Category: Bikes

Tens of thousands of words and the odd blurred picture of fast moving vegetation rehashing one of two tenuous threads. Spliced together using random punctuation and alcohol.

Chasing Cars*

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding5 Comments

Welcome to your commute. The local time is 06:40, the outside temperature is a chilly ten degrees and our arrival time is expected to be 09:05 unless someone succeeds in killing you first.

Back off holiday, back to playing with the desperate traffic, back to maximum concentration and minimum road sense. Whiffing of the closet masochist, I’d been looking forward to joining the battle and “ as expected “ the grimy jewel of our capital city didn’t disappoint.

First up Seymour drive closed again for reasons closely aligned to because we can and do I honestly give off the slightest impression of giving a fuck?. Well fuck you right back, couple of hard lefts stretching aching legs past lines of stationary traffic before crafting a cheeky move with slightly more pavement than the highway code advocates. From the frustrated horn section behind me, I’ll have to upgrade that to properly cheeky.

Love it. Love it. Love it.

Summer sun burns off the cloud and I burn off down a down a festival constrained funnel of Hyde Park. Facing tourists adjusting focal lengths by stepping blithely into my path, I begin with a pathetic dinging of my bell and finish by leaving a carbon bar end burn on their arse. Keeping it real there Mr. Livingstone, let’s do lunch.

Only by engaging Colin McCrae Sega Rally Mode can progress me made through the random perambulation of squeezed humanity on an ever thinning track. Elbows out, Bar ends to the fore again and an expression that politely but firmly expresses the dangerous truth that you are nothing more than mobile slalom in the path of my morning coffee.

Ride on in the sunshine, break a few more rules, bait lycra roadies and attempt to perfect clipped in trackstands before flipping the security guard a flash of my pass and a hidden finger. Dump the bike and hunt down the dripping bacon breakfast of champions. Not bad for a Monday morning, not bad at all.

The end of the day starts with beer which instantly imbues bravery as per the law of lager armour. Bravery instantly tested by a taxi attempting to save ten seconds by smashing me into small body parts using the curb as a mallet. Survival instinct kicks in and he’s almost as surprised as me to find a beery mountain biker hanging onto his passenger door.

As our six wheeled carriage wobbles down the Strand, I breathlessly explain to him to and his “O mouth shaped fare that if he doesn’t cease and desist RIGHT NOW, I shall be punching my way out through the drivers side window.

He fucked off quite pissed off although I hope he didn’t think, even for a moment, that I gave a shit. Believing myself indestructible, a¾ circuit of Hyde Park Corner will live long in the memory filed under mnemonic Go, GO, Oh Shit, Oh Shot OH SHIT, switch lanes “ DON’T LOOK “ safe, don’t you DARE come over here, sprint, spring, looked fucking amber to me, sprint, breathe

Fantastically, London wasn’t done delighting me today. I cruised up about half a mile of 150MPH executive cars travelling at approximately zero due to aforementioned coned off streets. I cannot bequeath them the names of roadworks because the second half of that word was conspicuously missing.

Anyway I counted about half a million pounds worth of leather clad car park before my mental arithmetic was exhausted. The worlds’ most expensive queue began to snarl slowly forwards as the lights changed but I had been and gone before they had even reached ramming speed. My delight was raised to a level that I can only term non Yorkshire when it became apparent that some brain stunted arse had parked his van on the yellow box and the queue was stationary again despite the green light.

Sometimes commuting is shit “ cold, dark, horrid, miserable and dangerous. Today was not one of those days.

* Spookily the first track on a perfectly shuffled riding mix. Is it wrong to like Snow Patrol? Oh I see, I am deeply sorry.

Woops, missed.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road RidingLeave a comment

Last night while riding home into a gloomy, late spring evening, I failed to crack the tough navigational challenge of finding my house. My third year of commuting has been ushered in with barely a whimper after years one and two were at least accorded a hedgehog sized nod. But the event was marked by a failure of muscle memory grooved by 250 return trips and while the autopilot tripped out, I tripped on towards the badlands of Aylesbury.

