Somewhat agitated he asked me if I'd seen anyone riding a silver bicycle.

  • Monday, February 01, 2016
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This is a desultory peck at my keyboard, it's Monday pm and I've stayed off work today with a cold that started late Friday and intensified on Sunday. I've slept most of the day away and I don't feel significantly better.
Such is life I guess.
I've had a bright start to 2016 on the running front, once again building up my fitness after a quiet December. I intend to slow down a bit this year and enjoy what the woods and the beauty of creation has to offer. I want to be more mindful of what is around me so I'm going to try be aware of colours, lines, light, shapes, textures and words (stories) I want to take more photographs too. It's a slight shift of perspective away from purely running to running being a creative springboard and a vehicle for observation. On my homeward run last week I noticed a burly figure in the dusk running up the gravel road toward me, he turned out to be a gruff individual wearing jeans, Workman's boots and a thick olive jersey. Somewhat agitated he asked me if I'd seen anyone riding a silver bicycle. It turned out that he had been taking a short cut through the woods and had a sudden need to urinate, he propped his bike against a tree and stepped off the trail to relieve himself. By the time he returned his bike had gone. It reminded me of my own bicycle, a proud and shiny red model with three speed gears and a carrier that was stolen out of the school bicycle shed when I was aged around 14. Bizarrely the police recovered it a year later at Harare airport, the thief had poured a tin of grey paint all over it in an attempt to disguise it and if memory serves it was the crudeness of this paint job that alerted them that the bike may have been stolen. I rode it for a few more years but it was never the same and I never got rid of the streaks of industrial grey paint.
I felt for my gruff inquisitor, there are not many people around in the woods at dusk in winter so it must have been a real opportunistic thief or perhaps someone who thought it had been merely abandoned.