My skinny legs...

A beautiful day's riding today.  Predominantly with cool airs, sunshine and a tail wind.  YAY!!  Heading south down along the A9 through the Berriedale Braes.  A notorious 1 in 7 hillclimb; an overgrown bastard child of Garrowby Hill back home.  From sea level to 800ft!!  The descent into Helmsdale chasing South Side Mark was 40mph of fun and fast! 

Watch this short video which shows one of the idiots we have to contend with most days.  Yep I was absolutely peppered with gravel, rubber and brake dust as he locked the back end of his articulated trailer in a pawl of tyre smoke at over 40mph on the wrong side of the double whites!!  The wide angled camera lens does not show it half as close as it actually was!  FECKING DANGEROUS!!

London Alan just cannot comprehend how a fat bloke can cycle up a hill, down a hill and on the flats faster than he can.  He's becoming obsessed with the size of my thighs!  Groping to feel the girth whilst we're sat at dinner.  Balloon dog cowering in the corner of my shorts as the huge hand of enquiry descends to fondle my achy bits.  Geroff!!  Feck'n'ell!  Alan!  Stoppit!

He insists that I have skinny legs.  So today's entry is written as a film synopsis covering my life with skinny legs - as done for the film 'My Left Foot'.

The life of York born and bread (1962 - ) Wayne Tyssen is presented.  A fat man who overcame his childhood affliction.  Debilitated with skinny legs, he required round the clock care as being able to walk, climb the stairs and sit on lavatories without falling into bowls could not be done without careful supervision.   Wayne learned to ride a bike using his skinny legs and both of his malformed left feet.  Overcoming all of the odds he eventually became a successful tour cyclist and blogger. 

He was a fat baby, born with normal legs to a large (normal), poor (normal) Yorkshire family.  He grew up in a working class home.  One of 13 siblings he survived infancy being fed coal dust whilst living in a cardboard box.  With siblings he had to share bikes and left footed rollerskates.  Often there were four to five hung onto mums bike whilst going to the shops.  

His mother, Feckoff Tyssen - well that's what he heard other folk call her when she was on the scrounge - regarded him as a vegetable, a legume.  Married to a bycycle frame welder working at the Raleigh frame works just outside of York, and a failed dental hygenist, she in particular did whatever she could to make sure that the now fat child was loved.

One fateful day a ghastly unsupported swinging accident at the local park resulted in a body slumping effect which left the young lad with a low slung fat body, long Gibbon like arms and short skinny legs.  

As a result and because of his subsequent inability to ride bikes he was largely considered a slow child.  Nonetheless, he surprised everyone by demonstrating his mental acuity in absorbing everything that was happening around him. 

Without the use of his legs, he initially used his two left feet to express himself through circular rollerskating manouvers being very proficient at replicating the letter 'O' and the number '0' in muddy puddles before learning how to ride modified framed bikes; keeping on the bike in lieu of fit strong legs by grasping the saddle between his over developed arse cheeks.  

He began to express himself more fully when he was taught to ride without stabilisers by therapist Dr. Abe Normal.  But as he gained greater independence in his rides, his mother began to worry more and more about him, not in him overcoming those physical disabilities associated with skinny legs, but having his hopes dashed by others who may have never seen him as a man with human emotions, including the capability and desire to ride bikes.

In this true story told through flashbacks, you learn how a fat child manages to overcome the odds using a pair of feeble appendages to tour the UK on a bike.  He is mistakenly believed to be intellectually disabled for the first 55 years of his life.  He eventually trains himself to not only ride a bike, but to produce Poo Tube video's and write, amongst his works, this blog.  Able only ride a bike through hard training and with the use of modified cycles for his skinny legs.  

Able only to speak in gutteral sounds (that'll be Yorkshireish then) through the help of his strong willed mother, Dr Normal and his own courage and determination, Wayne not only learns to grapple with life's simple bike riding tasks.  Against all of the odds 'Slumpy' matures into a cantankerous skinny legged cyclist having learnt how to write about tour riding on a monkey bike.

In this film, Wayne's left leg is played by Daniel Day Lewis having come out of retirement to try to better express the pain and anguish he showed as a tormented Irish left foot in his previous film.  

Wayne's right leg, being the stronger, is played by award winning actor Robert (you looking at me?) De Kneero.

London Alan you Slaaaggg!.  A warning.  Keep away from my thighs as whilst you might have initially worried him, Balloon Dog's 'Pluurrrbbb' is stronger than his bite. 

Ciao for now