I feel a bit guilty at nabbing this one from my Weather Trends, as I am sure this is also Caroline’s longest headwind too.

I asked Caroline if she had a bike and would she like to come for a bike ride. We’d done a lot of walking at this point so it seemed like a good alternative. She said ‘yes I have a bike’ so I thought perfect “let’s ride!” I rode over to meet her. When I arrived she was putting her helmet on. We went over to the garage to get her bike, out comes a mountain bike with knobbly tyres. Stood there in my full roadie kit I thought ‘ok this will be a difficult ride for one of us’.

Naturally I didn’t take my 23mm tyres off road.

 

Caroline smiled all the way. I have since learned this smile is purely from her dance training and hides her actual discomfort of riding a mountain bike, with a saddle far too low, for an hour and a quarter, into a headwind. Seeing her smile, I was blissfully unaware of her discomfort and I kept the pace high with no rest all the way.

It was only once we stopped at my house that the exhaustion became apparent. I realised how tough it had been. We took the bike back by car.

Fortunately the experience didn’t put Caroline off me or cycling.

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