Where I Shop

. . . I have a memory like a sieve. I meant to post this a couple of days ago, just before your Champagne treasure hunt on bikes to celebrate the opening of your concession on Oxford Street in That London. Anyway . . . A big, big “Wooo!” to the very nice people at Cyclodelic,...
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It’s been a long time since I’ve ridden my road bike, Christine - last July in fact. So on Friday last week, I gave her a good spring clean and lubing. Along the way, I used the handy chain wear checking tool I bought to check her chain. Good thing too - it’d done...
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My copy of the Edinburgh Bicycle Cooperative’s spring cataolgue turned up in the post today. But rather than being in the usual boring polywrap, it was in a not-so-plain brown paper envelope. Sketches of all sorts of bikes on the front, and this mind map on the back: Cool! I love mind maps and ideas...
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Yesterday on the way back from taking our Huge Dalmatian for a walk, Daughter & I stopped off at the local Coop shop to pick up the paper. There’s always a parking problem here, with drivers ignoring the double yellow lines along Huddleston Street, so as to minimise their walking to the shop. Anyway, the...
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So last September I bought a tandem from Ebay. £50 for about a late ’70s Pashley beauty. It needed some tender loving care, so I . . . Dismantled it to the bare frame Stripped the paint by hand, and rubbed the frame down to the bare, shiny metal. Had a word with a friend who owns...
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What’s the correct thing to do when a driver’s lack of care puts you in their sights? It’s hard to tell if it was out-and-out bullying, or just a crap driver with no appreciation of the fact that bikes do move faster than a walking pace. This was on my way home from Newcastle this...
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I had to nip into Whitley Bay at lunchtime today to get a new strap for my watch. The old one had come unglued (for the second time), and the watch had fallen off my wrist and into the road a few days ago. Miraculously, it was undamaged! Anyway, while I was in the jewellers,...
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This probably isn’t something you do if you live somewhere where everyone rides a bike. But for the rest of us - for me anyway - it’s a bit of a novelty seeing someone else riding. Not as rare as seeing two-headed horses, but rare enough that I feel the need to acknowledge them with...
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So I’m almost cycling in ordinary clothes now. The exception is my footwear: Yes, these are industrial-grade safety shoes. Because, after all, cycling is dangerous, isn’t it? Actually, the reason I’m wearing this is that they’re my work shoes - I visit all sorts of factories, where you really do have to wear shoes with...
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You may have gathered that I got a new bike. It’s a Pashley Roadster Sovereign. That’s not a photo of my actual bike, but one just like it. I’m waiting for a decent sunrise over the sea to take my own photos and scoop the EcoVelo photograph prize. After much agonising, I’ve gone with my first...
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