Traveling by bicycle is, actually, my personal antidote to a good deal of life’s irreconcilable vexatiousness. It is, after all, a simple thing to succeed at - not simple in the sense of easy (it’s not) but simple in the sense of uncomplicated. However far you go, your achievement is measurable and unequivocal. You make an enormous effort, you worry about all sorts of things, you strain and sweat, you self-examine, self-aggrandise, and self-loathe, you exult, you despair, you exult again and despair again, but at the end of the day, at the end of the journey, you’ve arrived at a destination or you haven’t. What a relief from life’s more common challenges - family, work, love - and their irreducible ambiguities. There’s an hour or so at the end of each day, when I swing my leg out of the saddle … during which I feel indisputably worthy as a human being, someone who has spent the day profitably and deserves happiness.