samuri.co.uk

Bike: Humuhumukununukuapua‘a
Distance: 13 and 15 miles

Commute. Beautiful day for it. reached work in the morning with barely a sweat on. It’s a bit of a faff getting into work clothes at this place. The cycle shed is round one side of the warehouse, the lockers on another corner and the disabled bogs right at the other end. Involves a lot of walking around with shirts and trousers and towels and things. But still worth it. Leaving, if I don’t want to walk right through the middle of the office in shorts and carrying my trousers on a hanger I have to leave by the main entrance and then right round the edge of the warehouse.

Looks quite nice for riding home, sunny. Bit windy. I plan to ride to the end of the Sankey Valley trail to add a bit of mileage on. Plus the trail tends to be populated almost entirely by attractive young ladies at this time of day, which is always a bonus. I meander around a bit and get completely lost until I finally find an entrance into the trail. Happy, I surge forwards and almost immediately a beetle the size of a small dog flies straight into my mouth and gets jammed in my gullet. I fall off the bike choking and my head is filled with the chattering sound of the insect’s chaffcutters banging away whilst it’s formidable pincers no doubt gorge themselves on the soft tissue at the back of my throat.

The bang to the ground dislodges the thing and with a huge cough, I eject the flem covered beast, still clutching half a pound of larynx tissue in it’s mouth onto the floor where it burrs a bit and then flies off unsteadily, struggling hard to maintain airspeed velocity due to the dripping mass of meat clamped firmly between it’s mandibles.

This is all mostly lost on me because I have entered a coughing fit who’s objective appears to be to forcibly detach my lungs from my ribcage and deposit them on the floor. To facilitate this ejection, my body lubricates my bleeding throat, mouth, tongue and the grass with a liberal coating of red frothy spittle and bile.

To recap then, I am on my hands and knees on the grass next to a fallen bike  with a courier bag (my new NorthWave one which is great!) wrapped around my neck, coughing up a disgusting blend of blood, vomit and lung tissue while my body involuntarily bucks and grinds in sympathy.

It is now of course, that one of the aforementioned hunnies walks round the corner and gets her first ever look at me. I’m presuming she’s attractive but with at least one eyeball now resting on my cheek and the other filled with half a litre of brine, it’s hard to say. Clearly I could be a drug ravaged bum merely clearing out the toxins from my body before embarking on yet another rage filled mugging and rape session for all she knows so she approaches me carefully.

She enquires after my health. If I still had an esophagus I could reply in the affirmative pointing out this is merely temporary and not normal behaviour but I just bang the ground. A crowd gather but as the coughing subsides it’s obvious I’m going to live so most of them wander off.  The lovely lady remains though and once I’ve wiped the sweat and tears from my eyes, I find out she is extremely attractive and has a quite wonderful manner of talking. Unfortunately I probably look like I’ve spent the last 30 minutes being rogered by a well hung bull so the same can certainly not be said for me (no matter how low that particular plateau lies under favourable conditions), so with a quick smile she says goodbye and walks away.

The rest of the ride went great though.