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A fine morning for my short hop to work… but I fear that the fingerless gloves will soon give way to the winter warmers.
Dear Marge,
I’ve decided that I want to be Scandinavian. They have the most well behaved people, the finest cycle paths, and Abba. Not to mention the fjords, saunas and smorgesbords.
I’ve also realised that, after half a lifetime of using PCs, Macs are better.
Am I having a mid-life crisis?
Dave.
A lovely morning for cycling, with bright autumn sunshine, a bit of mist, and lots of mellow fruitfulness. Ann had to go to Easton and wasn’t sure of the best route, so I cycled with her, which made a refreshing change from my normal route to work.
I was struck by the number of other cyclists on the road, and as we headed away from the centre on the cycle path, our progress against the flow of city-bound commuters was pretty tricky at times. I’ve been cycling to work for around 10 years now, and would be interested to know the statistics about growth in bike use during that decade – it must have more than doubled, and looks set to double again pretty quickly.
Another wet ride home today – this one was a real stinker, torrential rain blown right at me by a squally wind. Nearly home, I was waiting at a red light when a young woman and her child, both also on bikes, and both, like me, ridiculously wet, pulled up alongside me. I was struck by how happy they looked, despite the circumstances, and we got into one of those truncated traffic light conversations. “I love cycling in the rain“, she said, with genuine enthusiasm. “It makes me feel so alive!“. I knew exactly what she meant, and our little chat certainly cheered me up, but tomorrow I’ll happily settle for feeling so alive in the sunshine…
This morning’s bike ride to work was especially unpleasant, thanks mainly to the weather. We’re expecting over an inch of rain today, and I think half of it fell on me during my 13 minute dash. When it comes to negotiating the puddles, the obvious preferred option is to cycle around the puddle – but sadly this option is usually unavailable due to passing traffic keeping one pinned to the kerbside. So one has to go through it. One can either keep pedalling, risking a thorough soaking of feet and lower legs, or free-wheel through it with feet inelegantly raised above the height of the tsunami. I usually go for the second, although I have a horrible feeling that it makes me look even more ridiculous than usual, and certainly not very chic. I wonder how these Copenhagers deal with puddles?
“Arse of the Day” award goes to the lorry driver who couldn’t wait to get past me to get to the traffic jam first. Anyone who’s ridden a bike in traffic will be familiar with the scenario – there’s a long queue waiting at the lights a couple of hundred yards ahead, and any driver, however lacking in imagination or intelligence, can see that their vehicle will be held up, whilst cyclists will be able to roll to the head of the queue. At this point, drivers seem to split into two camps. The rational, co-operative driver proceeds calmly behind the cyclist, whilst the other variety speeds dangerously past, forcing the cyclist into the gutter (and through any puddles that have collected there), and showering him with dirty spray from his oversized wheels, just in time to slam on the brakes and join the back of the queue. I think it’s a macho pride thing.
Never mind – when Bristol becomes the UK’s first “cycling city”, all this will be a thing of the past – lorry drivers will become sensible and patient, cyclists will have the UK’s finest network of cycle routes to keep them safe, and it won’t rain any more.
Why are the British so good at cycling? We seem to be taking the Olympics by storm when it comes to two wheels. Is it because other countries don’t bother? Is it something about the Anglo-Saxon body or mentality? I think we should be told.
Well, maybe all is not lost, weather-wise. This morning was absolutely beautiful, and I drew back the curtains to see a hot air balloon hanging motionless in the blue sky above the SS Great Britain (how lucky we are to have that view, and how ironic that exactly a week ago the Balloon Fiesta was ruined by the weather).
It was quite chilly, though, in an alarmingly autumnal way, all of which made for perfect conditions for my bike ride to work. Cycling through Bristol can be such a pleasure, especially with the lighter traffic during the school holidays.
Finally, my new bicycle arrived, and a fine machine it is proving to be. Very comfortable, a perfect fit for my tall body, very well equipped and solidly built. It’s not the lightest bike around (in fact it weighs about the same as a Ford Transit, fully loaded with washing machines), but I’m not too bothered about that – at my age, speed is well down my list of priorities, behind safety and comfort.
It’s a Kalkhoff, imported for me by the nice people from 50Cycles.com, and it really is a delight to roll along on it without the cacophony of rattles, squeaks and scrunches that the old bike emitted. It has suspension on the front fork, which I’ve never really been keen on, but it certainly smoothes out some of Bristol’s rougher roads. It also has dynamo lights, which will be great in a couple of months’ time, and are very different from the dynamo I had as a boy (the one with a little wheel thingy that rubbed against the side of the tyre, slowing you to a snail’s pace and knackering the tyre in one neat operation). This setup even has some sort of residual power battery in the rear light, so that it doesn’t go out when you stop at a junction. It also has a little stand, which I’ve yet to use, but is nice to have.
