No, thinking about it I lie, because the words 'I went' implies that I sat up and thought to myself 'I Know what I'll do, I'm going to get up from my warm bed, pull on some dark clothes, then climb onto my bike (which features no front headlamp, a dodgy cracked pedal which could snap at any point, gears that threaten to fall off every time they're changed, semi-flat tyres and a bell that doesn't even work properly - the last time I tried to 'ding' it, the springy bit caught my finger and I nearly fell off) and zoom off into the drunk-driver filled night wearing no helmet or, in fact, any safety gear whatsoever. For jokes.' And that's not even mentioning the massive amount of pain my entire body was in - what with the return of the rowing year, my hands once again consisted of seeping open sores joined together by skin, my ankle was agonisingly full of tiny metal needles, and to make matters worse I had managed to walk into a wall with my bike previously in the day and had slashed a hunk 'o flesh off my finger. To be honest my hands hadn't had the BEST of days, and my misery was compounded by the fact that I'd got up at 630 to practise the aforementioned river-based sport and I was sleepy.
The point of the previous paragraph was to highlight the fact that I did not choose to go night cycling out of some mis-guided sense of adolescent fun (although I will admit, cycling at night is basically the funnest thing ever), but rather because of necessity. For, you see, I was trapped in some peach-coloured hell hole and I needed to get home ASAP. Where was this peach-coloured hell hole? MY GIRLFRIEND'S HOUSE. Yes I have a girlfriend. I might have mentioned her once or twice. A post.
She is pretty hard to get away from, though; I'd just cycled over to visit for a few hours at 630ish, and before I knew it I'd sat through all of Talledaga Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (crap), had done TWO CLUES on the Telegraph Crossword, and had managed to watch Team America: World Police one and a half times, at which point it was 3.30AM. I mean, I could have just slept on the sofa, but to be honest Lucia's weird bulgy-eyed dog would have probably already taken the good spot and would snuffle at me if I kicked it into the kitchen. Plus I had homework to do the next day and I needed to be bright and chipper if I was to do it properly (I ended up not doing it at all, but that is besides the point). Plus the idea of cycling the forty minutes home in the early hours of the morning was really appealing; the last time I did it was was twoish and Kingston town center was totally abandoned; I cycled about whooping madly. Then I was cycling down the other road and some guy pulled up in a car and offered to sell me pills. It was awesome. I was looking forward to some more excitement which to be honest could not be achieved by bedding down on the admittedly comfy sofa of Lucia.
So I climbed on my bike, said "COP YA LATER" to the gf (which made her swoon and probably monologue about how cool I am) and pedalled off into the night. In order to get home, I have to cycle through the following places in the following order:
- Kingston Town Center
- Bushy Park
- The long-ass Boat Club Road
- The slightly shorter road to my house
There now that should be enough information for any passing paedophiles to track down where my girlfriend lives and rape her to death. Get to work chaps, but give me a bell just before you do it. I just came up with a cunning Fargo-Like plan. Basically, you work out where she lives and then break into her room and get a-rapin', while I cycle up to the house. You can rape her like four times then I'll jump in and pretend to bash you on the head with a cricket bat. You swoon and say "Oh he got me" then run off. The gf'll be too dizzy to even know what the fuck's going on, so you'll get to molest some kids, I'll get loads of brownie points for saving the day, and everyone wins.
But I digress. I was a bit disappointed by Kingston Town Center; the last occasion that I cycled through it (at like 1.45 on a Wednesday) it was all spooky and deserted. But this time, four hours later on in the night, there were loads of random pissheads wandering about, sitting on benches, and generally ruining the ambiance. But I suppose that's to be expected; Kingston is a bustling metropoliton centre, according to the posters. What I like looking at is the random scum sitting outside ASDA or walking down the side roads. Why do you need to sit outside ASDA at 3:50 in the morning? Just go home and sit on a sofa! Weirdos.
Usually I go straight through Bushy Park. This is also quite cool because its all pitch dark and I can see the deer playing on the swings on the children's playground. No shit man; the deer are literally going on the roundabout and playing in the sandpit and stuff. They think that I don't notice them but I see. I see. They always look at me really moodily as I cycle past in the pitch black, and I sometimes scream MWAHAHAHA as I pass them and make them run away. Loser deer.
However, this time I decided to go the long way round the Park. Don't ask me why.
"Why, Thomas?"
Ok, invisible voice, I will tell you why: I couldn't remember if the deer cull was on. The deer cull is an exciting yearly event when the park rangers zoom about in 4x4s in the middle of the night and blow up the deer with grenade launchers. Apparently members of the public are not allowed in the park when this is going on. I do not see the logic of this; I would pay good money to be able to go into the park and watch a heavily-drugged up topless Park Ranger with a bandanna zoom about in a jeep pulverising stags. However, for some reason they lock the gates when this is going on and cyclists can't enter. I suppose I could have checked to see if the cull was on, but come on people, it was four in the morning and pitch black, I was in no mood to cycle all the way to the park gate and check when it was initially much easier to just cycle round the outside without changing direction. Which is what I did.
