Thank you for subscribing
Close
<html>
<head><meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow" />
<title>Just Do It</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>

>body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" marginwidth="100" leftmargin="100">
<div align="center"> <!-- #BeginLibraryItem "/Library/nav.lbi" --><h1>/bikereadercom/contributors/woodland/relax.html</h1><table width="5%" border="0" cellspacing="5" cellpadding="5" align="center">
 <tr> 
 <td bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Home</font></td><td><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Humour</font></td><td><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Essays</font></td><td><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Travel</font></td><td><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Images</font></td></tr>
</table><!-- #EndLibraryItem --> 
 <pre> ;</pre>
</div>
<p><font size="6" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Just Do It<br>
 </b><font size="3">by</font><b><font size="3"> </font></b><font size="3"><b>Les 
 Woodland </b></font></font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">I have a friend. I haven't 
 seen him for years. In fact, realising I hadn't seen him, I wrote to his last 
 address and -- to mutual surprise -- he received my letter. Why surprise? Because 
 for years he's been cycling round the world. He just happened to be in England.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">'How? Why?' I asked, remembering 
 a lad who could easily forget his shoes.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">'Plan, you mean?' he said. 
 'I don't plan. I was riding and I decided that was what I liked, so I carried 
 on doing it.'</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">He had no idea where he 
 was going that first night and his only thought was to be back for Christmas 
 to see his parents. I pictured him getting to the Andes at the end of June and 
 turning back and riding off the other way.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">'So how do you survive?'</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">'You know what I realised?' 
 he said with his habit of answering one question with another. 'Away from Europe 
 you hardly need any money. And when you're in Europe, you think "Well, the roads 
 are crowded," and that everywhere they're selling cars and that cars get dirty 
 in the rain. So I go to garages and say I'm cycling round the world and can 
 I have a morning's work shining their cars? It's not every day they get a round-the-world 
 cyclist so I get the work and then I ride on until the money runs out and I 
 find another garage. Easy, really.'</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">And that, surely, is the 
 point. You make it up as you go. Because cycling is an uncomplicated game we 
 love to make complex. It's as if we can't justify it to ourselves and everyone 
 else unless we've got expensive gear and planning that would have done D-Day 
 credit. Do you remember when you were a kid and you could walk on narrow walls 
 and not worry about falling off, because you didn't know what it was like to 
 fall off? Well, you never fell. Now you don't do it even consider it, fun though 
 it is, because you're all grown up and you Have To Plan, Have To Be Sensible....</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">You didn't worry about 
 your first bike rides. You didn't fret over equipment and gear sizes and whether 
 you had the maps. You just went. And I bet that to this day you remember every 
 one of those childhood expeditions.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Sometimes you can plan 
 too much. Bob Kynaston of the Edgware CTC in north London told me: 'Years ago 
 there was a chap near us who said he was going to ride round the world. He even 
 went to Tenerife and slept under the stars and experimented with cycling all 
 day on a Mars bar, that sort of thing. And when he'd convinced himself, he put 
 his house up for rent. But before he could rent it he had to do some work on 
 it and he started repairing the windows. Then he did all the other things and 
 by the time he'd done them it had taken years and the window frames needed doing 
 again and so far as I know he never did get to ride round the world.'</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Planning killed the excitement. 
 Maybe for some people the planning is even an excuse not to do it. Moral: don't 
 plan. Or, at least, don't fret. You don't even have to be a techno-whizz. The 
 other day I went to see Anne Mustoe in Norwich. I don't suppose her bike's falling 
 to bits but she wouldn't know what to do if it did. Did it stop her? No it didn't.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">'I don't even know how 
 to mend a puncture,' she admitted. 'Maybe I'm just lucky but right round the 
 world I only got three and every time there was somebody there happy to do it 
 for me.'</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">In her book <i>Lone Traveller</i> 
 she talks of people 'who would dearly love to go on an adventure, but teeter 
 on the brink, full of self-doubt'. They talk themselves out of it. They forget 
 the fun is in the adventure, the who-knows-what-nextness of casual travel. 'You 
 don't have to be twenty, male and an ace mechanic,' she says. 'I've cycled around 
 the world twice now. I'm not young, I'm not sporty, I never train, I appreciate 
 good food and wine, and I still can't tell a sprocket from a chain ring or mend 
 a puncture!'</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Does she wipe up the miles? 
 I shouldn't think so. You don't have to be a speed-fascist. That's what you 
 get from thinking what you do is linked to the Tour de France, like the fat 
 old jogger who gives up because he can't run a four-minute mile. Forget speed. 
