A decent haul of bikes today in the cycle carriage of my commuter train. Resurrectio was berthed with two Dawes hybrids and a Dawes folder. All rigged for daily use with bags and baskets, lights and bells. All were deposited there by folks dressed in normal clothes, just getting on with their days, blending in and getting to work the smart way. Squint and you’d think it was Copenhagen. Gives a person hope.
NB: no apologies for the crummy mobular phone pic. It is what it is.
On 26th May 2011, at around 8pm, my good friend Rob Jefferies was killed in a collision with a car while out training with a friend, near Wareham, Dorset. Rob was a huge character and a massive force for good in cycling, a real individual, super time triallist and track rider and yet an Everyday Cyclist in every sense imaginable.
On Friday, the cycling community woke up to the terrible news and since then tributes have been pouring into both Rob’s facebook page and the online message board of his cycling club, Poole Wheelers.
Today I went out on my bike for the first time since hearing the news, taking a ride around my favourite routes in the city; taking the backroads into the city centre, then along the waterfront and through the parks, linking up with the Loopline and heading for home. I hoped that the meditative rhythm of the cranks and the wheels would help me to remember, help me to forget, help me to come to terms with the sudden, cruel taking of a good friend and great man.For the whole ride, Rob was with me; advice he had given me, the too-few rides we’d had together, the long, rambling conversations we’d shared and the many laughs we’d had in the six or so years we’d known each other; all of these things entered and exited my consciousness, like the air whistling through the spokes of my spinning wheels.
The last ride I’d had with Rob was back in May 2010, when I’d shared a wonderful ride on one of his favourite local routes, near his home, Swanage, Dorset. We rode up onto Ballard Down and out to Old Harry, as the summer rainclouds came in over the English Channel. I took this image of Rob cycling up toward the ridgeway along the Down – using photographic composition as a convenient excuse for the fact that the big man was massively outpacing me.
Ride on Rob, you’ll be sorely missed.
Thanks to EcoVelo for sharing this great video – part of their Bicycle Commuter Profiles series, this time featuring Portland bike commuter Dolan Halbrook.
The Nitto Technomic is a king amongst stems. This tall, elegant Japanese model has made a thousand uncomfortable road bikes rideable, allowing countless ‘bars to be raised to that most agreeable ‘level with saddle or above position’.
However I’ve discovered a hitherto unknown virtue of the Technomic; valuable accessory real-estate, as seen here. I’m not fond of handlebar clutter and luckily the periscopic qualities of the Nitto give me space to mount my bell and front LED; out of the way but within easy reach.
Discount supermarket Aldi has for a few years been selling a range of no nonsense highly useful cycling gear and this year is no exception. Hitting the stores at the beginning of may was a great range of gear at real rockbottom prices. Like a decent track pump for 4.99GBP, a multifunction cycle computer for the same price and, the item that found its way into my shopping basket, an excellent hi viz ultra light jacket for a paltry 9.99.
The jacket is gossamer thin windproof, water resistant and breatheable, rendered in hi viz yellow with reflective logos, weighs virtually nothing (3 ounces) and packs down into its own integral stuff sack which is smaller than a can of soup.
The fit of the jacket is slim to prevent flapping and just the right length to avoid bunching up at the front. The ultralight fabric is excellent for keeping wind and showers at bay but thin enough to keep you cool, even on mild but rainy days. In short a better bet than a thicker, heavier full waterproof, which always tend to give you that boil in the bag feeling after a few miles.
The high viz colour, while never winning you any fashion points, does a great job of getting you noticed, especially in poor visibility conditions and the tiny pack size means there’s no reason not to leave it in your commuting bag permanently, always on hand for a chilly evening ride or a freak downpour.
However the best part of all is the price. At a lowly 10 quid, you could buy one for the whole family for the same price as its established rival, the Montane ultra light jacket at around 40 pounds. Of course the montane is better, but four times better? Of course if you’re hell bent on getting rid of your disposable income you could go for Rapha’s Stowaway jacket for £160…
As regular readers will know, I’m not one for cycling specific stuff generally but a featherweight wind/water resisting layer that doesn’t boil you on hot wet days and doesn’t break the bank is well worth bending the rules for.
For a few years now, on and off, I’ve been following a paleo primal diet, after reading an interview with Mark Sisson in the Rivendell Reader.
Since then I’ve followed the diet, in a far from religious fashion and managed to lose my spare poundage and keep control of my trademark raging appetite.
I won’t bore you with the details here but the diet basically shuns the four main sources of carbohydrates; wheat, rice, potatoes and refined sugars. I’m grossly oversimplifying here but Sisson and others argue that a diet with much reduced carbs and a higher level of protein and fats more closely approximates that of our hunter gatherer ancestors. Perhaps more relevant to us modern folk is the stabilizing and lowering effect the diet has on blood sugar and the consequent effect on fat burning and fat storage.
For full details on the diet Google mark’s daily apple and prepare to put aside some preconceptions on diet, exercise and health.
Of even greater significance for loping cyclers like me is how well a lowish carb diet fits in with steady, plodding exercise. Conventional wisdom says that you need to carb up for cycling. Heck, there’s a whole bogus energy drink business built around it. The truth is, you only need to carb up for long hard rides of two hours or more. For my kind of riding; steady conversational pace I can survive quite happily, even on day rides, on my regular primal diet, a typical day of which usually consists of:
Breakfast – scrambled eggs, Bacon, coffee with cream
Lunch – salad with chicken, tuna, cheese, nuts
Dinner – meat or fish with lots of vegetables
Snacks – nuts, 70 % dark chocolate, berries
All tasty, normal and unimpoverished tucker I think you’ll agree, which allows me to stay relatively slim and allows me to ride my bike in my kind of way, taking in the surroundings, stopping and starting, occasionally sprinting and climbing, expending energy in much the same way as our hunter gatherer genes intended.
