John Preator

The lovely spring weather inspired me to dig out and dust off my bike and see if you really don’t ever forget how to ride one. It was buried a little deeper in the shed than I remembered, I guess it must have been at least a couple of years since I rode it, and it had made a lovely home for countless large spiders and their tangled mess of webs. It took me nearly half an hour to get the damn thing out and the resulting gash on my arm was very unwelcome, I have no idea what I did it on but it seems to be OK, no lockjaw setting in so far! The first thing that became apparent was both tyres were flat, unsurprising really so I pumped them up and carried on peeling off cobwebs and making sure everything else looked in working order. The back tyre proceeded to flatten again, annoyingly meaning it had a puncture. A good rummage in the toolbox revealed an old puncture repair kit, seemingly unused – I was beginning to wonder if in fact the bike had got a puncture which led to me lazily leaving it in the shed with a view to “fixing it sometime soon”, conveniently I don’t remember if this was the case or not, remembering affirmations of laziness is not a good habit to get into! So the next day, puncture fixed and cobwebs dusted, I ventured out on the bike – at first I wondered if perhaps I needed stabilisers as I was wobbling all over the place, overcorrecting each wobble and making things progressively worse as I went. Taking an emergency stop break against a tree I was really wondering if all this hassle was worthwhile, if I really was going to be able to enjoy riding my bike again – one last try I thought, and off I wobbled, only this time I didn’t wobble – I actually managed to ride my bike in a straight line and after 5 minutes of panic that it was just a fluke and any second I was going to crash I realised that in fact I wasn’t, and it is true, you really don’t forget how to ride a bike.