Fiction

Doctor Hutch in Cycling Weekly often speaks of his cycling buddy Bernard, a semi-fictional friend who often becomes the butt of funny incidences. My Coach's friend Russell is the same. Even though I've met him, the way Coach talk's about him its obvious he is semi-fictitious....

And in my life right now its Mick. Honestly, he exists! Mick is a mine of information and generally has me in stitches on an average [steady-hard] bike ride. A reformed character once fuelled by IPA or a crisp, he is great company. Sunday was no different. He has a cold. I'd just feel miserable, hot and bothered by the remains of a chest-infection. Mick however was "sweating like a gypsy in a tax-office" after our first and only drag.
He is in the middle of beet harvesting at the moment. He has a super reliable harvester that seems to have nothing electronic in it's operation. Just levering and clutching to beat the band. Mick is understandably tired after a long, dawn to way-after-dusk day and I suggested it was like driving a stair-master. Stair-master? He wouldn't hear of it...driving a whole gym was more like it. For twelve hours a day. I was left picturing Flann O'Brien's character who cycled so much he was half bike/ half human.
And it's not all joking and joshing. Mick can speak in depth on most subjects that affect his fellow man. More cerebral than your average cross-bar jockey. The balance is there....Yet he has no time for the pretentious. Rounding a bend and encountering what I described as a murder of crows reciprocated a withering look from said Mick.
Somewhere in there on Sunday was a knee-op that became a...dare I say it...well, something quite sexual [You had to be there]...and be careful what emojis you use and when.... just make a good fist of it....
You wouldn't want to be afraid to pick up a shovel or brush around Mick either if needs be, you'd get a well deserved bol***king.
And as we are both early risers 'coz we have a lot to get back to, I'll mention this little gem from before 8am around harvest time.... Cresting a hill side by side somewhere not too far from Ramsgrange, Mick takes a sharp inhalation of the morning air, smiles, and says dead-pan..."I love the smell of Roundup first thing in the morning...!"
So what's the moral? Well I'm not very good at maths but if my friend Mick is anything to go by and there's lots of like-minded bike-nuts that I'd call friends, then an algorithm suggests that as a tribe, cyclists are generally good fun to be around. If I know lots of cyclists with both a sense of humour and a head full of ideas and opinions, then most cyclists must be as lucky as me, so exponentially the world is full of fun-lovin' cyclists by the thousand. Go find your Bernard or Russell or Mick, laugh out loud, shoot the breeze, inhale the Roundup and live a little.