Tijmen's Bikes and Related Projects

After Hayley and (bp.co award winner) R left, I briefly contemplated writing a trip report, but it felt like whipping out my phone to take a picture when my mates are right next to me with a Leica and a Hasselblad. But now I kind of regret not writing one when the memories were clearer, on the other hand I’m not sure a play by play would offer much consolation anyway. Not wanting to cheat my memory I won’t dig up her posts describing the week, but I’ll paste a link here when I’m done writing.

https://www.lfgss.com/comments/17345033/ (and onwards via the "read the full conversation" link)

Although I’m not sure what she wrote exactly, they added an interesting dimension to the dynamic. I think she wrote them overnight, I read them in the morning trying to will myself out of bed. It was an unseasonably cold late April, so getting up wasn’t easy for someone who thrives in temperatures above 25C. So I read her posts instead, delaying the scramble for a jumper and my uggs by a couple more minutes. I don’t think we discussed them explicitly, it probably would have been weird to talk about her writing about what we talked about the day before. But they hung over the trip as a sort of narrator’s voice, providing context and giving insight to inner workings.

We had billed the trip as a training camp, choosing to stay at a base camp (my place / a hostel close by) and attack our daily targets from there. Being the local, I was in charge of preparation. This meant making a list of cafes to visit and places to have lunch at, the day’s route then sorted itself out. I’d never call myself a foodie, but I’ve been accused of being one. And looking back most of my memories revolve around meals and drinks. (That’s definitely not because we spent our days going from breakfast to coffee to lunch to another coffee to dinner.)

The cafes we visited:

Best coffee, we went here twice and the “indeterminate sexual preference barista” made better coffee than the owner. Tragically the owner has called quits and the new owner seems to think an Italian flag is a mark of good beans.

Best cakes / my local. This didn’t elicit much comments, but it’s a luxury to have a perfectly solid cafe nearby. I think it might have been the only place H and R ordered an espresso. I’ve been an espresso drinker my whole life, and as much as I want to enjoy filter coffee it just all tastes the same to me. H and R would wax lyrical about a tea-like coffee, or the booziness-fruitiness axis all filter coffee can be placed on, but it hasn’t clicked for me. Anyway, I’m sure this place offers a filter coffee, but it’s definitely not where his heart is and I think H&R chose accordingly.

Silliest coffee, this is where I go when I want an espresso tonic. They don’t necessarily do it best, but you get it in a tumbler on ice and it’s like drinking a cocktail. H&R were unimpressed, stoically asked for a batch brew and continued talking about boozy coffee

Worst vibes, this place is serious about their coffee and they do good cakes. But we were asked not to park our bikes on a deserted terrace at what was probable -2 realfeel temp. A couple weeks after they visited H asked after the name of this place for a friend who’d be visiting Leipzig, as they had exotic beans and brewed them well, but I’ve never gone back since.

For lunch we did vegan Mexican (not amazing but it’s hard to get Mexican food in former communist Germany), falafel (better than in London they said), focaccia (last week H’s sister texted what H regaled about the place: “people in the UK are too scared to cook it properly and the middle is always too gooey (I firmly agreed with her) but she said that the best focaccia she ever had was this pizza focaccia thing she had while in Germany”), and a Burger King (apparently German BK is much better when it comes to plant based) where H&R had both ordered for me and I overcame lots of social anxiety to ask a staff member to ask for the surplus burger to be cut in two.

Written down it feels trivial. But after they’d left, these memories were imprinted all over town and will stay with me for as long as I live here. When I rode past the bakery last week, just after hearing the news, I couldn’t face sitting there. But as the rawness erodes, I’ll go back and every time I’m there I’ll be transported to their quips and observations.

I’ve often felt like a satellite to social groups, a friend of the people in a group of friends but not necessarily part of the group? But what H created with the jackets was magical, I won’t say instantly but I soon felt part of the group in a way I haven’t often felt before. It was a strange time for me, we had moved to a different country in the week the lockdowns started and basically all of my social interactions halted. Initially everyone interacted online, and the Zoom birthday parties etc made me unaware of the social dust bowl I had landed in. But as lockdowns eased and things moved offline again, I noticed I didn’t have much. Having this online circle was maybe the only thing keeping the darkest thoughts away.

Looking back on our entire friendship, there are so many ways in which she has supported me. She told me off for saying I shouldn’t clog up the healthcare system and leave room for the people who really need it (a woke version of the stiff upper lip is what she said), and encouraged me to seek therapy. This has been a real turning point and I’m eternally grateful for her part in getting me over the line. In the early days of Wit Slingers I often wondered if I shouldn’t just bin it all and get an uninspiring but safe job, H told me I would have all of my life to make boring choices and I should make the most the circumstances that allowed me to do something silly. And as challenging as self-employment can be, I appreciate those words and the experience of learning to be proud of my work has been invaluable.

Over the last week, I have wondered if I was there for her enough, did I have even a sliver of the positive influence on her life she had on mine? It’s hard to imagine, but I like to think that her interactions with me at least sparked some joy. I will miss being told my fit is “lesbian coded” and that I look like a futch (femme butch, I had to google it) climber gf. I will miss her theorising on low-t men, lesbian men, and I think the final term was queer heterosexual. Talking about the expectations around gender, what it means to not fit in, and how to relate to those feelings. I will miss her sense of humour, her razor sharp observations, her increasingly hard to follow bike builds I was proud to be baggageur for. But I will cherish the memories, when I get a focaccia, when I spell absalutely wrong, when I look at the (gay) gear indicator on my Alivio shifter. I had almost written I will have to stockpile those shifters, but gear indicator or no gear indicator, I will not forget her.

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