But for a sudden jerky awareness that my present surroundings were unfamiliar, the termination of the ride would have been exactly that. Thursday night at dusk in the a town populated by a lesser class of boozy thug is not a safe place for anyone without a tatoo or an anger management problem. I would have been killed and eaten and then very possibly charged for the privilege.

I can only put this misjudgement down to one of two things. Either my cognitive functions are already starting to fade or, the terrifying level of concentration I was applying to work related problems means I have started to really care about my job.

Either is a worry, frankly.

Pointless, stupid and lost

On By AlexIn Bikes4 Comments

My friend Mark has had his hinged small wheeled nonsense stolen from just about outside our office on the Strand.
Two things about this surprise me. Firstly, Mark – who is a seasoned London commuter – should risk securing his bike with anything short of two hungry, rabid dogs and a tactical thermonuclear device on a motion sensor. Secondly, that someone would actually want to steal it.

Ruling out kleptomania, advanced mental illness or a desperate need for the middle hinge, one can only assume the scallie nicked el folderado because he believed that it’d be a useful getaway vehicle. He’s going to catch alot of flak from his mates with their tricked out Vauxhall Nova’s when he shows off his latest illegal aquisition.

Anyway, I’m sorry Mark’s lost it but he’s sensibly insured so has a better chance of getting the cash for it than ever seeing it again.

He does however have some other bikes to ride, most of them of similar silliness. The best result is that his insurance pays up, he buys something that is of the genus bicycle and the horrid folder is sold for scrap.

Oh. My. God.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding19 Comments

Here is a pictorial testimant to my unshakable belief that new bikes will somehow overcome no talent. After 20 episodes of hiring bikes for a few months (ownership is too strong a word really), it is probably time to challenge this theory.

There’s all sorts in there, full suspension boutique lovelies costing thousands of pounds, crap old singlespeeds, expensive new singlespeeds, many, many hardtails that look almost exactly the same, which is why – I assume – I had three of those AT THE SAME TIME 😉 There’s almost no niche or genre not fully covered here.

I have tried to lay them out in chronological order but it’s been a bit of a battle with the old cerebral compost to try and remember what, when and – most difficult – why. If you click on the images, there’s a best guess. In another doomed attempt to rationalise my insanity, I’ve included pithy comments on the try/buy/discard strategy.

Don’t click further unless you want to see the many good and decent bikes that have briefly bobbed in the raging torrent of fiscal irresponsibility that is my bike buying fervor.

Continue reading “Oh. My. God.” →

20. Not out.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

There’s a post waiting to be polished (think turd and you’ll understand the metaphor) poking fun at fish keeping and, a worryingly homo-erotic bit of written therapy around some man on man handling action I suffered last week. All in good time or – to be more precise – all during a good time with the beer fridge.

Instead, here are some mountain bikes. I wheeled them all out to steal their souls in case of theft. The insurance people do not believe I’ve spent that much money on bikes and demanded photographic proof. This did give me time to try out my new (to me) EOS 300D.

Bike Collection

After much reading of the manual and faffing around in the spirit of experimentation, it’s clear the camera is going to be ace but it is not quite good enough to make up for my lack of talent. A theme you could apply to the TWENTY – yep count ’em – bikes I have owned since this madness started in 2000. And they are just the ones I could find photos of. Still keeps the money supply humming nicely.

This is the oldest bike I own; a veteran at almost two years. Aside from the pedals, a bit of the drivechain and the seatpost, none of it mirrors the bespoke, hand picked parts build that was originally delivered.

It’s just a hobby, ok? And I’ve got some things to say on that later 🙂

Duckin’ hell, that was wet.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding2 Comments

You may be astonished to hear that I occupy a very important position in the firm. But please restrain your flabber from gasting once you understand that this lofty perch is merely geographical. While some lesser lights toil in open plan darkness, bribery and sustained sprout induced germ warfare secured me the rights to a window seat. So a bank of mucky windows separate me from London city smog and the occasional desperate urge to leave the building from the seventh floor.

