The
Biking Man
Once
upon a time, there was a man with a bike. This was no ordinary bike.
This bike had no corporate logos, carbon-fibre suspension or tungsten
brake blocks. It was simple, plain and utilitarian - uncomfortable
undoubtedly, but superbly designed for the function of eventually
transporting a man from point A to point B.
I
first became aware of the Biking Man in January at around the same
time as the global media did: when he began crossing the Sahara
desert. At first, the news cameras boggled at the sight. The heavy
frame of the bike had sunk into the loose sand, leaving the bottom
curve of each wheel entirely concealed. Each turn of the pedals must
have been a tremendous effort in such cloying terrain, although this
never showed on the face of the cyclist. Each turn of the pedals
slithered the bike a little further forwards into countless sand
dunes and produced a distressing grinding noise as silicon crystals
ground to dust in the primitive gears.
The
man wouldn't talk to the cameras. When any questions were shouted
at him, he would smile a little and continue exactly as before, grind
after agonisingly slow grind. This vexed the reporters no end.
They
showed his picture on the front of most of the world’s newspapers,
especially after he continued cycling through the shifting sands for
an entire week without stopping for sleep or rest. He was troublingly
difficult to describe. He was dark-skinned, that was obvious, but
everything else was less easy to define. He was oldishly young and
beautifully ugly. His face bore both the simplicity of the idiot and
the serene majesty of genius. His clothes, a t-shirt and shorts, were
both slobbishly simple and the height of elegant simplicity. Cycling
through the sand clearly required substantial effort, but little of
that showed on his face. He was kind and stern and everything to all
men.
No-one
knew who he was.
This
annoyed the media outlets intensely.
Enquiry
having proved a dead end, they now switched to ridicule. Look at this
man, they would say, what a pointless waste of time and effort
cycling through the sand. What a fool this man must be. Let us all
laugh at the foolish man.
Under
the withering blaze of media attention, he was eventually recognised.
A postman in Athens had ridden beside him some weeks before. She’d
tried to engage this mysterious man in conversation, but he had
remained politely taciturn. Eventually, they’d parted ways and he’d
headed towards the port, obviously with the intention of securing a
berth on a ship across the Mediterranean Sea.
The
bombshell dropped when someone came forwards who recognised him from
a cycling lane in Berlin. The media became frenzied. This man had
cycled from Berlin to the Sahara desert. Why? He wasn't a
celebrity, so it wasn't an effort to rekindle a dying career. No
charity laid claim to his considerable efforts. Why else would
someone attempt such a feat? Life changing rewards were available for
anyone who provided information about his identity or his intentions.
The
real
global hysteria started when a rather hesitant report came from the
Polar One research base at the North Pole. One of the researchers
there had seen a man dressed in a t-shirt and shorts cycling past the
base early one morning, but had never reported it for fear of
ridicule by his colleagues. Appearing from the northern wastes in the
middle of a snowstorm, the Biking Man had patiently cycled his bike,
one pedal turn at a time, through deep drifts of snow without pause
until he vanished into the white blankness to the south.
I
think that might’ve been the month that someone started the Church
of the Biking Man. His tireless exertions and his tolerance of
suffering began to convince some that this was the second coming of
Christ. When he serenely cycled out of a lethal sandstorm and into
the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Church of the Biking Man
got another hundred thousand converts and became a loud voice in the
international press.
One
day, one of the hundreds strong band of reporters snapped and tried
to confront him when he approached the suburbs of Cape Town in South
Africa. The world held its breath as it watched on the television. To
my shame, I thought that the Man would cycle straight through the
reporter, turning him to dust.
Who
are you? What are you doing? the reporter had screamed at him, inches
from his face.
For
the first time ever, the Biking Man stopped. He laid a weather-beaten
hand on the reporter’s shoulder, smiled gently and looked into his
eyes. The reporter’s shoulders slowly sank and he stepped to one
side, gaze lowered. According to rumour, the reporter immediately
quit his job and quickly returned home to tell his wife that he loved
her and to spent time with his son, sailing toy boats on the local
duck pond. The media suppressed that story as heavily as they could,
but no-one ever stood in the Man’s way again.
I
watched every television program about him, even the interview with
the Church of the Biking Man's “Grand Axle” which revealed him as
a total nutcase. The “Grand Axle” had tried to use the
opportunity to attract more donations to his Church to “support his
Holy Progress,” but a few eviscerating questions revealed the man
as a total charlatan. Despite the deafening roar that his actions
were producing around the world, the Man continued on regardless.
After
Cape Town, some bright spark with a computer worked out that the
Biking Man was heading, almost directly, for the South Pole. The
world went completely crazy at that point. The internet, the radio,
the newspapers and the television channels were totally consumed with
speculation about the Man, the purpose for his journey and what would
happen when he reached there. There was an unequal split of opinion:
two-thirds of the Earth believed that his arrival at the South Pole
would be the beginning of a time of enlightenment, a time where the
greedy and evil would repent and all would join together in the
Brotherhood of Man. The remaining third were convinced that the
Biking Man was the embodiment of evil and that his arrival at his
Polar destination would herald the End of All Time, but it is worth
noting that no-one actually tried to stop him.
No-one
saw him vanish from South Africa. A suspicious series of coincidences
and mishaps happened to every news team tracking him. This team took
the night off and that team decided to recharge all of their camera
batteries at the same time. No-one was fooled by the unlikely
coincidences, but no-one could convincingly explain why they’d
followed the courses of action that they did.
Eventually,
NATO retasked one of its surveillance satellites under considerable
media criticism, spotted him in Antarctica, pedalling slowly across
the ice and through the snow. Round and round the pedals squeaked.
His progress was inexorable, like the slowly ticking heart of the
universe. I knew people who left the live feed active overnight to
comfort them as they slept. I knew others, who would watch the live
feed of the Biking Man serenely cycling through Antarctica blizzards
and confess their sins, asking for forgiveness and advice on how to
be a better person.
As
he neared his destination, the millennial mood at the Scott-Amundsen
base became overwhelming. At unbelievable cost, hundreds of observers
had been flown in to watch the Biking Man reach the exact South Pole.
Some believed that his arrival there would signal the ultimate
redemption of Man; some believed that the very Earth would split
underfoot and hordes of demonic beasts would surge force and scourge
the planet of unbelievers. One December morning, hundreds of
observers sat in hastily constructed shelters waiting for his
arrival. They were not disappointed. The simple bike and the simply
dressed man squeaked into view across the ice, inching nearer and
nearer to the Pole.
The
tension as he approached was absolutely unbearable. Every television
station in the world was showing a live feed of the hazy silhouette
pedalling nearer and nearer.
In
the strange distortion of time that happens when any event is keenly
anticipated, he reached the Pole sooner than anyone expected and
stopped suddenly on the exact spot. The world held its collective
breath.
The
Biking Man alighted from his simple bike and stepped onto the snow,
controlling its slow descent on to the ice with a confident, strong
arm. He took a little time stretching his arms. He took a little time
stretching his legs. He smiled benevolently at the assembled hundreds
and the viewing billions.
With
a thoughtful look on his face, the Man turned to the assembled horde
of cameras and raised his right arm to the heavens. With a warm grin,
the Biking Man gave the viewing Earth a sincere thumbs-up.
The
Biking Man picked up his bike, turned it around to aim it into the
thin snowy valley he had carved on his journey to the Pole and rode
off into the distance once more.
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