Because of its German origins, I’m inclined to think of it as the Mercedes Benz of the bicycle world, but, given its solid build and the potential to have lights on all the time, perhaps it’s more of a Volvo. Either way, it’s great and I love it. Now, the big question is, do I look chic on it? Sadly, I think not.
Any day now, my new bicycle will arrive. I had hoped to keep my old trusty going for a bit longer, but it really has become a bit of a liability. I think it must be metal fatigue, brought on by 10 years of lugging my 15 stone frame around the potholed streets of Bristol – bits keep snapping, grinding and bending, so I took the decision a couple of weeks ago to replace it.
The new machine is being imported, just for me, from Germany, where teams of specialist engineers and steelworkers have been working through the night to construct a bike big enough for me. (Actually, it’s not that much bigger than my current bike (a Specialized Hardrock, with a 23″ frame), but just a couple of inches bigger in all directions, i.e. top tube, seat tube, and wheelbase, and I’m quietly confident that it will feel the “right” size for me, where the Specialized has always felt a tad small, complete with its stupidly long seat post, handlebar raiser, etc.) Last I heard, it was held up in customs – maybe they wanted to put an extra bit of tax on it or something.
But, talking of cycling, I found this excellent site the other day, all about looking good on a bike on the streets of Copenhagen, and it’s made me notice people on bikes around Bristol. I have to report that, in all honesty, we really are not a very stylish crowd. The reasons are, I think, varied but straightforward:
- The starting point – obviously, the inhabitants of Bristol are not, generally, as attractive in the first place as the impossibly good looking Danes.
- Judging by the pictures on the blog, Copenhagen weather is also rather more beautiful than our own. Bristol at the moment is in the middle of its unofficial monsoon season – it happened last July, and the year before, so I think we can reckon to be stuck with it. So one has to be prepared, with dangerously nerdy waterproofs, which even David Beckham would struggle to wear stylishly. (Unless you’re Jon, who turned up to work yesterday looking like a drowned rat, his excuse for not wearing waterproofs being that they were “under things”. Hmmm….)
- Copenhagers seem not to feel the need to wear helmets, which inevitably gives them a head start (geddit?) in the style stakes.
- Copenhagen seems incredibly well endowed with cycle lanes, with very few cars in evidence, so people look much more relaxed in their cycling than we do on the mean streets of Bristol. (This may well also account for the lack of helmets, although you shouldn’t be fooled, Danish fashionistas – your brain is far more likely to be damaged by your head hitting the pavement than by being hit by a car).
We recently heard that Bristol is going to become Britain’s “cycling city“, so maybe we can expect infrastructure like they have in Copenhagen. Wouldn’t that be great? And who knows, maybe the funding will also make us more beautiful, make the weather better, and get Jon’s waterproofs out from “under things”. Meanwhile, maybe we should start to make an effort to put Bristol on the cycling style map.
Due to my bike getting locked in at work (while I was at Bath Races, frittering away the kids’ inheritance, but that’s another story), I had to resort to other means of getting to work this morning. My options were:
a) walk (journey time 42 minutes, cost £0, nausea factor 0),
b) get the bus (journey time 14 hours, cost £290, nausea factor 6 squillion),
c) accept my beloved’s offer of a lift most of the way, and walk the rest.
Option c) seemed the obvious choice, until we got to the centre. The traffic ground to a halt, and we sat in the motionless Mondeo for a happy 10 minutes, at which point I decided to cut my losses and resort to option a. Total journey time 43 minutes. (The cause of the delay turned out to be a cheerful group of firefighters washing the road, presumably after an accident.)
Now I shouldn’t go on, but the bike is such a good way to get around Bristol. Journey time 13 minutes every day, both directions (give or take, depending on the wind – with a serious tail wind, I can hoist the mainsail and do it in 10.)
Some good news for Bristol’s cyclists – the City has been chosen as Britain’s first “Cycling City”, a distinction which brings with it about £23 million for various measures to promote cycling. Although it sounds like a lot of money, it’s not a magic bullet and can’t possibly achieve everything, but it’s a great start. Read more about it here.
