Creole Belle

Two days now and not a word. The phone is silent. Ironic that, silence. Down the strand just over the beaten fence of the beach house, the surf pounds. It should be beautiful, isolated, a refuge. Instead all I can think of is her wind-blown, shoulder-length hair as she left. It wasn't an argument, more a disagreement. I don't raise my voice and she doesn't hold her ground. She'd often take the car, get some air, come back an hour later as though nothing had happened.
Not this time. Her phone was resolutely OFF. I sat in the sunroom staring out. Bleached cushions, bleached cane furniture. A smell of heat off everything now in the height of Summer. But I felt cold. Was she gone back to him? Would I want her back now if she did show up? I sipped the almost-cold coffee and watched in the distance as kids played down by the water's edge. A car door slamming woke me from my daze. I jumped up. Whatever it was we would work it out. We would. I rushed to the screen door and pulled it open for her. Sergeant Williams faced me, hat in hand. "Hey John", he said, eyes lowered.

Tempus Fugit

Time is an enemy. It catches up and breaks you down. All of a sudden you are having a conversation with your 87 year-old mother. You're engagement photo from Tunisia is 17 years old. You are counting down waiting for the few snatched play-times with your growing kids, caught between watching them grow into characters and wanting time to freeze-frame. What can we do? Look back and count the cost of time wasted aimlessly waiting, or, count the fewer memories of time lived fully? I remember dragging my ass through college, hours every day... gone. A lost boy. A faceless institution. But I took a love of words from it and met some incredible people along the way. Before that I can count the lost five years when I nomadically plodded about once I'd left school. Or I can recognise the character that came out of those lean times.
And in recent years I've awoken to another fact. I always felt my Dad passed on too soon. I was twenty-three. He was seventy one. Since my daughters arrived in my life I've seen it differently. I was too caught up in myself at the time to see that those were twenty three years where we were really lucky to have each other and to share whatever we did. I never saw that perspective after his death. Felt hard done by for a while. Life is fleeting, harsh and nail-biting stuff with zero warranty. He taught me that. I have a feeling he enjoyed those years just as much as I'd like to replay them.
I look at how green I was in the late eighties/early nineties. I rode my bike with no coach or clue, putting myself to sleep at night dreaming about Belgian toothpaste, epic battles and success. Sure, at the time I wasn't happy when I couldn't win jack sh*t but now I'm so happy turning the pedals. I look at young fellas being coached and equipped and mentored and I can only feel pleased for them. Cycling has probably contributed to my being here right now, more than any other thing. Yes I could have ridden and finished the RAS in the early nineties [and most definitely NOT in the last 20 years] but sure, in the grand scheme of things I've smiled a lot through cycling. I didn't burn like a flare. I wasn't extinguished in the dark times either.
In a nutshell, I've managed to get a handle on time and it's effects. I know it's value. Despite what my wife may sometimes vocalise, I spend a huge amount of time not cycling! There's the time with that aforesaid 87 year-old, there's the crazy times around the town with the kids, in the café, chasing them around the fruit and veg in ALDI, staying up reading with them or having cheeky snuggles on the couch. I cycle probably 6 hours a week. And I enjoy it. Most of that is done out of the school gate. Sunday spins have me back in time to do the shopping and look out the supermarket window at local clubs cycling by.
I don't have a great routine. I just try to turn the stereo up. Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" is sublime when turned up to eleven. I drive quickly. I train harder. Or pick harder routes. I jettison anyone that tears time away from me. I read hard-boiled stuff like Raymond Chandler instead of literature. The coffee machine in my classroom is always on as I try to teach at a million miles an hour. I pitch my life experiences at 30 students every 40 minutes. At home Lavazza is the pout pourri replacement. I have repetitive strain injuries in my sense of humour from messaging the good mates I have. If they were in a quiz they'd be the quick-fire round!
I try desperately to kick chronology in the gut and buy more time. I'm trying to log this blog [written over lunch] before putting the sprogs to bed!! But I'll be back down the stairs to write a page of the novel.
Andy Dufresne gets the last words though; "Get busy living or get busy dying."

