Ghost Beard

It is coldest before the dawn and I am hunch backed Inside my jacket, braced against a recurring shoulder injury, Standing my crank against the rising road That leads up onto the great chalk ridge. Breaths Drop into my toes now. I grunt against cold With the effort. My jacket, a moment before not enough Is now sweating, and my dynamo light dips With my slowing roll against the reality Of the gradient. Rather than striking through the fog My light makes a lesser cocoon, barely picking out Wan grasses that line the road. There is nothing beyond the lifeboat of my presence, the thin line Of being stretches out between low powerlines, The staccato of road markings plucks my wheels and counterpoints the calculation of time and distance I am making to keep myself alert and away from Hallucinations. Still I see things that leap In the fog then fade. That might be a rolling badger Or Batman or a giant dark hand Swinging for me in the gloom. I need To sleep but know I cannot. Stopping Would turn me to ice and while it would dawn soon The warming of the day was hours distant And by then I would be done. And done in Nothing to do but push on, ignore The truculent mental states, treat them like A distant radio. Time to tune out And let the pedals turn themselves. ‘Oh hello!’ Beside me, suddenly, a cheery voice. I jolt in surprise – I had thought My pace was enough that no one would be Sitting on. ‘Hello’ I reply, curt and unwelcoming. My abrupt objection to company on a night like this Might be hard to fathom, but some way back I had decided this leg would be cold and hard And all of the experience would be exclusively mine. Forbearance greed is a sin of the modern adventurer –There is nothing left to be discovered so we must go inwards To find the inhospitable terrain. After ten minutes I realised he was not going away; I sighed and looked t his bike. Cyclists, you will know, often bike watch before They look at the person. You want to know if the rider Is a bore, a chore, or a new friend for life. The truth is never in a marque, but it’s a start . ‘Lovely Mercian’, I say, finding the short phrase Hard to say in my current state of fatigue. ‘This old thing?’ He laughs, a long laugh A very long laugh, so long I wonder how He draws breath. But he is false, the bike looks Brand new, as if the mist had condensed and hardened Into mirror-bright tubes; And everything on his bike Was in silvery twinkle, a hymn to the reflection of light From the crankset to the spokes everything shone As if lit from the inside. An obsessive, I decide One of those who have time to clean bikes and have no life To contrast the joy of riding with. And fixed. Of course he had to be riding a fixed. And in that vein He is wearing wool shorts, white socks, a black and white striped shirt without a jacket. He could be Raphaman But the clothes are old, the shoes have wooden soles

If the bike is an object of perfection the man himself Was its verb. He is a sleek animal, his body still, his legs lithe and light; He is starlight on a bicycle. And stranger yet than the minimal covering Is the fact he carries nothing else. ‘You don’t Carry much’ I say. ‘No need’, he replies and I detect A faint northern accent softened further with a smudge Of welsh. ‘I never get punctures’ he adds As if this were unremarkable. The pace seems To have crept ever so slightly higher and I gasp Out my next words, ‘No route sheet either?’ and he laughs, again without apparent effort, ‘Oh I’ve done this route enough times, I don’t need one.’ ‘Right’ I manage to spit out, and lower my head for A few seconds, long enough to see the paraphernalia That covers my many geared machine; the disc brakes The GPS and its purple line, the spare lights And bar-bag full of just-in-case sweets and a camera and money and everything a man traveling light Could ever need. I feel dirty, morally overburdened Like a banker confronted by the prospect Of empathy. Again the pace lifts – though he seems Not to pedal faster – and I make myself shift up And placate my legs with an empty promise Of rest and jelly babies. The bubble pulls in As the temperature drops with the gaining height And a wind promised for later sends a chilly slap. The fog tightens again, deepens, climbs in To my lungs and festers there, a sobering wash of Anaesthesia. On my tongue the first metallic tang Of the bonk. I can’t keep this up. My breaths Drop ragged towards the fog that blankets the road Feeding it espressos of spittle and blood. Now Three lengths in front he churns on, seeming to offer His wheel. It can’t be long to the top now, or to dawn, So I look to his back mudguard and stand up. Straining with effort, discounting the hundred Of hills to come, willing myself to keep pace With the blur in the fog, I alloy each muscular spasm With will and pride, and grimly hang on. And he starts to chat now, about old rides, about Multiple 1000s; about twilight Nordic adventures and fixing his frame with cheese squares and sweat; About Mont Ventoux fives times in a day, on a fixed Borrowed from a peasant with a basket full Of lavender, charcuterie and a dozen bottles of Vintage Champagne. Everything to do with riding And nothing to do with a life beyond. Where my life Was about days in an office wanting to taste adventure He was always here, pedalling the countryside beneath him –A man without use or want for the ordinary. What manner Of man was this? He seemed like flesh and yet He was so much part of his bike that his bike Had become him. And vice versa. A mix of natures –A hybrid being at once both elegant and obscene. It was then I formed the notion that he was the man Who kept the world turning, that he was fixed Not only in gear but time and space; that our orb Was driven towards another dawn by his ceaseless toil And that I should be grateful. But yet