 In fact, to be a successful pootler you should go very slowly indeed, says the 
 arch-priest of pootling, Gareth Lovett Jones.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">'Pootle has emerged as 
 an inspired combination of pedal and footle,' he says. 'But the pejorative overtones 
 -- the notion of scurrilous time-wasting and aimlessness -- implicit in the 
 latter are entirely absent. The pootlist is never shamefaced or apologetic --indeed 
 he is quite the opposite -- in discussing the fact that he has done nothing 
 very much and, what is more, has done it randomly and taken rather a lot of 
 time over it.' </font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">And for 'he' read 'she', 
 he says. 'Truth to tell some of my best friends are female pootlists.' And what 
 is the pootlist's philosophy? That 'while as the days pass he may well find 
 himself growing fitter than he has been for many a month, his first concern 
 is not physical exercise... but to live life as fully as life will allow.'</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">That's the key. You know 
 that Nike slogan, 'Just do it'? Well, you can't, you won't, if you sit and worry 
 about it first. It's caution that kills. I have friends who ride with half a 
 bike shop of tools... for 30 miles. Thirty miles? Come on, you'll never be beyond 
 walking distance. You'll never be more than 15 miles from home, and then only 
 if you ride in a straight line. We're talking inconvenience, not shipwreck. 
 This is one of the world's most densely populated countries. You don't need 
 maroons to call for help.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">No, all you need is enough 
 to mend a puncture. There's not much worse than that that you can still mend 
 on the road, at least not without tools you'll carry for years as you wait for 
 the right mishap. It's a rare mishap you can't at least scoot the bike along 
 to a garage. Oh and another point. The tools may be neurotic deadweight but 
 that doesn't mean you have to go without everything else. You know the best 
 gear I had cycling across Holland? It wasn't the lightweight tent or the cooking 
 gear, although I'd have been less comfortable without them. No, the thing I 
 remember with complete happiness was a paperback. Can't even remember what it 
 was but I do remember pleasant half-hours in the sun reading it whenever I fancied. 
 Just getting off and idling was as much fun as riding. In fact it probably made 
 the riding even better.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">If you want to do the same 
 with a bottle of wine, a sketch book, the works of a French philosopher or a 
 string puppet, well who's to stop you? If you fancy buying a packet of fig rolls 
 and scoffing the lot, who cares? It's your ride, nobody else's. Forget the rules. 
 Just do it. Get on your bike and ride somewhere. When it suits you, turn round 
 and come back. The best rides start at your own front door. Easy as that. </font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Think of Walter Stolle. 
 He set off in January 1959 and he was still at it two decades later. I remember 
 in 1974 reading that just that year he'd ridden 22,060 miles through Nigeria, 
 Niger, Dahomey, Tojo, Upper Volta, Ghana, Sierre Leone, the Ivory Coast, Liberia 
 and Guinea. He paid his way with slide shows in seven languages. He'd given 
 more than 2,500 by then and worked his way through 11 bikes.<br>
 Does that sound like a man who repaired all his windows before he went?</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Of course things will go 
 wrong. Sometimes you'll pick something too big. Take Graham Webb for instance.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">'As a kid, I used to keep 
 riding from Birmingham to Gloucester and back to see if I could do it. And for 
 a long time I couldn't and I'd lie in a ditch in exhaustion. No other reason. 
 I just did it to see if I could do it. And when I couldn't, I carried on until 
 I could.'</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Why?</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">'I just enjoyed it. I enjoyed 
 suffering, I suppose. I still do.'</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Well, it's not pootling 
 and it may not even be fun. Not by my standards and maybe not by yours. But 
 it was fun for him, and that's all that matters. If he'd asked advice, he'd 
 have been told not to do it. But he didn't, and he loved it. It shows nothing 
 much will come of even the hardest rides. And it couldn't have done Webb any 
 harm because a few years later he became world road race champion, the last 
 man in Britain ever to do it.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Oh yes, yes, you need a 
 bike that won't fall to bits before you do. You can't do it on tyres that show 
 the inner tube or gears that haven't worked in years. I know all that. The point 
 is that you don't need a super-techno, Dayglo, mega-geared spaceshot of a bike 
 just to go for a ride. People worry about their bike worry too much. Does it 
 work? Will it get you to the shops? Will it get you beyond the shops? Fine. 