New tattoo

I'd like to think I move to the beat of a different drum. Doesn't everyone? A tattooed beat all of our own making. We all have a different reality deep in our subconscious. It's back there where we were little, hairy, hunter-gatherer types. Our way of being is decided for us long before we ever became aware of it. So though I'd like to think my slightly incessant sense of humour, my love of the outdoors and an awful disrespect for authority is a personal project and journey that I alone forged... the truth says different.
I have no idea who I am in reality. If I write drunk and edit sober then I'm of Norman descent via Flanders, farmers, educators, emigrants and tradesmen. I don't feel as though I belong to any of that bar the Flandrian part. 800 years ago that's where my namesake hailed from. A small region that prides itself on directness, a stubborn streak, and a sarcasm unparalleled in western Europe. Plus an affinity with the hard outdoors.
Today I coughed and spluttered and sounded like an East German female weight lifter every time I spoke. I belted out to the Saturday time trial league only to find that there were no other competitors. I had a chat about soccer with timekeeper/photographer/organiser/bastion of cycling Sean, then we called it a day. But somewhere in my sub-sub-conscious a troglodyte Norman with the unibrow and B.O. started to suggest I race anyway. So I couldn't breathe properly (hey maybe it was lack of oxygen to my brain?), knew I was racing myself only, and said flip it, let's do it! Would you believe it if I said I got a shudder down my spine as I started the stopwatch? I know, I know, it was probably just the Veno's cough syrup, Sinutab and vitamin D coursing through my oxygen-depleted veins.... But I'd like to think it was that inkling of ancestry, a dot of soil from a North Sea buffeted field.
Off I set, a sorry sight hurtling down the inclines and struggling up the drags with a stubborness and angst that belonged in De Panne instead of a rural corner of Wexford. I could have taken a shortcut, or turned around on the road. After all its not as if there was a witness. Hell I could have called a taxi! I was pumping amoebic horrors from my nose, leaving a trail Hansel and Gretel would have been proud of. And all to race myself because some glitch in my DNA bade me keep going. My ego would like to think I was tough to finish but really I didn't want to admit I'm sicker than my wife thinks. And there was that feeling that a little bit of cycling here and there keeps my hopes of having a decent season alive. My personal image now stands at 'Tough Flandrian skin wrapped around a soft, chocolate-fondant body'.

Funny half hour

Forty odd years ago my Dad would let out a holler from downstairs at us to quiet down, to go asleep, that it wasn't 'funny half-hour!!'. So we'd quit our sniggering and stop hitting each other with pillows or insults and nod off. As I cycled around town today I couldn't get the phrase 'funny half-hour' outta my head. It wasn't nostalgia. It was relief. I'd spent a week in a nether-world between sleeping on a sofa or walking like a zombie. Energy-depleted. Sore. Listless. Antibiotics and coffee the staple-diet. I'd gone from riding a time-trial on a Saturday to beaten old man by Sunday. Fun times. I knew I was going to get sick, what with viruses and doses having turned my house into a small hospital in the previous weeks. The virus I got had been in the post, so to speak.

And today I cycled for half an hour. Half an hour steady. To put that in perspective, I normally do full-on intervals on Monday, dragging my ass up a hill ad infinitum or sprinting like a deranged greyhound after a non-existent hare. But today was a litmus test. Ride a bike. For thirty minutes. Just cycle. And I did. I watched my heart-rate climb, felt my legs spinning in the cold air. And I laughed and smiled and laughed some more. Funny half hour was thirty minutes of beaming like the village-idiot, laughing at the air filling my lungs and feeling alive. I had thought my legs would go, my heart palpitate like a caffeinated octogenarian, dizziness would overcome me like a wobble to jelly or I'd just fall over like a fool.{I have form lately in that department!}.

Nothing happened. I survived. My lungs are good. I'm still smiling. There's been days in the past when time was too tight and I'd not cycle, thinking it wasn't worth the hassle. Never again. I'm sure half the people that saw me lapping the town like an idiot, grinning at my luck, probably think I should be sectioned. They could be right. But I'll keep on smiling, just to keep them guessing.

