Contrary

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I really can’t decide if I am contrary, fickle, undecided or just downright crazy!

Being a one car family with kids can present the odd difficulty. It isn’t that they are demanding or want us to be their personal limo service, generally speaking they are happy to walk most places without much demur.

Twice a week however they do require to be in the next town to train for the 2050 Olympiad.

This only really causes an issue if I am working late. Given that our summer expenditure was such that we had a fabulous time and depleted the reserves slightly, working overtime has now become a good option. This brings me to last night and found me scrolling through Gumtree and Freecycle in search of alternative transport.

Yesterday did mark my return to the gym after a two month hiatus so it was a day of changes. I had not quite expected that my arms and stomach muscles would have retreated so readily. The general consensus among them seemed to have been that he was done with that nonsense now so we can revert to splongy normality.

My technical knowledge of gym equipment is pretty poor, trying to describe to my wife what I had been doing there descended into thingys and air sketches. Enough to say that after 35 minutes of pushing and pulling heavy things my arms just laughed and stopped working. The next two hours were a trifle jelly like.

After dinner there popped into said crazy brain this thought that I could spend my birthday money on a bike. To be truthful it had started with a search for a free one (from someone who, like me, last year) had become thoroughly disenchanted with the whole concept of pedalling anywhere.

As recently as Saturday I had dismissed with a guffaw the idea of purchasing a new bike when a friend announced that he would be cycling to work. His commute is 2 hours into Edinburgh whereas mine is ten minutes along the road. I had said with complete confidence and belief that walking was preferable under any circumstances.

And yet there I sat, searching for two wheels and a frame to fit my birthday money budget.

Now my colleagues at work will gleefully part with thousands for pedal power….I was working with £40 absolute tops.

Before too long we stumbled upon a gentleman who had a range of good looking bicycles within my price bracket. He assured us that he was available last night so father and excited kids set off. I love that my kids still want to be with me and get excited at the prospect of loud music, windows down and a drive to get me something. They can happily participate in us getting something without any thought of personal gain outwith involvement, and that is marvellous.

The picture that had enticed us in to this yard of cycling cornucopia turned out to be way too small. So off he went to dig out three more from somewhere behind his house, I pictured a subterranean bunker of prepper proportions with Matrix like shelves stretching far off into the hillside. Probably not!

At any rate, as soon as the kids saw it they both said, “buy that one.” It was fluorescent yellow/pink/green all gently fading into each other, as gently as fluorescent paint can fade anyway. It was the best of the three and after a brief haggle we settled on £30.

So in spite of vociferously saying my cycling days were over, I came to work today on a very well maintained 30 year old bike.

I like to think that I am not so much contrary as open minded, just because I say ‘never’ today doesn’t mean that I won’t ever consider it in the future.

But then again, maybe I am just crazy.

 

 

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24 thoughts on “Contrary

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