Well, it all started with the dawn of time...
Man was just a glint in a nebulous mass of gases, as the Big Bang wracked whatever passed for a reality prior to it's being, and then the Earth and all other planets great and small were created in a very short time indeed. After a while, primitive single-celled organisms were born when lightning struck a particularly fortuitous conglomeration of chemicals, and life never looked back. Mainly because it had no eyes at that point.
Cell walls came, and cilia went, and life diversified into such a rich plethora that it was bound to incur the ire of statistical probability, and many extinction events occurred. Dinosaurs ruled and were wiped out, and then the mammals raised their furry five fingered hands to take the crown of "Earth's Champions". Rats took to the skies to become bats. Bats returned to the ground to hunt as cats. Cats were skinned to make hats, and so on. With the fall from a tree of the first proto-ape ( the mythical "Drop Monkey"?), mankind was unceremoniously set on its long journey toward uprightness, culminating in the perfection of mechanised locomotion: the bicycle.
Present day:
Friday evening: I go out to Victoria and catch up with Ant and G, who are here on their honeymoon OE. Brendan meets us there, and after drinkies, he and I shunt off back to his place in Uxbridge for some more drinkies, and some sweet gaming. Nice. 3:30am - we head to our (separate) beds.
2pm, Saturday: Brendan is meant to meet up with his brother Damon to go bike riding. The plan? For Damon to bring 2 bikes via trains to Uxbridge, then they'll ride them back to Damon's in Euston. Finding that I'm around, Damon generously offers me a third bike, and upon acceptance we plan to head for his to meet him at about 3pm.
3:30pm We leave the house. Computer gaming may have had something to do with our late departure, but I was lost in electronic limbo, so I really couldn't comment - we just woke up from Wesnoth, and found it was way past time to go. We take the route offered by Damon, which is the one he'd planned for taking bikes on the overland, and we completely miss the fact that we could've just ridden the underground all the way to his. Our minds are feeble.
4pm: we arrive at the overground station and realise that the next train isn't 'til 4:30pm, and it only drops us at Marylebone. Wicked route planning...only now do I realise that we should've just ridden the Metropolitan all the way to King's Cross...
5pm: we arrive at Marylebone, and head off on the Bakerloo to Regent's Park, and cut through the park to get to Euston. Brendan forgets where the hell his own brother lives, and Damon's phone is crap, so it takes a while to sort out directions.
5:30pm: we arrive at Damon's. We sort out our bikes, chew some food, spin out to the wicked new Tool album cover, and then plan a route. It entails riding the canalside west, taking a few minor detours, but essentially ending up back at Brendan's in Uxbridge - should take 1 1/2 to 2 hours, apparently - but then Damon reckons he can get from Euston to Waterloo in 7 minutes on his bike - a prospect which - given London drivers and, even worse, pedestrians - frankly terrifies me. We cogitate for about 30 minutes over how we're going to get the bikes back if we ride to Uxbridge, all solutions seeming like madness, so we decide in manly fashion that an answer must eventually present itself without any further effort on our part.
6pm: we leave the house and make our way smoothly through London's back roads towards the Regent's Park section of canal. Things go well, and I even navigate - SUCCESSFULLY!!! - the section from Regent's Park to Little Venice, as it's kinda like my hood.
The next 2 1/2 hours: we ride! Dodging traffic and shooting the breeze, like a poor, pre-adolescent version of the Hell's Angels, we manouever our machines deftly through foot and road traffic alike. Upon reaching a pikey encampment on the canalside, howver, we begin to wonder if we might not be completely lost. Damon fetches his GPS and places us, and unfortunately we've managed to reach Sudbury on the Hill, some 10km east of Uxbridge, and a tad off course - who knew there was more than one canal?? We decide to make for the nearest rail station, as we have no lights on our bikes, and our crowns are bare for all to see and attempt to crush should we dislodge from our trusty mounts.
8:30pm: we arrive at Wembley station, and decide to go in search of food. A Nando's clone provides us with excellent fare, including a cool and refreshing jug of sangria for only £10 - hah! I was buying litre-cartons of sangria in Espana for EUR1.30!! Damn restaurants...then again, I did wake up the next day feeling human, which is more than I can say for the carton stuff. Just imagine spicy Miami Wine Cooler, but red... Argentina are playing Mexico, and for some reason all the locals (not a Brit among them, I might add), are booing the Argies. Why? A lay-over from the Falklands, perhaps? Who will ever know...
10pm: Off we go to the rail station, and catch a ride home. Arriving back at Damon's, we deposit the bikes, have another drink, and then Bren and I head back for his.
11:30pm we make the tube - Euston to King's X. Arriving at King's, we are informed that ALL the lines heading due west are buggered up til Baker St, so - fearing the imminent closure of the system - we hightail it to the Piccadilly line and switch to head up on the trusty Bakerloo.
12:30am: we rush and rush to get to the Metropolitan before we become stranded, but we needn't have worried - there it is, just waiting to take us all the way to Uxbridge. Ahhh, relaxation...
1:30am: 4 stops from Uxbridge, we are told to "All change please - this train terminates here". WTF? Apparently another train is coming through in 5 minutes, so we set ourselves skeptically down to await it. The drunk group of chavs next to us begin hijinks, and entertainment ensues.
1:40am: still no train. The chavs press the "Service Intercom" button, and inquire of the operator whether he gets lonely sitting in there, and has he enough air to breathe? They really are quite sweet little chavs.
1:45am: "Your train will be here in 5 minutes - it is just at Rayner's Lane", chimes the announcer. 5 minutes later, a train does appear, but unfortunately it is laden with old ballast from the tracks down the way, and is clearly not intended for human transportation. Cue more chav hilarity vs intercom... Another 10 minutes after that, the real one does in fact arrive, and we are underway again.
2:15am: we arrive at Uxbridge. Chav West. Walking through Uxbridge town centre at the end of a drinking night is a dodgy prospect, but only in that the girls are world-class slutty, and the boys are all ogling for a fight. Or cheesy chips. Bless them again, most of them seem content with cheesy nutrition. We walk our way back to Brendan's, musing on how the tart in front of us has removed her high-heels to try to get more traction in bare feet while in a fairly restrictive mini-skirt she chases her boyfriend Gary, who is fleeing ahead of her on well-shod foot, clutching his polystyrene payload of cheesy carbs to his chest and feverishly comsuming them before - apparently - she gets her gold-digging hands on them. We rock on into Brendan's place at 2:45am, and proceed to play computer games until 5am, when the sun chases us like cockroaches to our darkened (but separate) dens...
And all this, just for a bike ride. Hallelujah, Transport for London...
1 comment:
Friggin hilarious! Especially Gary; that boy just was NOT going to share those cheesy fries with any ole hussy, least of all the one calling him a "bastard" and what-not as she barrelled her way across the intervening highway.
I just re-read this from the comfort of Fukuoka, Japan, land of people that really do act exactly like the manga cartoons. You just gotta see this place, amazing. Last night Noriko's dad offered to meet me at the airport to give me some Japanese girls to take home with me. I'm not kidding. I'm unsure as to whether he was.
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