alone

I ride to work for the first time in a month. I have lost all incentive and motivation to ride. I feel fat and bloated, unfit to grace any of my mounts. Less than a kilometre from home a magpie strikes. The eyes on my helmet mean nothing to this swooping demon. The third strike clatters into the side of my head, feels like a beak pierces my right ear. No blood but it hurts all day.

The traffic is not too thick this morning. The arm warmers are off before Mitcham. I’m in no hurry and the ride is uneventful. At work I shower in the disabled toilet, realise too late that I have no towel. I dab the excess with my sweaty jersey, put it and shorts on, dash back into the office for my towel.

Half the day is spent trying to contact our manager, a department co-ordinator at Latrobe Uni in Bendigo. No one answers phone or email. Next week’s presentation in Bendigo has been vetoed on grounds of cost. I try to sort the mess that’s not of my making. It’s good to be in the office after last week’s travels.

I explore a different route home, along High Street and into Bulleen Road before hitting the Koonung Trail. It’s 24 degrees. In Blackburn North I leave the trail again, fiddle through back streets to Springfield Road rather than endure the circuitous hilly path from Mitcham above the Eastlink tunnel to Ringwood.

I have an extra half hour’s light than my last ride home from work. Three vehicles hoot at me to convey their displeasure at my presence on the road on a bicycle. Nothing changes. Despite the lack of kilometres there’s still some strength in my legs if not in my heart.

Back home I go about my solitary business, feeding the patient dog and the impatient cat who wants food though I’ve not even got my helmet off. I feed myself, though I have no leftovers in the fridge. A stubby of sars slakes the desire for fizzo.

I’m good at this, being alone, puttering round the house doing small chores. I attach zip-ties to the bike hat to deter the magpies, remove the slippery saddle from the Red Star and install an old red saddle I replaced last August on the Cervélo with a red and white polka-dot seat that tells everyone I’m a climber. I wish.

I pump up the Red Rocket’s tyres. I haven’t ridden the Rocket since buying the Red Star as my commuter workhorse. Tomorrow I ride the Rocket. At lunchtime I’ll duck out on it to inspect the insides the two Richmond apartments whose exteriors I examined on Sunday morning.

The thought of inner suburban life grows on me.

Rock on.