Bike to Work

I have more than one bike, so I also have the luxury that they’re not all completely sensible. Trixie the Fixie & Christine have no mudguards (fenders). They also both have skinny tyres and the only way to carry any luggage on them is to put it on your back. On Trixie, there aren’t...
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Today was Day 3 of the BikeAbility instructors’ course I’m on. We did lots of practical stuff, planning lessons, role-playing teaching of the various road manoeuvres for level 2, etc on some quiet roads near North Shields. Then for the last half hour of the day, we headed out for a group ride, with everyone...
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I remember about, oh, eight years ago, I gave up my three vices for Lent - caffeine, chocolate and alcohol. It’s not that I’m religious at all, but denial of the senses is certainly good for the soul. Or whatever we have if we don’t have souls. I was expecting the end result of all...
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OK - it’s fantasy shopping time. No, not that kind of fantasy shopping. Here’s the scene - you’re a senior manager of a medium-sized private company employing 60 people across three offices that are spread across a town, each office being no more than 4 miles apart. You’ve generated £9,000 of savings from green initiatives,...
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I’m sure this question’s been asked and answered before, but I got put on the spot in a meeting today: What sort of bike should people have for riding to work? Just to be clear about this - we’re talking about the 75% of people at the organisation I was visiting, who live within 5 miles...
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So at the weekend I fixed the slow puncture in my back tyre. It’d been a slow puncture because the inner tube had had the slime treatment. Any. Way. I followed the advice of the guy from the bike shop, and used the old inner tube as a tyre liner. After cutting the valve off, I...
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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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It’s the bane of anyone who rides a bike. You get your trusty steed out, ready to set off to wherever, only to notice that you’ve got a flat. Or everything’s going beautifully with your trip, when you hear that dreaded hisssss, and the handling suddenly goes all weird. Punctures. Bah! You can probably guess...
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You can’t say that we don’t ask the big questions here! So. Here’s my problem. I have this image in my mind of a point in the future, where there’ll be integrated networks for people on bikes in all British towns and cities. It will be possible to get pretty much from your front door...
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Like John The Monkey said in a recent comment, people need better writers for this stuff - that’s such a lame headline! So anyway, I’d thought that winter was over, that as a wise politician once said, the green shoots of recovery are just around the corner. To prove it, I rode in to my...
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