It's been about four months since my surgeon told me in cricketing parlance that I was “on my bike” and until I next saw him that I was not to ride my bike. This week I decided to defy these orders a few weeks ahead of schedule, primarily because if my completely healthy wrist ligament cannot survive a low-speed impact with the pavement, what hope does any function of time have for it to do better? The obvious solution is to never fall off my bike. If only I had thought of this back in February.
I am fully capable of squeezing the brake and changing gears, which I wasn't back in August.
Despite the trepidation, it didn't take too many revolutions of the wheels to remember the appeal of bicycle riding that made me want to ignore medical direction and get back on the saddle. Cruising the bumpy footpaths in the open air gives me a feeling that I can't quite put words too. It's the sensation of my tender taint bashing up and down repeatedly against the hard seat. Obviously when you don't ride for a few months that's the first fitness you lose. Hopefully I have the rest of spring and then eternity to temper my taint back to its previous state. Conditioning my entire body would be ideal. As I crested a hill on my twenty minute door-to-door commute on Tuesday evening I was awash with pain in my knee, lower back, wrist, tooth, and - yes - the taint that could only make me chuckle as I realised that I probably have decades to go with this and more niggling injuries to live through. And I'm not even special! Soon I'll be forty and from what I've seen nearly everyone is just accepting a growing number of failing parts that will be with them until they die. No wonder the majority of people I know are alcoholics based on the Australian Health Department's guidelines.
But anyway, I would feel all those aches and pains even if I wasn't on my bike.
