The Great Bicycle Challenge

So I have agreed to go on a 50 mile bike ride next year. Although, for the most part, people have been encouraging when I have told them this I am sure that they must secretly find it very funny. The reason I say this is because I am probably the last person anyone would expect to get on a bike and cycle 50 miles in the rain (no I'm not psychic, but my 27 years of life in England have taught me that of course it will rain, so...50.miles.in.the.rain). I am unfit, I have not owned a bike since mine was stolen when I was 17 (a very traumatic experience preventing me from buying another one ever again, or so I thought) and I have done very little cycling since then except for gentle cycle rides on holiday such as going across Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. However, I am a very determined (stubborn) person once I set my mind to something so, I will do it and I will be ready. Anyway, I thought I might as well return to this whole blogging affair to record my (disasterous) efforts to get ready for this cycle ride.
Let me begin with 'assembling the bike'.

My brother Mark helps me to choose a bike. He lets me try out his wife Sarah's bike and talks about what sort of thing I should be looking for and then takes me along to a bike shop to actually look at some in the flesh, so to speak (or aluminium, whatever). Standing just down the road from said shop Mark preps me for speaking to Mr Bike Shop Man, ie what I am going to be using the bike for, where I will be using it and some other stuff that I didn't really get and he says "if he should ask, tell him you live in Heckingham" to which I replied "I am not going to pretend I'm from Norfolk!" (no offence if you have stumbled across this blog and you are from Norfolk, it is only that I am Surrey girl through and through and I probably would have gone bright red if I had tried to lie; some evil part of my subconscious would have inevitably tried to fake a Norfolk accent and then I may have broken out into a line or two of "I've got a brand new combine harvester!"...disasterous). So into the shop we go, I garble out some load of rubbish about wanting a bike for leisure, to get fit, maybe a little off road, by which I mean a PATH instead of a ROAD, and maybe commuting. Mr Bike Shop Man then proceeds to talk to me at length about things so completely alien to me he might as well have been speaking in an alien tongue; in fact I think he was. I heard such words as slicks, a-heads, suspension forks and 18" versus 20". I smiled and nodded and by the end felt a little faint. I sat on bikes, tripped over pedals and tried to avoid eye contact with the other people in the shop. My newphew who was there had a great time watching a man do things to a bike (I don't know what he was doing, he had tools). Finally I escaped. Later, using my new found knowledge and bike experience (ha!) I bought a bike on the internet for a lot less then it was in the shop.

Less than a week later, it arrives in a big box. I take it out and there I am all alone with a bike with its handlebars hanging off, the saddle and front wheel on the floor and the pedals and other interesting bits in a little brown cardboard box (At this point I have not looked too closely at the bits in the box in case they might blow my mind). At the time of ordering the bike my brother schooled me carefully in what I would need to do to put the final bits together. So there I am ready and armed with a pedal spanner and a...God damn it! where has the allen key gone! Great, I can put the pedals on but I am not getting far without a front wheel or a saddle. So the bike remained in bits on the floor and I went away for the weekend to visit Anne and Seth's lovely new home to catch up, drink wine, bemoan the fact that I have failed to put my bike together and do not know when I will have time to stop by a hardware shop to get an allen key (hexagon key), drink some more wine, eat Anne and Seth's pasta bake, go for a late night walk down country lanes to the pub where porno loving satan worshippers hang out (another story for another time) and drink some more wine. So far it may seem that the whole bike thing is a bit of a washout but actually I got home on Sunday, found an allen key and put the bike together, no problems.

Next installment: does my bum look big in this? Maybe, maybe not but it bloody hurts!