Pottering...

I started this blog post a couple of weeks ago, but have only just finished it, so it's slightly out of date, but hey ho. About 3 weeks out of date. But the content still relevant.

I cycle every day. Normally to work and back, about 9 miles in all, and nipping out on appointments during the day. Most weekends, I think I'll spend the days gadding about the capital, swooshing down back alleys and cobbled pathways with a sense of direction hovering somewhere in between a black cab driver and Sherpa Tensing. The reality is usually far from this. Usually it goes Friday, beer at the office, beers at a pub afterwards, home, sleep, wake up, sofa. Not very inspiring and certainly not the 'lad about town' persona I envisaged as a teenager. If I need to buy stuff, my beloved Brompton gets a cursory glance as I leave the flat, get on the bus, and engage in the melée of London shopping with all the other lemmings.

But this week has been different. A particularly nasty bout of food poisoning last weekend led me to the conclusion that I have been burning the candle at both ends. A couple of weeks of veg, salad and abstinence was self-prescribed. Saturday morning rolled around and lo and behold, I had made good on my pledge. It was therefore an altogether brighter eyed and bushier tailed creature that arose, needing to acquire some new shirts and a present for the little nephew (3 tomorrow...)

I have two bikes. One is a Marin Belvedere which is a mid-range commuter bike, and one is a Brompton M6L. The reality is, I never use the Marin. In my head I like the idea of touring about the place on it, but I think my bicycle use is only ever going to be confined to travelling to places I need to get to - in London there is no finer way to do this than on a Brompton. For a more detailed explanation of why the Brompton is a superior and sublime way of personal transportation; Will Self does it brilliantly here.

Well, there is - it's a Canondale Bad Boy 8 with a Rohloff 14 speed hub on the back end, but spending £2,300 on a bike is excessive even by my standards. And you can't quickly jump on a tube with it if it rains or you get a puncture. Or fall victim to spontaneous intoxication.

I bought my Brompton through the cyclescheme. Basically, your employer buys the bike, and you pay for it over the year, but they take the deductions from your salary before deductions - mine is £72 a month, but after tax in real terms it means I lose about £40 a month from my take home pay. It's a good way to get a better bike than you might be able to otherwise. You need to keep the tyres pumped up on a Brompton, to between 85 and 100psi as the wheels are small and you notice the traction loss if you don't, but apart from that, the sturdy steel frame and hub gears mean it is pretty much maintenance free. I could bang on about how much I love it til the cows come home, so I'll leave it there as that's not really what I'm on about today.

I left home at about 10am having looked at a map and attempted to commit it to memory. The problem is that the River Thames twists as it goes through London, rather than going in a straight line, and my sense of direction is flawed at best. In theory, you head west from where I live, come to Westminster Bridge, pop over and follow the river. In practice, you ride merrily around in circles for a while before finding a main road and going the way you know. But herein lies the rub. As anyone who knows me will tell you, my patience is in short supply. I used to become incredibly frustrated when getting lost and reach for the iPhone maps app to find where I was and hare off in the correct direction. The solution is an attitude adjustment. The way I approach it now is to figure that I know roughly what direction I'm going in, I know what I want to achieve, but if I take a wrong turn and end up a bit lost it's not the end of the world. For more details on this philosophy, you could do worse than read 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency' by Douglas Adams. I get to see a bit more of London and hopefully the cumulative result is that I ultimately learn more about this awesome city. I ended up going over Vauxhall Bridge, then just turned left and headed down the embankment. I have to admit, I thought Battersea Power Station was west of Battersea Bridge, so I've learnt a bit there. One of the things I love most about cycling is that you really learn how London fits together. I know lots of people (and I daresay there are millions living here) who perceive the geography of London to be accurately reflected in the tube map. Honestly, nothing could be further from the truth. I do not cycle quickly, I stop at lights (mostly), and don't really know my way around and I still guarantee I get places quicker by bike than any other method of transportation. It took me 30 minutes door to door to get from Bermondsey St to Battersea Bridge. To get to Sloane Square by equivalent public transport is quoted by TFL as being 34 minutes. Not much difference you might think, until you bear in mind that a) You have to walk to Bermondsey tube station, through one of the less salubrious areas of London, b) I got lost. If I hadn't it would have been a lot quicker, and c) The health and aesthetic benefits of cycling. Lovely morning of shopping, nice amble home. 

A lot of people bang on about the perils of cycling in London. As this is a bit of an intro to my cycling aspect of the blog, I shall set my beliefs on this topic out here:- 

Some people in the world are idiots. 

Not all cyclists are idiots, not all cab drivers are psychos, not all white van men are potential murderers, car drivers are not the modern day incarnation of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Therefore, comments like 'Cyclists are a  bunch of idiots' or 'F***ing white van man, they AIM for cyclists' are greeted by me with scorn and derision. Let me give you an example from only this morning. If you go over London Bridge, you bear left after the top and go up King William St and come to some traffic lights outside the Bank of England. The second the lights turn green, if you pedal like mad, you will make the lights at the beginning of Cheapside to go up to St Paul's cathedral. As the lights are about to go red, the build up of traffic waiting for them to change has gone, so pedestrians think it's safe to cross. Therefore when a young lady casually strolled out into the road and across, little did she realise that there was a courier on a hybrid and me just behind him hammering it for all we were worth to make the lights. he rammed on the anchors, I went slamming into the back of him. Whose fault is this? The pedestrian didn't look. They assumed the traffic had gone and couldn't hear an engine. The guy in front of me was doing the same as me, no blame on him for pulling up short. We were cycling perfectly legally. The pedestrian crossing indicator was on 'red man', the lights were green. I do add at this point that electric cars (Prius, Gwhizz, etc) make no noise either. I'm amazed no-one's died yet from not hearing them - I think a lot of people have to admit they rely as much on their hearing as anything else when judging approaching traffic. Darwinian...?