Hope

Why do you ride a bike? There's complex answers to that one. And I'm only asking because of late I realised that there's every possible avenue into our sport. I'm reminded that cycling doesn't have to follow the traditional routes of many sports. I'm reminded of Dutchman Steven Rook's drunken bet in a bar that he could win a race despite not riding a bike at all. And later rode the Tour regularly. Or all those ski/biathlon/triathlon/runners/GAA players with injuries that did more than take up cycling, they took it over. And we are surrounded by people who inspire without knowing it, simply because there is no hallowed path into cycling, no sure fire system like a lot of mainstream sports with their apprenticeship approach. Truck drivers, teachers, accountants, dentists, farm contractors,fitters, joiners, builders, salespeople, gangers, are the first people to mind that cycle in my world. That makes for some eclectic mix of personalities and mindsets! Get the picture?
I got into cycling through my brother Stephen and also my friend Adrian. Let's be honest. When your bro brings home Tour magazines in French from, of all places, well...France... you are only going to fall in love. He was off in France for parts of college when cycling was on the rise in Ireland. I was absorbed by Phil Liggett-voiced American cycling tales on RTE but Stephen taught me 'La tete et les jambes' (the head and the legs). Of course it didn't stop me from ignoring the 'tete' bit for the next 20 years but as they say in Brittany... actually I don't know what they say because I didn't learn much of that language! Roughly translated they would say "Imbecile! You are as useful as a teapot du chocolat! Mon dieu!" And besides, the shit-cool photos of Laurent Fignon and his ponytail or backdrops of open, heat-shimmered roads caressed with echelons in the mags sold my soul forever.
Adrian brought me out clubbing. Before you ring the drug squad or Greenpeace I should point out that it was bike-clubbing. Hard-as-nails chain-gang torture in the muck and wet of winter. Joyce described plunging into the Forty Foot in Sandycove as 'snot green and scrotum tightening'. That also defines our local roads. Just replace snot-green with slurry brown. Adrian was up for long spins of the return-home-buckled variety. I can honestly say that I was lost on his bike rides. And never as happy. And then I was hooked. Fast sprints around the town on friday night's when Stephen got off the bus followed by character building Sunday spins with Adriano where you came back with a beard.
Other club members came from handball or cross country running. Grass-track champion DNA or the Belgian school of hard knocks.
That was back in the Ark compared with today. And this is where cycling is beautiful. You can't pick up a Hurley at thirty and rock up to the GAA club but you can cycle with any club. You might like to think the local rugby club might accept a 25-year-old newbie that doesn't know their ruck from their try but really you'd be better off on a bike. Only a golf club will be as accepting. (Of your cash). So cycling it is then...! As an example, look at the crowds that participate in the Cycle Against Suicide or any large Sportif for that matter. They haven't come through the system in most cases. They needed an outlet and found most other sports inaccessible. Seriously though, Like drops of rain draining into streams until they become an ocean, it thankfully doesn't matter where we come from anymore as long as we get out cycling. Snobbery exists everywhere but thankfully in cycling it's being slowly swamped by a tide of MAMILS and smiling young folk that are of the zero-tolerance-of-BS generation.

Is this too chirpy for you? Too endorphinated? Seriously?! Sunday I met a bloke called Garrett and had a great social chat in a snow flurry as we cycled along at 8am. By 9.30 I was talking to a lady by the name of Mia who happens to be part of the National set up and is a track rider and good company too. But neither cyclist started with a club as a 12-year-old and learned the nutty, prohibitive rules. And both are definitely better for it. Instantly sociable will always trump the silence new cyclists used to receive. There is no longer a pecking order. Can you ride a bike without knocking me off? Fair enough, no need for an apprenticeship then, or, the 457 grey rules to accompany it. Why shouldn't you enjoy the same event as everyone else?
Mindfulness has probably, single-handedly re-shaped Irish cycling. We need our break. We need to re-connect. We want to enjoy the Irish countryside without a book of rules that basically shuts the door on day one.

So an average club cyclist equates to an average club member in any sport, right? No way! Look at what we are; Super social; apart from the odd grommet in your ear, we can instantly connect with most fellow cyclists. A Sunday group ride is basically manic speed dating in lycra. Had a mechanical? You might sit in your car waiting for the tow-truck but as a cyclist you'll be surrounded by helpful people instantly, like a benevolent pit-crew. Want to push yourself? Then you'll find events with hundreds of people (just like you) lining up, all with diverse backgrounds and circuitous routes into the sport. Cycling is a beautiful activity, a passion and a lifestyle. You are less ordinary. You are a rarity. You are a deity in a world of worshippers. You may not feel it when the trolls pass too close on the road but its blind jealousy that brings them close. They want to be you. They have drifted from soccer at 30 or hurling at 32, felt betrayed at 34 in rugby or dropped their gym membership at 36. They want your will and your resolve. They want your heart too. Pity them. They don't cycle.

