Shortly after lock down began last year I thought it would be an idea to start riding a bike; to try and exert some kind of fitness into these bones again and have a bit of a work out. It had been years since I was able to exercise to due a knee injury which was now recently and thankfully fixed. So with lock down in full swing it seemed the opportune time to do something about it!
So I bought a bike; a cheap, single gear bike to go to and fro the shops and do the very the odd 5km cycle on, but it needed a bit of work so I called a friend of ours who just happens to be a bicycle repair man and who has his own ‘bus’ travelling around fixing peoples’ bikes!
‘Handy’, I hear you think! – ‘Very handy’, you hear me think back!
So my friend Ron came over a few days later to take a look, mended this and that, replaced this, moved that and said right, ‘Let’s go for a ride!’
‘Ok’, I said, ‘Let’s do it!’, not knowing what kind of pain I would be in 2 hours later after he put my arguably feeble human limits to the test. When I arrived home my legs completely gave way and I literally fell off the bike; to say that walking was a problem would be an injustice to my shame!
The next time we went for a ride (Yes there was a next time) Ron lent me his rather awesome ‘spare’ bike as of course the bike was the problem all along!
Anyway, that was over a year and a half ago and we now go riding every week without fail! Our miles have clocked up to amounts I could never have imagined and therefore thought a thank you was in order.
So on a warm Saturday in August we set off to film a day in the life of a bicycle repair man. By the Sunday night I’d done a rough edit and decided it needed an extra little touch so wrote and recorded a song to accompany it called ‘The Bicycle Repair Man’ of course!
Thank you Ron. You helped me out in more ways than you could possibly imagine.
So without any further ado here it is…