🚴Cycling is big in Wagga, and we’ve got a shiny new Velodrome to prove it.

I got coffee recently at the French Bakery. Oooh la la the pastries are good! It’s a tiny shop and there’s always a queue like you used to get in the bank at 4pm on a Friday.  So, I’m standing on my `distance’ spot, waiting to give my unvarying order; a half-strength flat white…  I wonder should I live on the edge one day and try a half-strength cappuccino? I stood behind a gentleman wearing lycra, and had the time and the inclination, to ponder his attire. 

He was late 30’s maybe; tall and wiry, with a pleasant, even-featured face. Short, dark, curly hair, cut stylishly and modern, but not like those shaved-sides-of-the-head, and long-on-the-top, styles. I was trying to guess his occupation.  It’s a little game I play sometimes to pass the time in queues.

I was concluding that the gent in front of me was someone in the financial world. He wasn’t particularly muscular, but I bet he was into cycling in a big way. Either that, or he was just starting out and he wanted to look the part. His lycra attire ended about half way down his calf, and on his pedal extremities, were soft, foot-hugging trainers. His socks were iridescent pink.  Psychedelic pink, with little green cacti all over them. He’d pulled them up straight, and between the end of them and the start of his lycra suit, were thin, white legs with very black sparsely-apportioned hairs. Surely if he was serious about cycling, he’d shave them to cut wind-resistance.  Or don’t they do that anymore?

The suit also had silicone padding on the trouser-seat.  Most effective, I’m sure, in avoiding blisters on his bottom. But the view from the back was a little…. curious. I imagined it would be like wearing a full nappy…

He had a gentle persona.  I admired his embracing of such a worthwhile hobby which made him look just a little ridiculous when he was naked of his treadley. I admired his confidence to wear such an outfit in public.  But he didn’t look out of place in a coffee shop, because as I said, cycling is big in Wagga, and coffee and cycling go together like Jeeves and Wooster; like Elizabeth and Mr Darcy; like eggs and bacon. No, he wasn’t going to get stared-at in a coffee place.

But imagine if he’d accidentally been whisked (or perhaps pedalled) into the TARDIS and was transported back to the 1950’s.  He and his lairy socks would be laughed backwards out of the chrome and laminated cafes of the time. No coffee; no lycra.  And men didn’t ride bikes.   They played footy and ate pies.  They wouldn’t have been seen dead in a French bakery.