for the day

After a few days break from cycling, I was out on my bike again today. Despite my fears (which were covered, to a great degree, in the post below), it wasn't too bad. Gorsebank was with me for the first part of my journey but he didn't want to go as far as I did so we split and went our separate ways. That makes it sound as if we had some sort of big falling out but it was nothing of the sort. Anyway, after heading off alone, I decided I would put in a bit of effort and see how my legs (and all parts of me in general) were performing. Thankfully, I was running pretty well and everything seemed in reasonably good order.
My route of choice wasn't particularly far, so I guess that might have had something to do with my finding it all pretty good going but it bodes well for my little excursion next week and my longer cycle next Saturday.

Something I did today was attempted to be less anal and stuck in my ways than normal. As with so many people (or so I would guess), I find myself sticking to primarily the same routes I always tend to stick to but I thought I would try to go out on a limb today and cycle down a couple of roads I hadn't been on before, without knowing where they led. For someone as stuck in his way as I am, this was a tough thing to do. I'm the sort of person who both hates yet relies upon routine and it is difficult for me to break from it. As such, it's the first in some steps to make my cycling a bit more impromptu. I know enough roads around where I cycle to make it unlikely I would get completely lost and I can always turn back if I find a road leads to a cul de sac or a motorway (or even a particular busy road it's legal for me to cycle on but I don't want to). It's funny but I was thinking about how I should, for example, try to include at least one new road in a cycle every week. That would be making my so-called spontaneity something regimented. Oh dear. I fear there is no hope for me at all.

Something Gorsebank and I witnessed today was a cyclist who passed us in the opposite direction. Whilst seeing another cyclist is a rare enough treat on its own round our roads, this was particularly so as the fellow was carrying an enormous load in his rear panniers (he had lowriders too but they looked fairly empty). My goodness! I've no idea how he was managing to move his bike at all. In the distance, I didn't even think it was a bicycle because the panniers were so enormous. I thought it was some sort of pony and cart. The random picture of some loaded panniers (to our right) doesn't even begin to compare to the amount this guy had loaded up. He had one of the pannier sets with the usual bags at either side and another big bag over the middle (covering over the top of the two side bags). This 'middle bag' was up to about the small of his back. There was me thinking my rack pack was slowing me down. To make matters worse, he was going up a mountain. Now, just to explain, mountains in this country are other people's molehills. To most, it would be a big steep hill. The road is a climb of about one-hundred and thirty metres and it's one of those terrible climbs which starts off steep and keeps getting steeper and steeper as you get into it. Thankfully, it's only about a mile long but it's a tough mile to do (or I found it to be). The thought of doing it with the load on that man's bike would make me wretch. He seemed to be 'twiddling' in a very low gear but I still half wish I had stopped at the roadside to watch and see if he made it all the way up. Afterwards, I thought I might have been a bit of a shit for going on and not stopping to talk to him (even though he didn't seem overly friendly when I said hello to him). There's a road which goes round the side of the mountain and is much flatter than the road he was on. He might not have known about it if he's here on tour and not familiar with the area. Then again, he might have wanted the challenge of taking a loaded bike up the mountain. I know climbing it is something I found difficult when I took an unloaded bike up last year. I wouldn't mind having another stab at it, to see if my bike and fitness are better now, but it's a pretty busy road and has a blind summit. I can go on equally tough hills without having to be on a busy stretch of road.