The Delivery Service: Too Posh for Post

Today I seized the opportunity to get a little cycling in despite the variable weather, sleet, sun and icy wind. My wife had printed out a pile of leaflets about the village preschool open day and had to deliver them in the nearby village of Telisford. We were down at her mother and father’s house using the cutter to chop the leaflets into shape, there was some debate as to who was going to go to do the leaflet drop. When getting the car out was mentioned I immediately stepped in with an environmentally friendly, two-wheeled, solution. The father-in-law was just starting a relay series of lunches for the various relatives gathered at the house and it looked like mine would be a while so I elected to do the leafleting before eating. I rushed back to our house, put on my waterproof and Hi-rez vest then broke out the Brompton. The Lemond was looking a bit dejected so I’m going to have to take it out soon, the Brompton has certainly been getting all my attention recently, its status slowly ballooning on the category cloud in the right hand column of The Highway Cycling Group blog. As I had my enormous trousers on, I clipped up to avoid chain snag, I looked like a cycling Cossack. With the leaflets in the bag on the front I set off down the road, a nice freewheel down to The Mill. Telisford is atop a steep hill, in fact the church and one house is at the summit, the rest of the village descends down a no-through road, culminating in a steep series of old and uneven steps down to Telisford Mill, recently converted to generate electricity. I quite enjoyed leaving the bike at the gates of these large houses and crunching over the gravel to the front doors. However I rapidly became annoyed by the distinct lack of letterboxes. Some of the houses had many converted outbuildings, stables, up to six cars, but not a letterbox in sight! Are they too posh to receive post? Do they have some secret means of receiving mail? The final stagger down the steps to the mill ended with me wandering hopelessly round someones garden until they came out and asked what I was up to. Ah, hand delivery, just like the old days. The Mill was churning out the Kilowatts, I could hear its whine fading as I puffed up to the Brompton waiting by Crabb Cottage (who do have a letterbox). Then up the hill and right towards Farleigh Hungerford, pausing to take a photo of a seriously ploughed field.

By now I was longing for that lunch, I wondered if it was ready yet. Just a few more houses to go, but quite spaced out (the houses, not me). The final house was about ten feet over the crest of the first hill towards Farleigh, the impossibly picturesque Lodge. It’s for sale, three bedrooms and splendidly isolated. Hooray, they had a letterbox though it was extremely small. Luckily, the leaflet I was delivering was also tiny.

Job done. Then it was almost downhill all the way until the in-laws’ house, where I tucked into a plate of eggs, bacon, chips and beans laced with HP sauce.

Now that’s good living!

The Little Bike

The Little Bike that the village children
learn to ride on

Recently we were given a special little bike by one of the families in the village. This little bike has been passed round several children who have all learned to ride on it. There are at least four that I know of, but I think the bike has been in the village for quite a while, so it could be many more kids that have gone through the whole rite of passage on this bike. Now it is the turn of our youngest boy. However, the bike itself was looking a little worse for wear. So the first thing I did was cut off the manky foam grips (or at leasst what remained of them) and replace them. Then I sorted out a new brake block and adjusted the brakes so a child could easily work them, brake handle reach was pulled in and the biting time shortened by tightening the cable. The chain wass a mess, I’m not sure when it last saw oil, so a good soak in WD40 was followed by an oily rag wipedown and re-oiling with lube on every link. The chain guard is missing its cover and the remaining part is split so I will either have to fashion a replacement or strip the whole thing off. The bike is now ridable again.

I love the idea that so many children have learned to ride on this little bike, nowadays it seems that everything has to be bought new and disposed of once it’s finished with. Passing a bike round is a tremendous community activity, no one actually owns that bike any longer. It reminds me of an article in the American magazine Bicycling that I read last year, though the bike featured in that article was a little more stylish. We will do our best to look after the bike and pass it on once our youngest has finished with it, it would be lovely if the bike keeps helping children for years to come. I think with a little TLC it should do.

