I unintentionally had my initiation into the strange world of fixed-wheel biking last week, when I stopped to fix a puncture on my way home from work, and accidentally re-attached my back wheel the wrong way round.
I ride a single-speed Specialized Langster around town, and the back wheel has cogs on both sides – one that is fixed and one which allows me to freewheel.
Cash strapped by the credit crunch, my wife and I decided to take our summer holiday in Wales this year. To help keep things cheap, we waited till the end of September when the cottage rents came down, and took nothing with us but a few books and our bikes for entertainment.
It turns out – lest you've forgotten – that biking really is the prefect activity when economic times are tough. While we ended up splashing out on a few nice meals, as well as some castle entry fees, one of the very best days of our week away cost us absolutely nothing: a day's mountain biking in the hills around Betws-y-Coed.
A couple of weeks ago, a frustrated London commuter filmed a stretch of his ride to work and stuck it on YouTube.
I know it may not look like the most gruelling journey - and I'm sure everyone who commutes to work in a city has a worse example - but this is the very stretch of road where father-of-two Nick Wright ended up killed by a lorry just days before this footage was shot. And with so little space for cyclists, it's easy to see how that kind of accident could have happened.
This is nuts. A 24-carat gold-plated fixed gear bike studded with more than 600 Swarowski crystals. Conceived by Scandinavian design firm, Aurumania, it costs almost £65,000. It's beautifully made (if horribly ostentatious) but how many of the ten gold bikes on sale do you think will ever see Tarmac? I suspect the answer lies in the optional extra - a £4,000, gold-plated wall mount.
It's time to dig up an old favourite this week: red-light jumping. I've been thinking about the ethics of red-light jumping a little more than usual recently. As it happens, I've been interested in getting involved in politics, and wondered what I would do if I ever happened to become an elected official.
As became clear when David Cameron was caught riding the wrong way down a one-way street, politicians appear incredibly hypocritical if they go around breaking the law while preaching to everyone else at the same time. To my mind, politicians should surely be the example that everyone else should follow, not people who believe that their privileged situation leaves them with a right to flout the law.
More Olympic-inspired art, following my earlier post, and Shopping Bag's missive about the eBay auction of London 2012 posters. These watercolours are by a Worcestershire-based artist called Jeremy Houghton, one of a handful of artists commissioned by Lloyds TSB, the main sponsors of the London games. They show the stars of Britain's record-breaking cycling team in action in Beijing. I think they're rather good.
The Tour of Britain came back to central London last weekend, and was once again given the profile and resources that a race of this calibre deserves. Last year had proved nothing short of an embarrassment for the organisers, whose first mistake was to shun the beauty and grandeur of central London for a rather grotty park in south-east London. Last year's opening stage, in Crystal Palace, had more of a feel of a school sports day than a professional cycling event – with no timing clocks on display, no big screens on which to follow the race and, perhaps unsurprisingly, hardly any spectators.
As reported today, Lance Armstrong is planning a return to cycling to challenge for the 2009 Tour de France - he retired from the sport in 2005. This may seem like mere rumour mongering on a slow news day but Armstrong made his intentions clear in the latest issue of Vanity Fair and has now backed it up with this video on his website:
So is Armstrong - who will almost be 38 by the time the Tour rolls around - still be up to the task? Will this provide more grist for the mill of those who have claimed he is a drug cheat? Will his endless array of celebrity girlfriends be willing to take a back seat while he returns to serious training?
No sooner had I written about the menace of pedestrians to cyclists
last month, than I had my first crash with one. Cycling down the Thames
Embankment I noticed three people idly crossing the road while there
was a break in the traffic. Though I was travelling quite quickly, the
trio were at least 30 metres away when I saw them, giving me plenty of
time to ring my bell and hope they'd hurry across to the other side.
Two
of them looked up and did just that, but the third didn't react. And
when her friends urged her to get a move on, she simply stopped in the
middle of the road. As I tried to avoid her, she moved into my path,
and both of us ended up spread out across the road.
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