Entry three:
Millwold – this corner of the internet, this little shady crevice right here, is the scariest place a guy like you can stumble upon.
The talktofrank alcohol section is full of wonderful information and advice; some notable extracts from this high-profile website include: “After a night of heavy drinking, you shouldn’t drink for 48 hours to allow the body to recover” and the even more hilarious “Never drink more than once a week – and on that one day young men are advised not to drink more than 3-4 units”. Looking back upon the festive period that has just passed (well the whole of last year really), it really is quite worrying when I think back to the times when straight bottles of vodka were cascading down my throat, right after a bottle of wine had been swept dry in a time period of two standard FIFA games. It’s not just me engaging in these daring antics either; all of my companions are ‘good’ drinkers aswell (Frank may call it ‘bad’ I suppose). Yes, whenever a person sets sail from the Coventry kingdom to undertake their University adventure, they always return with a smile on their face, a glaze in their eyes and a spring in their step as they avidly express how much they could out-drink all of their flatmates. Some rumours breezing in from afar say it’s down to the challenging landscape of the Coventry kingdom that leads people no other way but to the door of a pub. Maybe those sweeping rumours are right. Is there really nothing else to do in Coventry but drink?
The point to all this is that I have had an empowering thought wash up on the shore of my once drowsy consciousness. And this thought, this ever-growing seed that continues to ripen in my brain, is an idea to actually listen to what Frank has to say and cut down on the drink. Shocking stuff I know Millwold. But yes, this has been what has happened over the last week and I’m not afraid to say I’ve set a new high score of being a full fourteen days sober. Originally I didn’t think I could achieve such a lucrative quest where upon I was rewarded with a new sense of self-being; and even though it seemed crazy at the time, I can now stand here sober and say that it was a good decision. The world looks different now: colours are so much more vivid – the air so much more purer. I can feel a sense of awakeness that has seldom been found in any recent age that I can recall. It really is all quite beautiful – a beauty that is soon to stutter however when my birthday comes round in a few days as Coventry’s greatest nightclub again becomes the neon-lit hunting ground of me and my companions. All-inclusive of course. It would be rude not to.
It doesn’t end there however. Although the sober run will fall victim to £1.50 pints and Colly jagerbombs, the lowered consumption of alcohol will continue to blossom over the coming months. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS YOU IDIOT! – I hear a confused future Millwold cry out reading back his diary. Well let me just remind you of the cataclysmic quest that you are your companion Michael Barnes have set forward for the coming easter. A quest that will require the utmost courage, conviction and fitness to see it through to it’s eventual end. Finally Millwold, you have something other than Facebook and alcohol to talk about!
Let me introduce you first to the joint-founding member of ‘Seedy Cycles’.
Michael Barnes some call him – also commonly referred to as ‘barnesy’, ‘barnicle’ or ‘stop sleeping and get out of the fuck out of the colly toilets’. Barnes and myself founded Seedy Cycles in the summer of last; we drew together our strong biking skills and yearnings for horizon-hunting travel and decided it was best to form a pack. The values of the pack are extremely complex and they remain mind-boggling to some outsiders who fail to comprehend the intense ideologies and social commentary that Seedy Cycles aims to embed into the world around it. Seedy Cycles does recruit members from time to time: Joe Waterfield, Leo Craddock and Alex Goodall are but three of the names that have graced the biking stage recently, but ultimately the pack remains a mysterious and enigmatical affair.
Anyhow, the idea of the pack this year is to set off out upon a quest entitled ‘Bike Hard, Play Hard’ where we set sail into the European landscape around us and sail through the lands of England, France, Belgium and finally, Holland. The final destination to arrive at would be Amsterdam – in-keeping with the name of said quest. The time route for this illustrious task would be between the 5th and 20th of April – in between the Easter holidays and days off from our University timetables. The route would be complex; the planning would be diverse; the training would be hard (lack of beer and fast food); and the work overall would be tenfold. But ultimately the ride would be for a charity that has yet to be named, and the achievement of such an ambitious quest would be grand and life-affirming. There are many details to come as the events unfold but me, Michael Barnes, and a potential Joe Waterfield, feel we can throw out our biking ambitions and soar high and mighty towards the canals and cafes of Amsterdam. Over five-hundred miles. Taking eight to ten days. Costing around four hundred pound. The plans of everything are still in dispute; me and Mike have met this weekend to discuss a number of factors, with the route primarily being the key starting factor. And then of course, the keeping healthy and training part! Details are sketchy but here is the initial mapping route of the mammoth task ahead:
As you can very well see, the road is an interesting one – passing through the outer London towns, toward the ferries of Dover, into the green hills of France, past the quaint and picturesque scenes of Bruges, into the cosmopolitan cities of Antwerp and Rotterdam, before finally arriving at the luxurious pleasures of Amsterdam. Grand indeed. After pondering over the idea of putting foot to the pedal and actually doing this 500 mile + ride, I immediately felt a sense of excitement and urgency; I realised that I would need to get back into the frame of biking pretty soon as I had been absent for numerous months. With this, I decided that the best thing to do would be to dig out my hybrid weapon of aluminium and rubber that had been vacant in my garage all this time. I entered the garage almost apologetically as my bike lay vulnerable and forgotten, like a puppy left out in the cold – it’s owner long gone.
Whatever hostility there was, well, it soon emigrated from the atmosphere as I approached the Claud Butler designed device. Dusting it off and fixing it’s flat tyre, I continued to wheel my bike out of it’s garaged cage, into the open plains of Coventry and the countryside that sat nestled around it. Yes, I took part in my first seedy cycle of 2012 and although I could feel my lungs, kidney, liver and muscles strain agonisingly like they had in that run I did the other day, the fact still remained that I was officially back into the thick of it. Biking and breaking. Alive and ascending. Swerving and soaring. If I was really going to arrive at the finish line at Easter, well then this certainly was the starting point. Only you, future Millwold, reading this back will know where the long, meandering road will go and whether or not the 2012 Seedy Cycle quest was completed to it’s finale. I beg for the answer now but I know you will not respond until time-travel is invented or something.
Ultimately week three of the roller-coaster had not seen much action; but within that lack of action, ideas were built and paths were mapped; and in the weeks and months to come, time will show just how far Seedy Cycles are really going to travel in their never-dying quest for the horizon. Will we make it to Amsterdam? Will we raise a good deal of money for charity? Will we manage to quit to actually keep fit before the task? As aforementioned, only the future Millwold knows. Until then, I leave you with a lovely picture you took of the Coventry countryside as you rode gracefully around it’s majestic, expansive and supposedly ‘wintry’ scenes. Cosmic.
No Filter Necessary 