Angel Tandem Ride: July Ramble

Where the heck has this month disappeared to?

I stumbled upon a few articles recently on why time seems to speed up as you grow older. It seems that as we age, our lives become more routine and we have fewer new experiences, making the days blend together. When you’re young, everything is new, so a week can feel like an eternity when you’re eight. But in your 70s or 80s, each day can start to look the same. So, it feels like the weeks just fly by.

This was kind of reassuring, knowing that my phone’s clock and calendar aren’t playing tricks on me. But here’s the really exciting part: you can still slow things down by doing something completely different. I was so pumped about this news that I nearly tripped over the furniture trying to find the Rear Admiral to tell her there is another really good reason why we need our upcoming tandem ride.

As a Rear Admiral, she is, of course, on a much higher pay scale than me. “Yes, she knew all that and said that she would send me a link about time flying when you are having fun. I read that article and came to the conclusion that one cancels the other out – I suspect that she knew that as well and also probably knew that I would not dare raise the argument that: ‘it won’t all be fun’.

Anyway, I’ve had time to go through all of this because the weather isn’t very bike-friendly. I know I shouldn’t let the weather stop my training, and I’m aware that once we get going, we’ll have to bike in all kinds of weather. But right now, I have a choice. Besides, it’s the middle of winter and it’s cold. Who wants to get all wet and cold, right? It doesn’t bother the RA as she heads off to the gym. When she gets home she asks me what I have been up to? “Oh a bit of trip planning that sort of thing”. The reality is that I have read quite a few books. Had a good chuckle over the latest that I completed, Sam Neill’s “Did I ever tell you this”.

Anyway, I digress. But, talking about being an eight year old totally made me remember when I first learned to ride a bike around that age, maybe even a bit younger. I can’t really remember how old I was when my grandfather gave me my first bike. It was a hand-me-down and I was so short that I couldn’t even reach the pedals, so he put together some wooden blocks to help me out. No helmets back then – learning to ride meant getting a shove from a friend or sibling to get you started, and then either wobbling and falling off or wobbling and managing to stay upright. Falling off wasn’t a fun option, so it was best to learn quickly.

Biking was a big part of growing up in the 50s and 60s. My bike was a single speed with chain brakes. If the chain came off, you had no brakes. My chain came off frequently, leading to some pretty interesting ways of stopping: crashing into a store window, careening into the bushes coming down Mt Taranaki, failing badly and bowling over my mum while coming down our steep driveway – (the cabbages in the veggie garden finally worked that day), just to name a few. It’s a wonder I even got back on a bike after all that. We rode all over, even along the State Highway, with no cell phones to call home if things went ‘pear shape’. It was great! Sadly, by the late 60s, cars were taking over and the rest is history. Like everyone else, I got a car as soon as I could afford one. There was a short period in the mid-80s when I had a bike with a child seat on the back and rode to work, and around Palmerston North with my young daughter. When we moved to Auckland, I sold the bike. You needed the nerve of a Kamikaze pilot to ride in the city back then and probably would have met the same fate. Anyway, it was another 23years before bicycles made a comeback in our lives.

Now where was I. Ah yes, an update on our pending ride.

I have managed to get out a few times on my manual MTB and we have also managed to get the tandem out for a couple of Sunday rides. But not as much as we had hoped. With time ‘flying by’ we will need to up our game as we head into August. Will let you know how that goes.

Because we have decided to support a charity on this ride there is another aspect to our planning that we don’t normally need to consider. That is: trying to create a bit of a profile for the ride. We know that once we get underway, the sight of a couple of idiots pensioners on a laden tandem, biking through the country, might pique interest with passers-by and curious locals. It certainly did on our ride around the Far North. However, that is not really enough, so we are starting to reach out to different groups and organisations both physically and via social media. The more people that know about the ride the better the chance that some may feel sorry for us and donate to the charity that we are supporting – The Bald Angels Charitable Trust. We also hope to use the ride as an example that life does not end when you reach whatever age is considered to be old by others. You are only as old as you feel (yes I have been reading some articles on this and ageism) and while the body obliges why not try something a little daring even if others may infer that you are too old to do it.

The Bald Angels asked if we would like to give some of their volunteers a briefing on the ride. Despite the terrible weather a few hardy souls came along last Friday. It was great to meet them and we had an enjoyable evening sharing experiences and giving a visual presentation of our plans. That has pretty much kicked off our publicity efforts. If anyone has any other ideas let us know.

We met Rene Heyde from Christchurch back in February and spent a day biking with him from Cape Reinga. He was biking back to Christchurch in preparation for an upcoming charity ride. Rene heads off to Perth this week to start that ride from Perth to Melbourne via the Nullarbor Plains – about 4,000km and I believe that one section of the road runs for about 146km without a corner. Good luck Rene – looking forward to reading about your adventure. If you are interested, you can follow him on Facebook . Here is an article in The Press about Rene and his ride.

I will finish with the picture below. I snapped this while checking my predator traps down on the Wairoa stream here in Kerikeri. I can walk to it in a few minutes. Unfortunately, the track is in places a pretty challenging bush track and not suitable for bikes. That’s not to say that some have not tried to ride it – I have seen the tyre tracks.