What Goes Around
by Josie Dew
Strange sensation. I'm
cycling again. My wonky knee is now functioning, albeit at half mast. After
swinging along like a ponderous pendulum on bicep-crunching crutches for eight
months, it first felt wobblingly weird, then wonderful to be spinning along
under my own steam again.
During those long and bleak and bikeless days when men in white coats predicted
that the chances of my returning to a saddle-bound lifestyle were about as remote
as cycle touring on the moon, my usually buoyant endorphin levels dipped, dropped,
then disappeared down the drain. Finding myself deprived of being able to cycle
-- something that I had done virtually every day since I was ten -- was not
a pleasant experience. Withdrawal symptoms hit with a vengeance.
At first I was fidgety and frustrated, then anxious and angry. I didn't just
want to cycle, I NEEDED to cycle. I needed to spin and to turn and to twist
and to roll with the wind. I needed to puff and to pant and to fly and to float
and to force my legs faster. I needed to feel that feeling so unique to cycling
that flings you into a higher and happier head-popping plane. Because without
it, my mind was mulching, my systems stagnating, my muscles wasting.
Cyclists tend to have a bit of a bulging leg muscle just above and to the outside
of the kneecap. Mine at their peak were nothing to write home about but they
did at least look as if they had seen a spot of action in their time, action
that had encompassed anything from dragging bicycle-trailer loads of meals on
wheels up the Hyde Park underpass to lugging a heavily panniered steed over
yonder distant mountain tops. But with my bicycle becoming a haven for a miasma
of spiders' webs as it redundantly hung by its wheels in the shed, I watched
with a growing state of alarm my quads being sucked clean out of my thighs.
I was wasting muscle, wasting time, almost waiting to waste away.
So for a while I one-legged cycled until I realised I was turning lop-sided.
One leg was the size of a tree, the other the size of a twig. Meanwhile in the
upper department, my arms were stealing the show. What with having got into
the swing of my crutches (to keep sane I had by now set myself a daily five-mile
obstacle course to crutch around at 6 o'clock in the morning), my biceps were
sumo material for sure.
In fact, so desperate was I to have an adventure that I seriously considered
cycling across Canada using my arms. Or failing that, crutching across with
the aid of a skateboard. East coast to west coast. Then, having arrived in Vancouver
I planned to learn to kayak among the spectacular offshore likes of Salt Spring
Island before paddling up the coast to Alaska. Yes, well, having your head in
the paddy fields of cloud cuckoo land is sometimes what life is all about.
But then, just as I was oiling the wheels of my rocky Mountain turbo-boosted
skateboard into action, and devising a method of making my crutches double up
as tent poles and paddles and grisly bear deterrents, my wayward starboard knee
suddenly clunked into gear and decided to revolve -- up to a point. Good enough
for low-key pedal-propulsion at least. And sitting back on board my pink, cobweb-dusted
machine felt like heaven on a plate. It was sheer and utter ecstasy to be hurling
along like a wombat out of hell through the fast-closing gaps of London's bicycle-crunching
buses, and bumping and bouncing over the multiple multi-storeyed bottomless
potholes again.
At last, instead of gnawing stagnated frustration, I was getting places with
exhilaration and speedy ease. My legs spun, my head sung, my blood-flooded heart
pounded and bounded with vigour once more. My knee may not be the knee of all
bees, but as long as it's wound well up to a hefty and daily
crank-pushing spin, I vow never to complain about any headwinds or sidewinds
or wide winds again.
Because, as all cyclists know, winds are not so much westerlies or easterlies as forever againsterlies. Now, for the first time in my life awheel, I relish them and love them, because to have no wind in your face is the worst wind of all.
© Josie Dew