Timid, clumsy, perpetually embarrassed
My cycling origin story
It’s now twenty years since I became a cyclist – or just about. I can’t pinpoint an exact date, but I can say, with reasonable certainty that the process took place over just a few weeks, and by the end of March 2006, I had undergone one of the most significant metamorphoses of my life.
Looking back, I’m still surprised that it happened – and that what could have been just a passing obsession instead became the main thing my life revolves around. I have never lost interest, never fallen out of love – never, in fact, even had very much time off the bike.
That was by no means guaranteed. I’m sure people develop all kinds of passions in their early twenties that wear off as they move into their thirties. It would have been entirely plausible for this to be a youthful fling, and for my interest to evolve away from it as I got older. Instead, cycling seems to have fuelled almost every single aspect of my life. It has given me my career, and many of my most important friendships. It has improved my mental health, and helped me develop a genuine (though sometimes still ambivalent) love of my body. It has shown me how to be brave, and confident, and assertive. It has taught me the delicious sensation of mind and muscle working in harmony, and turned me into an athlete – something my bookish inner child can still scarcely believe. It has helped me explore the world, and introduced me to so many places, people and ideas I would never otherwise have encountered.
I don’t often look back to my earliest days on the bike, and when I do, I feel almost anxious at how easily I could have given up, and not had all of this. There were so many moments where I could have succumbed to fear or self-doubt, or listened to the wrong people (everyone always seemed to talk about how dangerous cycling was), or just decided that this whole endeavour wasn’t worth the excruciating embarrassment of being new and clueless.
I definitely looked like an idiot, quite often, back then. I cringe when I think about it. I had absolutely no knowledge of cycling etiquette, the Highway Code, or the workings of my bicycle. I also had almost no money, so even if I knew what sort of thing cyclists were supposed to wear, I couldn’t have afforded it. For my first rides I wore tracksuit bottoms and an old woollen jumper that was a cast-off from my grandmother. I didn’t have a waterproof, so if it rained, I just got wet. I learned the rules of the road mostly by watching other people, and occasionally by breaking them and getting yelled or honked at.
But I was immediately happy. My first nine months in London had been miserable. I had come very close to giving up on the whole thing, and perhaps only stayed because I didn’t really know where else I should go. Cycling wasn’t the only thing that had cheered me up (I had also acquired a steady job and a girlfriend over the previous couple of months), but it was cycling that truly made my heart sing, that changed my mind about the city I had initially hated, and that launched me into the future that was waiting for me.
Twenty years ago this week, my recently purchased second-hand road bike was sitting in my girlfriend’s flat, acting as a clothes horse while I figured out the logistics of getting it to my house share in Brixton. I was too scared to ride it just yet.
