Sanctimonious

The other day -quite out of the blue- Vicky turned to me and suggested we exercise at least twice a week. The reasons for this momentous decision were unclear, either she couldn’t fit into something she owns or she is suggesting I am too fat. Clearly it could not possibly be the latter as I am in the peak of physical fitness…

Anyway I suggested that she use Daisy’s bike and we go out riding, she upped the ante by insisting this must be done twice a week. There were -as I tried immediately to point out- some considerable flaws in her plan. Firstly Daisy’s bike is of the ‘antique’ variety, which means it’s made of pig iron and presumably (given its weight) then filled with molten lead. In addition to this setback it had no gears (so we thought), no brakes, two flat tires, mudguards whose only apparent job was to rub on the flat tires and prevent them moving. Finally and rather fantastically it was also equipped [burdened] with a set of dynamo-powered front and rear lights (which didn’t work).

Never the less, she insisted if I put right some of the reparable problems with the bike she would ride it and not complain.

I guess I should make clear at this point that I actually own a bicycle, which I bought from Bob for the princely sum of £50 and that works fine – admittedly I can’t really touch the floor when sat on the saddle, and any attempt to put both feet on the floor could only result in pain even when not perched on the saddle. It was purchased because I stupidly said if only I had a bike I would ride in and out of work, unfortunately for me Bob overheard; I gained a bike and had to think of a new excuse.

As I figured this to be a mere whim -a phase that would soon wither and die- I got to work and straightened or repaired all the problems with Daisy’s bike, bar its incredible weight and lack of gears, because at the time I didn’t think it had any.

On our first outing on a weekday afternoon we happened to pass Chris Douglas’s house, and I was relieved to see he was outside and provided a perfect excuse to stop and chat for a while. He, being an enthusiastic outdoors-ist was ecstatic to see that we were using our bicycles and immediately insisted we should not be distracted by him and hopped on his bike to join us. Although this development was deeply displeasing to me, it did mean I had someone to talk to whilst waiting for Vicky at the top of any and all hills. It would seem that largely due to the weight and lack of gearing Daisy’s bike became a bit of a liability on anything other than a downhill slope, and resulted in plenty of breaks and time for me and Chris to discuss the bike in question and discover that it had in fact got a gearbox. Gearbox you say? Don’t I mean ‘gears’? No. I do not. It has what can only be described as a car-type three speed gearbox, honestly I looked it up and it could just as easily been a cross section of Doc Browns Flux capacitor. During the considerable amount of time Chris and I had to discuss this we both agreed that neither of us could be bothered to fix it.

As our first ride went very well indeed, Chris insisted we go out the next day for a much longer ride with him, Callum and Ella. In addition Bob also happened to call and joined us en-route, dressed like a professional bicyclist much to my amusement. It was on this day that I noticed that almost everyone else’s bike had hydraulic disk brakes front and rear, unlike my primitive pad-to-wheel type. Feeling a little outdone I did formally complain to Bob about the cheap shit bike he had sold me but he pretended not to hear me. This I find impossible, because he has ears that make gliders blush.

All this enthusiastic bike riding has left Vicky with a single conclusion – she needed to replace her (Daisy’s) old jalopy of a bike. So, bright and early on a Saturday she spoiled my lie-in and demanded we visit Halfords –enabling her to indulge herself and get a bike with working gears and brakes. This turned out to be considerably more palaver than first promised. On the way there a clearly blind chap in a BMW decided that despite my indicator declaring my intentions he would pull out directly in front of me on a roundabout, then stop in clear panic when I jammed the horn on and deployed anchors whilst swerving around the back of him, which I couldn’t do because he had stopped partially pulled out. Quite how he missed the 3 tonne Lolvo with its headlights on is beyond me but then again he didn’t look all that bright and appeared to be going to Popley which goes some way to explaining things.

Once safely at Halfords Vicky wasted very little time selecting a bike with the correct colour scheme (merely a few hours). Then came the fun of purchasing a bike, not something I fully appreciated as mine arrived at my own doorstep in the back of Bob’s car and I gave him cash. Vicky had chosen Hell-frauds because she had a £60 voucher, which the nice staff at Hell-frauds tried to comprehend for a half hour in the sweltering heat before Vicky lost patience and paid outright for the bike.

Stress over we assured them that if they could build a bike so could I and launched a suspiciously un-bike-looking large box into the Lolvo. An uneventful drive home saw the box in the hall and opened… It was certainly full of stuff, but no discernable bike as such. They clearly weren’t kidding, I actually had to build a bike. Using the utterly inferior tools provided in the box and instructions written so poorly that they would have made the Chinese titter I was able to assemble said bike with almost no violence and only four trips to A&E.

So with Vicky’s bike (Badly) assembled and most of the blood mopped up we were ready to set off, but there was a 4-year-old fly in the ointment… Harrison was with Chris and had no bike; even if he did he wouldn’t be able to keep up. So we decided to make a tow along trailer for Harrison to sit in, as a base we used a four wheel cart I use to move extremely heavy items around in the garage and garden. We very creatively used a long curved tube (formerly a trampoline) to connect the trailer to Chris’s bike over the rear wheel, with a pivot at the bike end and a steerable front axle. We put sides on the cart and lined it with old sofa cushions, then put an old car seat base and back in for Harrison to sit on comfortably. He was ecstatic, and eager to get going. Here is a photo of our efforts;

You may notice that Chris looks slightly flustered, well the net result of our bombproof construction is weight – and a lot of it. The cart was made to carry 500+Kgs, and consists of a sturdy steel frame sat on wide air filled tires. With the not inconsiderable weight of the cushions and child as well it led to a rather… sedate pace set by Chris, except on downhill slopes where the weight pushed beyond the capacity of Chris’s fancy hydraulic disk brakes and made the cart fishtail dramatically. Harrison of course, loved every second – Chris less so.

In other news I have been walking home from work every day (except Fridays), and I figured I would return my bike helmet to work so I could use the free ‘site bikes’ provided by my company to get around their property. This seemed like an excellent idea, up until I got to work…

You see, there are turnstiles all over the place, and not the wimpy three bar type that people hop over when catching the tube in London – the integrated-in-a-fence-or-wall type which cannot be entered or exited without being completely inside each section on your own (there is no way two people could fit in one) more like a no-return revolving door I guess. To add complexity when entering or exiting a card must be swiped and a pin number entered. In my infinite wisdom I had attached my helmet to the back of my backpack, which I neglected to remove when entering the turnstile. What happened next was broadly as follows, me and backpack in one section, helmet in another. This was made slightly more embarrassing by the permanently present staff member overseeing the doors, the meeting taking place on sofas just opposite the turnstiles and the fact I didn’t realise until trying to walk away from the turnstile.

(Title): Sanctimonious;
pious, smug, hypocritical, too good to be true, self-righteous, self-satisfied, goody-goody (informal) , holier-than-thou.
Example: He writes smug, sanctimonious rubbish.

(Clipped excerpt from the Collins Thesaurus)