There’s been so much coverage and so much bullshit being spouted about at the moment about cycling. Yet one article has stuck in the mind recently, over at the Huffington Post of all places. The summary of which is particularly poignant.
If cyclists are all to be judged on that one person who annoyed you this morning on your daily commute, then it seems only fair to do the same back.
Drivers are all speeding lunatics who change lanes without indicating, thrusting their un-taxed, uninsured motor around the road while talking on their mobile phones, blaring out the Radio One Breakfast Show at unbearable volumes and smoking out of the window. Oh, and you can’t pass a woman without leaning out and shouting ‘oi oiiii larvely! Fancy a shag?’ and beeping your horn incessantly.
Put like that, those cyclists don’t seem so bad, do they?
So, by all means, let’s have a debate about cyclists and why they keep dying. But let’s all make a gentleman’s agreement to stop using these tired, ridiculous old arguments, yeah?
A rather amusing post found via Twitter earlier of a slightly overzealous young rozzer. This reminds me of the operation going on this week in London stopping cyclists and telling them to wear high vis and helmets.
Whilst indulging in a spot of the obligatory DIY today I discovered I needed a few more bits and bobs, blowtorch, flux, joints etc… I could not get the car out for a ‘quick’ 6 miles to the shop as the community skip lorry was doing its thing so I took the jolly old – new – racing bike for a spin. Flashing along and wanting to turn right over the bridge system I crossed the four lanes to take up position for the giratory road system. Pulled up at the lights and waited, not bothered by and not bothering anybody when up pulls a plod car, the window goes down on the drivers side and a head pops out.
Young Plod – “Nice bike you’ve got there”
Me – “Yes”
Young Plod – “Going out for a ride”
Me – “Yes”
Young Plod – “Where you going”
Me – “Over there”
Young Plod – “You know you’re in the wrong lane”
Me – “How’s that”
Young Plod – “You should be over there” – Points to the near side lane four over
Me – “Can’t turn right from there”
Young Plod – “It’s dangerous to ride your bike in this lane”
Me – “Be a lot more dangerous turning right from over there”
Young Plod – “Is it yours”
Me – “What”
Young Plod – “The bike”
Me – “Yes”
Young Plod – “You’re not wearing cycling clothing”
Me – “No” – wearing old combats, boots and sweatshirt, very dirty as had been crawling around under the floorboards.
Young Plod – “You’re not wearing a helmet either”
Me – “No”
Young Plod – “Just pull up over there for me”
Me – “Why”
Young plod – “I want a word with you”
Me – “What for”
Young Plod – “Don’t argue”
Me – “About what”
At this point young plod had had enough and tripped his blue lights…
An interesting little study of a junction in Kentish Town showing a few changes of the lights and those people who choose to obey or not obey the rules. Watch it to the end and watch out for the Royal Mail van.
This seems to show what I see each day on the way to work. 99% of people riding bikes sitting at the lights amongst the scooters and cars in the ASL. A few departing early from the lights to get clear of the traffic (me included) but most waiting for the lights to turn green.
It’s been great to be out three weekends riding in a row now and hopefully we can keep that up and do a few more longer rides.
The last two weekends have been at Swinley which were both surprisingly good. The first with Vaughan and Matt and was ridiculously muddy. Then the week after I went with Joe and Chrissy for an ever so slightly longer ride.
This last series of berms were great fun and obviously great company too.
So this weekend the idea was to try and follow a new route and see how easy it is (or not) to follow a this downloaded from the net and then added to the Garmin. The other aim was to start upping the mileage a bit as rides have got shorter and shorter over the years. The first week it was 12, the second 14 so this week the idea was to try 24. Whilst those numbers sound low it is a lot harder off road than on. I do want to get to the point where I could ride 30 miles off road at a decent pace without too much hassle.
I found this one via singletrackworld.com so thought it would probably be ok after scanning around the map view. It’s hard to judge the quality of a lot of the routes out there generally but this looked like a good one.
The trail starts in Wescott rather than our usual Peaslake carpark stop so we headed out there this morning and got going after two service station stops – Matt was a little hungover. Seemed like a nice start to the trail and we got going and didn’t have too much trouble following the GPS. We got the hang of it and it seemed to flow quite nicely. It wasn’t until we got to Summer Lightning and followed it down to the bottom that we realised we had started going in completely the wrong direction. For whatever reason the Garmin doesn’t say “Turn around you’re going the wrong way” it just plots your position against the map. How annoying! Anyway we rode a few trails we hadn’t in a long long time and still had a good time. In future I’m going to take a screen shot of the start to avoid this.
