cycle brain

One of the big changes over the last year has been that after living within walking distance of the shop for nearly all of its 23 years (latterly only 2 minutes away) I've moved outside of Perth. The shop now is a 25-35 minute cycle away.

When we lived in the city centre my other half was doing almost the same journey in the opposite direction. He would be a bit grumpy if he had to take the car. I never really understood it, despite being a weekend & holiday cyclist myself. He would enthuse all the time about the changing wildflowers and the birds he'd spotted on his journey. He'd sometimes encourage/nag me to come along with him in the morning and then I'd cycle home before the shop opened, sort of a pretend cycle commute, but I never really kept it up for any length of time. And anyway, I still hadn't got it. But I do now, from day 1, which was so foggy that I could only see a few feet in front of me. I couldn't understand why in coldest darkest rainiest November I was cycling along with a big smile on my face.

During the time before Christmas, when I'm in the shop all day every day for 5/6 weeks, my other half commented on how much better I seemed to cope with it. Of course there are times when I don't really look forward to it (usually at the end of a wet day) but half a mile in and it's all gone. I think it's been my saviour while building works next to the shop have being going on this last year and a half. I might even have thrown in the towel. Whether it's to do with endorphins or the space to think about things, or the changing seasons, the wildflowers; whatever it is it does good things. My other half now has a much shorter cycle to work and I feel his loss!