Predictably, the Evil Post has declared itself critical of the initiative, running various negative and anti-cycling features, which is really such a shame. I feel very lucky to live in Bristol, and often feel very proud of the city, and something like this really needs to be celebrated, rather than derided. But, given the readership of this rag, I suppose it’s hardly surprising – some of the Post’s readers make Daily Mail readers look liberal. Here’s a selection of comments from its on-line forum:
- “Stop whinging, get off your bikes and get a Range Rover like mine. Far safer and MUCH more comfortable.”
- “With all Bristol’s problems what do we get? A shed load of money to spend on those underachievers who choose to use bikes.”
- “Roads plus cyclists don’t work; Bus lanes plus cyclists don’t work. Solution? Get rid of bikes don’t give them more money. It’s a recipe for further strangling this city. Have you noticed what a pitifully small minority the cycle lobby is?”
- “If a prospective employee came to me and asked what provision I have for cyclists their application would be torn up in front of them: I want – and Bristol needs – people unencumbered by this narrow minded eco driven approach to life.”
Let’s hope that some of the money is spent on initiatives to promote understanding and tolerance between cyclists and car drivers – after all, in most cases, people are both,and the car drivers who also cycle make the best drivers, and vice versa.
on a wet ride home
a rainbow in a truck’s spray
can make things better
OK, so we lost the playoff final, and we’re all gutted. But, four days on, here are some RTBC:
- Last season was the best ever in my time as a supporter, and next season could be even better.
- If we’d got promoted, we’d have probably lost most of our games next season. In the Championship, we’ll probably win most of our games. And we like seeing City win.
- In the Premiership, we’d have only had 19 home games. In the Championship, we’ll have 23. And we like seeing City play.
- We’re still a division above Leicester, Leeds, and, of course, the Gas.
- We get to beat Crystal Palace and Watford all over again.
- We won’t see Dean Windass, ever again. (Even if we don’t swap places with Hull this time next year, he’ll surely be too old, too fat, or too knackered to play football for much longer.)
So it’s official, Bristol’s traffic is the slowest in the country – within the city, traffic moves at an average 16.8 mph (as reported by the Beeb this morning). There’s never been a better time to get a bicycle!
I spent a very enjoyable weekend in Leeds, at Graeme’s 50th birthday party. Took the train, at considerable expense (“How much? I want to have a ride on the train, not buy it”), but it was worth it, partly because it was great fun celebrating with Graeme and other friends once I got there, but also because the journeys gave me the chance to read the Saturday Guardian, from cover to cover, which I rarely manage otherwise. One thing that I especially enjoyed reading about was the record-breaking cycle ride around the world by Scotsman Mark Beaumont. He did it in 195 days, smashing the previous record by over 80 days. Tough cookies, those Scots. I’ll see if I can do Barton Hill in under 13 minutes tomorrow…
I’m thinking of buying a new bicycle, not because there’s anything particularly wrong with my Old Trusty, but because I recently saw an article in the newsletter of the Tall Persons’ Club about bikes for the taller man, and I now have a hankering after a bike which actually fits me, rather than a bike designed for Mr Average which I’ve tried to make fit with a variety of extensions and adjusters.
The machine I’m thinking of is a German bike, imported only by a firm in Cambridge, so getting hold of one is going to be a challenge. The manufacturer’s website comes in a helpful English version, which is just as well, as my German is limited, to say the least. That said, they clearly haven’t seen fit to spend very much on translation work – I think it was done by one of the web team in their lunch break. The home page kicks off with “Do you know what transportation in the city at a stretch to four kilometers is the fastest? It is the bicycle.“, which I suppose is just about comprehensible, but see if you can make sense of the next bit: “And because the bike at many distances virtually unbeatable simply and quickly has our huge selection of all-wheel for each two-pilots the right vehicle.”
Many years ago, Ann and I were in Spain, and found a restaurant with a helpful translation of the extensive menu, posted in the window. We were especially tempted by the fish dishes, notably “Hakeor of the Frid” and “Squid the Grill“, but to this day wonder what “Quilted” might have been. We ended up dining elsewhere.
Anyway, back to the bike, and I’m reassured to know that my new bicycle will have disc brakes, which will “bring speedy descents on the plus of security“. But we seem to be getting almost philosophical elsewhere on the site with “How much should a saddle?“. The answer, of course, is obvious – “Only those who really sits, runs really good.”
My bicycle journey to and from work, a regular feature on these pages, is generally a pleasant experience – sometimes I even regard it as one of the best bits of my working day. But at this time of year, when it’s dark in both directions, the journey can keep its charms well hidden – especially as I always feel vulnerable on the bike in the dark, despite being lit up from top to toe in an assortment of reflective, day-glo and battery-powered devices.