In summer, this expanse of glass focuses significantly more dangerous radiation than an industrial microwave, except during rainstorms where each watery drop mocks my soon to be moist personage. Personal grim reapers the lot of them and “ if you listen very carefully “ you can hear them malevolently whisper he’s mine, mine, MINE.

The drumming nemesis of my homeward commute was perfectly accompanied by the head to desk counterpoint beat of a man who is coming to terms with a recent courageous decision to remove the mudguards from his bikes. The compelling rationale behind this I tell you what, why not do a rain dance instead choice was “ and I’m sure you’ll be laughing almost as much as I am here “ because they were aesthetically disagreeable.

So having splashed through forty five minutes of elephant trunk playtime, my entire being graded a level of immersion not seen since the Man From Atlantis hit our screens back in 79. Mark Harris and I began to share some disturbing similarities as desperate Darwinism was adding oxygenating gills and a food processing system based on osmosis. The key difference was tho was while old water-boy seemed to be enjoying his lot, I was having a properly miserable time.

If this is wet, I was ———————————————-> and still heading in that direction of travel. The only difference between riding and drowning was a bloody minded refusal to die of water damage. My shoes were a watersport park for a party of lemmings, my arse was pebble dashed by a one inch tyre bringing the waterwheel bang up to date, and my bum crack could easily double as a deep water harbour, and I’m bloody sure hundreds of Cuban refugees were queuing up to dock.

After about an eternity, it was finally over and I waded indoors to the delight of the children who were broadly convinced that Daddy looked far better as a duck. I think that’s what they said, it was pretty close to how I felt anyway.

Worryingly, there are some who live amongst us “ similar and yet not the same because they are missing a vital organ; to whit, one brain. Spot them as they enjoy nay embrace this type of wet and miserable riding. This is the same therapy group who espouse the joy of winter mud enemas and apparently take perverse pleasure in racing around a field with five hundred other recently escaped nutters.

These are dangerous people and should not be approached.

The forecast for the remainder of the week reads like this; Rain, More rain, Misery, Trench foot, Mudslides, Creation of inland seas. So I’m off to the zoo for some surreptitious animal gathering and then onward to the Boatyard.

So that was summer was it? Thanks.

Today is not a good day to die*

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding3 Comments

It’s been a while since a complete stranger has made my acquaintance in that thoroughly modern manner of trying to kill me.

Last time, a bloke high on testosterone but low on intelligence failed to co-ordinate a mobile phone, a road junction and his optical collision detection system. Before that, a rather pleasant older gentleman just ran me over

So it’s a bit of a relief to have one in the bag while maintaining a firm grip on all my limbs if not my sanity. There is the Alex Two Bomb Randomisation Theory at play here; if you smuggle a bomb onto an aeroplane, statistically you’re in great shape as what is the chance of SOMEONE ELSE DOING THE SAME? Pretty damn clever eh?

So by nearly, but not quite, having an accident today makes it statistically improbable that my twitching form be impaled under a set of designer bull bars tomorrow. Oh and before the protractor and pocket protector brigade wade in to explain that this is total nonsense, because each incident operates in a single randomisation context “ I KNOW OK, but it makes me feel better anyway.

Hyde Park Corner has been packed full of excitement and danger since the inauguration of my weekly battle with the uncaring motorised killers of our great capital. Short lights on the rotary are balanced by a long set when you’re trying to join, but this is largely irrelevant since everyone jumps each set. I know this but with misery enjoying the company of being pissed on and pissed off , I incautiously speared a front wheel into the lionised tarmac of the apparently red-held traffic.

Not being totally insane, it was a manoeuvre censured with an emergency double take, into which a belligerent taxi driver barged through the long lit red in an apparent attempt to terminate my worthless existence. I parked the bike on his bumper and my face in his window so we could discuss the merits of such an approach.

I was forthright. I may have tended to the frank and possibly even spilled over into vexed. During one diplomatically tricky exchange, there was just the possibility of a stray into quite annoyed. In Non Violent Conflict Resolution classes, it’s not clear to me where You fuckhead, you stupid fucking clown, you arrogant fat, stupid arse fits into using passive language to settle the incident to everyone’s satisfaction. But I tried if not punching the twat counts.

