Memories

Memories memories memories. All that was left standing in the space where the bicycle had been. That memory maker that memory machine was gone. With a confused squabble of emotions, ears ringing in the empty vacuum of what was no more but should still have been..maybe if I was to go back inside a moment to come back out again it would be there again.still there not never gone.

°°àààThe scene builders obviously just forgot to put back there for todays show..someone is radioing mike and the crew to set 'the bike is not back on set..khuuuhhh crackle..mike get it put back...signal to toby that he needs to improvise, and drop the lights over there to give us a chance to get it back on set...crackle'

Before it bought beauty, but now its lack of, puts the spotlight on the cruel injustice of life and man, those things I would pedal away from moment in moment of pedal stroke let go.

Memories. These are mine.

Obviously its easy to wax lyrical..it was not always sunshine and smiles beautitudine, there were also times of discomfort of relative suffering..but those were active choices and there was always that knowledge. An innate knowledge that one had chosen to build a barrier in order to overcome it. Why to camp out when there is a warm bed at home?

Have you been to Suburbia before? Experienced the stifling muffled lie with everything in its cut trimmed measured polished place and its a dangerouslydelicate balance of the denial of reality. All chinks in the armour to be polished away before they yawn into gaping chasms.

And so to leave that warm bed. To put oneself in positions of varying degrees of discomfort. At times into positions of ridiculousness from the standpoint of the onlooker. Haha!

But, when that sense of ridiculousness seeps into your own consciousness then you know that maybe you've taken a wrong turn. Sbagliato!

Huffin' n cussin' in the mire of lost, in too few clothes fighting through an nightmarish endlesss undergrowth as the sun taunts you sinking lower..the shadows offering a taste of the cold reality that awaits with impending nightfall and best not to think of what will become of you up at altitude in solitude and the mountains could make a fool of you after the joyous childish glee of playing whizzing in and around up in the empty hills like the last 25 years never happened. Like a child playing on the massive hulk of a giant sleeping uncle, pulling on his beard and swinging off his ears..all fun till the giant awakes to shake n rise and the child falls tumblling to hard ground, and 'its all going to end in tears'!

And lesson learnt is that one taught back when in cap and shorts and woggle the Ar-ke-la had taught us as he had been taught, and 'I' still continue to be taught even though I know it but now, which is then, knew it most as I shivered and pressed on in the hope of salvation from the potential cold reality..the ridiculousness that could have been avoided had I heeded to 'be prepared'. The mental checklist of all that I would do differently and would endeavour to carry next time would do nothing to save me....just add to the torment as I perish shivering in lycra entangled in undergrowth on the dark side of a mountainside..high enough so that as night envelopes, the summertime seems just a memory.

There are a reel of memories from that connection of metal tubes with circles.

From a shop in London where it was bought on a lunch break by a bank clerk potentially seeking meaning and escape from the rat race within which he found himself in a million miles from the fireside lamplit cottages of Ireland where still the (storyteller) told tales and big farmers talked in the flickering shadows whilst a small boy looked on. Now all gone.

Those cycles tourist guides from the 70s and 80s, with a bearded man on the cover in skimpy tennis shorts pedalling bare chested, down sunny English country lanes. Well so my old man added to the aesthetics of those simpler times..i still have a photo somewhere..A snapshot window back in time where he's kitted up and ready to go pausing to pose at the gate..a hero a fool? Heading to cycle to a place that could be driven to in a few hours..yess that spirit was there in him too as he stands there in cut off cut short denim shorts, and a tight fit polo shirt.. aerodynamic fashion. As for shoes I don't remember. Funny that, as I think about it I don't recall seeing him ever wearing trainers. Who knows? Maybe he was wearing sandals! Oh scandals!

Either way that is where I remember it first.

It was found many years later whilst at home in a barn. Neglected, unused, paint pocked and blister blemished form elements. Cobwebs in the spokes, bearings all seized. Saddle torn and damp like a sponge from ingress.

