My Journey to the Dark Side

Once upon a time, many years ago, I read a book called Richard's Bicycle Book, by Richard Ballantine, one of the gods of the bicycle firmament. In here he described the wonderful word of human powered vehicles (HPVs), and I was interested. But I had me a Dawes Super Galaxy, and the prices of these exotic machines were way out of my league, so I thought no more about it. Some time later I was presented with a copy of Richard's 21st Century Bicycle Book. In it he described in still more vivid detail the wonders of HPVs, notably a thing called a Windcheetah, designed by the legendary Mike Burrows of Lotus bike fame. I looked upon this thing and I coveted. It is a thing of beauty, you understand - like the Mini, it is a perfect representation of the state of the art on the day of its conception, and it has been manufactured ever since without significant change. I wanted one. I still want one, truth to tell. But family finances are not endless, and my trusty Claud Butler was doing good service, so I shelved such thoughts for Another Day. Then we sold the second car. No need for two, bikes will do. A glimmer of hope: had Another Day arrived so soon? It had indeed! I was authorised by the Financial Controller to purchase, should I so desire, a Windcheetah, at some unspecified but not too distant future time. So I started doing further research, as one should. Now, the Windcheetah is one of those machines for which people seem to have an almost religious fervour. And the unconverted, even within the world of recumbents and HPVs, are as sceptical as the unconverted are wont to be. The Windcheetah has heavy steering at low speeds, is twitchy at high speeds, has no suspension, breaks racks with monotonous regularity, and is in sundry other ways perhaps not as robust as one could wish. Or so they said. So I found a shop which had a Windcheetah, an old one, an original Burrows. I went to see it. It looked - tired. The seat was broken in a couple of places, the steering was somewhat slack and the padded grip on the joystick was gone, leaving cables exposed. It was, however, elegant. But then I went upstairs. Here I saw not one or two recumbents, but dozens! An Aladdin's Cave of the Dark Side. I tried to leave, dear reader, I tried to think pure thoughts of my trusty Wedgie back home, but ultimately I was doomed. Minutes later I was seated on my first bent. A short trip up and down the road, and I wanted more. Lower, leaner, meaner. So I tried an Optima Lynx, and it was good. And then I tried the bike my eyes had been drawn to first of all: the Optima Stinger. Low, fast, elegant - and very, very yellow. I rode the Stinger for a while, and then I rode it some more - and it took a very long time to wipe the silly grin off my face. I went back to try some more bikes; I promised myself I would go to BikeFix and ride the SpeedMachine - but I bought the Stinger, because it was so good I just wanted to have it there and then. I bought the display model. The Flying Banana is mine!