Today, on the day that I'm supposed to be fifty, I perform a bicycle manoeuvre for the scond time in as many weeks that I have called TOTO (just like the wily little canine out of The Wizard of Oz). The first time I didn't think much about it, the second time however I realized it as a psycho-behavioural tick that some cyclists (not necessarily older) have: that of proving to themselves that they've 'still got it'. The manoeuvre is simple: a cyclist overtakes you (in these two cases an older cyclist in his fifties, ahem...) and proceeds not to pull away as you would expect but to slow down from the speed that they overtook you at. They thus occupy a space in front of you, in this case about twenty metres or so in front. And so, I realise that they simply wanted to prove something to themselves. Clearly, they are going at the same speed as me (about 15mph) as they are not pulling away any further, and so after the push of the overtake they start flagging. This is the bit I like, especially since in this latter case, the chap had his ears plugged in with the rattle, crawling up behind them into their slipstream and letting them do all the work. This is the danger of TOTO: that in overtaking you are also taking that headwind all for yourself which in your latter position (behind me) you perhaps didn't feel that acutely. Now, you have to work twice as hard and I, having done what all birds do and save my energy by falling into formation, half as hard. The beauty of this is that the chap in front gets his ego-boost (for the moment) and I get a little rest while he takes the lead, and all this whilst the chap in front thinks he's way ahead of me. This is the great danger of sealing your major sense organ - the ears - up whilst cycling. You cannot see behind you. And so when it came for me to enlighten this chap and pop out from his slipstream and overtake him, he was so surprised to see me overtake him that he almost came off his bike. Indeed, in this case he was so perturbed by TOTO sneaking up and around him that he muttered something (in Hungarian I think) to which I simply responded by pointing at my ear.
Two lessons are to be learnt here in the wild cycling game: number one: never overtake someone who is going faster than you, and number two: never ever seal your ears up (and thus your eyes too since the ears direct the eyes where to look) when you're out and about trying to navigate the land. Did this chap learn these lessons I ask you. Probably not. Which is why I'm writing this.
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