After last week’s outing, was pretty disillusioned with the whole bike thing.

Didn’t get out during the week and hadn’t really the heart for it to be honest. Besides, had other things to worry about that are more important than pedalling around like a moron.

I intended to go to one of the bike shops today and see about a new seat. Consequently I didn’t get out with the 8:30 peloton, I had dropped Leo to his bus for a tournament in the arse end of Fermanagh – Kinawley to exact. When I was a student there was a fellow from Kinawley kicked ball at Queen’s. Tommy McManus you called him. Dunno where Tommy is now, he was a good lad and he spoke with an accent you could cut with a turf spade. I digress.

Anyhow, I returned to my bed and slept in, and looking out at the pissing rain I had no regrets. As the weather cleared I decided to force myself out on the road for a two hour spin. Save the seat shopping for again. I slipped into my skin tight cycling shorts, fitted the banana and other fruit into position, assisted with as much lube as I could muster and set off down the road, my helmet a-gleaming in the afternoon sun.

Numerous women couldn’t keep their eyes of me as I swooshed past in a blur of vaseline and banana-and-other-fresh-fruit-a-wobbling. As one fainted I heard her sigh ‘It’s not about the bike’ and another leaning on a post groaned: ‘I wish I could ride like that’.

Really in the groove now I changed my gear strategy, no longer viewing them as adversaries that needed to be worn down at every wheel turn, today my gears were my friends, helping me up valley and down hill.

As I headed up roads that caused me pain last Sunday I struck out for the home of the world’s most famous whiskey and also the home of more inbreds per square mile than anywhere else on the planet. Bushmills.

Bushmills makes you feel glad to be British, if you are British. If you are a Fenian cyclist, it makes you want to cycle through the place as quickly as you can. Some might view the open and aggressive displays of loyalist, unionist, royalist and paramilitary insignia and flags as quaint in an Ulster Scots ‘this is the only culture we have’ sort of way. It doesn’t bother me – I just think these folks need to grow up and move on.

Anyhow, after an uneventful trip, other than the fainting women, I made it home in one hour and three quarters. Dunno the mileage, probably about 18 miles or so.

But what a trail of destruction I left in my wake.