Man Love

OK - I'm going to talk about man love in relation to one of the least likely peddlers to have ever been involved in man on man action. Just to be clear I have no issue with man-o-man, and whatever keeps you warm at night is OK with me, but I don't think Sean Kelly was ever likely to have been sprung in the sack with another hombre no matter how cold it was.

But I love Sean Kelly. I really really love him. I guess that because I first got into bikes in the late 70's early 80's that I was always going to have a thing for someone like Kelly. I liked Phil Anderson and Allan Pieper too, cause they were Aussies, but I wanted to model myself on the Irishman.

He was not the caricature of hardness that some modern sports superstars try to carry off, he was just genuinely hard. Hard in a "I earn my keep down the pits" coal miner way. He had legs that looked like they were a prop for an anatomy lesson, with veins, tendons and gristle all on display and his form follows function approach to his uniform had the effect of making him seem to me at least to be super stylish.

There are many things that I love about Sean Kelly but a few are worth special mention.

1. His turned up cap - heaps of people did this but it seems to sit particularly well with Kelly
2. Black shoes with plain white socks - that's the way you do it kids.
3. Persistence with cleats and toe clips long after everyone else was using goofy Looks - you can almost imagine him saying "tey ha surfed ma well uta noow". Imagine being the last bloke to win a classic in cleats, toe straps and down tube shifters.
4. Bike is a tool of the trade attitude - Its commonly known that he rode a flexy flyin Vitus with neary a complaint for much of his career.
5. The last man to have a crack at just about anything - you got the feeling that you really just had to point him and say "dat whey Seeeeaan" and he would be off at a million miles an hour.
6. The fact that he was nearly unbeatable at Paris-Nice at the start of the season after presumably busting his clacker in the rain for the whole of the Irish winter.

I know I am a misty eyed old nostalgic, but why can't cycling have a bit more of what Sean Kelly was made of in it today??

Killer Kangaroo's

It was one of those lovely mornings.

A group of us had met for our standard long Sunday ride, and while the air was crisp as we started it was a classic spring time day where you knew it was going to warm up as we rolled along. It was a good group as well. A mix of abilities but all got types so the banter and piss taking got started early.

As we headed out of town, the miles were clicking by easily. As usual we rode two abrest and swapped turns at the front every couple of K's. I was riding behind my friend "Ripper", who was a good little rider, but only had sight in his right eye so you had to be careful when you were on his left. Ripper and I knew each other well as we had worked together as cleaners in a factory when we were at Uni, and so had had the sort of conversations that you can only have when you are desperately trying to avoid doing any real work.

We were riding through a bushed area with trees on each side of the road. We started to head down a bit of a gully so we were doing maybe 50kph when it happened.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move on my left. In a split second I registered that it was a Kangaroo and it was heading straight for the bunch!!!! I could see that at its current velocity it was going to contact the bunch somewhere near me, but all I could do was brace for impact. As it got within one hop of us, it seemed to realise that it was in trouble and tried with one almighty hop to go over the top. Thats right, it tried to jump over us. I realised that while I had a hole in my arse that that plan was not going to work, and watched in awe as the creature flew through the air and laid a perfect shirtfront on Ripper. It hit him with full force on the left hand shoulder. Due to his vision problem, Ripper would genuinely claim later that "I didnt see him coming".

Rip hit the ground like a bag of spuds. His lovely Eddy Merckx cartwheeling down the road while everyone did the best they could to avoid the carnage. As we all picked ourselves up and checked on Ripper we were confronted with one of the most sureal sights I have ever seen. Ripper was lying on the ground with a broken collar bone and beside him almost snuggled up was a unconcious kangaroo. We formed a circle of sweaty lycra around the two. Rip sat up and while clearly confussed about what had happened and in pain from the collar bone, he was OK. Slowely, the kangaroo came around. Lying on its side it tilted its head up and surveyed the scene. It had a look on its face which suggested it was thinking "what the f___ is going on here?" It sat there like that for about 10 seconds before one of the guys reached out and touched it gently on the nose. At that point it obviously thought - I am out of here, and it took off at a million miles an hour between two blokes legs and back into the bush.

We got Rip up and managed to push him back home. We rode in silence pretty much all the way back. As we reached town, the bloke beside me looked around and said with a solemn look on his face, "Mate, that was bullshit".

I had to agree with him.