O-V-E-R-D-O-S-E.

I raced my bike the other day. It felt pretty good, then pretty bad, but not in the bad way. It felt pretty bad in the good way. I came off the track and went in desperate search of the bin with the open lid. I sat beside that bin for a good ten minutes, waiting for either the nausea to subside or to come to its logical conclusion. It opted for the former and I decided it was time to go home.

Fifteen minutes later, however, I was feeling fine again. That's usually when the fatigue starts kicking in, when I'm usually comatose in front of the computer screen. But there was no sign of it whatsoever. I was so stoked on this that I decided to ride my pub bike over to pizza. And I did. And it was rad. I was listening to Modest Mouse and singing as loud as I possibly could. I was sprinting for traffic lights and victory saluting like Peter Sagan when I made it. I was trackstanding at every red, bunny hopping every bump, from Separation to Arthurton to Blyth, one road with three names, knowing every crack in the road, every indentation, where to get out of the saddle for a climb and where the traffic is going to get a little fierce. That road joining Northcote to Brunswick, string tying the two former working-class suburbs together like they were mittens through your coatsleeves, independent but always connected through those secret lengths of yarn, and never lost in the snow. Listening to Modest Mouse and singing and getting romantic about streets and bikes and the cold damp down by the Merri Creek and the possibilities opening up before me. At that moment, I felt like I could do anything, and that if this good feeling stuck around for a little while, there was a good chance that I would.

And then, when I arrived at Pizza, Rolly told me that he and Tate had seen me. And then I felt silly.