The Ride of your Life

Recently CTC ran a competition to describe, in under 300 words, the best ride you'd ever done.  There was no way I could possibly pick out the best ride I've ever done, so I came up with this.  Needless to say, it didn't win.  Apart from anything else, it wasn't really in answer to their question.  And I am very glad it didn't win because the prize was a cycling holiday in the Scottish Borders - which sounds great until you learn you had to take it sometime between the end of October and Christmas.

So, here is what I think has been the best ride I've ever done:

It’s yelling to your dad, “Don’t let go!” but he does and you wobble on, triumphant. It’s country lanes, city streets, backroutes and backroads. It’s the haven of a cycle lane and the relief of survival without one. It’s a Brompton on a bus, full suspension in Wales and a German carbon-fibre dream-machine hired for the week. It’s leaving home half-asleep and getting to work full of beans; it’s leaving work half-dead and getting home full of life. It’s cruising past summer traffic jams and knowing you’d not trade places; it’s cowering in a rush-hour gutter in the wet winter darkness and knowing you’d not trade places.  It’s the hypnotic monotony of training rides and the ridiculous pain of a time trial.  It’s 200 miles around a lake through the Swedish night and it’s 14,000’ up in the Rocky Mountains.  It’s Cornish granny gears and maxing out across the Cheshire Plains.  It’s lochshore rhododendrons and the roadside ripple of a Hebridean otter.  It’s a buzzard gliding at your shoulder and a peregrine streaking overhead.  It’s your photo under the fingerpost at John O’Groats. It’s dipping your rear wheel in the Pacific, and your front wheel in the Atlantic, with mountains and deserts and cornfields and forests in between.  It’s knowing you can trust a stranger on two wheels anywhere in the world and that they will trust you. It’s impotent rage at a headwind and a Titan’s strength in a tailwind. It’s being too cold to think and too tired to care, and finding nirvana in a cup of tea. It’s when they yell to you, “Don’t let go!” but you do and you watch them wobble on, triumphant.  It’s the ride of your life.

And maybe that's why I ride.  Sometimes.