Shiny New Bicycle

I’m not one for material things in general but look what arrived today, a shiny new blue bike. Last time I bought a road bike it cost me £25, had one brake (which sort of worked) which I cycled with the indestructible arrogance of youth through the angry streets of Leeds to and from the hospital as a clinical student, in at 6am to do the bloods... -white coats back then covered up all sorts of shortcomings in the wardrobe department.
 
Anyway with L and B loving their road bikes and all my mates including my running friends extolling the virtues of road biking (which seems to involve a full English Breakfast on weekend mornings somewhere down the Dales and frequent coffee stops), I’ve given in and agreed to join the cycling hoards of Yorkshire in the summer months only and “to save my knees”. I started with a budget of £25 (I liked the poetic symmetry of that) and found that I might get some pedals for that if I went down market, but was slowly (over 12months) nudged up to a more realistic budget by friends.
 
Given my current state of health it won’t get a ride out for a while, which is just as well, apparently the pedals need special shoes that you clip into, which I don’t own, I own no lycra, but still have some trouser clips (another tut, tut from the cycling boys). But all that is as nothing compared to the gears, they have no numbers and the instructions are indeciphearable (click lever A to make the gears go up, and to make them go down click leaver B- which in the diagram is the same as lever A AND there’s no A or B written on any of the levers on the bike). I’ll try YouTube tonight otherwise I’ll have to ask for advice (“shock horror, bloke asks for directions”). 35 years between bikes and they tell me this is all progress, and yes the seat looks just as "cutting edge" but not in a way I hoped technology and the market would have brought us.
 

News elsewhere is the patient is improving.