Memories.

Early days and learning the skills I took that and endevoured to strip it, of paint and parts. All done in a small basement studio flat..climbing out the window into that subterranean cubby space where I applied harsh chemicals to blister and peel the paint to reveal the raw steel beneath and exposed gold welds in the angles. Lacking proper tools, using a bit of initiative building it up. Oh to see it again beyond minds eye, that finished article with the critical eye of mind knowledge of today.

Early months of a dark winter and in the lamplight of a dark Sunday afternoon with traces of a hangover I was to be found in a dissatified place. Life was dealing and offering up a grim hand. Living in a new city, some two-bit job in a restaurant that I would never eat in. A chance online encounter with an image of a friend from another time, who always evoked a lyrical beauty in me. A tent by a lake..a back pack..his spirit. Simple in its unfettered nature. I still remember him in braces and a creepy trench coat when we first met as pot washers in the US. Working in the black for the green. Him would hunker down and blissfully tear away at a hunk of the good fresh bread from the restaurant. A book, a radio, a sunlight window on an easy chair or an iron bath sunlight passage with drip drip echo squelch of time passing. The timeless simplicity. Years had passed and that stumbled upon photo awoke something in me. Young and free I decided to take a trip.

The bike was back at home. Retrieved with a couple of small front pannier bags on a rack on back. Limited funds and I cashed in the early birthday gifts card half a year in anticipation for the bags, and a fine small and cheap tent. From the Dunkirkque to Rome a journey of love to reach my love.

Bike. Kit. A purpose. Checkcheckcheck. And a cheap road atlas with the relievent pages torn out and saved in a cheap filmsy plastic sleeve. From A-B down the scope of the corridor of pages that I had, plotting on the fly, just keep turning those pedals and its downhill all the way right?

Memories.

With a ragged simplicity, swapping the messenger bag for a couple of panniers, the congested bustle of city streets for the open road the journey began. Badly. Off the late evening ferry and into the pouring rain. Lost at some point in the bleak industrial environs of the no mans land between port and town. A massively under scale map to navigate the details of a town. An idea of a campsite but with every passing minute of dark lost hungry wetness I felt my spirits dampen further. I couldn't find it either with road signs no matter how much I wanted to. Night one was a hotel. A chunk of my daily metered out campsite and bread roll funds gone. And no supper.

That stripped bare steel frame was to my eye great, raw. But with no protection when it got wet it would oxidise, a fuzzy brown coating. After a deluge of rain it transformed into a rusty old junker. For this I had a little ball of steel wool to rub it down. I remember sitting beneath an afternoon campsite sun cleaning off the rusty memory of the previous nights soggy entrance to France.

It didn't rain again until the final day that signalled the end of the trip as I made way south n south west on that raw steel gun metal memory machine freewheeling spinning and pedal stepping through the vast unmanned emptiness that is central France. Pristine roads and junctions with nobody around lending a ghostly feel, especially after the more claustrophobic nature of Englands isle. As I worked through the wafer thin paper pages of the road atlas I took great pleasure at the point that I rode off the edge of particular page I had been traversing, to screw it up into a ball and toss to the wind to leave in my trail. It tickled me to think that where that page ended cartographically is where the page ended geographically. And the thought that nobody would ever realise the significance of that crumpled rubbish paper ball blowing in the wind in a ditch in a hedge...maybe making part of a birds nest. Nobody would ever know or care and that is the point..like the journey, the ride..it was significant to me and only me as is always the case in the effort to bring sense and meaning to life through these trips made ,that could seem like empty folly to the observer. But no it is surely noble to strive, to seek sense in an otherwise at times senseless world. Pilgrims.

Snapshot remembernce. Entering a roadside village bar in one of those single road straight-line streets you find in France and Ireland too..and makes me think of the wild west. The bar mid morning. Old men sat behind small glasses of beer. The bar sells many things. Amongst which was a shelf of seemingly out of place explicit magazines lined up deep along the top shelf. Seemingly incongruous to the environment of old men beer and farm talk. I fill my bottle and push on.