Tramadol for the craic

You have to laugh. Karma has been buzzing around the last ten days like an unwanted fly in a kitchen. As the fridge magnet reads, 'Sometimes you are the pigeon and sometimes you are the statue.' Last week I was the pigeon, soaring, carrying the message of karma to all. This week I am, most definitely, the statue. I rounded off last week with the tough Sunday session in my schedule and it went really well. I felt good and didn't waste a kilometre. In fact I had time to spare coming back from the Hook and headed, as suggested, for Sliabh Coillte. It's a hill that my friend Mizgajski turned into a training Mecca. I've probably, literally been up there a hundred times and it's a horror. A Bullfighter will often refer to the bulls as being their friends, even after a goring. I'll never call that hill my friend. Frenemy on a good day maybe. I must have been motoring in the last week whilst delivering that karma message. I'm one to torque. My chain snapped as I rounded the first hairpin bend. I was standing, churning, doing a Contador. Well, El Pistolero but firing blanks. And then I was on the deck, via the handlebars. My pride was shot to bits. My broken chain became a broken projectile headed for the nearest ditch. My voice became that of a drunken cowhand's, cursing mostly myself.
At this juncture you may be laughing solidly at my misfortunes. Thats how karma works. This week I'm the statue. A cracked rib, stiff neck and swollen knee delivered at 5mph. But then karma just might have been taking really great care of me because during that morning's session I'd totalled 28 all-out short efforts. So I could have face-planted anywhere and at any speed. Fair enough I could probably do with the free cosmetic surgery more than most. But methinks something is keeping me alive. So the 'Jeers' (As my Dad called them) from the past can come get more karma....
And although I'm sore, I'm not terrible. My friend Shirley nearly broke her ankle last evening playing hockey and vomited on the way home with the pain. That's nasty. I can pick up my kids but can't turn sideways. Grand really.
That's not to say I didn't consider painkillers. But if my body is telling me it's sore then I should just back off. Like the cyclists going to league races a few years ago with a car boot full of supplements... you are only writing cheques for your body short term, knowing that the account will soon be in arrears. Better rest now. Besides, even though there's Tramadol in the house I'm not a pro rider in need of results. I'm not even a second string kermesse rider in Flanders. I'm just a weekend warrior. Actually more a Sunday skirmisher. No, a partially motivated MAMIL with delusions. So Tramadol or Nurofen or NO Explode are out the window. As for creatine, yohimbe or beta-alanine... I can always do with a tingle but no amount of potions will make me great. A doped donkey won't win the derby and all that. I won't give up my coffee though. I may never be a champion but my Cuppa Joe tells me different. I'll just avoid the pastries and general, stretch-mark inducing, diabetes-in-a-bun delights I seem to be surrounded by.
So where to? An easy week beckons. I can do that. I'll cycle by the bike shop, coffee shop and off-licence so word will get around that I'm constantly clocking kilometres. I'll stay off Strava to keep the chaingang chimps guessing too. I might drink 4 cortados per day to keep the weight down and trick my heart into thinking it's training. In no time at all I'll be the pigeon again. Pecking around, noisy when approached and leaving my mark on whoever's the statue next.

Manipulation examples

"Go on, it'll be the best tenner you ever spent!" She winked and put the tiny pill with the Mitsubishi symbol on the end of her long tongue. She smiled and it disappeared.
And I knew what was inferred, her message.... Join in with me and you just might get me too. But that was the voice in my head. It didn't occur to me that in a club with 1000 other pill-necking, beautiful-people, it might not be me she'd go home with. But it did occur to me, like a neon sign flashing over my head, that if I didn't do it, she would disappear like a witch into the night. So I took her hand, her exquisite, manicured hand, and she led me into the corner of the club, near the booming bass and pointed out her dealer of choice. She called him Instagram, explaining that he could always, no matter where you were, show up with a gram in an instant. But the bass pounded, we didn't talk, I waved a tenner, he waved a pill. On the dance floor, Amy waved a finger at me in a come-hither way and my conscience dissolved away with the powdery taste in my mouth. She had won.
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"F**k you ya clown!" My first impression was that he was big. Rugby big.
"It was an accident lad. I'll buy you another beer." And I turned to the bar to do just that.
"I don't want another beer, you've ruined me night ya eejit." He was squaring up. Well as 'square' as a chunky, over-weight rugby jock could get.
But my girlfriend wasn't having it.
"You ain't gonna let that blob call you an eejit, are you?"
"Well, I just want a quiet time Rachel. Hadn't planned on A+E tonight." Rachel had had a few drinkies by now.
"Well I think you should take that fella to the street and 'bate the head off him!" The problem with this statement was it's volume. So loud that the Jock looked at me expecting me to go through with it. Thank you Rachel, my soon to be ex.
"OK, you want a beating, I'll give you a beating!"
Then we were outside, tucked away around the corner out of sight of the bouncers. As I passed out from his knee blocking my wind-pipe, I remember the smell of urine in the alley and the absence of Rachel, bloody Rachel, presumably still in the pub.