friday thought

So first off, I'm not a cyclist, or a bike rider, I might be at a stretch called a cycling enthusiast (as my dear friend Maca once claimed on a rental property application ) mainly an enthusiast because I enjoy the idea of cycling, but I dont do it as often as i would like (or back in Australia I didn't)....I also thoroughly enjoy the Tour De France, and the dulcet sounds of Phil Ligget and Paul Sherwen commenting me through the French country side and using the words echalon, tete de la cour etc etc and so on. I digress,

I have been using a bike (photo of bikephalus above ) as my primary means of transport, which has been great, with a few close calls in the last few days (clipping a few people, almost driving into a bus, a bus almost clipping me etc) lets just say a bike in KTM is not the best place to be daydreaming....anyway, as i was on my leisurely ride into Thamel for a language lesson before work today, I was labouring a bit more than usual up a very slight incline, my legs, as they say in the game, were like lead. just couldn't do it. A frequently mentioned enough occurence in the cycling world, however, I'm no elite athlete climbing up the Col de Tourmalet, I'm liz drummond riding to thamel on a mountain bike, and this shouldn't be a problem....and then as i was laboring up the incline (and no I wasn't even hungover), I saw an old dude, on a crappy old indian bike, with no gears, disc brakes and no suspension, carrying 20kgs of onions...and as I passed him, I wondered, does he ever wake up with bad legs, unable to push his onions, or gas bottles, or water tanks up and down the hills and bumpy streets of KTM? Any days when he would rather just be in a taxi? probably,

photo credit http://www.traveladventures.org/continents/asia/kathmandu-streets11.shtml


its pretty easy sitting in my office, writing reports and taking extra long lunches to go shopping, to forget about that sort of thing, so i'm glad i got a small kick in the ass on the way up that small hill this morning, to remind me why I'm lucky enough to be riding a bike in kathmandu by choice,  and not because I've got to get to the market to sell some onions.

Happy Friday peeps

xL