Seneschal at Scullogue

Last Sunday of April?  It's Blackstairs Cycle Challenge time! I can ride a bike, I have ridden a bike, I cycled 60km, for the craic, on Whit Monday 1969, when I was 14 y.o.  Not a bother, no training, just saddled up and cycled to the nearest beach and back. Almost exactly 40 years later, I should have been teaching part-time at The Institute when the car broke down in Waterford with The Beloved on board.  I cd/shd have cancelled class but reckoned that class was only 40km and 5 hours distant . . . and I had a bike. It was fine, I set off, arrived in good time, taught my 2 hour class and set off home for tea and medals.

Well. reader, the return trip was considerably more arduous. It wasn't really the fact that The Institute was 15m about sea level and Home is 200m higher. It was rather that the coastings downhill didn't compensate for many moderate uphills. On the final approach, not only could I not cycle up any incline; my legs were too wobbly to even push the bike and I had to collapse on the verge for 15 minutes. That's the difference between 14 and 54!

I'm still a fan of cycling - good for the planet; mighty for stamina; great in lycra - but I am now an infrastructure guy: I was in HiViz last year directing traffic and I was there in 2019 for the very first Blackstairs Cycle Challenge. In the interim? Coronarama! So, of course, I volunteered to help this year. Here [R] is Seneschal Selfie: point person at the most crucial intersection on the course: where the hard chaws [up for a 110km or even 140km jaunt around Mt Leinster] are separated for those with  more modest ambition, broken wind, spavin, strangles or colic. Miss the signs here late in the day and you could be condemned to wander the Plains of Wexford until the end of time. The Seneschal was en poste for 3 hours and the cyclists came in clots peletons, so I had plenty time to survey the face of our hill to work out where The Perp set the heather blazing on 12 Apr 25. And also to look closely at the signage - which is the same as last year with a new date superimposed on the post-board in not quite the same font. But then >!hark!< a distant chatter manifest in the West and another peleton whooshed past.

They would wave, or at least raise one finger from the handlebars, and many of them would disconcertingly say "Thanks".  Later, an ou'fella stopped to say the same thing, like, in person. I demurred "I should rather thank you for coughing up the entry fee and working your calves into knotted cords; I'm just standing here waving and gurning". To which he replied "Yes, but we enjoy this shit" wch, I guess, is fair enough.