As I slowly made my way down the long straight road that led past Bushy Park, I thought about how awesome it would be if I could drive, as I was overtaken repeatedly by young men driving flashy cars going far too fast. One guy went so close to me that I wobbled a bit and wove my fist gingerly in the air. This got me thinking about how awesome it would be to get hit by a car and thrown onto the grass verge. I immediately began to compose a plan for what I'd do. If the car driver left me there, I would assess my injuries. If I could walk, I would probably make my way to safety. Or I'd phone my mum. But what if my phone was damaged? I would flag down a passing car and hitch a lift to Ogg's house, which is closer. "Excuse me Mr Ogg" I would say "I was just hit by a car, can I sleep on your sofa? I'll be gone first thing in the morning." And then I'd text Lucia "I got hit by a car," and nothing else, which would make her REALLY worried but then I'd go to bed and wake up to fifty anxious messages on my phone and I would feel happy at being loved so. But what would I do about my bike? I would probably chain it to a lamp-post. But the lamp-posts were too thick to allow my bike-lock to fit! (Seriously, all this stuff went through my mind I am not even lying) I would probably just leave it there and hope it would not be stolen, and would then return with my father the next day to pick it up in our mauve car...
I could continue but you get the idea. I have an active imagination. My imagining continued later on in the voyage as I was cycling along some scary dark road in the middle of a reservoir. "How freaky would it be," I said to myself "To pass a crashed car... like a really recently crashed car... on its side, wheel still spinning, steam rising from the tarmac, a little bit of blood splashed about the place, but there's Nobody Inside. Like it's just abandoned." Just to paint a picture, the crashed car is silver. I tell you, that idea properly freaked me out for some reason, and I started to have visions of being kidnapped and castrated by a passing maniac, so I suddenly sped up my cycling to get past the aforementioned imaginary wreck and turned up my iPod.
Oh yeah, my iPod. When one is night cycling, it is natch v important to have a decent soundtrack which can be obtained from an iPod. Night-Cycling music is very specific; every song must be Significant. Thus, Hey by the Pixies is an acceptable NC Tune. However, "Go It Alone" by Beck is not. Here are some more examples:
Heavens Above (Hixxxy Bonkers XI Remix) Adam Harris = Acceptable.
Trucker Hat by Bowling for Soup = Not acceptable
Under the Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers = Acceptable
Anything else we have ever produced by Red Hot Chili Peppers = Not acceptable, ever
Lithium by Nirvana = Acceptable
Lithium by Dilana = Not acceptable
Crimson and Clover by Simon and Garfunkel = Acceptable
Sesame Street Soundtrack by some cunt = Not acceptable
Anything Greenday have ever written = NOT ACCEPTABLE
You get the idea I am sure. And I'm sure that you understand that it is necessary to be constantly pressing the 'Skip forward' button on the iPod to get some decent tunage. What you may not be aware of is that it is also necessary to speak to said iPod, to entreat it if you will, so that it will use its eternal wisdom of the shuffle feature to pick out some sweet cycling tunage. I'm not joking, at 430 on Sunday morning I was cycling through Sunbury literally yelling "Come on baby, come on baby, gimme some sweet sweet sugar... oh for fucks sake... MARS VOLTA? Boo! Why is this even on you? i don't remember downloading it. Ok, next song... Come on, come on, gimme something good... GET IN BRISK & HAM. I love you iPod."
And the iPod rewards me by not freezing halfway through the song and forcing me to bang it against the bike frame to restart (for some reason that is the only way to turn it on now). Or it punishes me for my blasphemy by playing something from Ray of Light. The iPod is a cruel master.
Actually I was getting pretty nervous approaching the end of the journey, because I wanted a decent tune to finish up on (yes, I like to end my cycle journeys in style, sue me). So I started to rapidly flit through the tunes. This is always risky with myPod, which likes to take its sweet time to think about things and punishes a too-swift changing of songs with rapid freezing, unhappy iPod sign, screaming and shutdown. I was getting properly worried as I cycled past Squires - what if I couldn't find a good song? I might have to end my 4:40AM cycling listening to fecken TY UNWIN. Which would be - and I don't think I'm being melodramatic when I say this - a total unmitigated fucking disaster. Who is Ty Unwin, and why the fuck is he on my iPod? Luckily, though, La La Love You by the Pixies came on and, breathing a sigh of relief, I zoomed into the drive whistling loudly at 4.42AM.
It was the latest cycle journey of my life, in which absolutely nothing of note happened. And you just read 2132 words about it. So who is the loser here? You. I bet you were expecting something exciting to happen. You kept reading, hoping that I'd save an injured badger or foil a midnight drugs deal or something BUT NO THE BIGGEST EXCITEMENT WAS ME NOT BEING ABLE TO FIND A GOOD SONG TO LISTEN TO ON MY iPOD. MWAHAHA.
I finally went to bed at 5. Seeing as I had got up at 6.30 in the morning, this meant that I had been on my feet for 22.5 hours. I could have easily lasted the other one and a half. Now I understand how Jack Bauer does it. What a pussy; I was so impressed that he'd gotten no sleep. But it's actually really easy, and I did like twice as much as stuff as he did. Boo. Try rowing for five hours then spending another solid hour and a half cycling to and from the house of an unreadable female Bauer you pansy. THEN you'll se what true manliness is, you gravelly-voiced slowpoke.
The End.
ps. I could have been fixing my Personal Statement or doing some History homework or writing an English essay in the hour it took me to write this. But no.
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