Although Roger’s own cycling prowess consists of more cafe biscotti than breakaways he loves nothing more than tuning in every year to criticise the finely tuned athletes in the Tour de France.
Every night, Roger gets charged on enough coffee to get sanctioned for caffeine blood doping and bores the living shit out of his wife with his Tour commentary. “Look, they aren’t protecting their sprinter, very sloppy, how’d these clowns even qualify? Standards are slipping, luv”.
However, under his critical, blowhard exterior is a man yearning to be respected in the cycling community. Every hour he watches the more inspiration drips off his hairy gooch and pools into a puddle of unrequited dreams. Well, not anymore.
Having hibernated from exercise so far this winter, Roger decides to dust off the old mid-life-crisis-chariot and give his office a first-hand look at what a god damn CHAMPION looks like.
*Ding*, the elevator door slides open and the receptionist is confronted with a lycra-clad sack of doorknobs tap dancing in like the Fred Astaire of ill-fitting cycling fashion. She attempts to keep her distance from power chode sticking out which seems to grow each time he mentions he just clocked his personal best time to work.
He then decides to crop-dust his excellence through the office, making sure everyone below him got a big whiff of what he’s made of – talcum powder, Rexona and delusions. This is exactly how the spectators at the Tour must be feeling.
He parades around several minutes longer than necessary before hitting a shower and getting ready to carpet bomb an equally unnecessary meeting he called with barely relevant cycling metaphors.
Finally, the weekend has rolled around and his cycling stiffy is ready to burst. He assembles a peloton of similar men who love nothing more than having power-business conversations at 6 am while riding through your suburb. Roger has arrived in a new yellow jersey he just bought, step aside bitches, it’s his Maillot Jaune.
On the home stretch up Mends St, Roger decides to live out his dream and breaks away from the peloton and sprints for arabica roasted finishing line. Ooooffff, he hasn’t seen a lovely old lady crossing the road with her little shopping trolley.
BOOM, he creams the pensioner’s weekly supplies and knocks her over in the process. Roger is in no mood for acting like a civilised human, however, and berates the lady for not crossing safely. He lost valuable time and will need to make that up at the next stage.
His face is red and his spittle is plentiful as he demands to know who is responsible for raising such a useless, old dinosaur. His mates break it up as there is some concern Roger might be making a massive tool of himself.
Thankfully, his standing in the community helps him avoid any legal trouble from the incident although in the court of public opinion he has been convicted on all charges of being a dangerous cyclopath.
Ordinarily, a human may do some soul searching after such a public meltdown. Not Roger thought. Instead, he watches on as Ben O’Connor does his nation proud. He realises, there is honour in the climb.
So no sooner than the next day, Roger loaded his bike up on his Audi and took a drive out to Mundaring Weir Road to run a clinic on climbing. His peloton is a little worried that they aren’t at the required level of fitness for the task but proceed anyway.
After a few hundred metres the men are struggling up the steep hill. Not to worry though, Roger is as high as a vampiric Lance Armstrong at the thought of creating more substantial blockage than the drain after a gorilla shower gang bang.
Life is good, man.
Documenting the Human Zoo is thirsty work, so if you enjoyed what you read how about buying Belle a beer, ay?