Junk kilometres rock.

I’d like to put in a big shout-out for junk-kilometres on the bicycle, where you don't count how far you are going, don't go fast and have no aim. It was “that guy’s” biography where it was mostly about the bicycle, that he alleged he wouldn’t jump on the bike unless it was for a ride over a certain amount of miles and part of his specific training plan. I’m guessing heart rate monitors, threshold effort and interval sprints, blah, blah, blah.  Shoot me now.

Yesterday was really getting me down with missing someone very much and somewhere between little and no interest in being at work. I didn’t have a plan, didn’t want to go home and thought I’d drop in to see the guys at Commuter Cycles who always help me out.

Turned off the Footscray Road path and headed up the Moonee Ponds Creek trail stuck behind someone who had ridden through the red light to get in front and then ride slow. You have to negotiate a few tight and blind corners in the first few kilometres so I was happy just to sit behind this joker and his unpredictable cycling.

There are the days when you feel good and strong on the bicycle and the mind is a bit sharp and focussed. Those are the days you engage in Commuter Racing, you see the pumped up rooster on the carbon fibre Fibonacci frame with matching kit and just know you are stronger than him. It was the opposite of that, just letting things happen, no effort as I pushed up past where I would have turned off to Brunswick . It wasn’t a conscious choice to keep riding, more of an awakening when I realised that I had missed the path to Commuter Cycles and the weather was nice and nothing at home for me.

Lots of options on how to get home from where I was but too much mental effort would have been involved in considering any of them so I just kept on cycling. No point cycling any faster at this stage even though I had long ago lost contact with any other cyclists out there. Bigger worry is running into any of the puppy dogs that are not on a lead and I was quite admiring how happy all of the dogs were yesterday enjoying their time out in the parks after being home alone all day.

Made it out to the Western Ring Road and again there are a few ways I could have cycled but there was one path there that I had never taken, leading further out of town. Yeah, why not take the one I have never been on? It ended up not doing much other than looping around for a few kilometres and before I knew it the sun had gone down and I was on the banks of the mighty Maribyrnong River on the wrong side of Brimbank Park stopping to try and take photos of what turned out to be the most amazing bright moon I can recall seeing for quite some time.

The cycle home from there was grand, the weather was cool without being brisk enough to warrant stopping and putting the thermals on. I did wonder if it would be more pleasant to just turn all my lights off and cycle along to the light of the moon but you only need one idiot and you end up being on the front page of the Herald Sun as Australia ’s most irresponsible cyclist.

I do not know where in the process and for me it is a process, I evolve from that feeling of empty, soulless and bereft of inspiration to feeling a bit like I can be a part of society for a while. I do know that it is usually when the mind starts composing again. It doesn’t really matter what it is, sometimes stories, sometimes poems or songs, sometimes lyrics of popular tunes playing in your mind to my own arrangement, because I don’t know all the words so why not just join up the various good words from multiple songs. Then there is the contemplation, the wondering, the solving of the worlds problems. 

Maybe something, somewhere, somehow the linkage between the physical, the importance of creativity and the soul. Then I am reminded that is only me. I need the physical to be creative. I have written good words in the past, words I have liked and could read again and consider myself clever for having written. Did I really write that? Was I ever that clever? That must have been an accident. I must have been that monkey within the infinite universe of monkeys that randomly hit the right keys to compose Shakespeare's Hamlet. Then I remember the day I quoted Hamlet back at someone only because I could and they thought I was clever but really just bad stuff from school, nearly the anti-clever. Compounded by my memories of the other times when I have not had the words, when thing didn't connect.