Bicycles

A bicycle dream the other night, a few elements of which I could pin, while still fresh (which they are no longer), to things that had happened in the previous 48 hours or so, but most of which seemed to have arrived from nowhere.

It seems that I was reprising a continental bicycle trip I had made (in the dream world that is, not in the real world), involving a large bicycle, vaguely like a rickshaw, BH and perhaps sprogs. Large amounts of luggage were included, most of it strapped to the outside. I pedaled.

In the dream I was getting ready for the reprise rather than being in the middle of it. It was the same bicycle but there were more people, at least one additional named person, and there was a lot more luggage, including tents and furniture. Things like an old fashioned bed with steel wire and springs rather than slats or elastic straps supporting the mattress. All the stuff you needed to go camping with. Quite of a lot of the dream involved trying to strap all this stuff onto the outside of the bicycle, trying to use some ancient string which had been rotting away at the bottom of some cupboard or other and which broke as soon as you put any strain on it. I didn't seen to be able to find the serious sisal twine which is kept in the garage for such purposes.

And then there was a concern that the loaded bicycle was going to be too heavy for me to pedal. There was a gloomy sequence of me having to stop while pedaling up a very gentle incline and push the thing the rest of the way up. Early evening, dull and damp. Cobbled townscape. But then a pleasanter sequence of gently rolling down some green and peaceful valley in the sun. Maybe Glen Nevis.

PS: I now remember that we did indeed go camping in France with our young family, maybe twenty years ago now, and that there was stuff strapped onto the roof, albeit of the car rather than a bicycle. Making the parcel out of the stuff and fixing it to the roof rack was a job that required some care if it was not to come unstuck in the course of a day's drive.