Aspice Christophorum et Tutus Viam Carpe – ding ding!

I was in Salisbury yesterday, for work purposes, and had to go to Waitrose on the way home to pick up some chow for tea. As regular readers of The Highway Cycling Group will know, I like to take photos of bikes that are chained up outside shops. I struck some gold this time. I saw an old lady, dressed in a big coat and a woolly hat locking up her bike, which looked like quite a nice traditional style roadster of the sit up and beg variety. As she wondered into the store I took a closer look at her steed. It was laced with rust, the cables, once white, were discoloured, and much of the protective paint had come off the basket. In time honoured tradition of old lady’s bikes, the tatty old seat was covered in classic style with a plastic carrier bag. However, the handlebars had a beautiful shiny bell mounted on them. It was quite large, and as I moved in close, I could see it had a St Christopher on there, surrounded by the words “Aspice Christophorum et Tutus Viam Carpe” – which I guess means something like “Look at St Christopher and travel on safely“. St Christopher of course being the patron saint of travellers, but he’s also revered by athletes; mariners; ferrymen; people who carry things; archers; automobile drivers; bachelors; boatmen; bookbinders; epilepsy; floods; fruit dealers; fullers; gardeners; lorry drivers; mariners; market carriers; porters; sailors; surfers; and transportation workers.

Fabulous! A search showed that these bells, often made in Germany, come up from time to time on ebay, fetching around USD 20 or so. Nice. This one was so shiny in comparison to the rest of the bike, it looked like maybe it was a gift for the old lady. I hope it was.

Pootle to the Garage

Just a very quick ride today. The sun was trying to get through the clouds as I freewheeled out of the village on my Brompton. In no particular hurry I made my way over the A36 and up the old Bath Road hill into Beckington. About four fifths of the way up the hill I suddenly noticed an old Milestone. I’d seen this one before, but then it had been obscured by brambles all summer and I couldn’t remember whereabouts it was on the hill. Strangely, someone had actually recently cut the brambles right back. This hill is almost un-used, it was once part of the main road before the A36 was sent past Beckington, so there is no real practical call to see this very old milestone, however, I think it’s lovely that someone trimmed the brambles out the way, it gives the hill back a little of its dignity.

The lichen has all but covered up the lettering, which looks like it was once painted on. I suspect this was once a whiteish stone, as there is a similar stone on Rode Hill, although in much better condition.

I wonder who cut that bramble back, and why.

Novemberfive Bike Indicators

Legendary Engineer Jez of Novemberfive has pulled off a neat new project. It’s an indicator light system for his bike! Awesome work, I can’t wait to see it in action.

Check it out here.

Of Occult Cyclewear, Slayer, RPGs and Cycling

Last night I came across the website of a cycle inspired clothing company. If you think you may have a penchant for cycling tinged with elements of the occult (Laura), I’m talking Process Church of the Final Judgment reliance on neat graphics, then you have to get your dammned self over to http://www.everybodylies.net/ and see the fantastic t-shirts, caps and patches on offer. It appears to be a one man operation – rooted hard and fast in the SF courier/fixie scene. Here’s a photo displaying Lies’ influences:

More than a sniff of Freemasonary and hey! Slayer’s first full album Show No Mercy. Often derided as ‘immature’ and even ‘laughable’ I have a massive soft spot for this album, I own it on cassette and as far as I’m concerned it’s all killer and no filler, in fact I’ve just realised it’s the only cassette I still play. I even like Metal Storm/Face The Slayer.

“You see me lift the axe and it plunges through your shield…”

and my favourite line…

“Now, I can freeze your burning eyes!”

The song, about a warrior who is trapped in some sort of twilight world, locked in combat with a demonic being that prowls through a mist-filled maze, reminded me of Role-Playing Games.

