This morning I felt heavy inside and disgruntled, kipped a bit sideways by work -a gig at a free moving dance workshop - the night before, and logy. Sleep hadn’t lifted everything and breakfast had possibly contributed to the weight. Came a break in the weather and a time of the day when I could choose: sleep more, or ride. Nobody from the regular riders I knew fancied it but the weather was warm and the sun, albeit watery, putting in an appearance. I knew the light would be beautiful out there. I could take some pictures.

I cornered Auerbach and decided to turn North, chasing down a guy in yellow and knowing the wind would be behind me at least for a while and I’d had enough of battling it already. He turned just before I caught him, never mind, at least I had a head of steam up and momentum, spinning pedals and breathing in rhythm. I felt I was doing alright but then a car closely tailed by a fast boy over took and pulled away ahead, I watched him in all his joy vim and vigour and panache dance out the saddle, around the car and felt with him in his beauty as he danced. Soon he was gone but I was alive, awake, shedding skins as I sweated. The wind stayed kind. On Postfenn as I descended I was greeted with warm smiles and waves from comrades ascending, everyone out who could be to catch the weather and rejoice in the sudden community of these moments. Light skidded from the water across the denuded spiky forest but I decided not to stop, to savour the moments, to capture the images later.

A mistake actually as the light shuddered down in the advancing cold gloaming and the views faded all too fast. The one beach I stopped at was littered with cars and somehow cluttered. The road pulled on, now into a stiff head wind and up a drag to get me out of the valley back to the Krone. Here, mercifully. I could turn again, pick up the tail and work my way North, across the city West and home, heavy legged and light hearted.

NYC 1986 (approximate)..

It had been a while – years even– since I'd ridden a bike with any intention of being speedy, or of being seen as such, but I was in NYC, on an old battered Flandria, retrieved by a girlfriend from her ex boyfriend for me. A bike I liked and felt better on than I should have, given its weight. Or my strength.

I was on my way to the Graham School, and fancied sprinting. Taking out a few slowed cars. Uphill. And I'd hang a smooth left at the top instead of waiting subserviently, waiting for the cars to clear, the lights to change.

I danced on the pedals, or rather, honked, and found I didn't quite have the power I'd expected as the road steepened. I was on the outside, left of two or three lanes of disgruntled New York SUV guiding drivers totally unused to cocky European cyclists, and indeed intolerant of anything resembling weaker users in the savannah like mayhem of Manhattan traffic.

He leaned down from the high black tinted window of his high black vehicle. His voice, an insane basso profundo that seemed to make the skyscrapers vibrate around us. “You,” he told me, “you are going to die”. The window rolled up and he was gone.

So yeah, I hit the Krone already feeling decent but there's a guy there comes up behind me swooping around while I am checking out the guy in the full world champion kit (I kid you not) that I am flying by. Anyway, of course I grab the wheel of swoopy guy and we ride two-up all the way down, and he means business and piles it on and I try to match until he turns.

Which I am almost relieved about as I press on down towards Glienecke Bridge (where U2 pilot Gary Powers crossed back into the West) because I want a break as I am intent on doing the hills. I get around the whole circuit including the nasty 10% and 8% mounds, and my average is still looking great and I'm feeling good when…….,

…there's this soggy feeling behind, as I try and fly up the last drag, and yes, I have a flat, a slow leakage of air that has finally resulted in a saggy slowdown, and not in a very good place. Everybody I passed on the way a few seconds before is now coming by, the old ladies asking if I need help and so forth, some of the bikies flying past with a sort of schadenfreude atmosphere about them. At this point I refuse all offers. Wheel comes off smoothly, and I even manage to locate the culprit in the cover - a small sharp triangle of white glass. A couple more bikies come by and ask if everything is ok, I smile and thank them politely, and reassemble the bike. I'm feeling good, but shit, my pump isn't working well. Lever down, no good, lever up, not much better. Eventually work out which way it is supposed to be, after hammering away both options, but it's hard work getting even some minimal pressure going, and I'm fed up, I want to be moving. Then I see, coming up the drag, an almost angelic rider in all white waving hello, so I call him over and ask for a pump. Which he has (of course) and it's a pocket rocket, and it's great. By this time I've managed to mangle the valve, but the rocket glides smoothly into position and with a few thrusts I'm at maybe 85 or 100 psi (say 6bar)…. the valve has jammed open and I'm worried about riding off with it so, but the guy on the white Pinarello with the matching Sidi white shoes is eager to resume training, and assuring me 'everything will be fine,' in his Berlin accent, sprints off with purpose up the hill. I look at my contrastingly dirty - black in fact - hands and knees, pick up my bits and follow suit, turning the big gear to get going and feel the adrenalin stimulate a good pace. The bike is weird and spongy but oddly comfortable as I descend over chopped up tarmac before picking the main road towards the Krone and home. I'm still feeling fast, although I'm aware of lost impetus. The tube makes it. I've yet to ever complete that particular course as planned, something always happens. Maybe today.

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.

This Easter --with the shroud of Corona over everything, is different. The sun is out, a broad Berlin welcome to Spring and so are the Berliners. The Krone bike path is full, where normally at this time of year it is empty. Here is what I wrote two years ago:

The rain had reduced to occasional showers and even the sun had made an appearance so I stole out of the house to ride. My body wanted the work. South west as often, through the forest, into the wind, and then the hills. A battling ride as they say. Down by the old spy bridge the water was choppy. I saw few people, except the odd mad cyclist and the usual dog walkers. There was a definite sense of the country starting to pause, a collective inhalation and settling back into a favourite chair. Easter was almost ready, the quiet starting to permeate. I detoured around the empty roads of the industrial estate that would be teeming on a work day with commercial vehicles and then back, up through the forest, towards my repose and indeed, favourite chair.