My first
mistake was heading out the door late.
It was only 9 AM but by then it was
already 36 C. Not a cloud in the sky.
There seemed
to be a faint petrol-chemical smell in the air. And while I can't be sure, it played with my head. I hadn’t
been on my bike in maybe a year and I was going to need oxygen, a lot of it.
I rode on a
Friday morning, really the only time a cyclist can reasonably expect to come
home alive.
Any other time
there’s too much traffic. Even if you could find a shoulder to ride on, there’s the risk of a Qatari driving his Land Cruiser running you over while
passing someone on the right.
The
roundabouts are suicidal. The drivers of SUVs regularly launch themselves into traffic at high
speed while texting someone. Riding a bike into one is like trying
to jump on a speeding merry-go-round. You’d be swatted back like a fly.
I rode from
the Pearl to the Zigzag Towers to the sandpit of construction that is Lusail. And
back. The air was brown, part dirt, part the byproduct of the world’s largest
exporter of liquefied natural gas.
The few
construction workers who were out on what is for most a day off, stared at me
like human cattle. Who could blame them, seeing a tall white guy coughing up a
lung in the desert...
Every one of
my pores was busying jettisoning sweat. It stung my eyes. I glistened. The
searing sun was crisping my forearms like bacon.
Occasionally a
dilapidated bus used to ferry construction workers would
lumber by, leaving a trail of black exhaust for me to suck in. In Lusail, where
everything is new or being built, a hot waft of freshly paved asphalt assaulted my nose.
On the way
back, closer to home, even the moist scent of the Pearl’s freshly watered,
unusually green grass was off-putting. Broad expanses of lawn with nary a weed
in sight… proof of the truckloads of herbicides employed in the pursuit of
perfection.
… And yet when
I got home, I somehow felt good.
