101/1001 (17)

In the excitement of sticking bits of paper to my son’s bedroom wall, I forgot to write this week’s update.

I completed one task:

• Get a bike.  I got one.

I have added two new tasks:

• Ride my bike twenty out of thirty days – I’m already behind on this task, but you can blame the relentless rain (the week just gone) and the wallpaper (the week to come).  When Spud comes back from Lancaster he will drag me out to ride with him, so I’ll start the count then.  I need the other ten days to allow my legs to remember they’re attached to me.

• Answer all comments received in one day with song lyrics – this popped into my head the other day when I wrote a comment that I’m sure came from a Showaddywaddy hit.  I’m looking forward to this one.  I think I won’t tell you when I’m doing it, and see if anyone notices.  I will use a variety of songs and artists and hope it will take a while for anyone to catch on.

I have adjusted a task:

• Not play on King.com for a total of 30 days has now become Not play on King.com for a total of 101 days.   I thought thirty days would be difficult to achieve in three years because I’m quite addicted, but you are all so generous with your comments (that need replying to) and so interesting in your blogs (that need commenting upon) that I find I have days when I just don’t have time to play.  Thank you for breaking me of my addiction to King.com.  Now I need a task that will cure my addiction to blogging.

Don’t forget to check the links on the right to see how the other 101ers are getting on.

First Impression

New bike: great.

Old legs: ache.

Lungs: moved to another location.

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Cycling Diva

Getting a bike today – at last!

I have been after a bike for the past twenty years.  Not enough to demand one for Christmas, or to steal one hanging around outside the corner shop, but I’ve always fancied another go.  However, circumstances have now made getting a bike an imperative:

• We have been putting £5 a week of petrol in the car for about ten years, but it has become so expensive, that barely gets us to the end of the road.  The bike will pay for itself in unused petrol and/or bus fares within a couple of months.
• The Hub is finding it more and more difficult to do things, and can’t be wasting his energy in running me about.
• I’ve become aware of diabetes.  I may not have mentioned that I like to eat and I have a sweet tooth.  Several of my friends of a similar age and approach to chocolate have come down with Type-2.  Plus, I’m at an age where I need to be wary of developing heart disease.  If I ride a bike I can keep eating and my body won’t know.*

* Just had a cryptic message from my arteries, telling me I’m an idiot.  I wonder what that’s about?

I almost had a bike last year: a free one was offered to me but it was about the size of a penny farthing and I couldn’t get on it.  The new bike cost £25 but it should fit, if we’ve measured correctly.  We bought it online so I haven’t tried it out yet.

I ordered the Hub to trawl the internet for a secondhand bike.  It had to be cheap and old: there’s a good chance I will decide that cycling is not for such as the likes of I, just like swimming, rowing, running and aerobics.  Plus, it is less likely to be stolen; and the damage won’t matter when I fall off.  It took months to find one because my demands were many: I am the J-Lo of the Stockport Cycling Community, and I have the backside to prove it.  As well as cheap and old, it had to be a proper girl’s bike with no crossbar, and a basket.  The basket was a must, a deal breaker.  My new bike has almost everything I demanded.  The Hub is going to buy a basket for me on eBay.

After what’s been going on in the Tour de France this week, I have to say I am a little relieved not to be a cyclist just yet.  I haven’t ridden a bike for over thirty years; I hope I remember how to do it.  I can just see the Hub holding onto the saddle and running alongside me; and then the boys holding onto the Hub’s coffin and me cycling alongside it. 

He says I don’t have to worry about not knowing what to do; it will be just like riding a bike.

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