I think I found this amazing Tumblr site via Brant Richards many years back and it’s been a fairly constant source of great cycling imagery. Viewing it on the website is great as you can just scroll and scroll forever with all those fantastic images trundling by. It might be easier to view all those images together in a wider format but that’s my preference.
I prefer to view this site in Reeder on my phone and laptop. Usually by the time I come to look at it theres a couple of hundred posts waiting to be viewed.
The images seem to cover all aspects of cycling including some weird and wonderful frame designs to the latest trends and theres always a link back if you want to find out more. The sheer variety makes it well worth viewing, especially if you’re in the post office queue etc. Add it to your daily viewed sites!
I always try and go riding over the Christmas break. When I used to spend every Christmas in Bath I would normally try and get a Boxing Day ride in with Gav as well as a few more trips to Wales in over the Christmas break. As we alternate between mine and Emma’s Mum’s place now that doesn’t really happen as much.
This year I’ve also been full of cold and a hacking cough which has killed most ideas of riding. To be honest though the end of 2012 has seen a slow decline in riding which I’m keen to rectify. We had our annual trip in October (which I still haven’t written up) and I haven’t really ridden much off road since then.
So I managed to find some people willing or able to make a trip out in the pouring rain with me on New Years Eve – Finn and Joe from Brighton. We agreed that Swinley was probably the best option as the Surrey Hills would be a complete wash out.
I’ve been trying to not buy so much crap when riding. One of those is crap service station coffees on the way. So I grabbed a small cafetiere and some coffee and decided to make everyone a brew from the back of the van before we set off. Far nicer coffee and a nice way to have a chat before getting going.
Swinley is one of those areas that has miles and miles of trails that you know are there but you don’t know how they all link up to make a good ride. So we were keen to just ride around and try and make some of those connections as the conditions weren’t so good. Swinley is also having some work done by trail builder Rowan Sorell so it made sense to try and find new bits that weren’t affected by trail closures. We found lots of new bits and linked up some really nice little trails. Most of it was sloppy as hell and we spent plenty of the ride with water up to our bottom brackets but it was still fun. The forest looked strangely beautiful in the flat grey light.
I shot a few images on my LC-A with some HP5 400 in but I’ll have to wait a bit before processing those.
So even though it was wet, slimy and horrible and I had little lung capacity it was still great to get out for some fresh air. I rode mainly trails I had never seen before thanks to Joe’s incredible photographic memory for finding and linking them up. The favourite comment each time we stopped for a chat was…
This trail would ride really well in the dry!
Hopefully I can get another ride in next weekend and start getting back into the habit. Would be great if the weather started improving too.
And yes it’s probably time to trim the beard. Image by Finn.
One of those evenings where everyone ditches their bikes and goes for the bus or the tube.
You’re not riding are you? You’ll freeze!
Such a satisfying thing to get the gloves on and enjoy a quiet ride home. The city lights looked so beautiful sat within the cold fog this evening. So many beautiful sights on the way home which the phone camera doesn’t do justice to in any way.
One of my colleagues at work brought this beautiful thing in the other day, which although a little Nathan Barley, is a pretty amazing bike. It turns out that this belongs to his Granddad and is just borrowing it for a while to get around town. It’s in immaculate condition and weighs nothing due to the main section being made from aluminium. The company appear to still be going and have a history section on their site showing the original catalogue shots from the 80’s which are well worth checking out.
Sometimes riding around really does drive me insane due to the attitude of drivers to cyclists people who are on bikes. The person rushing past you and cutting you up to get to the red light is my particular bug bear or the police car creeping forward in the ASL. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an eloquent rant to date though. It is a little sweary but entirely justified in my opinion.
I have had enough of f*cking motorists. Car drivers, bus drivers, lorry drivers, vans, taxis the f*cking lot of you. Basically you have left me with pretty much no option but to assume that every single one of you is a self righteous c*nt with no regards for the laws of this country who lack the fundamental regard for the safety of other human beings necessary to enable you to be considered anything other than an utter w*nker.
My love for my little Brompton is well known – especially now it’s got flat bars on. It makes the perfect bike for getting to meetings in Oxford as walking at either end is painfully slow.
Building a Brompton is a labour intensive task. It takes a factory of 115 skilled people, some 1,200 parts and six hours to custom build each individual bicycle.
It’s nice to know that this ingenious bicycle design is still built in the UK just beneath the Hammersmith flyover. This little video and article gives a short insight into their processes. Best to not scroll down to the outrageous comments on the Torygraph though.
Working as an Architect and occasional photographer I find that graphical representation comes far easier than words. Sure I can write formal emails, structure planning reports and minutes of meetings, but being any way creative with words isn’t something that comes easy to me really or that I have much practice at. One of the reasons for re-designing this blog was to find an outlet for longer pieces of writing and to maybe think of longer more structured pieces. Choosing the font and space surrounding text was a big part of the re-design. I often find it hard to think of things to say when it comes to writing pieces here and to avoid the temptation to simply use superlatives and then add a picture then hit post.
So when I had some time off in lieu recently I went for a ride along the river east and found myself taking a series of pictures recording my trip. I got back and then processed and wrote a hurried description including superlatives and added pictures. Done. What I had actually wanted to do was write an account of all the fascinating things I’d seen along that route, with carefully inserted pictures illustrating my points, and showing a thoughtful account of an interesting context.
Fortunately a few days later Building Design magazine Tweeted about wanting people to write about cycling and Architecture so I pitched the idea of re-writing my existing post for them which they accepted. The hard part was actually writing it which I procrastinated about and delayed until I had to just sit down and just do it. As usual I also thought about how I would use technology to help me achieve it and found a great little writing application called IA Writer which cuts out all the distractions and even lets you focus on the text sentence by sentence which I found invaluable, especially in full screen mode.
So armed with this and Google Maps I went along plotting all the interesting things I’d seen and working out how my pictures fitted in with the story. I was also keen to make sure I didn’t bitch or moan about anything that might upset anyone reading (and be attached to my name) but write it from the perspective of a guide book and let people make their own decisions. Three hours and 690 words later I found something I was happy with. I read through it another three times and then hit send on the email.
Fortunately BD liked it and published it a few days later. Even better was that it didn’t attract any nasty comments!
Just had the silly monkey riser bars on the Brompton changed for some flat ones along with a new stem. Couldn’t resist some new grips with a little splash of colour. First impressions seem to be good. Feels much faster and a much nicer riding position. Feels quite nippy really.
