A not-so-vicious cycle

I have spent the morning avoiding poo.
I recall that in the haze of surreal lovey-doviness that was our engagement I agreed to go cycling with the Drudester. Since then I have tried to convince him that I did not, in fact, say “I will try cycling” and that what I actually said was “I am prepared to mount a cycle on the condition that a) it has an engine or b) it is a tandem and you are at the front doing the grunt work”. Funnily enough the Drudester has not bought that and has held me to my word.
So this morning I finally submitted to his entreaties to try cycling.
The Drudester has a slight advantage over me in the cycle stakes, in that he has cycled from the West coast of Australia to the East coast (across what he calls the Nolaboa and what we Ozzies call the Naaarlaboor).
And he has cycled across America.
Coast to coast.
Twice.
I, on the other hand, have ridden the stationary bike at the gym.
Once.
Eight years ago.
Apart from that, my previous cycling experience is limited to careening down our precipitous driveway when I was 10, failing to break, becoming airborne and landing in the gorse bushes halfway down the embankment opposite our house.
Actually I can’t remember if that happened to me. It either happened to me (in which case it was tragic) or my brother (in which case it was hilarious). Either way, the event obviously scarred me for life and had a profound and need I say detrimental impact on my desire to cycle.
That would explain why, when living in Austria a number of years ago, where everyone cycles, my then-boyfriend and I were the only 2 lifeforms in the whole country who stubbornly refused to cycle. Oh no, we were waaaay too cool to be one of those helmet-wearing, garter-legged cycling nerds. Instead, we bought rollerblades, maaaan. And we sure looked cool, gliding smoothly around the streets of city we lived in.
Or at least, we would have looked cool, if the city hadn’t been entirely comprised of cobblestone streets.
So anyway, the Drudester and I hired me a bike and we went cycling. We cycled along a paved path which winds lazily between green meadows and hills and deposits itself softly at the seafront. It was picture postcard perfect.
Well, it would have been. Except that there used to be cows in those beautiful green meadows. And they had certainly passed that way very recently, given the presence of the little parcels of steaming love that littered the pathway. By the time we were halfway along it, the pathway had become a poo obstacle course.
Weaving to the left and the right, it was an enormous effort not to lose my balance and land in the dung. But what was harder was to restrain myself from “accidentally” bumping the Drudester off his prized touring bike to end up face-first in it, Laurel and Hardy style.
The alternative to poo dodging was to ride through the poo. However this produced 2 unpleasant results: 1) The front bike tyre gets turdy and 2) (which was unforseen) the back tyre when passing through poo will actually flick the poo up and catapault it towards the direction of the rider’s head. This would tend to happen most often when the rear mudguard was absent or incorrectly affixed. Hire bikes rarely have correctly fitting mudguards.
Luckily the Drudester, being an old hand at all things bikey, had noticed prior to our departure that my mudguard was not on properly and had fixed it for me. I love him.
So we successfully avoided the cowpats, and took an alternate grassy route along the river back. And as I was riding along on that beautiful sunny Sunday morning with my husband cycling behind me I thought to myself, this is one of the happiest days of my life.
So I very much enjoyed my cycling experience.
But don’t tell the Drudester ...