Phew, thank God that is over. September to the end of January is a long time but thankfully well spent. As it turns out it was 5 months investment into this past month's risky venture. A broken elbow doesn't just require a month to get over it. There's the store of memories and a lifetime addiction to cycling that helps too. Cycling has always saved me, given me that dangling carrot to strive for. This past Winter is not something I want to throw away but its the past that has got me through. The juice in my veins. The majority of my life seems to have had cycling as a pivot point, like a drug of choice. In essence its been running through my veins a long time. Its been a refuge, a way of life, a goal or a talisman since the age of thirteen. I watched Kelly win classics, followed Roche's improbable triple crown and got completely hooked. Dumped was the BMX with yellow mag wheels and bought was the Peugeot racer with profiled tubes.
Ah yes, the drug that has sailed me straight for more than three decades. For instance when things went pear-shaped in Madrid I found a Cash Converters near my apartment in Cuatro Caminos and put a deposit on a Massi racing bike, paying the instalments out of my meagre TEFL teacher's wages. But I would go out of my way every night on the way home from work around eleven, slip left out of the Metro instead of right to pass the shop and stare at the 'reservado' sticker on the handlebar of the soon-to-be-mine purple bike. And then I got it, escaped from the carnage in my life right then by cycling in the Casa de Campo up through the fire-breaks or down past the zoo where the scantily-clad Cuban prostitutes would tout for a different type of lunch-time trade in the midday heat. And sometimes I would get wing-mirrored in the ass by taxi drivers that didn't know how to get around cyclists. I could cycle too as far as the Rosalera in the Retiro park, down past the boating lake and smell the April blooms that would work like an umbilical cord connecting me to the fifty rose bushes my Dad had left behind him at home in the garden.
In fact, even at thirteen, farting around the unfinished town park in 'Ross on my BMX I guess it was escaping from mixed emotions and struggling to find an identity. Wheelies and coming of age. Except the bike just tagged along in one guise or another on the journey ahead. I may have got lost a few times but I always found a bicycle.
There was the cadex I cycled into the Dublin/Wicklow mountains in '93-'94 when I lived in Ranelagh. Seeking pain and isolation to deal with grief I sought the only vein I knew, pushed the plunger on the syringe down to the grit until I was absolutely and utterly destroyed. Then one day I found myself disoriented in Glendalough, couldn't see straight in fact...but I seemed to have found some sort of Neanderthal closure.
Of course, racing is like mainlining a speedball. League or open race, you are on a buzz from the minute you close the car door and close out the world [filled with crying babies, work put on the long finger or guilt maxed to the last] until hours later, everyone asleep, you are up like a meth-fiend at midnight, deconstructing the day like a statistician. Who did what? When did I? Could I have? In the Collins Christle seven years ago I rode from the in-laws to the sign on, rode a sublime race, got Miz to the front twice, never felt the pedals, rode back to the in-laws after Miz got his third place prize, soon drove back to 'Ross for two hours and sat up until midnight smiling at getting a top ten after all of the craziness. I had gotten married in Kilmessan, knew the finale over the bridge like my own driveway. So I sat there in focussed cocaine clarity re-living it all.
And being a courier? Escape at it's best. No real responsibility, no real consequences. Pretty much one long high. There were of course days that were down. Days I felt like crying with exhaustion or lack of fight. Days I couldn't light a Marlboro whilst sitting under Liberty Hall because I was too cold to strike a match. But 90% of it was mindless, escapist highs. Again the bike.
And so I find myself four weeks on from breaking my elbow. Whilst cycling of course. I spent a couple of weeks messed up in the head watching Friends episodes and drifting in and out of some tortuous torpor. Then watching the Bike channel, mostly cyclocross re-runs. I couldn't open the shed and speak to the bike. I didn't know what to say. But I knew the bike was there. Not when I turned my elbow into a tennis ball or when I just wasn't right after the anaesthetic. But somewhere in the white noise was a need to turn September to January into something tangible. All that bloody time turning bearings into mush in all weathers had to have a worth. And two days ago, under the watchful eye of Miz...I got back on a bike, albeit a spin bike but...I thrashed myself silly for an hour and slayed the misery and self-pity in one go. I was back straight away... instant junkie. High on the coming season, high on possibilities, high on the mere whiff of a race finish.
I make no apologies. My addiction is total. It transcends broken bones, broken friendships, caustic relationships and poor decisions. Rehab? Maybe someday. Right now I'm too high to come down for it.
