My bike is in a box on its way back to the manufacturer. Something in the rear hub gave out, so it has gone back under warranty. They should have it by Monday, and then there is whatever they do to it and the journey back, so I am off two wheels for another week at least. Maybe more.
I am part way through Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford’s history of the man, on Audible. Fourteen hours and twenty minutes of it. Before it I went through the whole Bobiverse, a sci-fi series, the same way. A few weeks ago I would have told you I was the kind of person who listens to whole books now. This week is testing that.
Before any of that, my downtime was YouTube. Random things. The news, oddly soothing videos of fun facts about animals. I was watching, not listening, and to nothing that left a mark. Then I started cycling, and it changed without my deciding anything. On the bike my eyes are on the road and my hands are on the bars, and the only part of me left free is my ears. You cannot scroll on a bike. You cannot half-watch a clip at a junction. So the ears got handed something bigger to do, and a commute turned out to be exactly the right length for a chapter.
A whole book does something the fun facts never did. The thing that has stuck with me from Genghis Khan, of all people, is that he would not let blood decide rank. Being his son or his cousin earned you nothing on its own. A man who started at the very bottom could rise, on merit, all the way to general. For someone usually filed under “brutal warlord” it is a strangely modern idea, and it is the sort of thing you only get from sitting with a subject for fourteen hours instead of ninety seconds. The animal facts never left me anything to turn over on the walk home.
Here is what this week has taught me, with the bike gone. My hands are free again. And the moment my hands are free, I scroll. I reach for the phone in every small gap, the way I always used to, and the audiobook sits paused while I thumb through nothing in particular. It turns out the habit I was a little proud of was never really mine. It was the bike’s. The bike took my hands and my eyes hostage and left me no choice but to listen properly, and I mistook the result for having changed.
So I am waiting on the bike, a bit more honestly than I would like. Genghis raised men on merit. The version of me that reads real books didn’t earn it; he just had his hands tied to a set of handlebars. Take the bike away, and he goes straight back to the scroll.
