The bicycle stork

My new bike, carefully selected for the rigours of the JohnO’Groats trip, has arrived. This makes me very happy.

The more cynical among you might venture to suggest that I probably organised the entire two-week ride simply to justify splashing out on a new bike – and you might be right, because while it might not be about the bike for Lance Armstrong, it certainly is for me.

I’m not alone. There is even a mathematical formula which can be universally applied to attainment of happiness for acquisitive cyclists;B=N+1. (Let B denote bikes and N the quantity of bikes currently owned, then ergo, B=N+1).

In fact, there's no limit to the amount of time I will happily spend talking about bikes. And because I don’t tend to talk to myself(too often) you can deduce that there are plenty of other people who willingly share my obsession.

Hours can (and have been) spent discussing bikes we’ve had, bikes we’d like; lusting after bikes and deriding bikes.

And it’s not even whole bikes. Bits of bikes merit lengthy debate and weighty discussions; gears, cranks, saddles, pedals, bottom brackets, wheels; nothing is too obscure, too tedious to discuss. I’ve even had reasonably animated exchanges over handlebar tape.

Then there is the (usually solo) pursuit of pouring over ‘bike porn’ magazines, in which individual bicycle components are artfully displayed and back lit, then carefully photographed like small works of objectd’art, in an attempt to justify their eye-watering price tag.

The high, not to sometimes say astronomical price of ‘kit’ is hardly commented on by ‘cycling folk’ as I was starkly reminded recently when a non-cycling friend came over for dinner. Slipping off to the toilet at some point, he returned in mood somewhere between outrage and incredulity. He’d been reading one of my cycle magazines, conveniently placed in the smallest room for those with time on their hands. ‘Pedals’ he almost yelped, “just pedals…..for over £200”

“I know, they’re lovely aren’t they, and they're,.... errmm, really light”, I weakly responded. He seemed unconvinced.

Some bike shops are aware of how matrimonially divisive high prices can be. And they have developed elaborate manipulation of receipts, which make the Libor jiggery-pokery look frankly tame. It is not unusual, as the till read-out pushes swiftly on to a three figure bill, for the quite offer to be made…. "Do you want to pay some of that in cash”. We all know what’s going on here. It’s not tax evasion. It’s spousal-grief evasion. So when the bill – with say, £50 lopped off - lands in the account, it looks a little more modest.

For some, even that is not a safe enough refuge. A retired gentleman I know, of quite senior years, who will remain nameless for his own safety, decided he deserved a brand new Bianchi road bike. These Italian beauties don’t come cheap and his long-suffering cycling-widow wife was shrewd enough and experienced enough to know it. So he used to leave his brand new bike under a snooker table at his local cycling club house.

Then, each time he went for a ride he would leave his house on his ‘old bike’, cycle to the clubhouse and with the connivance of his equally silver-haired club mates who’d slipped him a key, dump his old bike and take out his shiny new stead. On the way home, the process would be reversed.

Anyway, I digress. Back to my bike (which I’ll add was purchased with my wife’s full knowledge).

If you don’t care about bikes, you’ve done well to read this far and all you need to know is it’s grey.

If you do like bikes, then it is a Specialized Tri-Cross,aluminium frame with drop handlebars, a Shimano triple chain ring and Avid disc brakes. It’s also been a little pimped-up by the design team at Specialized, who clearly thought that its sober grey, anodised finish was just crying out for a little bling. So it is finished somewhat randomly with gold bits and bobs (not real gold obviously – that would be too heavy).

So it has gold effect skewers, gold effect braze-on bolts, a bit of gold on the headset and even under the seat pins.

The contrast of tasteful grey punctuated with flashes of gold leaves the bike looking like a smartly-dressed city boy in a Paul Smith suit, with a couple of gold crowns teeth, prominent medallion and a few sovs’ on his fingers.

Of course, it wouldn’t do just to ride it as it is. The good people at Specialized might have agonised over every last bolt and carefully selected each component. But no sooner was it out of the box than I was over it quicker than a greased weasel, replacing this, tinkering with that, swapping out the other.

Believe it or not, this is the comfy one !

First to go was the saddle. This is personal.
1,000 miles and an uncomfortable saddle; you do the maths(or the biology), but by my reckoning, on a brand new and unfamiliar (and let’s be honest not very attractive) saddle, I’d get no further than Barnstaple before if felt like someone had taken an electric sander to my perineum (those two words ‘electric sander’ and ‘perineum’ should never make an appearance in the same sentence, and for that I apologise).

The other outcome of sitting for hours on a merciless saddle is that the blood supply to your man-bits gets constricted. Numbness follows,which in itself isn’t too bad. But the moment you get off the bike, you suddenly develop pins and needles in a part of the anatomy which really shouldn’thave to entertain such indignity.

I’m sure you’ve all done it before; fallen asleep on an arm overnight and then woke up to find it floppy and useless. While you amusingly pick it up and drop it again, the blood slowly starts to flow back, causing a rather peculiar feeling closely associated to unpleasant. For some reason, this sensation always makes me giggle….Now, imagine (if you have the anatomical hinterland to do so) such a thing happening to the old fella. Trust me, it’s no giggling matter.

It does at the very least leave you walking very oddly for a few minutes; and I find the usual remedy, rubbing the affected area to get the blood flowing again, is rather frowned upon in public.

So to avoid all these groin-related shenanigans, I added the saddle from my ‘best bike’ (see the blue and white one above), a saddle my posterior is fairly well acquainted with. Granted, it’s not exactly a leather armchair in the comfort stakes…but it is not the cruel slice of plastic which came which the bike.

And on a 1,000 mile ride, I'll take any little but of comfort I can.