There is no easy way to social distance on a bike unless you cycle on your own. And that is just what I've done for three months. I have a lot to lose. Covid would kill half my household faster than Mike Myers in the movie 'Halloween'. And I didn't want to be thinking of what being asymptomatic would do to anyone else that I love. So I stayed apart. Didn't fool myself that a spin with my mates couldn't wait. Got as clever as a cartographer with my two kilometre limit, so much so that the five kilometre thing felt like opening the door to Middle Earth. And the twenty kilometres was just sublime. Mentally I got used to the constrictions. I'm a social person, totally stoked on occasional spins with mad-cap friends that share the lunatic love of cycling. It was tough but I adapted, and I sure wasn't alone. People I greatly admire did the ring road shuffle, or stayed indoors and got on to Zwift, or ran the whole Camino de Santiago virtually on a thread mill, or just walked the road outside. Some at least took the MTB and hid in the woods. Good God, Mizgajski rode the 300m of his housing estate over and over to climb Everest rather than pick an easier climb outside the restrictions. It wasn't fun but it was done.
And yet the undercurrent was of isolated people [particularly on STRAVA] just doing what they wanted. And as the pandemic picked up pace, that more sinister plague took off. A dose went around of acute narcissism. And I watched as too many of my comradeships in cycling died daily all over the county. Restrictions? They aren't for me! And not all of them were STRAVA jockeys. I'd stuck close to home under ridiculous stress while 'friends' shared pictures of hill-walks and barbecues. Ever felt like a fool? I'm sure many people just silenced their apps and did what they wanted. Others did 100k rides as far from home as they could get even though the 2k/5k rule still applied to the rest of us. Have you any idea the lengths most people have gone to NOT to break the rules or to stay as close as possible? Blurring the lines is one thing, being ignorant about it, another. We might have a vaccine soon for Covid-19 but not for stupid.
I understand that restrictions are lifting. I understand people like a chat. I don't understand how I'm not gonna get someone's breath/ snot/ Covid droplets in their slipstream. And there are still cases out there. I'd rather be paranoid a while longer thanks very much.
So on Sunday I ploughed into a cat that was obviously just getting me back for being a dog lover. I went over the bars and took skin off my left side while snapping my collarbone and cracking a rib. I'd spent the morning socially distancing in splendour, riding the lanes and getting lost as I really love to do. It took me a long time to get off the ground. I'd never been winded like that before. I couldn't do the usual, you know the craic, get up sprightly and check the bike. Actually I did a Renton in Trainspotting when he had the adrenaline shot. It had been a close run thing. I got a fright. Nothing felt broken at the time so I rode home and felt bad for the hassle I was gonna cause my family by being cranky and slow for the day.
As I rode into town I beat myself up over not being in a secure cycling group earlier. And then in A+E I got to thinking the truth. What I'd been doing for quarter of a year hadn't gone to waste. The masks, the gloves, the loneliness, the irrational nature of isolation in itself was the right thing to do. I might have looked like a mug to some, but hadn't I protected my wife and kids? The voice in my head whispered 'fair play Joe, you are better off adjusting your life to somebody's absence than adjusting your boundaries to accommodate their disrespect'.
