A bike, some hills and a vomit

I had been making good progress with my planning so far. My route planning was coming together well, I had a couple of different options heading north, depending on wind and weather. People were getting in touch with me with all kinds of advice. What to take, where to go, when to leave. So far I wasn’t hearing anything discouraging.

The next step was to organise a bike. “That should be easy.” I thought, it needs to have two wheels, some gears, and a bell? I had been told I need a really comfortable seat so I should get one of those. To be honest I didn’t really know what I should get, so I decided to test the mettle of some bike shops. I was feeling buoyant, and excited about having committed to my goal. The first shop I visited, I took it back to basics, I wanted to know everything I would possibly need to know. I wasn’t sure what a bike salesman would be like, so I went in guns blazing.

“I want a bike, can you help?” I asked.

“Ahh, yeah we sell bikes” He replied jokingly as if it was some major revelation. “What type of riding will you be doing?”

“Hmmm, a bit of touring” I responded like I knew what I was talking about, gazing around the store at the multitude of bikes.

There were bikes for all occasions. Small red ones, with trainer wheels, fully suspended bikes for careering down mountains, sleek speedy looking bikes for going really fast. I didn’t even know if “touring” was a category. He showed me around some touring type bikes that would be good for long road trips, explained the difference in the seats, suspension, and gears. His advice tended to lean towards the more expensive end of the ranges. He could tell I knew very little.

“Done a bit of touring have you?” He asked after a while. The bike-salesman had an English accent and I was waiting for him to call me geezer and offer me a deal I couldn’t refuse.

“Nope, none at all actually but planning on a bit” I replied. I had decided that the first shop would be a practise run, especially as I knew nothing about bikes at all. I couldn’t possibly buy a bike from someone who thought I was a twat, and I had a feeling “geezer” here was about to form that opinion of me.

“Oh yeah, what sort of trip are you planning?”

“I though I would ride up the country”.

“Oh yeah, up north a bit”.

“No, up THE country. I want to ride from the bottom to the top”.

“Crikey. Cool… Good on you!”. He hesitantly replied. I could see he was thinking the same think pretty much everyone else 5 seconds after I told them. You see I wasn’t exactly in prime physical form. I had lost a bit of weight recently but still looked thirty something, saggy and in sub average shape.

“Yeah, if I buy a bike from you will you show me how to use it?” I asked.

“You mean show you how to run the gears, and to maintain it? Sure thing.”

“No, I mean will you show me how to ride a bike.”

He stared for a bit. Laughed in a forced manner while eyeing me carefully to see if I was joking, then stared for a bit more. I can of course ride a bike, and after a while I let him off the hook. He look releived but I didn’t buy a bike from him.

I went to a few more shops after that, and learnt quite a bit, and eventually found my way into a local store, Rocket Bikes. They recommended a well priced bike and really good advice, and was relatively supportive of my plan. They put me on a bike they recommended and told me to ride it up some hills. I was a little apprehensive considering I hadn’t ridden a bike for further than 40 meters in 15 years or more, but agreed it was probably a good idea.

My first ride in one and a half decades didn’t go too well, but then I had my expectations set quite low. With helmet donned, and seat adjusted to my height I was ready for action. I had a quick instruction on how to use the gears, and breaks and I was off, excited. I sat outside the shop, on the saddle of my new mount, ready to go. I just needed to cross the road first without getting killed. I fiddled with the gears a bit, rolled my pedal back a bit to get maximum take-off as soon as the traffic parted, waited and then there was a gap. I was off! Apparently changing gears and then rolling backwards messes with the chain a little. Half way across the road the chain came off, and I was left dangling with legs spinning in the middle of the road, waiting for the van tearing down the road to hit me. Straddling the bar, I quickly tiptoed the bike to the other side of the road. Not a good start, but at lease I was still alive.

So after a quick self taught lesson on what to not do with your gears while stationary, I was off a second time. Cruising down the Kerikeri main street with a grin ear to ear, the wind in my hair and gaining speed. “It’s not so hard” I was thinking to myself. Then I came to the top of a hill, where the road disappeared down into a valley and then went up the other side. So far my journey had been flat, but that was all about to change. Wheeeeheeeeeee, I thought as I raced down, down, down. It was fun, I was going fast. The cars passing me seemed to do so in slow motion. A bug flew in my left eye but I didn’t want to take my hands off of the handlebars. I was gripping tight. I was feeling positive, right up to the point where I hit the hill going up the other side. My easily won speed going down quickly evaporated, and I found myself having to pedal, and pedal pretty hard. Panting and with burning legs I made it up my first hill. I paused at the top and gulped down half of my water as a reward. I was pleased I had made it so far, so I went on a quick tour of streets and areas of Kerikeri which I hoped had no monster hills.

The second hill I came to was much smaller, and having a bit of my energy sucked out of my legs from the last one, I was please when I managed to push myself up and over this one too. I passed people walking dogs, jogging and going for power walks, I wished them all a good morning. I wondered what I looked like, wearing a pair of old shorts, a t-shirt and some hiking shoes. I really didn’t look the part but I didn’t care.

At this point I was beginning the return trip back to the store. The valley I crossed at the start of my ride was waiting for me, and the slope going back up the other side was much steeper and longer. Still I was fairly optimistic as so far I hadn’t dismounted once.

Here is how that hill went.

I was single-mindedly focussed on making it up the hill. As I pushed my legs harder and harder, I could see the top beaconing me. The crest of the hill was waving at me in the heat, and seemed to be messing with me by getting further and further away. Someone once told me that pushing yourself was as much of a mental thing as it was a physical thing, so as my body started to talk to me and was saying “Okay, I think I have had enough now. Lets walk the rest” I was replying with, “Shut up you quitter, we are getting to the top of this hill”.

“I really think we should walk about now”, my body began to plead.

“I know you are lying and can do it you sad excuse for a body. We are going to the top!” I felt like Knight Rider and my body was KITT. I knew better, and all I needed to do was push the Turbo Boost button, and we would be sorted.

“Well if you don’t stop, I will have to make you, I am sorry to say” said my body. And it did. At this point the world screeched to a stop. I felt like I was swiming in glue, my legs unable to walk, and I hobbled off the bike and onto the sidewalk and towards a park bench a few meters away. I needed to sit down. One step, legs shaking, two steps, head spinning, and… vomit.

So that was my first ride. I expected it to go badly, I have to admit. I had no false illusions about the state of my fitness. After recovering on the park bench horizontal for 20 minutes, I eventually peeled myself off and walked to the top of the hill, and rode back to the bike shop. “How did you go”. “Fantastic” I lied.

The next day I did the same route again. This time no vomit, and I made it further up the final hill, and I didn’t have to mentally abuse my body to do it. The next day I did it again, and made better progress again. So I bought the bike, and even rode it home, which was almost twice the distance again with double the number of hills. Most I had to walk up, but no more vomit. I was getting better with the gears, and generally feeling better each day. I rode home from work a couple of days later, paced my self slower, made it up a couple of hills I didn’t before, and so it went.

The biggest challenge for me will be my fitness, and as long as I kept riding it would improve. If I rode as often as possible and made a little bit of progress each time, I increased the chances of success for my tour, and lessen the amount of pain I would have to endure at the early stages of the trip.

I now needed to organise all the other kit I would need to take with me. I would need to get some racks for my new steed, and some bags to carry stuff in. What other stuff would I need? A change of clothes, food, a tent? These were next on my list of things to organise. But for now I have a bike, which I can ride without falling off. That has to be progress.