It was the first time I climbed a true mountain climb as opposed to a big hill. The valley road cheated its way between the mountains. It was beautifull but the weather was grim grey. I arrived to Modane nearing the French border. I had planned to stay there but the grey weather and the less that welcoming response to my enquiry as to the local campsite made me want to push on. It was 3 o'clock on a grey afternoon with a spitting of rain in the air. From there was no way to cheat the mountains anymore. I would have to make it over a pass. In my innocence I didnt know what that meant. It could have been ridiculous folly had the weather turned and I was woefully ill equipped for 2000ms pass in early April. 30kms to Italy..easy. But the final ten as I toiled up 10 per cent gradients way-laden with panniers some hunger and fatigue and legs not used to the mountains, and neither the technique. I went through some emotions. As I crested in the early evening to silence and mist I remember the mixed emotions of elation and relief. A yelp stifled as a sob. A bitter cold I curled my hands in my sleeves...hunched my shoulders to my neck to try to keep out the draft. But still the elation was there as I rode across the mysterious misty plateau before to descend.

The flash past of the border sign 'Buenvenuti in Italia'!

The campeggio in failing light.

After the campsites of France I discover many Italian were different. Places of fixed caravans, second home holiday getaways. Old seventies caravans with trellises and canopies constructed. Brick pizza ovens. The only tent space was a scratchy piece of ground between footpaths. My dissapearance into the tiny coffin like tent felt sad and solitary set amongst the lived in caravans alive with jovial groups.

The guy at the campsite said I din't need to pay. I think he felt sorry for me! Precious money saved as funds dwindled with the passing days.

From insane heat and a phone call expressing how hot it was and my search for some mid day respite leading me to sit myself on a dusty track beneath the shade of the spiky bushes. To the initial smell of moisture in the air as I left a town with dampness on the road from a recently passed shower. Out of town and making good time and it started to darken. Broody bruised skies. The waft of the storm on the horizon and then all hell broke loose as the heavens open and I scrambled to find shelter. The best I could find was a brick building housing an electrical generator. No doorway or true shelter but just to stand flat against the wall to try to avoid the angle of the rain. A hoodless rain jacket and under the intensifying deluge raindrops leaking down the neck. Thunder cracks so close I jumped out of my shivering skin. After 15 mins and no signs of it abating and I started to shiver in my relatively meatless frame I stated to dig around the sodden muddy earth at my feet. Pulling up a large plastic agricultural sack that must have carried fertiliser or the like. I dragged it up all cold wet and filthy and pulled it over my squatted form and waited shivering How did I end up here I remember thinking as all my life has led me to that point, squatted under a filthy miserable tarpaulin..though how grateful I was to have that! Finally the rhythm of the rain on my handheld shanty shiver shack started to slow until that point where you can start to individuate the raindrops and they slow down to isolated puddle drops on the still road water. I remember trying to ride in a straight line but my teeth were chattering and I was shivering so much I though I was going to fall off.

Backtracking to the town of before. The relief of the a hotel. Food. Conversation.

Almost out of cash and a phone call home. A ticket for a train from Torino. The mad rush on the platform to dismantle the bike and get it wrapped up in some form to be able to take the train. Using the tent flysheet and cord to wrap the hurriedly bag it. The chainring piercing the fabric at a point. The oily chain print. Physical marks of memories that are still there today.

Arrival. They joy of arrival. The pleasure of relief and basking in the moments of the heroes welcome.

The sun kissed face. The pleasure of having made it. From the memory of dark wet Dunkurque to the baking streets of Rome (with a little bit of a train thrown in to join the dots!)

All these memories from the memory machine. And not only.

There was in India too. But thats a whole other story.

These memories and so to now just a remembrance to the machine that made them.

So you'll just have to take my word for it all as there is nothing left but

Memories

They are mind and can never be taken away.