Easy As Falling Off A Bike pt 2994

Printer-friendly version
The Daily Dormouse.
(aka Bike, est. 2007)
Part 2994
by Angharad

Copyright© 2016 Angharad

  
007b_0_0.jpg

This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
*****

Danielle had recovered quite well from her training the day before and although she was quite stiff, when I offered her a quick bike ride, she jumped at it and we were away before the rest of them knew where we were. I’m happy to ride with the younger girls but after I’ve done something more challenging with Danni.

About fifteen sweaty minutes later she was on my wheel as we ascended the downs and this time her superior fitness probably meant she’d overtake me as we got towards the top, which caused me to push myself even harder. She didn’t overtake and I wondered if it was because she couldn’t or she decided not to.

At the top, we rested and took some fluid on board. I was sweating like I’d been in the shower while she was a bit pink in the face but not gasping for air like I was. “Why didn’t you overtake me?” I managed to get out in between alternating between sucking in air or blowing it out.

“What for, we weren’t racing.”

“So if we had been racing you could have done?”

“S’pose so, but you usually go up another gear and beat me.”

“I’m not sure I could have today.” I drank half my bottle of water.

“We weren’t racing, besides you’re my mum.”

“What difference does that make?”

“Lots, you don’t overtake your mum,” she blushed.

“If you’re racing you do, unless it’s as part of a team and you’re under instructions to support rather than beat your leader.”

“Nah, it’s not nice to beat your mum.”

“What if I was playing soccer on the other side?”

“What?,” she gasped, “Like with Pele and Bobby Moore?”

“Very funny, they’re both dead aren’t they?”

“Pele’s not, but he’s gettin’ on a bit.”

“Bobby Moore was the captain when England won the world cup, what fifty years ago?”

“Yep, he’s one of the nicest footballers we ever had, an’ a good player too.”

“So I’d have been in esteemed company with two of the most gentlemanly players in the game.”

“Yep.”

“I’m glad you hold me in such esteem, young lady.”

“Yeah, but as my mother not as a soccer player—you’d be crap at that.”

“How d’you know, you’ve never seen me play?”

“You’ve got no coordination an’ you said you were crap at netball, so it’s a extrapolation.”

I think my eyes must have nearly bugged out as she used what was a large word for her and correctly.

“What’s the matter, have I got that word wrong?”

“No, you got it spot on.” I hugged her, “You’re a lovely girl, Danielle and I’m so proud of you.”

“Go on, you’re just trying to soften me up before we ride home.”

“Dash it, you guessed my plan.”

She rolled her eyes in reply and we both chuckled.

“C’mon, Missy, I’ve got things to do.” We remounted and as my legs had recovered from the torment of the ridgeway, I led her down at speed back towards home. Downhill my heavier bodyweight helped my momentum and she struggled to stay within fifty yards of me until we returned to the flat. However, having got my second wind, I hammered home and she came in several minutes later as I was wiping my bike down. Nothing was said but I shall have to look to my laurels if I want to stay ahead of her and that meant getting on the bike more often and training harder.

As I showered a little later, I thought about training to stay ahead of my daughter and then wondered if I was too competitive. Why did I need to beat her? If she’d won would it have mattered?

Essentially, I didn’t need to beat her but in making her work harder to beat me, it would improve her cycling speed and possibly endurance too. It would also make her strive to improve herself and I hoped that meant she would always do her best whatever the cause.

I want all my girls to do well for themselves and hopefully to do it while enjoying themselves. Danni is a very talented footballer but I want her to have a career in something else as well. She’s said she might like to be a sports teacher, so that could be something she’ll enjoy. I think with a bit of pushing she’ll be clever enough to get to uni but it could interfere with her soccer career in terms of the time required plus all the social stuff young women get involved in these days. Then again, if she’s an England international looking for a university, then somewhere like Loughborough may be very interested in recruiting her—I know they used to do loads of sports science years ago, I presume they still do and they may well have a women’s soccer team. I’ll need to sow some seeds in her mind and let them germinate.

As for the others, I wonder if Trish would like to do particle physics or something like that, or even quantum-biology, which is an up and coming science and which demonstrate even the things we thought were simple in living things, will turn out to be extremely complex involving photons or electromagnetic waves or both, at a subatomic level. Listening to Brian Cox talking about the physics of photosynthesis the other night, that seems much more complicated than the lectures I remember when I was student. But then our understanding has improved in ways which weren’t even conceived when I was a student.

Instead of wearing my brain out I went and got a piece of toast and some tea and felt better able to deal with a gaggle of girls who demanded to know why I hadn’t taken them with me for a ride. To shut them up, I agreed to take them for a short ride after lunch, which Danni said she’d also come to help keep a eye on the stragglers. I sent her out to the bike shed to check all the tyre pressures on the bikes we’d be using. I decided I’d take my old MTB with Lizzie sitting on the carry seat and Cate on the trailer-bike. I’d certainly get a work out with that little lot. Hannah went off to help Danielle while Trish and Livvie went off together probably to collude in planning their next stage in world domination.

Simon had gone off in the car somewhere to get the newspapers and Mima had gone with him—there’s a surprise, so I had to deal with the little ones myself as Amanda had the day off and Jacquie was busy doing some work for her course. Julie and Phoebe were busy with their accounts and Sammi was helping them with using a spreadsheet on their shop laptop. I wasn’t sure if keeping accounts on the same machine as they used for appointments was such a good idea, but Sammi seemed to think it was safe enough—she’d put an encryption thing on the pages so they couldn’t be easily accessed.