The reality is, we were all a little bit to blame. Pedestrian should have looked. We shouldn't have been going so fast. I hasten to add that the lack of damage to bikes or people illustrate that this wasn't the worst collision to have ever hit the headlines. If you are nervous, cycle slowly. Pretty much anywhere you need to get to can be reached using back roads or parks. 

For months I said I would never cycle, you must be mad, it's a death sentence, etc etc. Now, I'd never travel any other way. I used to watch cyclists haring up the outside of queues of traffic and wonder how on earth they knew what they were doing or if they were just kamikaze. When you start, you will learn through observation how people get around, and it is up to you to decide what you feel comfortable doing. I take it pretty easy, but if I'm on the way home I'll boot it a bit and work the heart rate up as I know I can have a shower when I get home. 

It's certainly more healthy than sitting on the 43 from Friern Barnet. 

Lock it. Leave it. Lose it?

My hesitation with cycling around town shopping, apart from laziness, is the fact I hate leaving bikes in London locked up. If someone here wants to nick your bike here, they will nick it. I work in affluent Islington; home to media darlings, politicians, and other simliar Eloi. However, a local bobby told me that on the nearby Packington estate, the fire engines have police escorts. The reason for this is that 'yoofs' set off bin fires just to get the fire engines in the estate so that they can nick the 'jaws of death' off the back of the vehicles. These intimidating tools, used to cut people trapped out of smashed up cars, can snip through pretty much anything you can wrap around your trusty steed like a knife through butter. So a certain degree of judgment has to be employed. To me it's absolutely ridiculous to not use something you own for fear of it's theft or damage - what's the point of owning anything? My bike is insured (you can put it as an add on to your home insurance, but I'd advise against it as you probably don't want to lose the no claims benefit) on a stand alone policy at a cost of £10 a month through cycleguard. It specifies that I have to lock it with a silver graded lock or better if I leave it. The specification of lock obviously varies with the cost of the bike. I use a Magnum courier lock pictured here:-

If you use anything less sturdy, you might just as well leave it unlocked with a note wishing them enjoyment of your bike in the future. Or enjoyment of the small amount of crack they will receive from the fence they pass it to. NB if it does get nicked, wait a couple of hours, go on gumtree where it will pop up for sale, and visit with a large friend/ baseball bat *insert disclaimer*

A tip for locking: make sure the lock goes through the triangle of the frame. Not through the wheels or forks or saddle post or crank: they'll have it off in a second. Try and lock it as tight as you can so potential thieves can't wedge anything in to get it off. Park near a security camera. None of these things will ensure it won't be nicked, but do your best and get it insured. If it gets nicked, it gets nicked. I lock mine in Brompton 'parked mode' with the back wheel flipped under the frame. Here it is on Kings Road in Chelsea

The triangular part of the frame is a lot smaller on the Brompton, but I've done a close up so you can see it going through the triangle of the frame which is an unbroken steel barrier.

Even despite this, I'm never too comfortable leaving it for more than 20 mins. Goes without saying, don't lock it to a short post or even a post that's just over head height - they'll whip it over in no time. So, good luck, try and remember not to affix it to anything that isn't set in concrete, and console yourself with the fact that if it does get pinched, you can always claim and get a nice new one. 

That one you wish you'd got. The one with the carbon forks and the disc brakes. Because no-one will nick that one...

Soft in the head

A word on helmets. I wear one. Here it is, a bit battered and bruised, but rather it than my swede

I have fallen off twice and hit my head not wearing one. The first time (Cheapside) I was on the outside of a group of cyclists and the lights went green. I was probably a bit too far on the right, the white van which hit me was probably too far towards the kerb. I was doing about 2 mph and pitched off. Lucky escape. Don't get me started on righteous cyclists who think they can bosh about the place with impunity while all other road users swerve to avoid them, more on that in a different post. The second time, I was waiting for someone outside a gated group of houses. Thought they might be at the other end, jumped on the bike and straight away got the front wheel jammed in a storm drain I didn't see and flew over the handlebars. If I had been wearing a helmet I'd have laughed it off. As it was there was not even a chuckle. I landed heavily on my side, and the top of my head smashed into the tarmac of the road. Very very sore, and I sported a shiner for the weekend - lovely. My point is that on both these occasions, I was doing less than 3mph. If I'd been going faster, who knows. 

Here is a list of common occurrences while cycling:-

• A fly goes in your eye
• A dog runs out in front of you
• Someone just walks into the road in front of you without looking
• You are cycling up a cycle lane inside a queue of stationary traffic, someone crossing the road walks out from in between two buses from the right
• A pigeon attacks you (Kudos to @karmacycle, who blogs about it and other cycle related activity here)
• Vehicle door opens into your path
• It's just started raining after a dry spell. The road is oily.
• A car does not see you

This is off the top of my head. There are probably others but trust me, if any of these things happen, you stand a good chance of falling off your bike. It goes with the territory If you cycled at a snail's pace, you would probably be unaffected by many of these tribulations, but you don't. Don't even pretend that you do. One of my most passionate beliefs (right up there with NEVER wearing brown shoes with black trousers) is that generations have fought for us to live in a society where you can choose how you behave, so I have made my observations and leave you to make your own mind up.

I sometimes don't wear one myself - especially if it's hot in the summer and I'm only nipping round the corner. Kind of feel superstitiously that it is sod's law for me to crack my skull open on one of these jaunts, but I was ever the contrary one. 

In any case, you might feel you look a bit silly in a helmet which is an excellent reason not to bother. Not as silly, perhaps, as you will look dead or being fed through a tube and wearing a nappy, but to each their own.