Sometimes it’s hard to find an hour to get out on the bike. Work, family responsibilities, iddy-biddy jobs to perform – all of these things conspire to squeeze cycling opportunities out of your life. However, once in a while, a crack opens up in your weekly schedule and a ride opportunity emerges.
And so it was this morning – a golden hour of opportunity presented itself and I was out of the door like a shot. When I haven’t got a destination planned I generally head out onto the Liverpool Loopline, part of the Trans Pennine Trail. The Loopline stretches 13 miles around the outer edge of the city and passes within half-a-mile of my house, so traffic-free loping in never more than a whim away.
The Loopline is a very pleasant place at this time of year; a linear park, you might say, with fresh, verdant foliage on the trees and patches of bluebells in full flower everywhere. Being a Sunday morning, the ‘line was alive with walkers and cyclers – from kids on stabilisers with their mums and dads, to pensioners getting their daily exercise fix. Always a nice place to be on a sunny day – the loopline is a brief glance at how travel could be – human paced, human sized and civilized. People smile and say hello as they pass, make way for each other without conflict or aggression.
The ride was made all the more sumptuous by the armchair like comfort of Resurrectio, making her first proper journey after a two month lay-off. It’s good to be back.
… by giving it all away.
Wise words from Mancunian muse Ian Brown.
My elder brother as just been bitten by the bicycle bug, having loaned a beater mountain bike from his partner’s brother. However, he’s discovered what most people discover about mountain bikes – they’re a drag on the road.
At about the same time as I found out about Graham’s cycling epiphany, commenter fwinter asked “what’s happened to Ressurectio?” – to which the honest answer would have been, “its been hanging in the shed for nearly two months”. Then an idea started to form in my head – the Peugeot has given me a lot of fun, and it could give Graham a lot of fun – and to neglect a bike as honed as Resurrectio is a crime of some magnitude.
A text later and the deal was done – he wanted a bike that he could get fit on and a road bike fit the bill perfectly. So, a few minutes ago, the Pug was loaded into the back of his estate car to start another chapter in its long and colourful life.
Am I sad to see the Pug go? A little, yes, but I’m a lot happier about the prospect of helping someone rediscover their cycling mojo.
So Resurrectio is back in action, and the first moment back in her saddle was like sinking back into a chesterfield sofa. Ahhh… there’s nothing like riding a bike that you’ve built piece by piece for your kind of riding.
Have you ever given away a bike to help someone back onto two wheels?
I had a late night last night so this morning’s commute was a suitably leisurely affair. Today I chose the main road route into the city. Some days the back roads beckon but today, time was a little tight.
The roads were greasy with rain and a fine drizzle was coming down as I left the house. So it was on with the waterproofs. As you might imagine, I don’t hold with cycling-specific rain gear- Regatta’s breathable gear works well, is cheap and you don’t feel like weeping when you snag your over trousers on your chainwheel.
The last few day’s wet weather has necessitated the return of the fenders for the Peugeot, also meaning that the standard 25mm tyres have made a return. A little sad to see the cream Schwalbes back in the shed but the luxury of staying clean and dry won me over.
I arrived at the station in plenty of time to get my ticket, remove the wet weather gear and find the bike carriage on my train, which had a spare berth for the Peugeot. The day was going well.
I strapped the bike in, found a seat and slipped into train commuter mode. I love the combination of bike and train travel – you get the buzz and fresh air of the bike ride and the quiet, contemplative downtime of the train segment – it’s where I’m writing this blog from right now.
Also making a return on the Peugeot, along with the tyres and fenders is the Nitto M18 front rack – a beautiful piece of fillet-brazed steel from Japan. I’ve used it before to mount a basket and as a saddlebag support; I have to admit to struggling to find a use for it as a standalone front rack – it really comes into its own as a support for bag or basket. It’s currently installed up front but I may switch it to the rear or remove it altogether. Function aside, it surely looks nice, lending the bike that quintessential French randonneur look – the cycling kin to those boot mounted racks on classic open topped sports cars. Has anyone out there have a Nitto from rack? How do you use yours?
The journey home has also been good thus far. The ride to the station took in the Ashton Canal towpath – the narrowboats were out in force, which is always good to see. The train I’m sitting on is quiet and my bike is snugged up with two other trusty commuter hacks in the bike space. Just the final hilly ride out of Liverpool and another day’s wandering will be done.
Back in the early 1980s, the aspirational bicycles for teenage boys were those wonderful ten speed racers that lived in the back of mail order catalogues. Every new season, you’d enthusiastically thumb through those flimsy pages until you found the bike section, where the latest Raleigh, Peugeot or Falcon would gleam back at you. These ‘sports bikes’ would all feature suicide levers, short mudguards, freewheel discs and, that killer feature, the Kickstand…
I’m a big kickstand fan. Few bicycle accessories have such a splendid balance of function and style. The ability to prop one’s bicycle up wherever one chooses is not to be underestimated and the sight of a machine propped thusly is the very zenith of cycling cool.
So get a kickstand and join the revolution.
The Everyday Cyclist 