Is everyone’s Sunday as manic as mine?

05Dolce_Red_l_0.jpg

up
265 users have voted.
If you liked this post, you can leave a comment and/or a kudos! Click the "Thumbs Up!" button above to leave a Kudos

Comments

I Can Remember

littlerocksilver's picture

... when Danny was pictured as not being too bright. Much has happened over the years and it is obvious her confidence as a footballer and in her mental abilities is bringing out a bright young lady. She will continue to develop and advance in many ways; I hope.

Portia

I was always told that there

I was always told that there is a difference between wisdom and knowledge. She may not be the best student but she is showing wisdom there in being a good daughter when her mother needed her to be.

I'm told STFU more times in a day than most people get told in a lifetime

The sweetness continues

as Danni honors her mom. Loved the message - "You don't overtake your mum."

Biology when I was in High School

Let's just say there was a lot of handwavium as to how photosynthesis works as they had not figured out exactly how plants convert that quanta of light necessary to create an electron which would eventually yield molecules of ATP from ADP. If I recall, there was this whole electron transfer chain of some sort that would step down the energy of the electron and at each step it would yield ATP.

It all starts off with an excited electron from that photon of course but I believe it was not a one to one conversion between photons and ATP.

Ah, Google to the rescue. Apparently their is a second step to the reactions that does the whole CO2 conversion routine to sugars I think.

Science, you gotta love it.

Sunday is crazy

NoraAdrienne's picture

Aside from the week's laundry we have my partner's 94 yr old father to deal with. He's homebound. Is deaf in both ears, even with hearing aids installed. He's had 4 hip replacements and has lost feeling in both hands (breathing in hot lead fumes as a linotypist).

Danni is smarter as a woman,

Danni is smarter as a woman, don't you know
Nice to see the family.out biking. What ever happened to Stella?

Karen

A new and better football?

Sara Selvig's picture

This may be an opportunity for Danielle and Trish to conspire to create a new and better football:
"Geometry of Footballs and the Cube-shaped Ball" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwWBpjeyRS0

Thank you for your efforts with the Dormouse saga. I look forward to it each day, and it is usually my first read that day. (When is it not my first read? Well, sometimes I check too early in the day!)

Of historical interest, perhaps: Most of my reading is via text-to-speech software, and each issue typically runs 5 minutes speech. Which means that I have enjoyed the saga for over 249 hours, not including naps and bathroom breaks! That is 10 days of enjoyment ... more when I decide "I'd like to hear that one again!"

Sara


Between the wrinkles, the orthopedic shoes, and nine decades of gravity, it is really hard to be alluring. My icon, you ask? It is the last picture I allowed to escape the camera ... back before most BC authors were born.

How interesting

Angharad's picture

the text to speech software, I mean. How does it cope with British slang? Does it sound like a robot reading the telephone book? Fascinating.

Angharad

The sound is ...

Sara Selvig's picture

rather better than most 10 year olds reading aloud in the front of the classroom. Exception seems to be consistently selecting the wrong pronunciation for "wind" and "live." The listener, much as the visual reader, must supply most of the emotion that a human performer would supply. It definitely isn't "audio book" quality. I don't know how well the modern readers work as I'm using TextAloud-Version 3.0.39 from NextUp.com and the (free or very cheap, I don't recall which) voice "AT&T Mike16" which as reasonably agreeable. The software license I'm using dates back quite a ways. I'm not sure if I upgraded other than adding a voice after initially installing on Win XP. I think I did ... once when I installed Win Vista. Yes, I did. At that time they added a pronunciation library which, when it found a word that the library couldn't handle, it spelled out the word rather than "sounding it out" and often mangling it. A small price to pay when some abbreviations are encountered. (OTOH, "IV" is rendered "forth") Adapting to new GUI's is something I avoid. And developers love to add new bells and whistles to their "new and better" GUI's! It reads direct or to a file. By default its file output option is WMA, but the compact MP3 format can be added using the (then) free "Lame MP3" encoder. Needless to say, I have a few GB of MP3 files to listen to when my internet or the BC authors are broken!

As to handling British slang and dialects, I'm not sure I'd be good at selecting a test case or judging the quality of the conversion. I'd be happy to convert your sample text and email / post on BC (possible?) the resulting MP3 file.

Sara


Between the wrinkles, the orthopedic shoes, and nine decades of gravity, it is really hard to be alluring. My icon, you ask? It is the last picture I allowed to escape the camera ... back before most BC authors were born.

Mother daughter competition ...

... didn't seem to bother Beryl and Denise Burton. Beryl never gave in and there was a bit of friction stirred in too. But then, Beryl was a very special racing cyclist considering she was the women's time trial champion for 25 consecutive years - one of them the year Denise was born!

Thanks Ang

Robi

I'd heard

Angharad's picture

that Denise eventually beat her mother and that Beryl didn't speak to her again.

Angharad

they

Maddy Bell's picture

certainly had a very fractious relationship! The few times I met Beryl she seemed to have a melancholy about here, oh bright and cheerful, talking to anyone and everyone but all was clearly not well in the Burton household.

She didn't speak to me after I beat her - but there again, I didn't see her afterwards either!


image7.1.jpg    

Madeline Anafrid Bell

Yes.

'S jus' another manic day, where I come from.
Still lovin' it Ang.

And thanks again.
for the years of pleasurable reading.

bev_1.jpg