The end of an era (27 weeks)

Today I sold my Mid Life Crisis, as T likes to call it. What was it, you may ask? Well, in true splitting-up-and-suddenly-being-single-after-a-decade style, I bought a motorbike.

The funny thing is, nobody in my family knows I have one. My parents would kill me. Actually years ago when I was about 12 or 13, there was this bike in a mall we used to go to, and my mum used to say that I could get it when I was old enough. I used to fantasise about that bike – it was a red, white and blue Honda Cub. A quick google throws this up:

The object of my youthful desire

Needless to say, when I reached the age (I think it was 16 or 17 or something) my mother denied ever saying I could have a motorbike.

So years and years and years later, I found myself suddenly single after a very long term relationship and I got a bit nihilistic and thought, you know what, I’m going to learn how to ride a motorbike.

In the UK, to ride anything less than 125cc (piddly!) you only need to do Compulsory Basic Training (CBT, confusingly the same acronym as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which is probably what you need when you have a mid life crisis). It’s a day of training and you don’t really pass or fail so much as have to complete the whole day (although someone did get sent home for being too rubbish – not me, I hasten to add) and then you get a certificate to ride anything 125cc or under.

As a pushbike rider for years, it was fairly easy to get the hang of CBT and obviously in my nihilistic, don’t care if I live or die state, I decided to buy a motorbike. I mean, if you can’t get a bike when you’re 30-something and newly single, I don’t know when you can.

I bought the coolest looking 125cc I could find, which was a Yamaha YBR 125. By this time I’d grown out of my youthful colours and turned semi-goth (like, I wear a lot of black but it’s more through laziness at colour matching than a lifestyle choice) so the natural choice was the Bat-bike. For a 125 little thing it looks pretty cool. Also, I’m very small so it didn’t look piddly – it actually looks like a proper bike rather than a learner.

Oh yeah…

I did love riding my bike. For one thing, it’s much more of a fun ride than a moped (which is what you do CBT on, to increase the likelihood of you passing). It’s faster and a lot more visceral. You lean into the turns. And you do feel super cool riding around on a motorbike. Or at least I did. (Also you get mega kudos points with people who are super impressed at the idea of a girl riding a motorbike, which is a bit silly as it’s basically just a less effort bicycle. But hey.)

I used to ride across London to see my friends. It’s much quicker to get across town instead of taking the tube if you’re going a certain way. And it’s more pleasant, unless it’s raining. There’s something really exhilarating about being on a motorbike. It’s hard to describe except for you’re flying. Of course it’s a bit dangerous but at the time I didn’t really care if I lived or died.

And then I met T. Of course, I did use mention of the motorbike as a bit of a chat up line in the early stages of our relationship. Thing is, you can’t really go out together on it as you can’t take a pillion passenger until you’ve passed the full test (allowing you to ride bigger bikes) and T didn’t have a bike, and anyway we were too busy doing fun stuff to be pootling about London on motorbikes.

Within a few months we had moved in together and got Dog, and then there was even less reason to go out biking! I mean, go out and try and avoid getting in an accident or hang out with The Cutest Dog In The World (and boyfriend, ahem). It’s a non starter.

Which is why my lovely bike was transplanted from flat to flat, never really doing much other than sitting around feeling sorry for itself. (Why’s nobody riding me? I’m sure it was saying.)

And then I got pregnant, and there was even less reason to own a motorbike.

So… I probably would have let it sit around mouldering but it was taking up our parking space and we’re planning on getting a car for when B the baby arrives. And T, ever the practical accountant, suggested I sell it. So today, a guy came from a dealer to come and see it. They’d made an original offer that was more than I was really expecting, so when they knocked £100 off for the rusty chain and wear and tear and the flat battery, I really couldn’t be bothered to haggle. In the van it went, and a few hundred quid went into my account. We will have a splash out meal on babymoon and we’ll buy a lot of chocolate!

The way I see it, I would have paid for another year of insurance and not used it. It’s not like I’m strapping on B and going out for a spin! And Dog has never shown himself to be anything like Gromit in Wallace & Gromit so I don’t think he’ll be donning a crash helmet any time soon. So it was time for the bike to go.

Goodbye bike… Hello new life!

Me and Dog      Wallace and Gromit

Updates this week:

• Saw my lovely midwife. Invited her to my baby shower! Haha. Apparently I’m measuring 29 weeks on bumpage (the midwife measures the size of bump each time) which is a bit crazy but explains why my bump feels so huge and possibly why I felt so tired last week. She said not to worry unless it’s more than 2 weeks ahead.
• I finished up my antibiotics for UTI #2 – not sure if I mentioned it. Apparently it’s very common and I don’t really have any symptoms apart from I feel like I need to go to the loo a lot. She sent off another sample to test. Also I had bloods taken. She said maybe I’m tired just because of pregnancy, or maybe it’s gestational diabetes or I have low iron. I’ve been taking Pregnacare ever since I was told there’s no iron in the NHS supplements! I still feel tired though. This may be because I have been up late a bit due to being busy with work and also not having time to eat all day, which is probably not helping.
• Tonight was our big team event which I organised. It went soooo well, better than I could even have imagined, and the boss was very happy with me, which is awesome. (I love organising events and I love making presentations so this combined the two – I didn’t deliver the presentation, just put it together and made 100+ people laugh, so that was good.) We hired a huge arcade which included free play arcade/video games, air hockey, bowling, ping pong, pool, DJ, buffet and free bar. Everyone was pretty happy. The team is mainly men so it appealed to them! Was funny not to be drinking but I still had a great time. Also now I’m “out” at work, all the guys are actually really nice about it, asking about the baby and so on. It’s so much different from my last company where there were nice people but also a lot of horrible people (generally the ones in charge) – I’m so glad I moved, even if it means I get no maternity pay!
• Holiday starts tomorrow – whoop whoop! Thankfully I get to work from home tomorrow as I was up so late getting the presentation done and I tend to do that on Fridays. Our friends are coming to pick up Dog (boooo) and then Saturday we are off to the Baby Show – eek! Sunday we are treating ourselves to a stay in a posh hotel with a spa before heading off on Eurostar to Bruges on Monday for our babymoon! Chocolate week! I can’t wait. It’s crazy to think that after that it’s baby shower in November, then Christmas, then B’s 0th birthday! (T keeps reciting these and includes at the end “followed by four months off”… I think he thinks babies are a walk in the park!) So many exciting things to look forward to. I already feel crazily lucky just to be able to spend time with my two favourite guys, T and Dog.
• Baby B has been kicking up a storm lately. Sometimes I think he is saying, Mama I’m hungry! (when I’m at work all day and so busy I don’t have time to eat anything) or Mmmm sugar! (when I eat something sweet which they’ll probably try and tell me is giving me gestational diabetes) or maybe he’s just making his presence known because he’s an attention seeker like his mother. Either way there is little that makes me feel better right now than snuggling up to Dog, hanging out with T, and feeling B kick up a storm in my belly.