ride the night

It’s just after 9.00pm when I post this and if everything goes to schedule, she should be on the road by now.  

I am immensely proud of her and at the same time concerned; not worried exactly, but I recognise that this is probably her biggest challenge - so far.

Anniemay likes a challenge; she abseiled off the roof of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford a few years ago - and jumped out of an aeroplane - all in the name of charity.  Not me though - I wait on the ground holding her handbag.

Anniemay came to bike-riding late; she’s never ridden in traffic before. Or at night.   She tries to make up for lost time by watching a road safety film on Youtube over breakfast.

So she’s out of her comfort zone, big-time. It’ll be dark for much of the ride - and probably pouring with rain; there are 1999 other riders on the route - not including other road users; and it’s a long way - further than she’s ever ridden a bike before.

She knows it’s going to hurt; “but women with cancer are hurting more than me”.  She’s doing it for them and for all the others in our family who have been hurt by this disease.

The route starts in Windsor, then heads off to London, round Buckingham Palace and back to Windsor. It’s too far for me to go home and then come back again - possibly in the early hours of the morning - possibly later - so I stay in a Travelodge a few miles away and wait for her phone call.

I’m not out on the road cheering her on, but I know plenty of other people will be, including PeckhamBelle (Thanks PB).  But I am thinking of her; I’ve cleaned her bike, pumped up her tyres and there’s nothing more I can do now, except wait.

I took this blip earlier in the day, when was safer to stand in front of her bike.