Even above the shouting, I could dimly here a hundred horns belting out their staccato umbrage. The cycle killer couldn’t move since my bike was still resting on his bumper and my hand was resting somewhat more firmly on his jacket lapel. And with all this at 5:20pm on one of the busiest junction in town, not much was moving behind us either. Shame.

We eventually parted, not with kind words, but with threats and promises that next time there would be proper violence. I was properly white hot, vibratingly angry “ unable to stop shaking or construct a well argued or even a grammatically correct sentence. I filled the gaps with lots of swear words though and that felt good.

But here’s the thing; it’ll make no difference at all. I can’t be cowed by the motorist however much they try to cattle me, and the guy in the cab will never see cyclists as anything but annoyingly slow bugs waiting to be mowed down and crushed. What’s worse, bugs that don’t even pay road tax.

Got to stay out there though. Otherwise it’d feel like letting them win.

* I always wanted that bloody Klingon to get the fear and heroically intone today is a good day to get pissed and fondle innocent tribbles.

Hummer Time.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding5 Comments

Shuffling embarrassed into my inbox this morning was this horror which understandably put me right off my breakfast.

Arrgh, my eyes

It’s a Hummer Mountain Bike and you can read all about it here. There is not sufficient mathematics in the world to begin to count the number of things wrong with it. But almost worse than that is this; the marketing bollocks which accompanied that photo.

I’ve seen some outlandish claims made for mountain bikes over the years but this one doesn’t just take the biscuit, it nicks the whole bloody packet and makes a hostile bid for the manufacturer.

All HUMMER Tactical Mountain Bikes use Montague’s patented military folding system, developed to allow Paratroopers an easy exit from military aircraft with a full-size mountain bike

I’m sure you “ like me “ have many a time lamented the lack of ambition from your bike designers. So how useful would it be to be able to leap out of a plane knowing your robust off road transport has been thoughtfully designed to fall out of a Hercules transport plane? That has to be the most pointless Unique Selling Point since the SDLP combined two power crazed lunatics into a single political party.

Obviously if this behemoth ever did go on active service, chances are it’d land on your head, killing you instantly and creating a tidal wave that’d make the current rising sea levels look like a bit of heavy surf.

And yet, the copy spares itself no embarrassment whatsoever with what follows:

Developed for extreme riding, the HUMMER Tactical Mountain Bike can be stored inside your HUMMER, car, boat, plane, closet or wherever else you stash your gear.

Or possibly up your arse, which should be the immediate and final resting place of the advertising blurb.

If one was spending useful time nailing colours to masts, mine would translate to unreconstructed bike snobbery and irrational hatred of folding cycles. But in this case, it is perfectly justifiable to lampoon the whole ludicrous concept with it’s cheap, heavy components, pointless front fork, spindly yet weighty frame and “ to cap an almost uncappable folly “ a price tag of£750.

You could buy a car for that. Or at least a nice bike. And – although I honestly believed nothing would ever put me in a position to say this – it is EVEN WORSE than the Sinclair Wheeled Death Machine

Pass me the angle grinder. It’d be an act of selfless public service.

Crashes to Crashes..

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

…Dust to Dust. Somehow in April, I managed to ride 23 days out of a possible 30 and crashed only twice – both on my apparently healed knee and obviously still-buggered shoulder. I’m seeing this as progression of a sort mainly because, while it wasn’t entirely painless, hardly any hospitals or whimpering were involved.

Global warming is – and I’m cutting out some of the more complex science here – a bugger if you like you ice caps frozen and your eastern counties above the water table. But tending to the selfish, it’s doing wonders for my tan and the trails are rock hard and dusty. And I’ve carried out sufficient face surfing, ground chewing and bone bruising research so you don’t have to.

We’ve ridden some old favourites and some long abandoned, scarcely remembered little treasures. One of these started in a time lapsed village, last visited by the real world when hot and cold running tweed were installed back in 1932. The local shop teleported me back a couple of generations with frighteningly dusty corners presenting foodstuffs never seen since we dispensed with rations books. Even more worryingly was a vast display of “hosiery” including all the support stockings you may ever want. That’s none then is it?

