For some obscure reason best known to Murphy & co, it seems to be an immutable rule that if I’m going out on a Saturday night, Sunday is going to be a good riding day. Which puts a bit of a damper on the kind of reckless all-nighters I pulled as a student. Apart from anything else, I like being able to walk and breathe for myself, and safe biking isn’t all that compatible with exhaustion/ hangovers/ blood-alcohol levels you can smell from 20 metres.
I do not have a death wish, or delusions of immortality.
So Sunday dawned as predicted - bright and fresh and early and I rolled myself quickly out of the door, heading for coffee and the bike. My bike was reluctant to start. It’s not best pleased with being stuck in a garage for a month with no excursions. Dammn winter weather. I did start the engine and run it for a while during that month, because I like to keep it ticking over, but boy, does the bike know the difference between ticking over and an actual run on real roads. And it does NOT like the former. By the time we got to Marble Arch, it had got over itself and was merely growling quietly. By the A3 at Tibbet's corner, it was purring loudly and flying along. My grin threatened to take the top of head off and my helmet with it.
Luckily the roads were pretty quiet still, and the half-term traffic hadn’t really kicked in yet, so we could have fun on all the curves and roundabouts, making me long to ride through the Dolomites or the Catalonian Pyrenees again. (Hang on in there, summer’s coming. Inching nearing every day).
Usually, I’d eat before riding but I found vouchers for half-price breakfast at the Chessington Garden Centre’s restaurant, so that was the plan - a short run down the A3/ A243 and try the breakfast. We’ve often stopped there coffee or lunch, and we know the food’s good. Breakfast is a new meal for them, so we thought we’d give them a chance. Afterwards, the day was still pretty and bright and clear, so we wrapped back up and headed on through the Surrey Hills for a while, finally heading back when we could no longer feel our fingers and were running low on sunlight. (Hang on in there, summer’s coming. Inching nearing every day).
It’s Tuesday now, and I’m still on a high... No wonder they keep trying to legislate bikes off the road.
