4. Honeymoon

With the saddle getting more intimate with my butt, biking came closer and closer to my heart. It was the perfect combination: sport, fixing my back, losing weight, getting fitter, enjoying nature. Nature itself is worth a few words: in April and May, the forest comes to life and it's so incredibly beautiful, like a young woman in green, with an ample and generous bosom, and thousands of arms to take you and press you against it. If that's not THE place to be, then nothing is. 

    The nights were drawing out, the weather was fabulous (thanks, global warming!), barbecue season started (no friends over yet, still in lockdown, but a steak is a steak) and, with biking taking care of quite some calories, I didn't have to worry too much about the amount, be it food or top Belgian beer. If you add the warmth of the family and the fact that my son would go out playing with his classmates the whole day, coming home in the evening, dirty from head to toes, pants torn, no electronics, starving, but with a huge circular smile, you realise that life's not bad at all, even during the pandemic. Or, as my wife would say, quoting me, "I've seen worse!".

   

Such life, though, does set the stage for introspection and you tend to become philosophical. On several occasions. 

   

Firstly, when your nine-year-old child comes home from the playground having discovered a new game, called hide-and-seek, asking if you knew it (kids!!). Or having the pants torn because he climbed a tree. Then you ask yourself how come he (and his friends) didn't do that before? Is it due to the pandemic? And it was, in a great sense. It was the school holiday, no one travelled, we all stayed at home, kids got together, they loved it, couldn’t wait for the next day. Just like us when we were kids. Except for smoking, I guess. I mean I hope. For some reason, I got the feeling that my son and his friends discovered their childhood, at least the childhood as I know it. Did we really need the pandemic for this?

   

Then, biking outside in first hand air: is it love or just a flirt, a mere trifle, something to keep me busy for the lockdown? What if I dump it the moment we’ll be getting our old habits back? Will I be still willing to go outside feeling the feel, or will I fall back to the sweet comfort of my charted territory? My friend and companion - tennis aficionado, more inveterate than me! - told me that he’d reduce his bike trips once the tennis courts are open.

(Spoiler: he called me 5 minutes after his first post lockdown game to tell me that biking is, to put it delicately, not for the tennis virtuosi and he’d like to wish me good luck and success in my future endeavours. And he’d call me, no worry, I needn’t bother to call him myself. Unless it’s for tennis, barbecue, wine (beer is for peasants, I should well know by now). Best all in one combined). 

For me, the oracle has spoken and the signs were everywhere: butterflies in your belly, her smile waking you up, the same smile putting you to sleep. Every single day was a call to it. I just couldn’t wait to get on and lose myself on the two wheels. It felt like I was living for it. And I knew, without any doubt, that I was deeply in love. And, as with great love come great actions, I began to feel that I was more and more ready. 

What if, just saying, no pressure, in your own time, Flo!, no rush, but what if I went the full distance? What if we got married and then took her to a nice honeymoon trip? And what better trip would be than a hundred kilometer one? The ink of my thoughts wasn’t dry yet when I set my date in my mind: in about six weeks I’ll do it. 

   

The preparations were simple and blended gracefully in the day to day activities: all I had to do was to keep biking, trying now and then to go faster, or a bit longer, but overall - it was training by enjoying. And that’s crucial for me, as I have one big big big issue with many sports: I hate training. Tennis is the best example. I like playing, on points, but I don’t have the patience to hit one million balls on one side of the court, then another million on the other side, then there are 5 minutes for playing. I do acknowledge the importance of training, no doubt, but I’m too old for that, thank you so very much!

Then something happened. I don’t know where it came from, whether it was me being in love, or my midlife crisis pumping whatever hormones it does, or me just being me, but I started to get anxious. The nice and funny thing was that it didn’t feel bad, or scary, or threatening. It felt… alive to be anxious, like being young again, on the brink of experiencing something that I’d never done before. It started to enhance my senses (no, I didn’t take any of those pills!) and make me do it as soon as possible. My heart was beating hard, my mind was soothing it (come on, stop being silly, you’ve gone long distances by now and still had a wagon of energy left. It’ll be a piece of cake). I designed several routes, all of them practically going 50km either north, south, east, west and coming back. It was my wife who, again, had to be the scourge of reason:

“Flo, just saying, maybe, for the first time, make a circular round, not too far from home. If...  again, hypothetically, you feel tired or so, you can come home easily. Of course, you can call me and I’ll pick you up, but if you’re in a forest I might not be able to get there by car”.

How was that one, again? Listen to whom? Your woman? A wise one! I made a nice route that passed through all “regular’ six I’d been using by then. One to rule them all! 

Two weeks had passed. And I decided that the first weekend with decent weather would be the one. I only had to wait for one week . 

The trip announced itself like a long and weary one… I began in the morning around 10 o’clock and went to the west, under a rather grim and cloudy sky. With a slight but annoying wind blowing against me, the first 20 km were hard. But then the clouds disappeared. Nor dim, nor red, like God’s own head, the mighty sun uprist...My spirit rose in an instant and from then on the journey was a true honeymoon. 

As the sun was shining, the trip got lighter and lighter and I fully immersed myself in it. I don’t recall what I was thinking of while listening to music, but two things I remember clearly: One, the whole world became unidimensional, like a long line and me biking along it, filling it completely. And two, for a very long period in my life, I felt that I had time, the whole time in the world. There was nothing and no one to take the time from me. 

I stopped twice, very briefly, to take a picture and eat something. And to shake hands with a friend of mine. I know, it was in the outbreak of the pandemic and we were not supposed to shake hands, but he got pissed when I tried elbowing him :). 

The middle of the trip fell in a forest, one of the most beautiful from all the routes I’ve travelled so far. It’s very important that, at the middle of your trip, you’re in a place where your spirit is high. Why? I’ve realised in these long trips that the middle of the route is somehow the centre of gravity of it and it’s also the point where you take your energy from for the remaining part. In the first part you’re an explorer, a pioneer, someone who goes out and seeks the world. In the second part, you’re coming home.

The moment I finished it, after four and a half hours, I felt exactly like after a lovely holiday in an exotic new place (it was the honeymoon after all, wasn’t it?): no matter how old you are, there are always marvellous “first timers” in your life. And I couldn’t wait to chase the other ones. For there were quite a few.