Bear with me here, this is only a slight digression from cycling as you’ll see in a minute. I wish to salute the late Gary Gygax. Gygax was the co-inventor of Dungeons and Dragons – if that interests you at all, then read this brilliant article about his passing from the NY Times that futurist and publisher Betageek sent me. I’m not going to write an obit or anything, partially because I didn’t get on with D&D, I was strictly Warhammer and Call of Cthulhu, but I acknowledge that he pretty much created the fantasy roleplaying game and as such is worthy of great praise from me. RPGs had a huge effect on my life, but in order to play them with any regularlity I had to get from Hilmarton to Calne, where our gamesmaster lived.

At the age of fourteen, hammering down the Swindon Road was pretty much out of the question, there were regular accidents on that fast and in places narrow main road. So the way to get to Calne by bike was via Compton Bassett. The rider would have a pleasant pedal through gentle country lanes, finally to be spat out onto the Marlborough road just as it hit Calne at the start of the 30 mph zone, relative safety, but it did make the journey about five miles instead of three, and put in a pretty serious hill to the equation. As I got bolder, and my player character (a psychotic dwarf called Mad Morgan Khazias) entered deeper and deeper into the fiendish campaign poured out from the mind of our gamesmaster (Mark Johnson), I began taking my life in my hands along the main road. Many’s the time an artic lorry would scream past me having just emerged from behind a bend, so close that I could have reached out and run my hands down its side. I had no helmet, the only protection my head had was provided by a cushioning of imaginings; orcs, elves, dragons, daemons so that I cycled along blissfully and didn’t consider the perils of the road. The too fast traffic, the blind corners, the massive, clanking lorries that seemed almost out of control as they hurtled along.

The way back was the old route via Compton, a slow meander home, time to think on the day’s adventuring. The rattle of D10s across Mark’s mum’s kitchen table, the acidic taste of cheap lemonade, banter with friends, battles won and lost, fat purses of gold pieces. My mum wasn’t too keen on the RPGs, there were numerous scare stories in the media about kids commiting suicide or murder as a result of playing them. So my mum thought they were dangerous. Ironically she thought I was going for three to four hour rides on my own on Sunday afternoons, an activity much more dangerous to a 14 year old (pre mobile phone) than sitting down with my mates in Mark’s kitchen, battling through a fantasy world using the power of our collective imagination, a rulebook and some many-sided dice.

Me: I draw my sword and point it to the heavens, I lean back and shout to the sky “Gary Gygax I salute you!”

GM: [rolls two d10, consults rulebook and notes] hmmm, the tiny readership of your blog has no idea what you’re talking about.

Respect to Shearer, Chiles and Cracknell- Sport Relief

From the BBC Sport Relief website:

Against all odds Newcastle and England football legend Alan Shearer and BBC presenter Adrian Chiles have completed their epic Sport Relief Super Cycle.
The duo were set a challenge of cycling 335 miles from Newcastle to London, via West Bromwich, in only two days.

After completing day one, riding 186 miles from Newcastle to Burton-on-Trent they still had it all to do.

But as Sport Relief kicked off at Television Centre on Friday the pair arrived on time to complete their task.

That is an epic ride, and a fantastic achievement by any standards. To give some idea, around 150 miles in one day is the maximum amount riders in the Tour de France will do. These guys had five hours sleep then got back on the bikes again.

Amazing work – and a great result for sport relief, £371,065

And also an astonishing achievement by James Cracknell, who has rowed, cycled and swum his way from the U.K. to Africa.  Spending an incredible 108 hours in the saddle over 10 days, more details here.

This is Herculean stuff, well done gentlemen.

