live-cycle

For two weeks Dennis has been my partner, its been fun, hard work and an emotional rollercoaster at times.
We’ve worn matching outfits in Lycra everyday and admired how we look. People have commented, very favorably, on our matching bikes. We are and have had a perfect marriage, a solid friendship, both individually capable but better because the other half is there. Our partnership knows no bounds.
After finishing, and thankfully in our hotel suite – yes with a double bed- I was surprised by the level Dennis wanted to push our bond to.
” I have to ask” he said coyly ” will you do something for me?”
” of course” I responded
“thanks” he said, and promptly thrust his camera into my hand, dropped his towel, bent over and said ” take a shot of my bum for Pam”
Slightly stunned and not wanting to be scarred for life I closed my eyes and thought of England. It was perhaps the strangest commission I have ever undertaken.
Since then our ability to wear matching outfits has continued, no longer racing, but on a road trip, we have sported our matching finishers jerseys and epic t shirts with pride. We have been delighted by big game, attended art exhibitions, had candlelit meals and generally had a good time.
Everywhere we have gone people have assumed we are gay, a couple of men travelling together in matching yellow t shirts and shorts happy in each others company, well they must be. We were sat at dinner and I watched people starring trying to work it out, curious and amused.
We have taken this sincere form of flattery and enjoyed the our mystery.
Even yesterday afternoon we sipped our ice cream floats through straws both amused by the glances from “the ladies who lunch”.
We recounted our amusement at this glances last night over dinner with Dennis’s friends, we ordered coffees and Dennis ordered an ice cream and whisky combination called a Don Pedro, Julien the owner of the restaurant, produced the drink for dennis complete with pink straw and cherry, “when he has finished the drink you can have Dennis’s cherry” he laughed.

After tonight our platonic marriage will be over, back to normality, where funnily enough half the people I meet think I’m gay!

On a separate thing I just way to say thanks to all of you who have been Reading this blog, left comments and supported us throughout the Epic. It has been fun in a crazy way.
Also I must say a huge thank you to our sponsors without whom this trip would have been beyond us: Greg at halfords bike hut, Andy at boardman bikes, Pete at SIS, Roger at Polaris, phil and Sharon at British cycling and the staff of Virgin Atlantic for getting us and our overweight baggage to Cape Town.
There will be more from us as we are already floating ideas of other events we could attempt.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 5:42 am and is filed under Paul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.