The Road to Melksham

Good evening, humans of the internet! I'm pleased to report that day one of being on the road was a success.

The first unexpected challenge was: trying to get on the bike. (Stop laughing.) Florence is a bit too big for me really, so I usually mount her by leaning her to the left (towards me), swinging my right leg over the back wheel, and plunking myself onto the saddle while pushing off with my left foot and starting to pedal with my right. I'm so well-practiced in that manoeuvre, I do it effortlessly now, without thinking about it. When I tried it this morning, Florence's front wheel left the ground as her back end nose-dived sideways, and I only just managed to catch her before she hit the deck. Heaving her back upright was a struggle, too. With the battery and two packed-full panniers all hugging the back wheel, she's achieved a monstrously uneven weight distribution. I tried again, being more careful, but it just wasn't possible to hold her by the handlebars at an angle with all that weight at her back end. I had to roll her into the gutter and mount her from the kerb.

I could really feel the extra weight when I cornered at the bottom of the street; it presented as a barely-controlled and somewhat alarming wobble just behind me. It felt like Florence was gestating a whole new bicycle in her arse. But by the time we were putting Bedminster behind us, my sense of balance was getting the measure of the situation. The corner-wobbles became less dramatic, and then disappeared altogether. And the weight didn't seem to slow me down any - thanks to a combination of my hard-won Amazon thighs and the battery being back in action, we were making a smooth and easy ten miles an hour or so on the flat. And she could do faster, easily - but I have to keep the battery on its lowest power setting for such long journeys, else it will run flat before I get where I'm going.

The rest of the journey was reasonably uneventful. I know the route to Melksham - my dad lives here - so there was no navigational work to do, only thirty miles of straight riding in pleasantly cool and occasionally drizzly weather. Tomorrow will be forty miles, and more of a navigational challenge. I have driven from Melksham to Salisbury by car before, once. It was many years ago, and I was trying to get to Yeovil, and it all went a bit wrong. Hopefully I'll have better luck tomorrow...