My First ‘Proper’ Bike

Everything about the bike looked heavy, from the metal mudguards and massive deraileur to the steel rack and thick tubing. The too-wide drop handlebars were covered in some strange deteriorating, rubberised red tape with suicide levers hanging limply and ineffectively beneath. Rust-spattered cables slewed off the hoods at awkward angles that spoke of improvised repairs by gradual shortening. Dull black paint-work, flaking decals and a maker’s badge so nondescript that my memory would eventually hold not even the faintest possibility of recalling it’s providence, even to my untrained eye the bike looked somewhat woeful. Yet as I stood watching my father begin his negotiations with the assistant in the secondhand shop, I was holding my breath and crossing my fingers, hoping the bike would shortly be mine. Earlier, having checked the bike over (a shake of the handlebars, a spin of the wheels, a surprisingly smooth run through the five gears followed by a tut as pulling on the brakes had no effect whatsoever), my father had surreptitiously removed the price tag and now, he was slowly screwing the card into a ball behind his back as he spoke, I watched the biro numbers disappear, £15, before he casually slipped it into his back pocket.

“So ten pounds is the asking price, yes” It wasn’t a question, the assistant looked confused.

“Uh, yes”

“But the brakes don’t work so let’s call it five”

Minutes later we were wheeling my ‘new’ bike towards the carpark in Devizes, my hand was almost shaking as it rested on the saddle.

Previous to this bike, I had owned only one bicycle, the one I learned to ride on, my Vindec. This was a sit-up and beg roadster with a nasty white saddle, but a firey red paintjob (this was let down by the mustard-coloured metal mudguards), basically I had killed it before I had outgrown it. This poor machine had been ridden it into not only the ground, but various trees, rocks, hedges and streams. It was the mid-eighties, bicycling for the early teens in the Wiltshire village of Hilmarton had revolved around straight handlebar roadsters with a single sprocket freewheel. One or two of the group had a Sturmey-Archer three gear hub, and one lucky bastard from a well off family had a BMX. Our main pastime was riding these heavy bikes at speed down the bridleway that led out of the village, down a steep, root-infested mud and gravel singletrack and out the other side onto a country lane. We stripped the mudguards off so the wheels wouldn’t jam when clogged with mud and lowered the saddles to keep them out of the way when we stood up to allow our legs to absorb the ruts and bumps on the trail. None of us had seen or heard of a mountainbike and we rarely ventured beyond the confines of the village on our bikes.

My ‘new racer’, as I called it, (though clearly it was an absolutely bottom-end tourer), opened up the surrounding roads to me, suddenly I had five gears, a rear rack, a kickstand and a place to put a pump. Not only that, but, as my father pointed out sternly, this bike would have to be locked up when I went into a local shop. It was that desirable!

This bike, riddled as it was with faults, from its regularly snapping cables, its grinding bottom bracket, to its rattling front mud-guard (ripped off in the end), carried me for a good many years, and hundreds of miles with The Highway Cycling Group. Finally it rusted through, abnout two weeks after I rode it into the English Channel from the French side, blissfully unaware that salt-water will eagerly devour metal.

I last saw the bike as it slid into the pile of rusted, mangled metal on the back of a rag-and-bone man’s lorry. Every three months or so this battered vehicle would slowly crawl through the village with a loud hailer mounted atop the cab, squawking “OldIronAnyol’Iron?OldIronAnyol’Iron?OldIronAnyol’Iron?” in a squealing tone that sounded like metal grinding on metal. Years before, the same lorry had taken away my father’s useless old roadster, prompting him to buy his ten-gear tourer and start The Highway Cycling Group.

The rear wheel of my bike span slowly as it was absorbed into the mass of tangled scrap, the lorry continued on its way, finally disappearing round the corner into Church Road. I stood for sometime on the pavement with my hands in my pockets as the metallic voice, laced with feedback, gradually faded into the warm summer air, absorbed by the distant melancholy sound of reversing propellers from a transport plane taxi-ing on the runway at RAF Lyneham four miles away.

I cannot remember what I was thinking at that moment, only what I saw and heard. Perhaps I felt sorrow, maybe acceptance, it’s possible I was wondering how I would get around without a ride as I can’t even remember if I had my next bike by then.
But I do think it’s true that you never forget your first ‘proper’ bike.

Rust In Peace.

Mystery of the Orange Shopper: Solved(ish).

“Thank you for your e-mail.

