Lifetime Ambition Fulfilled
On Friday, after Lars Andreas' drumming lesson, I got home to find this text message from Anders:
The factor most important in your endeavour to go quite fast is the music you choose to listen to. Try to find a pacy, energetic number that is still anthemic enough to inspire your thighs to their deepest efforts. Race for the Prize by The Flaming Lips, for example, will never fail to motivate speedy travel but be advised that it is followed on The Soft Bulletin by the rather dreamy and disjointed Spoonful Weighs a Ton. In cases such as this, consider employing the 'REPEAT 1' setting on your Discman or iPod.
As I cycled home from last night's meeting I listened to Fauré's Requiem, music which is never going to help anyone break the speed limit but is beautiful nonetheless. It was a clear night and, riding up my road, I noticed what looked like the beam of a spotlight shining up into the sky. I stood my bike with the others behind the house and walked back to the road to see a natural phenomenon that I had been waiting to see for a large part of my life. They were the Northern Lights.
I don't live far enough North for them to appear as brightly as in that Coca-Cola advert with the polar bears but they were unmistakably there. Several tall, green beams standing up against the sky, fading out and glowing back in again. They lasted for about five stunning minutes from when I first noticed them and then disappeared. To finally see them was a truly satisfying experience and could not have had a better soundtrack than the Fauré that was still coming out of my headphones.
I thought about writing this post and knew I'd need details - where had I seen the lights? I looked up at the sky, found The Plough and from there located the North Star. That was the direction the lights had come from: North. Almost immediately I was aware that I really hadn't needed the stars to tell me that's where the Northern Lights would have been.
You have to hold theApparently he saw me rocketing down the long, downhill straight of the main road home, criminally exceeding the 50 km/h speed limit. Less than felonious yet not quite legal, I try to practice this discipline on a daily basis and I'd like to help you to do the same. Firstly you will need a bike and a mountain to place it on. Tuck your jeans into your socks to avoid getting all oily but let this be your only concession to practicalities that can and will make you look a fool. Repeat the mantra: 'luminous Lycra is a friend to nobody'. It is highly unlikely that you will be able to avoid uphill pedalling but you will find that taking a route that allows you to sustain the maximum possible forwards momentum will allow you to sustain the maximum possible forwards momentum.
speed limit when your
bicycle
We so you
The factor most important in your endeavour to go quite fast is the music you choose to listen to. Try to find a pacy, energetic number that is still anthemic enough to inspire your thighs to their deepest efforts. Race for the Prize by The Flaming Lips, for example, will never fail to motivate speedy travel but be advised that it is followed on The Soft Bulletin by the rather dreamy and disjointed Spoonful Weighs a Ton. In cases such as this, consider employing the 'REPEAT 1' setting on your Discman or iPod.
As I cycled home from last night's meeting I listened to Fauré's Requiem, music which is never going to help anyone break the speed limit but is beautiful nonetheless. It was a clear night and, riding up my road, I noticed what looked like the beam of a spotlight shining up into the sky. I stood my bike with the others behind the house and walked back to the road to see a natural phenomenon that I had been waiting to see for a large part of my life. They were the Northern Lights.
I don't live far enough North for them to appear as brightly as in that Coca-Cola advert with the polar bears but they were unmistakably there. Several tall, green beams standing up against the sky, fading out and glowing back in again. They lasted for about five stunning minutes from when I first noticed them and then disappeared. To finally see them was a truly satisfying experience and could not have had a better soundtrack than the Fauré that was still coming out of my headphones.
I thought about writing this post and knew I'd need details - where had I seen the lights? I looked up at the sky, found The Plough and from there located the North Star. That was the direction the lights had come from: North. Almost immediately I was aware that I really hadn't needed the stars to tell me that's where the Northern Lights would have been.
"It's the Northern Lights, Aurora Borealis: high energy particles spilling over into our atmosphere. They get through the magnetic field where it's weakest - at the poles."
posted by Dan at 9:16 pm
2 Comments:
proper jealous. one of my lifetime ambitions too. grrr.
May I suggest light and day by the polyphonic spree, assuming you can sucessfully eschew all thoughts of Jamie oliver mashing garlic whilst listening.
getting me to work at present is aint got no/I got life by nina simone, float on, by Modest mouse, and Do you wanna? by franz ferdinand but perhaps these are walking tracks. I will need to reload my ipod shuffle when I buy my bike in brighton.
Yes, I think I employed that same Modest Mouse track on one occasion although I think you might be right that it's more a song to plod to than to tear past a fjord with.
Some noses will turn up at this but I find that there are few artists can get you pedalling like Thunder Road-era Bruce Sprinsteen.
But of course the greatest album for fjell-cycling is Sigur Rós' Takk... It's got every possible moment covered.
No growling allowed at Dan In Norway.
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