I hated him. As the first rag of dawn Rubs the East, as the fog loosened into mist And the gradient eased, at this moment I should be buoyed and vital with the new day. In truth I was broken. At the crest my legs Finally refused motion and the rider moved on Picking up speed as the road flattened Still tapping out the same cadence, it seemed he had The perfect gear. As I slowed and he flowed on I noticed one last detail – I could swear the cable Running from his dynamo hub to his ancient But unaccountably bright light was severed. I stopped and unclipped and rested on my bars. My sweat instantly froze, I started to shiver And shake and not just from cold. I crammed my mouth with the carcasses of babies Waiting for the sugar to flare in me. I looked Back down the incline. The mist had gone. It was just a road. I was just a tired rider With a hundred to go. There was nothing unusual About my state, but I found it desolate. My imagination had been pierced by the encounter. Imagination? No, my pride. Knowing I could never Attain the Audax perfection I had just encountered It all felt like an empty exercise, a game Where I was only good on Strava and in forums And in the shallow reaches of my vanity. I clipped in And completed the ride, mostly in silence, barely Muttering a cranky hello to riders I knew well Who wanted to ride with me, or offered to pull Me along on their wheel. I spurned them all, a crisis Doubled with exhaustion wrapped in a foul mood, I couldn’t stop thinking of him. Perfect bike Silky style, endless palmares. The hatred grew Eating my own cadence. It took some time to realise That what was bothering me was not the man But the face. I couldn’t shake the notion That the face was mine. Not merely close, but exact –That the man could have been mistaken for my twin Were it not for one thing. The white beard. Sipping tea at the end of it, registering The concerned looks of riders around me, I realised I was muttering a random string of words That made no sense, nor even to me. One of the Ancien sat beside me then, offered tea-biscuits and subtly examined me as he talked. A wise man, kind and experienced, he asked me About my ride and I told him about the rider. He patiently listened as the words lined up And nodded and smiled and his encouragement Unlocked my mood and let me confess my fear And the morbid detail of his matching visage. ‘Ghost Beard’ the Ancien said, as if he were Talking about spotting a rare animal, a known But seldom seen bird. ‘You have seen Ghost Beard.’ I stopped then, aware the room of twenty was silent And waiting. ‘What is Ghost Beard?’ I ask, feeling That all but I know the answer, that knowing the answer Will somehow change me forever. The Ancien looks Both sad and pleased, like a father welcoming his son To the marvellous complications of manhood. ‘Ghost Beard is you.’ He said simply. ‘It’s you.’ ‘Me?’ I replied, astonished. ‘Ghost Beard is The fantasy you have of yourself as a rider’.

Yes, I could see that he was right. I wasn’t sure Whether I would laugh or cry, and I looked to the room For some sign of what I was meant to feel. Relief That I knew who the phantom was, or horror That some rich part of me had been consumed By this ridiculous pursuit and become flesh? ‘But’ I gasped, ‘He was so pleasant, so nice, so perfect… it was horrible.’ I flinched Knowing that he was me to an extreme. ‘That’s the Ghost Beard.’ Said the Ancien A smile playing on his face, ‘It means you are ready.’ ‘Ready for what?’ I asked. ‘Ready to be the rider That you are and not the one you think you should be.’ I was almost ashamed to have taken so many years To see the truth of it. To get better, to enjoy this I needed to move on from the need of perfection. I needed to cast off ideas of there being a right way Or wrong way to ride a bike an unaccountable distance For no good reason. There was no way But my own sweet stagger. I nodded then And with that the room turned back to their biscuits, Discussions of gearing and mileage and what The next ride was. A room full of people Being the riders that they were, not what Someone else told them to be, not blur lines In a fantasy of speed, not victors, not Children dreaming of conquering – just plain adults And me among them suddenly older; and happier.

The Corwen Summer Audax Saturday 15th July 2017

The Barmouth Boulevard 204km with 3650m of climbing. A beautiful and challenging ride with glorious scenery. Route includes the Trawsfynydd Mountain road Bwlch y Groes and the Northern Hirnant Pass from Lake Vyrnwy. The Brenig Bach 107km with 1920m of climbing. This classic ride visits some remote and beautiful areas of North Wales. Stunning scenery throughout, excellent café stops. Last 20km all downhill. A wonderful and stimulating day out enjoying one of the best 100km rides in Britain. The Bala Parade 60km with 1000m of climbing. A lovely ride around Lake Bala designed as an introduction to Audax riding. Pub/café stop at south east end of the lake to complement a pleasant morning ride. Go to aukweb.net/events for full details of these excellent value rides.