My coffee was served on an ornamental platter, accompanied by a selection of dusty biscuits and – I kid you not – an assortment of paper doilies. All that was missing from this scene were some post Edwardian ladies who breakfast and a retired major sporting a dangerously stiff moustache and a cravat. Tomorrow’s People eat your bloody heart out (am I the only one old enough to remember that. Yes? Oh, smashing)

And with all this riding, I could be getting within sweating distance of fit – luckily my recent ‘pringle tube devastation in a single sitting” habit allied to an extension to the beer fridge has kept some nonsense at bay. Tonight, I stole a late afternoon ride to rekindle some lovin’ with my rather fantastic full suss. You see my head had been not so much been turned as owl wrenched through 180 degrees by something stiff, nimble and frisky. And there’s a set of adjectives which are universally positive unless the first applies to you, and the remainder describe something normally accompanied by mint sauce.

Here are some photos taken from my DumbPhone ™. I hate camera phones, they are a waste of time and processor but – and I’m grudgingly admitting this under duress – they do take better photos than say, your toenail, when you forget your proper camera.

There was beer to finish of course. But you would expect nothing less.

This post could have just been entitled “Bikes are ACE” and many innocent electrons would have been saved. But it wouldn’t have been proper hedgehog tho and standards – low as they are – need to be maintained 🙂

Performance Enhancing Drugs

On By AlexIn BikesLeave a comment

You didn’t for a second think I would have anything relevant, insightful or – even – accurate to say about the Ivan Basso affair, or sport related drug taking in general. It seems cycling is, sadly, in the vanguard of medicinally boosted cheating and while that is clearly to be lamented, I appear to have found a legal and (sort of) safe version of EPO.

It’s beer. A subject that twenty years plus of copious and unstinting practical research has put very close to my heart. Well down a bit and bulge but you get the idea. Normally mixing beer with anything requiring co-ordination, swift reactions or a modicum of caution is a recipe for the kind of disaster that always hurts more in the morning. You know the sort of thing, beer fuelled hedge jumping at 11am becomes Nuragen fueled back pummelling when sobriety takes over.

And yet, for all that selfless experimentation, I may have missed something. Riding last night while practicing the “be the ball” sporting analogy (although I’m more “be the rubbish bloke with ‘facial scars by hedge’ kind of athlete“), my concentration was shattered when a contact lens decided to “be the trail“. It stuck for a tantalising second on my sunglasses before a gust of wind guaranteed its freedom. I was now “being the bat” riding at about half pace while my brain tried to reconcile one sharp image and one blurry one.

It wasn’t doing very well and neither was I so calling in the wife support vehicle was the chosen alternative to a depth perceptionless headplant into a spikey branch. Skillfully, we crafted a fine combination of mobile phone signals, a handful of cash and a pub as our enforced rest area. Being almost completely helpless in the face of alcohol, my worthy “Just an orange juice please mate” was spookily transmogrified into “pint of best and the jumbo bag of pork scratchings to go“.

And go we did, leaving my wife and two shivering kids to finish their drinks while we span cold legs up a steep road hill while beer sloshed unpleasantly in our bellies. But then we turned downhill and my inhibitions and irrational fear of left hand corners wafted away on a rear facing organic jet pack of processed hops. Dutch Courage it is sometimes called although “London IPA” would be a better description as the bike swooped majestically betwixt tree and shrubbery and – unfettered by panic braking – floated over rooty obstacles with barely a whimper.

Nothing to do with me of course. I was merely whiffy ballast providing the music on hold. So if anyone was enjoying a late evening stroll in the quite lovely woods of the Chilterns last night, I apologise for the smell of second hand beer and a crippling rendition of “My Way” arranged for strangled cat. So impressed with the power of the pint was I, that we went home and had several more. And the way in which I fearlessly attacked the stairs on the way to bed just further proved that beer is in fact a performance enhancing drug.

So I’m trading in the Camelbak for a rucksack mounted “Watney’s party Seven” and reprising my internal pub singer. You know, I think I’m onto to something here!