Do The Right Thing

This thing about cyclists not stopping for red lights seems to go on an on and on. When you’re sitting inside your air-conditioned SUV / open-topped sports car / beaten-up 1987 Volvo, and you get to a red light, you have to stop. Everyone knows that - apart from minicab drivers. But then you see […]

Filed under: Road Safety, Bike Culture | 1 Comment »

This via UltraRob on Twitter. One of New York’s ‘finest’ assaulting a cyclist during a Critical Mass thing:

Full story on the New York Times’ City Room blog.
Cyclists are a minority group (less than 5% of the population), and in other circumstances similar to this, the result’s been rioting. Maybe it’s a good job that we’re […]

Filed under: Cycling, News, Cycle, Politics, Ranting, Assassination Attempts, Road Safety, Bike Culture | 2 Comments »

Cycling in to my client’s office this morning, I had two near misses - both situations that I could have almost certainly avoided by riding more assertively, and holding my line.
In the first, I was approaching roundabout, where the lane nearest the kerb splits into two - the left (3 in the picture) is for […]

Filed under: Cycle, Newcastle, Assassination Attempts, Whitley Bay, Road Safety | No Comments »

I’ve slowly become addicted to getting a daily dose of the comic strip, Yehuda Moon and The Kickstand Cyclery. It’s the story of two guys running a bike shop - each one of them representing opposite sides of cycledom. Joe, who seems to wear Lycra & ride head-down with a helmet perched on his bald […]

Filed under: Triathlon, Cycle, Assassination Attempts, Road Safety, Cleveland Steelman | No Comments »

On Saturday morning, I got up early (OK - early-ish), put the bike in the back of the car and drove down to Catterick to have a look around the Cleveland Steelman’s bike course. I’d programmed it into the satnav on my phone as an ‘itinerary’, with various waypoints setup to guide me round. Before […]

Filed under: Triathlon, IronMan?, Cycle, Road Safety, Cleveland Steelman | 2 Comments »

So here’s an alternative way to deal with drivers who cut you up, shout at you, throw things out of the window, or otherwise act like you really shouldn’t be on their road.
Be polite.
I found the original article by Bill Strickland via Tomorrow Morning’s Weather. His basic approach is to catch the offending driver, […]

Filed under: Motivation, Assassination Attempts, Road Safety, Bike Culture | 3 Comments »

Yesterday the weather was forecast to be mostly good, and I had a meeting scheduled with a client that my SatNav said was only 36 miles away by bike. Hmmm . . . with fuel prices now at £1.30 a litre (that’s $9.60 for a US gallon) (So all you in the USA moaning […]

Filed under: News, Global Warming, Cycle, Environment, Newcastle, Whitley Bay, Road Safety, Gateshead | 3 Comments »

It must be. I mean, it’s just got to be CGI, hasn’t it? Maybe it’s a promo for the Ironman movie (see how we got the triathlon link in there?)
I hope it’s CGI, ‘cos otherwise it’s totally insane:

Found over at Tomorrow Morning’s Weather.

Filed under: IronMan?, Silly Stuff, Road Safety | 3 Comments »

The weather forecast for tomorrow is for snow. We won’t get much here (the sea keeps us nice and ‘warm’, but that’s a strictly relative term), and although I don’t mind riding on snowy roads, you do have to take things carefully. So any training session would end up being more about spending time with […]

Filed under: Cycle, Environment, Ranting, Wind, Road Safety, Gateshead | No Comments »

Help - this is getting ridiculous!
Our local TV news ran a piece based on my YouTube video about the [not quite, or in fact even near to] shortest bike lane in the country. Apparently I’m now “cycling groups in Gateshead”,  and to protect me from being mobbed / rising up like an angry mob on […]

Filed under: Cycling, News, Environment, Ranting, Road Safety, Gateshead | 4 Comments »