I never realised how much I’d miss the dance now that it’s turned into a full-on brawl.

Ride the same roads often enough and long enough, and you’ll get to know every hole, bump, ripple, manhole cover, drain, white line, bobble, hump, lump and crack. All those little tarmac threats that want to smack you through the saddle, punch you a puncture or merrily drop kick you onto the asphalt that you intimately and instinctively know to avoid.

pothole 1 – VecchioJo
pothole 1 – VecchioJo (Image Credit: Farrelly Atkinson)

There’s a sweeping left-hander a few miles from home that after a quick shoulder check demands a drift out wide to avoid the rippled dimpled tarmac that chops the inside line. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve ridden up this road, it’s probably my most frequent escape from town and I don’t know how long that bit of messy tarmac has been there, frequently enough for me to automatically take a broad arc around the bend every time. One day it might be resurfaced and there will be a whoop of joy that a hedgerow rabbit might hear.

drain cover – VecchioJo
drain cover – VecchioJo (Image Credit: Farrelly Atkinson)

Then there’s the drain cover, exactly where I want to be if I’m turning left at that junction towards home, with the slots in it angled almost deliberately perfectly to catch a front wheel. It means the choice is to cut it tight by the grass, or go the long way around it to avoid certain comedy incident and hefty new front wheel bill.

There’s the random scattering of manhole covers on that sharp bend that needs a threaded needle line to negotiate, and an extra tongue out level of concentration if it’s in any way damp. I could carry on at length with a pages-long list, and the whole repertoire of rehearsed shimmy and weave that punctuate every ride at each familiar bump or thump that’s burnt into the ride’s memory map. The static upper body in contrast to the bike, two-step underneath to sideslip the sunken drain, and a sexy little hip-sway to woo the judges.

cracked road – VecchioJo
cracked road – VecchioJo (Image Credit: Farrelly Atkinson)

But what was a fun game and collection of little moments of internal victory as I picked the line just so has now become a constant skirmish as the roads have deteriorated into an unholy mess of vulgar tarmac, a moonscape of craters and less than glorious holes.

Where once was the occasional hazard, now booby traps and highway jeopardy wait unknown and unannounced around each corner. They snatch haphazard from every gutter, and the always exciting shadow-or-hole game in the dapple of the trees has an extra tang of menace to it. A destructive blend of an increasing convoy of engorged heavy and pointlessly cumbersome cars, whisked with endless months of pissing down poor insidious weather have taken their toll to create a war of attrition played out in tarmac trenches and puddle-filled craters.

pothole 5 – VecchioJo
pothole 5 – VecchioJo (Image Credit: Vecchiojo)

Using the tiny bits of my brain not prioritising staying upright, I wonder how we ever managed to survive thrashing around on 21mm tyres strained up to 100psi and then some. We were much younger and lither then which helped us cope with the battering, and we punctured a lot, that’s how; but even with rose-coloured Bollé glasses on, the roads were generally in  reasonable repair.

Fast forward a quarter of a century, and if 30mm-and-then-some tubeless road tyres didn’t exist to make the roads barely manageable, then they’d have to be swiftly invented. The old holes, bumps, ripples, manhole covers, drains, white lines, bobbles, humps, lumps and cracks are still there, of course they are. But the constant interference coming up from the tarmac now makes their appearance that of old friends, and a reminder of better times that warrants the subtle nod of recognition and lift of fingers from the bars as a wave.