The above is what we actually rode, 14 miles or so but with lots of the same ground being covered whilst we tried to establish what was going on with the map. I also didn’t start the timer straight away so there’s a few more miles to add to that. Regardless it was good to get out, ride some trails as well as test out the limitations or foibles. Hopefully we can go back next weekend and do it properly!
No pictures today apart from this one of us washing the bikes. Exciting eh?
I hadn’t been out on my mountain bike since the beginning of September fr a variety of reasons, one of which was a blown shock which had cut short my last trip. So it was great to get out with Vaughan and Matt on Sunday to Swinley for a bit. The trip up the motorway was slightly alarming due to the sheer amount of rain coming out of the sky.
I’d gone off Swinley after a few very busy trips during the summer. It seems like this wet weather had killed the interest in it, at least on Sunday. We didn’t see many people and more importantly didn’t get stuck behind anyone or hold anyone else up.
It was muddy as hell and slippy too. The phrase “UK slop and grime” from the old ChocolateFoot days came to mind. The usual fear of riding off road came back after not riding for almost six weeks. Seems to take a while to get dialled in and trust the tyres and keep off the brakes. Half way round I seemed to get the hang of it.
I also thought I’d try my new Garmin GPS which I’d got to plan some road training for LEJO next year. Interesting the kind of stats it gives you and then it plots all of these on a little web app. Neat but complex getting it all to work. Not a massive ride by any stretch of the imagination but you’ve got to start somewhere I guess. Need to start ramping up the miles from now on.
I see so much crap towards cyclists people who choose to travel by bike online. I follow loads of pro cycling people on Twitter and plenty of people post shocking and dangerous clips, as well as the odd idiot copper. I’ve also spent plenty of my time being on the receiving end of this crap too. There’s also these bullshit campaigns, the Nice Way Code being one of them recently. I try and not post about that stuff here but then once in a while one of them tips me over the edge. This time it’s the city of London and this bullshit film.
Lets all share and be nice. How about the driver doesn’t drive on his phone, doesn’t go in the ASZ, uses his indicators and doesn’t drive aggressively? No we have to be nice to each other. For fucks sake this shit makes my blood boil.
There’s no room for proper cycle infrastructure in our medieval streets… pans to wide boulevard. Just a fucking joke all over. Try again City of London.
I’ve been riding around the Surrey Hills for years now. But as I’m a bit of a boring person creature of habit I tend to ride a similar loop. I rarely break out of this except when riding with others who are guiding. When you only have one ride every two weeks you don’t want to get lost and not enjoy it. Whilst I know my favourite trails very well and how to link them up I don’t actually know where I am. That sounds ridiculous but I really don’t. All I know is the trail and the series of links to get back to the van / tea shop.
The one person who drags me out of my usual route is Matt. Mainly due to him being so, so bored of riding my favourite trails I’d imagine. With this in mind I went to look at getting a map of the area and starting to properly map out and record some of the trails. I was thinking I could GPS a few then compare them on the map and know where I was, or had been. I also wanted to then use the map to be a little more adventurous and explore, but with the comfort of knowing which main road we were crossing etc.
So i found the maps we needed at 1:25,000 scale. Unfortunately the area I wanted was split over two landrangers, numbers 146 and 147 I think. So I had a quick look at the Ordnance Survey site which isn’t crap anymore. It turns out you can make your own custom maps there. So I centred the map, added my own image to the cover as well as a title. I got it in the post today. Somehow I’m completely amazed that this is possible. Completely custom on demand printing. Looking forward to riding more trails and pencilling in some new ones.
I hate cycling in London at the moment. The pollution and air quality in general is terrible. It’s thick with soot and particulates. I can feel it each morning in the back of my throat.
I’m also twitchy and nervous of any sudden moves by vehicles around me whilst on my bike. Someone came a bit close turning in front of me today. I was going straight on and he was waiting to go right, facing my direction of travel. He’d judged my speed and was going to tuck in and turn behind me. I crapped myself and shouted at him. I had no idea whether he’d seen me or not and was waiting to ruin another bike. I seem to remember it took about six months to get over it last time. I suspect that I’m still not going to be enjoying cycling in London for a while yet.
