The weather has been strangely spring-like lately, and I've managed to ride ever weekend for 3 consecutive weeks. They just haven't been long enough runs to feel like proper rides. So I played hooky from kung fu, and went riding on Saturday. I took the bike home Friday and went on a long (and much needed) run on Saturday - out on the A20, then swinging west again on the world's longest parking lot, which was actually flowing for a change - the much-maligned M25 (quite justly maligned, I'll admit), then off to the A25, which is much prettier, the A23 (a mistake. It's prettier than the M23, but in dire need of resurfacing), the A264 (famously fun to ride, although I wasn't on the nicely curvy bit) and back up the A24. It's been a while since I just headed out with no particular place to go. I had a vague notion to head to Brighton, but I knew I probably wouldn't get there, because the wind is a chill significant factor in March, even when it isn't gusting hard enough to push me across the road. It was trying its best to buffet me around like a child's balloon on Saturday. (I was in full Gore-tex. This makes me look like the Michelin man, so a balloon feels like an apt analogy). I had filled up round the corner from home and was just playing - and damn, it felt good. There's a simplicity to riding that's hard to express. After all, it's a complicated activity, what with all the controls and the traffic and the 101 things you need to see/ do/ remember at any one point. But like driving, the mechanics of handling becomes muscle memory, and the brain is left to concentrate on the traffic, the road and the ride. I feel a little like a bridge player: in the moment, I can tell you plenty about what's going on around me, but afterwards, the details elude me unless they were remarkable or amusing (the cyclist carrying golf clubs springs to mind). I eventually acknowledged my craving for coffee around Dorking & stopped at The Star in Leatherhead, which hands out little mint chocolates with its coffee. I find this very civilised.When I got home, half a day and 100 miles later, I dug out the map book to see where I'd been.