When I experience rudeness, it usually comes from motorists. I think Bristol must have an unusually high concentration of grumpy car drivers who resent sharing the road with cyclists. This is probably an inevitable consequence of the traffic being stationary on many of the city’s roads for large parts of the day, and I have to say that I particularly enjoy cycling when the cars are gridlocked – certainly there’s an element of smugness, knowing that my journey will still take 13 minutes, regardless of how many stationary cars I pass, but there’s also the feeling that, while the cars are not moving, they can’t be knocking me off my bike.
And the flip side of this wariness of cars, is the certain camaraderie that cyclists feel for one another. We stick together, we stop when we see a fellow cyclist with a puncture, we have a chat when we’re stuck at lights together, and we sometimes wave to one another. (I wave every morning to a man on an antique Raleigh Shopper. I think of him as Jack, although I have no idea what his name really is, and his commute is the reverse of mine – we always cross over at roughly the same point, Jack being so regular that our passing place is an accurate indicator of whether I’m early or late for work. We wave cheerily, and exchange a very brief pleasantry about the weather, or about a hazard that lies ahead.) So generally, we cyclists feel affinity and warmth with our two-wheeled brethren.
And the more established one pattern of behaviour becomes, the more upsetting it is when somebody deviates dramatically from the norm. I was waiting at a traffic light last night, in a place on the junction where I was supposed to be, but blocking the route of a rapidly oncoming cyclist, who wanted to take a short cut across the part of the road currently occupied by me. Anticipating his needs (camaraderie, warmth, etc.), I was actually just preparing to move out of his way (I’m getting on a bit, you know, so unusual manoeuvres don’t happen quite as quickly as they used to – think oil tankers), when he barked, yes almost literally barked, at me “SHIFT!“. Wrong-footed by his rudeness, I promptly did as ordered, moving aside as quickly as possible, allowing him to go on his lycra-clad way without even having to slow down.
Now I’m not the most assertive of people, and we unassertives often find ourselves wishing we could rewind our lives a couple of minutes, in order to have another attempt at handling a bad situation better. All I would have said to this guy in Take 2 of the scene is “Look, maybe you’ve had a bad day, but really, there’s no need to be quite so rude. And yes, I’ll gladly get out of your way.” But of course, there was no rewind or second take, and I was left feeling really offended. Even now, I wonder if he got half a mile up the Wells Road before realising how rude he had been, then wishing that he could rewind a few minutes, and say to me “Hello, fellow cyclist. I realise I’m not entitled to do this, but I’d really like to cut through this way. Would you mind moving a bit so that I can?“. Sadly, I think not.
Whilst the horribleness of my cycle to work was significantly mitigated by the moment of kindness from the recycler (see below), the even more horrible ride home offered no saving grace. By then it was snowing, and the wind, behind me this morning, was now in my face, and much colder. The motorists with whom I have to share the road seemed even less considerate than usual, and the bike seemed to have doubled in weight during the day.
But, once home, I got changed into warm and dry clothes, lit the fire, made a nice cup of tea, and settled down for a quiet read – or more accurately, a few pages followed by a nice snooze. The book was Bill Bryson’s “The Thunderbolt Kid”, a great read, and one which has made me laugh out loud on several occasions. I chose it as light relief after “The Road”, by Cormac MacArthy, simply one of the most powerful books I’ve ever read, but certainly not a laugh a minute…
Today it’s absolutely pouring with rain in Bristol, and I took even longer than usual to prepare myself for the bike ride to work – waterproof trousers, rain cover for the pannier, a tot of whiskey, 2 hours’ of Buddhist mantras, that kind of thing – and the actual cycling was as unpleasant as I had anticipated.
At one point, my route was blocked by a recycling lorry, which is not unusual, but was mildly irritating on such a foul day. Nevertheless, fortified by the mantras, I calmly slowed down, ready to wait for the operatives to do their worthwhile job and move on. The guy unloading people’s empties into the van looked even more oppressed by the weather than I felt, but when he looked up to see me drawing near, he stopped his thankless work, moved to one side, and waved me through the narrow gap with a broad smile. “Thanks a lot”, I said, loudly, as I free-wheeled past. “No problem”, said he, still smiling through the torrential rain.
It made my day.
I really am heartily sick of rain. Every morning lately, I’ve woken up to the sound of rain on the roof windows, and know that I’m going to have yet another wet cycle to work in sweaty waterproof trousers. What about the hot summers that global warming promised us? Were all those short-haul flights with Easyjet a complete waste of time?
