'A'-List Blogs

There was an interesting question raised on the Commute By bike blog yesterday, as to why the world at large seems to view cyclists as “Kooks, Freaks and Weirdos”. Basically in societies where the car has usurped the bicycle as the mode of transport of choice about town, people riding bikes are very much...
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This made me laugh today - it was on Copenhagenize.com, and in a way sums up how it feels to ride to the shops instead of walking or driving: I don’t know if you think like me, but I was surprised by the second half - I thought the bike was going to disappear from...
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I was working in Wallsend this morning, and then had to pop into Newcastle for a couple of things, finishing up with dropping something off with Carlton Reid. Whenever he’s come to my house he’s come along the Coast Road - it’s arrow-straight, and runs from the edge of Newcastle to, uh, the coast...
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Over lunch today, I had a flick through the Sunday Times, and found this article by Emma Smith about the perils of saddle sores, and how if you don’t deal withthem, they can get really nasty (the phrase “drained by a physician” was used - what if you’re not married to a physician? ...
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. . . and a busy day. Wife’s abandoned me for a week’s gallivanting in That London. She’s staying with VonSmallHaussen, and according to the detailed & extensive itinery I’ve been left (she claims it’s so I’ll know where she is in case of emergencies. I think it’s to rub in what a great...
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It turns out that this sort of thing cuts both ways. I had a good laugh at French breakfast cereals when I was skiing the other week. Yes, that’s right kids: Hard drugs make for the breakfast of champions. So help yourself to as much smack & crack as you want! Anyway, if you don’t live...
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I’ve been called all sorts of things in my time, many of them not particularly flattering, though many quite justified. But I have thick skin - something that probably comes from being an engineer. Unless insults are printed out on tractor-feed paper & backed up by a lot of calculations, I just don’t understand...
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On Thursday, there was no ski school, so Daughter and I got to do some distance together on our skis. Like Algernond with his Petite, I found this exhausting, so I can only imagine how tiring it was for Daughter. She can ski - turns starting to parallel-up, and the ability to snow-plough to a...
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It probably is. But this is a blog post from David Hembrow in the land of bicycles and culturally-ingrained tolerance that I agree with so whole-heartedly that I am going to re-post the whole thing here. As far as ‘fair use’ goes, it’s right up there though. So in the spirit of fair use, I...
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This via Tom Vanderbilt’s blog and the BBC today - crafty Nigerians are dodging new laws to force them and their passengers to wear helmets. But far from civil disobedience, they’ve got a cunning plan: Make their own helmets from hollowed-out pumpkins. No, really. The country’s unregulated moto-taxi service has particular problems as helmets are expensive,...
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