My First Bike Ride From Ronda

A bike also has the really amazing benefit of instantly reducing our carbon emissions to a level that we feel comfortable with. So anyway, Friday my bike finally arrived in Ronda and I was able to pick it up. The other half's bike also arrived but it was the wrong colour so she went home by bus, but me, oh no, I chose to ride home - all 17 kilometers of windy hilly road.

Call me a sucker, call me stupid, I wanted to do this. My manly pride was at stake. A friend recently managed to do something heroic on a bike and too many people were saying I was crazy so you understand I had to prove them wrong.

I dutifully checked the bike out at the bike shop, made sure the tyres were fully inflated, yes, the brakes work, all the lights on the battery meter were working, helmet seemed comfortable, no problems. My first 100m or so was a bit wobbly but luckily the traffic around me seemed forgiving, then I proudly did a left turn onto a busy street, and again the traffic was quite forgiving and allowed me to merge into the stream. I was on a roll.

Deciding to avoid the heart of the congestion where the buses tend to take up most of the road, I crossed the railway line heading upto the various supermarkets, and amazingly, the motor was allowing me to actually keep up with the cars on a slight hill. Woohoo, this is going to be easy.

At the top of the street I crossed the traffic again making my way to the outskirts of town and Avenida de la Legion, I was about 500m from the carretera and everything was going well.

Then suddenly my legs felt a terrible strain, almost as if I was trying to cycle with the brakes on. Ouch, it really hurt and I had to stop. I checked everything, everything seemed OK, except the motor wasn't working, and the lights on the battery gauge had gone out.

I panicked briefly, wondering if maybe I'd done something to break the bike, then concluded the battery maybe wasn't fully charged, and in fact after charging it overnight I believe that might be the case.

I checked the time, could I get back to the shop before they close for siesta, nope, did I still have time to get the bus, nope, what about the train, not a hope, shit! No way of getting home except to ride the bike, well OK, I bought it for that exact purpose and surely 17km couldn't be that bad, could it?

It's a question I now have conclusively answered. Yes it can be that bad, especially when the person doing the riding has no experience of riding that distance on hilly roads, isn't used to the gears, and if you missed a previous post about my weight, also not quite the finest specimen of a healthy fit male.

I think 4 hours, two tapas bars to get more water, 10km of walking the bike uphill, and both legs completely cramped up is a fair description of my 'ride' home. The other half had been concerned wondering what calamity occurred, but her sympathy rapidly disintegrated when she decided my tired aching muscles needed a massage to relax them.

I don't know which pain was worse, the cramps, or the massage.