"Fat to Fittie"

Apparently blog writing or in fact any sort of creative writing is now a thing of the past and should be put in the same category as the dinosaurs. Since the rise of AI, useless, lazy, thick people can now have a 1000 words on any subject, written down on their phone before you can say “Hasta la vista baby”. It’s a sad fact that these zealots actually think no one notice’s that their boring, stale content has been written by a robot with the personality of a toaster. To try and prove that the skill of writing something interesting and funny will never be taken over by Metal Mickey, I’m writing this blog on a subject given to me by a doubter, who is adamant that the drivel his pretend friend comes up with will be better than mine, true, his will be done in about 30 seconds, mine will take a little longer. I’ve just been given the title and am currently typing quite fast to get it done as quick as possible, hopefully in my haste I haven’t made any punctuation or spelling mistakes, cos it’s my guess, that’s the one thing AI, which stands for “arsey idiot” is going to get right.

The subject I’ve given given is the evolution of bikes, which might sound heavy and a bit of a challenge but I’m happy with it. I’d have to do a lot of research though to find out the exact beginning of when cycling became popular, but I haven’t got time for that, so instead I’ll make a guess. Maybe it was around the late1500’s when Guy Fawkes used one for his paper round in the city of York, it was this that then lead to him deciding on blowing up the houses of Parliament after King James I outlawed bikes, because Scottish people were too stupid to peddle and steer at the same time. (yeah I know that’s going to upset some North of the border, but I had to come up with something and as I said in my last post, it’s only banter) Actually now I think about it, in the film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid” Paul Newman was riding round on the latest invention while BJ Thomas told him it was pissing down, so there we are, the invention of the bike happened the 1890’s in Bolivia. The more I think about it though, the subject is ambiguous, the point of writing a blog is about your experience, so let me look back on how I remember the evolution of the bike.

Sadly, cycling is something I can’t do at the minute, I miss it lots, fantastic for exercise and keeping you fit as well as being something that get’s you around, but my poor crippled hips just will not let me do the circular movement with my legs, that crucially you need in order to propel yourself forward. As a child the bike was my best friend, I did have actual real friends, but in order to catch up and meet with them, I needed to get around fast. Don’t forget here were no mobile phones to find out where everyone was, it might sometimes mean checking out five different places before we all caught up and when you did, there was always someone who for whatever reason didn’t have a bike. Maybe his brother had nicked it, or he’d got a puncture the night before, whatever the reason, he was never left behind and you spent the day croggying him around. There were a few different methods for giving someone a lift on your bike, some preferred the handle bars, but this can seriously un-balance you, especially not good if lots of corners were on the route. Some bikes had extra long bolts on the back wheel, so your mate could stand on them and hold onto your shoulders, probably the safest way but not always possible. The most common method of giving your mate a lift was on the crossbar, good control, pretty safe and not a lot of difficulty for the one peddling, the poor kid sitting on the bar did suffer though, not the most comfortable ride trying to balance your cheeks so it didn’t hurt, and you had to have an arse made of iron.

Growing up in the 70’s and getting around, was near impossible if you didn’t have a bike, it was also essential that you learnt to fix them, which in my case wasn’t good. Back then everything was simple, not like the complicated gears you have today, but even so, I was still shit. If you couldn’t fix a puncture, you were vilified, not that you could afford an innertube, but if anyone ever saw you purchasing one, the word went round very quickly and doubts on your manly skills were cast, you can forget getting a kiss from Susie down the road if she finds out you can’t stick a bit of tape over a hole. There was a certain skill to filling a bowl full of water and sliding your tyre through it, waiting patiently for the bubbles to show, this is where the novice can fail, always check there aren’t two. Of course getting the tyre off the wheel was a piece of piss, anyone could do that, putting it back on without nipping it, or your fingers in the process was a whole different ballgame and a real test of your manhood. The feeling though of achieving it was like nothing you experienced, riding out to meet your mates on a repair you just did, with no help from your dad was like winning the lottery, not so good though when half an hour later you’re flying down the hill with your mate on the crossbar, trying to control a bike with a flat front tyre. For me the summing up of the subject the “evolution of bikes” is simple, thank frig for bicycle repair shops.