Week 3: Fixin' up, the feminine way

I am having another love affair - with a bike shop assistant called James.

Actually I'm not. But everyone at Cycle Care in High Wycombe thinks I am, so I really may as well be.

It all started last Saturday. Having deliberately restrained myself on Friday night to a couple of shandies and a packet of red hot chilli crackers, I awoke fresh and sparkly-eyed the following morning with all the Tigger-like excitement only a pair of padded spandex bike shorts can engender.

My plan was to bound onto The Bike, whisk myself 40 miles through Henley and Wallingham to Witney, stop there for a well-deserved ploughman's and sticky toffee pudding (with both cream and custard - why do they make you choose? It's like choosing between your parents, or asking whether you'd rather have no ears or lobster claws for hands - an impossible choice), and then shuttle back to Hazlemere through Marston and Thame before sundown.

It was all going perfectly to plan - until I finished my breakfast. The problem, you see, was that before I could actually race off towards the horizon, a few bodyparts (saddle, wheels, frame) needed a bit of a tweak first.

I basically had to transfer the bulging box of tricks I'd bought the day before at the discount bike store Decathlon (Canada Water - recommended) from bag to bike.

This, though, turned out to be trickier than I'd envisaged. My first hurdle was unscrewing the pedals, which seemed to be welded on with cement, and replacing the toe-clips with metal cleats.

I tried everything - hammers, spanners, pliers, a foot-long wooden mallet I found beneath a pile of Victorian short-tennis racquets in the shoeroom cupboard... but nothing worked. And so my first trip to Cycle Care commenced.

James greeted me at the door, and was everything you could want in a bike shop assistant: helpful, informative and possessing a spanner the size of a small child. Having never quite decided whether the helpless, batter-your-eyelashes, what-a-big-spanner-you-have approach is demeaning or emancipating for women, I decided either way it was efficient - and went for it as best I could. Ten minutes later, the pedals were off.

"What do I owe you for your trouble?" I asked.

"Nothing," he said. "Glad to help."

"Oh, James," (in best sultry-but-stern Miss Moneypenny voice). "That's really incredibly kind of you."

Twenty minutes later, I was back.

"Sorry," I said. "I forgot to buy cleats to go with the pedals. Do you sell them?"

"What are those in your hand?" he asked.

"Oh, just rubbish," I said. "Some useless metal scraps that don't seem to fit anywhere."

"They're cleats," he said. "They screw into your shoes."

"Ah," I said. "Interesting."

Quarter of an hour later, the cleats were firmly fixed in place and James was checking my riding posture.

Prodding and shifting me about the saddle, he examined me like a farmer might judge a prize crop of potatoes at market.

"Don't tell me you've actually been riding like this," he said, as I slumped ungainly across the frame like an osteoporotic OAP. "No wonder your back has been causing you such problems."

Brilliant, I thought - I'd been under the mistaken impression it was because I had done no training and had the pain threshold of a newborn baby. As it turned out, I was sitting on the Raleigh equivalent of a suicide bomb.

"Your bum is too low, your legs are too bent and your arms are too stretched out," James said.

And when I actually got onto the bike, apparently, it was even worse.

Ten minutes and various giant spanners later, my posture was transformed: my bum was high and pert, my legs were straight and my arms were suitably angular.

"Perfect!" said James, admiring his handy-work. If I had been a sack of spuds before, I was now a sizzling pan of homecut chunky fries.

"How much do I owe you?" I asked.

"Nothing," he said. "Glad to help. Just remember: it doesn't matter how good your bike is, if your stance is wrong, it may as well be a rusty old wreck."

I went back three more times that day: to install my cleats, to fix a dodgy pump and to exchange some over-sized inner tubes. Total cost: £10 (for the tubes).

Now, as I mentioned at the start, everyone thinks I am in love with James. I am known as "James' stalker" by the man who answers the phone, and can no longer request my cleats to be examined without invoking a flurry of stifled guffaws ("Not sure if he could find them!" said one hilarious joker).

But if that's the price I have to pay to have my bike done up for free, then so be it.

At least I know that when my back finally gives up the ghost at the end of the trip, I'll still have a healthy pair of eyelashes to flutter at the osteopath.

And, as everyone knows, fluttery gets you everywhere.

PS I finally managed my cycle on Sunday - though to Buckingham, not Witney, home to a very nice little bridge, the only private university in the UK and a pub with the worst nachos I've ever tasted. On balance: mediocre.

Please visit www.justgiving.com/rebeccalowe81 to donate to the London to Paris cycle-ride.

All money goes to the Kisima Pastoralists' Centre, a children's charity for communities in northern Kenya: www.kisima.org

Thanks go to: James and co at Cycle Care, in Desborough Road, High Wycombe, for your very kind help. Phone the store at 01494 447908.

More thanks go to: Steve Howlett of Cyclelife Mill Hill, in Bittacy Hill, for very generously donating the Airlite 200. Phone the store at 020 8346 5784.