up in smoke

My man Carey at Gembrook writes to ask if I’m a puff of smoke. I write like a Dervish for a couple of months, then nothing. Did I fall off the bike, he asks. No, I fell off the wagon.

It all begins on what turns out to be my last day at the gym. I pick up my not-too-heavy barbell and am about to make my way onto the floor for pump class but realise that the rick I felt in my back is not to be trifled with. I don’t risk the rick, but by night I’m a wreck anyway.

My back incapacitates me for weeks. I stop going to the gym. I stop riding. I cease writing about riding and write about my back. It doesn’t respond to the usual remedies; my recovery takes time. My twin concerns are when can I ride and can I lift everything that needs lifting when I move house?

Moving house becomes the issue. It consumes all energy, all effort, all time. I allow five weeks but it hardly seems enough time to organise a household of belongings, to pack it, to stack it, to load it, to drive it 200kms, to unload it, and to clean up after it. And to go to work three days a week and present some semblance of an interested employee.

In fact I do manage some sporadic rides, and some spasmodic writing, But I don’t edit and I don’t post. My one-man business sparks up and I’m training groups of people in Sydney and around country Victoria. I desperately need the money to fund the trip to France I’m no longer training for.

2011 is all about climbing real and metaphorical mountains. Moving house; moving city; moving building and office at work; training; renovating my house; re-educating myself for a job when my current job ends at the end of the year; and 28 days in France riding up the Alps and the Pyrénées smack in the middle of it all.