Annwn Home : Wyrd
Wyrd Biking Part One
In The Beginning (Up To 1993)

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Geasa: wyrd themes

There are some issues that always come up time and time again in a person's life, and we can't do anything about them except perhaps acknowledge that they are there and try to enjoy them. These are best described as the word geasa (plural) which was the often terrible fate inflicted on a hero or monarch by the gods, a significant handicap to that individual's power.

Our own geasa are not often terrible: I'm rather glad of one of mine! It's the wyrd of biking; every time something important crops up in my life, there is a biker theme somewhere close to hand.

How it all started

I started biking at the age of eighteen, and stopped again when I split up with that particular boyfriend! However, he always told me that biking was in my blood and he was right. My Dad was a biker, though he stopped after a rather nasty accident involving a learner driver and a shop window, and naturally his experiences rather coloured my opinion of biking myself. But let's take a few steps back. I suppose I had always liked motorcycles, even as a child. When I went to university I did think about getting a bike, but decided I couldn't afford it (which was perfectly true; however, parental ideas also played their part). But my first true biker-to-the-rescue incident occurred in 1990 whilst I was living out in Germany, in Dortmund, as part of my studies.

Germany

I didn't much like it there; aged twenty, I was supposed to be teaching English to "children" only one or two years younger than myself, students who knew much more about English grammar than I did. Added to this was a ni.htmlare landlady whose obsession with cleanliness and tidiness made home less than homely. Ultimately, she decided she didn't want me there because I'd left dust on the skirting boards. I needed to find a new flat, quickly, and this was very difficult because there was a huge shortage of student-budget places, partly because of the Berlin wall coming down and the resultant huge influx of East Germans coming to settle in the West. I was hundreds of miles from home, desperately upset and homesick, and I'd had enough.

Earlier, I'd met a woman called Ute Axthelm through a walking group. Although I'd decided that the group was not for me, I remained in contact with her and, on hearing the news, she put me in touch with her daughter, Hilke, who was staying with her boyfriend whilst holding onto her own flat just in case things went wrong and she had to move back! She just so happened to be looking for a sub-tenant. After considerable string-pulling with help from my teacher-mentor and Hilke herself, I was able to sub-let the flat, and became relatively happy there. It came as a surprise when Hilke, probably the most mellow landlady I've ever had, turned up to collect the rent, wearing her red and black leathers and riding a large red motorcycle.

Another friend I made out there, an English student called Ann, had a boyfriend with whom she split life savings to buy a bike of their own. Even though they later parted company and he wrote off the bike in a crash, Ann and Hilke firmly fixed the seed that eventually developed into my own desire to ride.

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Annwn Home : Wyrd
Wyrd Biking Part One
In The Beginning (Up To 1993)

This page created 12 Oct 1996
Last update 14 Nov 2003
© 1996-2007 White Raven

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