“UP on the bike,” she instructs. I try not to wince; I hadn’t seen this coming.
“Okay!” I say, hoping I have adopted a bright, easy tone, one that betrays the horrendous pain I am in.
I start to pedal and I imagine I hear a crunching noise with every movement. My bones are grating off the saddle – the saddle is my tormentor.
“Just warm up there for ten minutes,” she says.
“Okay,” I squeak, again, adopting as breezy a tone as possible. I attempt to distract myself by counting sheep but the memories come flooding back.
Just 48 hours earlier, I was a normal gal, full of joie de vivre. So much so, that when I saw the sun shining one fine Sunday morning, I said to the person lucky enough to go out with me: “Why don’t we go for a lovely bicycle ride in the glorious countryside?”
That I don’t own a bike meant nothing.
I had fashioned a soft-focus, romantic vision in my head, something akin to a Ralph Lauren advert, and I was going to do all in my power to make it a reality.
So while he pulled his rusty old mountain bike out of the garage, I made plans to borrow an equally rusty old bike from my mother.
Safety first, of course, so we went to buy helmets.
Then we had to stop at a shop so I could have a 99. Eventually, we got to the homestead where we (well, he) spent a considerable amount of time pumping tyres, fixing saddles and lifting handlebars and whatnot.
The gloss was quickly wearing off my Ralph Lauren-inspired vision of us blissfully holding hands while cycling along a secluded path.
At this stage, I really only held a vague interest in our quest but he was gung-ho for action and, given that it was my idea, I couldn’t back out.
Sometime later, we set off, but seeing as I hadn’t ridden a bike in, oh, about 15 years, I quickly realised that negotiating the brakes/gears ratio was not my strongest point.
He, on the other hand, flew off down the road while I struggled to stay on the bike. After about 23 seconds, my lungs were burning, my legs were sore and the chain had come off my bike.
“Stop! Emergency, emergency!” I screamed, silently thankful that the bike had broken.
He came back and fixed the chain, so I reluctantly got back on.
A few seconds later, I came to the first hill – at this stage he was on top of the hill looking down. I tried my best, my damn best, to get up it, but I couldn’t find the right gear and there were cars driving past and I was trying to avoid potholes and I was sweating and, well, ya know.
“I’ll never survive this,” I say. “I’ll never make it home alive. I’m going to die either from exhaustion or at the hands of a crazed lunatic behind a wheel.”
So I jump off the bike and push it to the top of the hill. Once there, I get back on and glide peacefully for a while until I notice an uncomfortable sensation.
A bone, which I didn’t know existed, was grinding off the saddle, causing me vast amounts of pain.
Then the chain broke again. He fixed it. I got back on. The bone began grinding again. Grinding, grinding, grinding agony! I’d say it’s probably worse than childbirth.
Why is this saddle pain not spoken about? It is madness. Why do people ride bikes? That is madness. The whole schmozzel is madness!
Like a trooper, I carried on until sweet divine mercy was granted and we came to the end of our bike ride.
I swore then and there that I would never get on a bike or anything which has a saddle again for the rest of my dying days.
Who knew that just 48 hours later I would be sitting on a bloody saddle again? Who knew?
I shall burn the next saddle I see.