 Bikes don't break down, not unless they've been neglected for years.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">People used to have a whale 
 of a time on penny-farthings; I'm sure you don't have to worry whether your 
 bike would raise eyebrows in a world championship. If it'll last as long as 
 you do, it's fine.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">I met some lads at Ewhurst 
 Green youth hostel once. Still at school they were, so the break from regimentation 
 suited them. Plus they wouldn't have known good equipment even if they'd been 
 able to afford it. Terry, the one from the Isle of Wight, had a saddle with 
 a hole in it. Or rather, a gash. It had grown old and dry and the leather had 
 split along the three holes in the top, like a coupon half-torn from a magazine.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">He followed my eyes and 
 grinned. 'Your bum gets used to it,' he said. If he'd been a worrier, he'd never 
 have left home. He'd have saved for a new saddle and before he'd bought it he'd 
 have got interested in something else, or lost interest in everything, and he'd 
 never have got to Ewhurst Green or anywhere else in two weeks of happy travelling.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Look, here's an idea. One 
 weekend this summer, have a doze on Saturday afternoon and set off at 10 and 
 ride through the night. Don't worry where. Just choose a direction and ride 
 off with a packet of sandwiches and a flask of coffee. Why? Well, have you ever 
 done it before? No? Good reason to do it, then.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">I did that once. I remember 
 every mile decades later. I remember being stopped in the Ashdown Forest by 
 police who hoped I'd escaped from a borstal and gave me coffee when they realised 
 I hadn't. I remember owls near Gatwick airport and midnight people who waved 
 and smiled, detached from the straight-faced glumness of ordinary life. They 
 too were doing something odd. They recognised a fellow spirit. </font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">I remember sitting in a 
 telephone box with a roadworks lamp when it got cold before dawn. I smiled when 
 I remembered my friend John Harding. </font><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">'I 
 slept in a telephone box before early-morning time-trials sometimes,' he used 
 to say. 'It was fine if you got in first and pulled the bike, wheels and bags 
 in after you... and if you didn't turn the light on by leaning on the door.' 
 In those days the inside light operated on a time switch connected to the door. 
 In those days, too, private phones were rare and once his sojourn was interrupted 
 by a man who wanted a midwife. The image of them pulling out all the bits of 
 bike so the husband could cope with his emergency came to me then as I sat with 
 the paraffin lamp under my cape for warmth.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">I hadn't planned, I hadn't 
 worn enough. Did I die? No I didn't. I have marvellous memories. I remember 
 a giant breakfast on the sea front at Eastbourne. And I remember Alfriston youth 
 hostel being full but getting a bed in an attic where the window was covered 
 with dead but preserved butterflies.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Next day I had cream tea 
 at Abinger Hammer and a good talking-to from my parents. Did I care? No. Had 
 I planned it? No. That was what upset my them. I hadn't planned it. But planning... 
 that's what Sensible Parents do. You don't have to. You can't head into the 
 Sahara with two litres of water. You have to know your limits, but mostly it's 
 common sense.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Much more you need a sense 
 of fun, the willingness to do something for the novelty. Here's a thought. Pick 
 five places on the map that start with the first letter of your name. Build 
 them into a loop and ride it. Or -- an idea I got from the cartoonist Johnny 
 Helms -- dot in the coloured roads you ride on your Ordnance Survey map. The 
 more you ride, the more you'll twist, turn and go in eccentric directions you'd 
 never considered, just to get to roads you missed. And you'll see every village, 
 every view from every direction.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">It can get you to unusual 
 places, too. Alan Helsdon set out to ride all the lanes and main roads of Norfolk. 
 The project gave him a fresh view of cycling and he ended up promising himself 
 a 100-miler at least once a month. It took him eight years and by the time he'd 
 finished he'd crossed a battlefield. He looked at the giant military training 
 ground at Thetford and all the roads he was kept from riding and wrote to the 
 army and told them he wanted to see them. </font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">'It annoys me intensely 
 that the Stanta battle-training ground it is still there and takes up so much 
 beautiful countryside,' he said. 'They were very helpful and said I could go 
 anywhere provided I watched a safety video that told me not to pick up anything 
 metal coloured orange or black and yellow.'</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Is that something you'd 
 do if you stuck to just the same old roads, same old routes? I doubt it. Somewhere 
 in your heart, do you worry that you worry, that worrying -- or 'planning', 
 to give it the word that hides the truth -- is simply an excuse not to do it? 
 Do you remember when you were a kid and you looked at everything with fresh 
 eyes, when you discovered things for the first time and remembered them for 
 ever? Those were the days when smells would stay with you for life and memories 
 would be the best you'd ever had. You didn't organise yourself out of existence 
 then, did you? You just went and did it.</font></p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">So go on, do it. Now. </font><br>
</p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3"><i>©; Les Woodland<br>
 </i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Bycycle, 
 June/July 2000</font></p>
<p align="center"><i><font size="3" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">other 
 stories by L Woodland</font></i></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">TOP 
 OF PAGE</font> </p>
<p> ;</p>
<div align="left">
<p> ; </p>
</div>
<div align="left">
<p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> </font></p>
</div>