I still think of Lou sometimes. He sold me a bike, when I was about to start a job near the Elephant, while I was living in Penge. For the commute. Of course the bike bug soon bit deeper than mere utility riding and I started going further and faster, as one does, and even entered a time trial or two while using that machine, replete with mudguards. Eventually it was stolen, as often bikes are, and I upgraded to a racing machine. Without mudguards. A Roy Thame that I still mourn the loss of. It was stolen. More of that later.

I thought of Lou today, when I rode up that 10% (that Vincent says is actually steeper) down by Moorlake.

Simply, for example, one day I headed out to Westerham via Saltbox Hill (about 11%) for the first time, at his suggestion. Next time in the shop I told him.

"..and then I hit that hill! I nearly stopped dead,".

"You got up it right?" he asked, quickly interrupting.

"Yes,".

"Good, that's all that counts," he replied, in a tone that was somehow reassuring and approving. I'd achieved something. Later in life Saltbox Hill became nothing.

Anyway, so today that 10% wasn't so hard actually, and I went up pretty smoothly and even had some breath at the summit and pushed on easily. But on a hard day I always say to myself that I have never let a hill beat me since I first started riding properly, listening to the stuff that Lou would tell me.

Lou was also the one who told me about the A 20, where I soon found everyone who rode trained when there was no time or imagination to go somewhere else. It was also the local ten mile TT route, and relatively fast although much of it was a drag up to the roundabout where everyone turned unless going on a real ride, balanced by descending that same drag back towards town.

Long after I first hit Saltbox Hill I had given up commuting and was a struggling wannabe guitarist and had maybe started dance accompaniment I'm not sure but I was still cycling seriously when I got a call to play on an album. There was a catch though, in that first I had to learn the music, and much of it I had no idea how to play. For example the Brazilian classic Desifinado. A feel I had no empathy for. The Leader, Salmen, was happy to rehearse me, and we spent a couple of sessions down at his house in Tunbridge Well where he masterfully danced his clarinet like bubbling lark song around my plodding literal accompaniment and dropped chords. It's coming together he quietly said, looking a little doleful as I headed back to the station and the London bound train.

One Sunday then, I knew I had nothing on, so I got on the bike and headed out with the possibility of doing a long one dangling in front of me in the grey air. Or maybe a short one and some guitar playing. Hmmm.

I got on the A road and the legs were pumping well enough and I was going well and I was pondering my fate or dreaming away and indeed debating whether to make the turn at the roundabout or carry on for a proper one when a skinny guy a few years older than me overhauled with insolent ease and cocked his head and said, "it's alright mate, I can see you are not trying". Bloody was, but let that go. Either he downed or I upped but we got talking and then to my horror I saw he was not wearing toeclips. Not only had I been overhauled but I'd been done by a guy who wasn't even wearing bike shoes as I knew them. All thoughts of planning my route gone now, I was going where this guy was, and attempting to glean his secrets. "Yeah, they're clipless mate," he cryptically observed as we turned at the roundabout, and started down the quick stretch, the fields coursing by on the left, traffic slipstream on our right and a couple more riders behind as things got pacy. The line strung out. With me hanging out on the front.

These days I understand what was going on. He was good, ergo connected and had somehow scored himself a set of the very first "clipless" shoes as we know them today…. that "click in" directly to a custom pedal and require no strap to remain attached and stable even through the roughest of sprints or climbs. Back then I'd never heard of such a thing. Clips and straps we all used. A rough metal groove that placed the sole on a pedal bar, strapped down tight when in real action. And make sure you remembered to unstrap before hitting a traffic light or you'd be in for a nasty fall trying to pull your foot out. As far as I was concerned that day this guy was riding without anything beyond a pair of shoes on his feet.

I hammered on, I remember a headwind, keeping the pace high, hoping to drop somebody, hoping somebody would come round and help, hoping…. and then another rider who'd I assumed been siting three or four places back flew past. An attack! A classic road race attack. I sprung out the saddle to try and catch his wheel but he was gone. My legs were gone. Nobody came on to help. Perhaps they couldn't either. I was buzzing though. That was fun.

We said our various goodbyes and I headed home only to find Salmen sitting patiently with his clarinet across his knees waiting for my return, so we could rehearse. I'd completely forgotten our date, and my muscles felt all wrong for playing. Heavy, clumsy, the fingers of a dullard, And those damn voicings I did not understand. I felt like the guy on the clipless pedals had really been sent though, to make sure I got back in time. To London where I'd arranged to meet Salmen, instead of Tunbridge Wells where I'd thought him safely ensconced. I'd even considered dropping in to get a cuppa tea at his place before starting back.

This thing with the muscles being wrong was starting to bother me. I'd take the bike to Laban sometimes, after I'd started playing there, hurtling along Brockley Rise and New Cross as fast as I could, sprinting with the traffic and generally making sure I arrived a trembling sweaty distracted, unfocused in fact, musician. Who felt distant from the groove.

I took the train more. I started riding to the station to buy a monthly ticket, and this turned out to be a big error as I was careless about how I left the bike there and one day I emerged after a particularly frustrating wait while the clerk sorted himself out to find the bike stolen.

A few weeks later, a friend approached me. Had I heard what happened to Lou? I hadn't, I'd stopped going in the shop. Perhaps I'd buy another bike, although maybe it was time to focus on the music more seriously. Give something up.

Lou had got done on the A20 by a lorry. No, properly done. He wasn't getting up. Lou was now riding in the next life.

I didn't replace the Roy Thame, and despite owning a few bikes here and there while in Berlin and NYC did not resume serious training until 2011, in Berlin. Getting back was partly at my father's behest, but more about that later. It was hard though. Really hard. But I've never yet not ridden up a hill when I've been out on a bike.