I can confirm that there was a non UK promotion in Spring 2005 that used
bikes to promote the launch of a crunchy cream bread spread. This product is
not available in the UK.

The bikes were sourced from www.thoemus.ch/index.php?id=226

Unfortunately we are unable to advise how one of these promotional bikes has
come to be in the UK.

I hope that this information is helpful.

Customer Relations
Ovaltine UK”

For the previous entry on the Mysterious Orange Shopper, click here

Cycling through a gale in search of a cup of tea

A distinct lack of teabags in the house saw me venturing out in the high winds in search of the magic leaves for a brew-up. The fact that I was freewheeling uphill suggested to me that the return trip, into the wind, might be a little difficult. I hurtled out of the village with a whirlwind of leaves, grass and twigs blowing around the road, onto the Wingfield Straight with the wind pushing against my left side. Luckily I presented a thin profile to the raging gusts and I kept my line on the road. Turning right at the shrine, I had the wind behind me and was blown along the road to Trowbridge itself. I raced past the roundabout for Broadmead and continued to where the Bradford road joins up, going all the way round the church that sits on a traffic island. My right pedal grounded slightly with an audible scraping sound as I leant hard into the bend, still pedalling. I cut across a no through road and took a hard left onto the bike path. Over another main road, avoiding the massive roundabout by the large Tesco’s, now I was in the backstreets.

Here the wind was less steady, less predictable; gargantuan gusts howled round corners of 1930s red brick houses. Frequent patches of waste ground spewed out clumps of dried, white, grass which skittered and raced about the hammered tarmac, Wiltshire tumbleweed. A scally crested the railway bridge in front of me on a full-sus mtb, his eyes alert, looking round intently, for what? Escape routes? Opportunities? On seeing me he looked down, spitting hard onto the ground  and rose from his saddle to pump the cranks before passing, eyes flicking up once, wolfish, then he was round the corner and away.

The bridge was in poor repair, crushed kerbstones and chipped caps that spoke of wide loads and tight-squeezes, back a bit, left hand down, steady, woah woah WOAAH! On the other side the road just gave up, disintegrating into gravel and bramble. Lamposts leant into the wind, which sang its banshee cry through sagging telephone wires. By the side of the tracks a trolley was choked in brambles, obviously it had been there much longer than the brand new, spike-tipped, galvenized steel fence dividing the walkway from the trainline. No one had thought to pull the trolley out while putting the fence up. An avenue of stunted blackthorns festooned with ripped plastic bags; tattered fruits, noisily flapping, funneled me into the maze of roads backing onto Tesco’s. White paint was splashed over the asphalt, a decorator’s accident, now etched into the surface of the road, white tyre prints radiated out thirty yards or so before fading to grey.

Into the relative calm of the store, emptier than usual. I had the Brompton and  the front bag in the trolley together, no need for a bike lock. Pretty soon I was back outside, the bag laden with groceries including some excellent quality tea. The return journey promised to be hard work, I spent as much time as possible weaving through the backstreets and houses while the wind probed at me where it could.

Finally, Trowbridge spat me out onto the A361 to face the gale, now at last the wind had me where it wanted me. Three miles of agonisingly pushing the pedals, moving forward slowly, almost down to walking pace. I kept with it, a steaming hot mug of tea appearing in my mind’s eye like some sort of grailquest vision. I guess I am a hardcore cyclist, not in the traditional sense of putting in lots of hours or miles on the bike, but I am hardcore in the sense that I will take on the A361 in a force 7-8 gale. The light over the fields appeared silvery where the grass was blown flat in waves, exposing the pale underleaves momentarily so that the landscape appeared liminal, even unreal. It kept my mind from over-thinking the sluglike pace I was crawling home at. Indeed, it seemed that soon I was slipping into the lowest gear and trickling steadily up Rode Hill.

You can be certain that the first thing I did on arrival back at base, was to switch on the kettle. Never, and I mean never, did a cup of tea taste so damn good.