Musings on Midlife Madness - my Brand-new Birthday Bike

I just had to share this with you - I got a lovely new bike yesterday from hubby Jan as a belated birthday present - a sort of midlife milestone that doesn't end in zero but momentous nonetheless. As it's nearly thirty years since my last bike was stolen from the house in Drumcondra we shared with my mother before we went to Tanzania, it was not before time for a replacement. I was a bit like Flann O'Brien's Third Policeman in that my bike and myself were so unified it was hard to tell where where one ended and the other began and there was probably an atomic exchange between us. It took me to work in every hospital in Dublin when I did agency nursing in the years before and after my Bangladesh sojourn.

Suffice to say that wherever I went, like Mary's little lamb, the bike was sure to go. I say "bike" advisedly, as a generic term, as I nearly went through more bikes over the nine-year period when I lived in Dublin (with two years off for good behaviour that I spent volunteering in Bangladesh with Concern, where I met Jan) than the proverbial hot dinners I may have had. Through the mid-1970s I lived in the heartland of Dublin flatland, Rathmines where it was always open season for bike thieves. The chances of having your bike nicked from the railings of your own or a friend's flat were pretty high that no self-respecting gambler would take bets on the bike's chances of survival. Kevin Street Garda Station had regular auctions of bikes that had been stolen, abandoned or recovered and unclaimed, and a £10 or £20 bargain could be had for the canny cyclist.

There was a whole culture around cycling in Dublin in those pre-Celtic Tiger days - everyone cycled, no-one had a car (students or young Civil Servants or nurses) and the buses were never going where you wanted to go. This was generally from one suburb to another on the Southside, but all the bus routes worked on a hub and spokes basis (no pun intended!) - with the City Centre (An Lár) as the hub and the routes to the suburbs radiating out as spokes - which added cost and hours to a journey of maybe a few minutes by bike, as you had to go everywhere off the bus route via the City Centre.

The first intimation I had on the demise of the bike as an essential mode of transport was when I returned to Ireland in 1980 from Bangladesh, took up the two wheels again to traverse the city when I started agency nursing,and realised every nurse in Ireland seemed to be driving a car. Even though the 80s is generally decried as the decade of the first recession, it heralded a shift for the bike's place in Dublin society as far as I was concerned, and when I left the country in early 1982 for the next 16 years, I had resigned myself to a four-wheel future.

So now the two wheels have come full circle - bikes are eco-friendly, recession-proof, and more popular than ever - and I am delighted with my new bike. We chose it yesterday from a small specialist bike shop in Fermoy, after looking at a big chain store (another unintentional pun?) where we felt the spotty youth didn't really seem to care whether we bought or not and certainly wasn't offering much in the way of service or information. The other shop had a different take on customer service - I got to ride a few bikes up and down the street, the pros and cons were detailed, my dumb questions about gears and ratios and different types of bikes were patiently and unpatronisingly answered, and I felt they weren't just about selling the dearest bike but more about what I wanted from a bike - not a mountain bike, not a "High Nelly", but something in-between.

I ended up with this lovely bright red Kelly's Kappa Hybrid bike which has a nice gel seat (minimising the numb bum effect!) and 21 gears with 3x7 speeds. As my last bike had 3 gears (a nice Raleigh Tourer) and was a High Nelly for the 80s, I am having great fun playing with all the gears on this one. Yesterday I went for a short 3mile spin and today Jan and me went for a longer haul - 15km on fairly level ground in a circuit that took us home along the beautiful Blackwater river. Never mind gel seats - I had the original jelly legs and an extremely numb bum on arriving home! I'm assured this will get better as time goes by - Jan had already cycled 93km on his racer earlier today so this spin with me was like a cool-down for him. In fact a classy new racer is top of his wish-list and will be fulfilled for his upcoming significant birthday next month!

Those of you who've been following my blog for a while will remember my post on Jan's 100km charity Seán Kelly cycle last August, and know he's a seasoned cycling enthusiast. He's already signed up for the 2010 Seán Kelly Tour of Waterford, and suggested I do the 50km "starter" circuit! Right now that seems way beyond my capability so I will have to review that in a few months and see if the quads and hamstrings are bearing up - on the plus side I envisage the cellulite falling off and the coveted size 12 regained in no time - the old mantra of "No Pain, No Gain" never seemed truer than now.

Watch this space for occasional progress reports as I will be shamed into keeping up the good work if I blog about it from time to time, so all encouragement will be welcome!