sucker love is heaven sent

You know, I distinctly remember Zelda* learning how to cycle at some point in J1. Sure that was a long time ago, but you supposedly never forget. Or so I thought when I invited her and Jude* to cycle with me at East Coast Park yesterday afternoon. They showed up cheerfully enough, each perched on one of Jude's sisters’ old bikes. But then I learned that in the twenty minutes we’d taken to meet each other, Zelda had already crashed into a tree.

Never mind, I figured. She’ll get the hang of it soon enough. At least she’d got right back on again, like they say you should when you fall off a horse. We kicked off towards Bedok Jetty, embarking on what I hoped would be a relaxing time. Little did I know I’d spend the afternoon feeling like a driving instructor.

First of all, Zelda has this thing where she emits noise when in doubt. She proceeded down the path, swerving maniacally from left to right and wailing her head off, a great biking banshee, her mouth open so wide a few flies met a slimy death. Heads turned as she barrelled by, the heads of innocent park-goers in their swimming trunks and bikinis, trying to picnic peacefully on a lovely March afternoon. Instead they were treated to this creature both ghastly and epic.

Jude and I dutifully followed behind, maintaining a safe distance – the embarrassment-by-association margin, I secretly call it. We passed a girl who had fallen while rollerblading and was being helped up by two of her friends. As we approached the girl whimpered like a hurt kitten, and Zelda turned to us, grinning as gleefully as one can while wobbling to and fro in 45 degree angles.

“At least,” she hollered, “At least I’m not as loud as that!”

After a while she had all but lost her voice and replaced the wail with a steady stream of muttering which only I, cycling alongside her, was privy to. This new monologue ranged from the enraged to the insecure to the vulgar. I didn’t just feel every bump in the road; I was given a commentary on it. Every time another cyclist appeared, heading in the opposite direction, Zelda’s words became quicker and more psychopathic – “I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill you. All of you are going to die.” These threats were accompanied with even wilder swerving. “What is wrong with you?” I asked, alarmed. “Why are you threatening these people?”

“I’m not,” she panted, careening back and forth. “I’m trying to warn them. There’s going to be an accident, I can feel it.”

It takes two careless drivers to make an accident, I thought, but before I could say that I witnessed one. Confused by the ang moh family on bikes heading our way, Zelda panicked and tried to brake and speed up at the same time. The bike braked, but she sped up, flying over the handlebars and landing on the road, narrowly avoiding the family’s blonde mum.

“Oh, god,” I said, stopping. “Are you all right? Anything hurt?”

“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” said Zelda, rubbing her ass ruefully as she got to her feet. “But I’m really angry!”

“At those people? But the whole thing was your fault.”

“Yes,” said Zelda, “but she shook her head at me!”

I made a mental note to shake my head at Zelda at least once an hour the next time we met. Jude came pedalling up, looking vastly unsurprised that his girlfriend’s knee was scraped and his bike was on the floor, wheels still turning menacingly slow in the air. (It was like a scene from a movie - the assassinated newspaper boy.)

I offered to ride Zelda’s bike in exchange for mine, because I am good like that. She eagerly agreed and hopped on, noting immediately how much better it felt.

“The placebo effect,” muttered Jude.

“What’s that?” asked Zelda, fiddling around with the handlebars. She never knows this kind of intellectual thing, which is excellent for me because I always do. Everyone should have a friend like this.

“It’s when you think something is making a real difference when it’s actually not,” said Jude, in his long-suffering voice. The voice was what prevented me from arguing – I felt like he’d gone a bit bitter here, and just didn’t want to admit that my brand new bike was a better ride than his rusty old heap of metal. It looked shabbier by the moment and I was sure that, like Eeyore’s tent in Winnie the Pooh, it would collapse with a puff if a butterfly landed on the seat. He was jealous, obviously, of my much snazzier machine and its snazzy paintjob. But I bit my tongue.

For real or psychological reasons, Zelda’s cycling improved tenfold from then on. Jude and I were glad; finally we could cycle like three normal people, instead of two normal people and a drunk. To encourage her good work, I tried to entertain Zelda as much I could, cracking jokes about Lance Armstrong and the bicycle song from Pokemon. Unfortunately this proved a distraction and a bird almost lost his head. Sometimes humour can be a liability. I adjusted my internal joke dial from funny to lame, which worked better.

It was time to head back. “Turn around!” I yelled. (“Bright eyes! Every now and then I fall apart!”) We started on the return journey, Zelda complaining that her ass hurt. I told her to consider tampons, while Jude barked some seriously impressive commands he learned from the army ("Suck it up! Keep going! No stopping!" etc). Eventually, after 3 stops and an aborted attempt of Zelda's to scale up a breakwater, we made it back to Big Splash, sore (Zelda), red (me) and tired (Jude and me). I think though, that I might want to do this more often. Cycling alone is pleasant but uneventful; having cycling buddies is a lot more amusing.

*Names have been changed.