84. The Cyclists

While I was drawing this, an older man, wearing a baseball cap, a pale blue shirt, shorts and trainers and pushing a fancy looking dark blue bicycle, and another man also with a bicycle, stopped in front of me and looked down at my drawing, then across at the house I was drawing, and then back at me again.
“What’s happening here?” the man said, smiling and laughing.
I told the man about the Hundred Houses project and asked him what he was doing with the bicycle.
‘We cycled from San Luis Obispo, the man told me, “were just walking the last few streets home.”
‘How far away is that?’ I asked the man, knowing that it’s far, but not how far.
‘About 450 miles,’ the man said.
His cycling companion corrected him.
‘475 miles,’ said the companion, whose bicycle was one of those low rider style, like a reclining beach chair with a wheel at each end.
‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘that’s a long way. Are you too tired to cycle?’
‘My butt hurts,’ said the man, reaching around to his bum and pretending to rub it.
‘I bet it does,’ I said, looking at his seat which looked like it would be as vicious as a plastic picnic knife on the backside and testicles.
‘Believe it or not,’ he said after I suggest he get a gel seat, ‘this is the most comfortable bike seat in the world. It’s a Brooks England,’
I told the man him I did not know what that meant, but I’d Google it.
‘I’ve worn out every other seat,” the man said, “and this one takes 6 months to break in.”
Then the cyclists started looking over my bicycle.
‘A bit of oil to go with those cobwebs on your gears,’ said the cycling companion, pointing to the back wheel.
We all laughed at this and I explained that my bicycle had been in storage for 4 months.
Then, diverting the conversation away from the shameful state of my bicycle, I said to the man in the baseball cap-‘You look like a hardcore cyclist and that bicycle looks really lightweight,’
The man told me yes, and that all they have carried on this 475 mile trip is in their panniers; a change of clothes for eating dinner in and not much else.
‘And sore butt cream?’ I said.
The man laughed and said yes.
‘Have you been cycling a long time?’ I asked the man.
He told me yes, he had, since he was very young.
‘I’m 75 now,’ the man told me.
My mouth fell open and I frowned.
‘Are you serious?’ I said, ‘you’re 75? You look about…I dunno, 54,’
The man laughed and touched me on the shoulder and said he was going to report that to his wife.
‘I’ve been married 51 years,’ he said, ‘and I’m going home to tell her I look too young for her and that she doesn’t cut the mustard anymore,’