RETURNING TO MY FIRST LOVE

IT'S BEEN NEARLY 3 FULL WEEKS SINCE the Golden Epic Bendigo race event and my knee's still not 100% right, which is a bit of a worry because I really haven't had any time to ride my bike since. With Kona 24 Hours only 5 days away, I can still feel the odd twitch and twangs from my right knee. Things are not going so well either on personal side of things, as work is retrenching people and the girl I'm fancying declared that she doesn't want me as a boyfriend. However, neither of these were not unexpected, it's just another couple of disappointing holes in the highway called life, sometimes smooth sailing, other times full of confusing paths with odd carnage and pileups.

ON THE BRIGHTER SIDE OF THINGS, I've finally managed to go for a bit of ride yesterday and even though it wasn't an strenuous ride, the knee actually felt ok without too much pain. For a bit of laugh I rode my Ruckus tankasaurus hardtail with flat pedals and went for a spin around home looking for trouble... I mean things to ride. So anyway did a bit of stair riding at local schools, some downhilling along a farmer's paddock, grass slaloms at back of a golf course, being a stupid huckwit hucking off a loading bay and some trial riding over park benches - for the first time I've managed to hop onto a park bench without the help of SPDs. Ok admittedly I also promptly fell off it, but it was progresive riding for me, albeit in a tiny, unremarkable way. Ended up at the Jells Park carpark for a bit dirt slalom on loose gravel and managed to carve out a beautiful high speed turn with rear wheel drifting in a perfect arc, and caught a glimps of the gravel roost in the corner of my eye whilst doing so, and all this done without me falling off my bike for a change. :-)

I REMEMBER TYLER KLASSEN ONCE SAID IN "THE COLLECTIVE" MOVIE that what makes a guy happy in life are girls, cars, beers and bikes. Well after been away from my bikes 3 weeks, tired of work and not getting anywhere with the opposite sex, it was good to return to my first love, the simple pleasure of being a kid again riding a bike in whatever the way I wanted.