nicknames, monikers and sobriquets

My last circumnavigation of Tasmania earned me the nickname The Tractor. Pulling along the rare long flats in huge gears attracted the attention of pithy tongues. I feel tractorish as I chug-chug-chug relentlessly up mountainsides.

Sporty models need fine-tuning; tractors go on forever.

In France Mick gives us call signs: The Iceman, The Pirate, Hulk, Doc, Crash. I am Legs. No one bothers to call me that. Do I not look like a Legs? Are my legs unworthy of eponymy?

Sometimes when churning up something steep, only the legs exist and I am indeed legs, all legs, and nothing but the legs.

Sometimes when I haul my arse out of the saddle to use some different muscles, I look down at my legs. They look good. I like them. Legs are good. Legs are great. Rather lose an arm than a leg.

In French the legs are les jambs. Ham is jambon. The legs are hams and the hamstrings are the pistons of the legs. When they ache they ache right up under the nates and it’s no dull pain, but the singing of too-taut catgut, deep in the flesh.

At 90 kiolgrams I carry too much weight. But when I lose it, does it come off a bulging gut? No, it comes off the legs, the only part of me I think looks fine.

On a forgotten ride on a forgotten road long ago, Dr Landucci was born—in my mind. He’s a doctor of everything and nothing. He’s both myth and mythical. He can do anything he sets his mind to. Sometimes when I’m spent, I call on Landucci to get me over the line.

On those seemingly endless long days when 100 kilometres stretches to 150, 160 and beyond, Landucci clips into the pedals and wraps his weathered Roman fingers around the bars. He’s indefatiguable, and inscrutable.

He has an imagined life, shared only with a small dog. He does as he pleases. The bike is as much a part of him as his arms or legs. He looks like Burt Lancaster and has his fabled grin, all creases and bonhomie, though he seldom employs it.

Would that I were Landucci.

Some people live in their heads; most live somewhere else—shopping centres, in front of reality television, in a land of delusion and superficiality. Landucci is deep within himself.

What’s in a name? Plenty.