The convenient puncture

“Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.”

 

~Hellen Keller

Once upon a time during a weekend trip with a bike club I mentioned to Jim that I’d had an inconvenient puncture the previous day on the way to work. Jim laughed and said a puncture is never convenient.  That made sense and that thought stuck with me for years. Every time I had a puncture I’d think, ” yup this one isn’t convenient either”.

Fast forward to South Africa 2012. I’d left my hosts house in Verkeerdevlei at dawn for a gentle 80km ride to Bloemfontein. The whole morning was a gentle downhill with a gentle tail wind. By 10am I only had 20km to town where I would take a long weekend off the bike. The sun was shining and life was good. Then ppsstt ppsst ppsst and within 30 seconds my tire was empty.

I laughed “Well this is about the most convenient puncture ever !!”. The myth of the convenient puncture was no longer a myth.

——————————————————

Fast forward again to 2019. The Summer at work has been busier and more stressful that I’d like. But, I’ll get over it. In the Spring I smashed my own expectations racing in Oman. Though picked up an injury which I will also get over. I’ve had a lot of doubts this Summer about what to do next and which way to go with the constant internal struggle of ultra endurance bike racing vs bike touring as I love them both but are such a contradiction to each other.

A recent purge of social media ( I killed Strava, Instagram and my FB fan page) certainly helped to rethink the why of what I’m doing. A recent holiday bagging Alpen Cols with missus E-bike certainly opened the possibility of other types of bike holidays rather than trying to kill myself on crazy adventures.

During this holiday and during one of my typically inadequate sexual performances I found a hard lump in missus E-bikes left boob. We light hearted laughed and said ” ha, its probably just breast cancer, the chance of you crashing your bike tomorrow and dying is higher than this being something to worry about. We’ll worry about it when we get home”.

Now a couple of months further a 2cm tumour and 2 lymph glands have been removed and we’re a couple of weeks away from 15x radiotherapy which will be followed by months of chemo and endless months of other shit to kill off this somewhat aggressive Her2 neu breast cancer.

I doubt any sensible person would ever call cancer convenient. But for me the timing couldn’t be better. At no other point in my life would I have been comfortable enough to put my own life on hold for a while to look after someone else.

My life is in order, my bucket list was finished years ago, I’m ready for a break from chasing my own arse on ego driven adventures and races. I’m fit and healthy, have a great employer that will support me and have a partner that means more to me than I thought just a couple of months ago. It’s now time to move life into a lower gear for a while and concentrate on important stuff.

When I walked into the recovery room to find missus E-bike high as a kite on anaesthetics she saw me and lifted her hand. The only thing she wanted was for me to be there to hold her hand.

For now the only adventure and challenge I want is to be there to hold that hand.