Ever seen that episode of Family Guy where Peter Griffin finds a genie inside a bottle of beer and asks his purple-hatted new friend for jaunty theme music to follow him around everywhere?
- How music can help your training
- Over to you: your greatest ever bodge
- Over to you: what's your ideal road gearing?
The irrepressibly amusing cartoon character from Rhode Island has a whale of a time going shopping, enjoying 'special time' with his wife and riding the bus… until a fellow commuter takes a disliking to his noisy companion and threatens to bloody his nose. Watch the clip below to find out what happens next.
Peter wishes for his own theme music
So I was thinking — if your bike had a theme song, what would it be? Would you shred the gnarly trails to thrash metal, soar along sweeping streets to orchestral string instruments or bounce along to some happy hardcore?
At this point I should probably reveal what my own theme song would be, but first let me tell you a story. A couple of years ago I rashly entered the Mallorca 312 cyclosportive at short notice and needed to log plenty of training miles to get myself ready.
Around the same time, my young daughter Julia was given a new book by her grandpa. We'd spend happy evenings together reading her book about a friendly dragon called Puff and I soon found myself singing the song to myself when out on the bike. A song that I remembered from my own childhood.
It quickly became a fat little earworm and I couldn't shake the blighter. But when I was out there battling a squally headwind, dreaming of Mallorcan roads and sunshine, it sustained me and made me smile. So now, it's always the first thing I sing to myself when summoning mental reserves in the saddle.
And now over to you — what would your bike's theme song be? Let us know in the comments below, perhaps yours is even more embarrassing than 'Puff The Magic Dragon'…