Something Which Has Always Puzzled Me

I can understand people who choose to wear cycle helmets.

I can understand people who choose not to wear cycle helmets.

What I don't understand is people who carry a helmet around, dangling off their handlebars. What are they saving it for, some particularly gnarly bit of their route to work ? Or perhaps they just enjoy the extra challenge of having some extra weight on their handlebars to complicate their steering?

Watching Next Year's Tour

The route for the 2010 Tour has been announced and Rotterdam has been chosen for le Grand Depart. The Bike Show has some nice ideas for getting over there via Eurostar and bike, and watching the early stages in Holland. I'd be particularly tempted to see the stage in Brussels or maybe stage 3 from Wanze yo Arenberg Porte du Hainaut and combine it with a trip to the monasterey in Westvleteren to pick up some of their beer.

Having said that, I think an upcoming addition to the family may limit my future cycling jaunts :-)

Pants and more cycle cinema

There are many great things about riding a bike to work, but forgetting a change of pants and socks TWO DAYS IN A ROW is not one of them. There's only so many times you can ask your boss if you can pop out for 10 minutes to buy some underwear.

On a lighter note - the London Bike Film Festival opened last night and I went along to watch Breaking Away, the 1979 film about small-town American life, broken dreams and cycling. I'd not seen it before, but it was a lot of fun and more light-hearted than I expected. The climax of the film is, essentially, a bicycle relay race, complete with the competitors passing the bike from team-member to team-member. It was frankly, insane! Do such things exist, or was it just a dramatic invention for the purposes of the plot?

The festival is on for the rest of the weekend at the Barbican. I think Tour Des Legends looks particularly good. Get down there if you want to some more cycle-oriented movies; there was a great atmosphere last night, plus current British Road Race Champion, Kristian House was there.

Bike Films For The Bank Holiday

Tomorrow night, Monday, in Brockwell Park they're showing the fantastic Belleville Rendezvous, along with live music, a bike race and The Harder They Come (not sure about the bike connection with that one, I thought it was about reggae). More details here

And if you're looking for something more environmental, the Climate Camp in Blackheath is showing some films about sustainable transport tonight, Sunday, "when it gets dark" using bicycle generators! Go to the camp entrance (off Hare & Billett Road) and ask to be directed to the 'cyclology tent'.

Picture courtesy of "reynard"

London Bridge Bike Park

I've seen cycle parks in other cities (Bristol, Amsterdam) but not London until today. Luckily I have pretty good facilities at my office, but if you don't and work around the City, this could be a useful facility. Although, you will have to put up with the bell-end outside the "London Tombs" pretending to guillotine tourists.

Apparently there's one in Finsbury Park too.

Drookit!!

Wow! Did anyone else just get caught in that downpour? The Brixton Road was so bad that even the buses abandoned the bus lane for fear of drowning.

Still the Carradice ("that handbag" © my boss) proved exceptionally water-tight. Everything was still bone dry by the time I got home. Same couldn't be said for "other parts" of me. Times like these I wish Gore-tex shorts were less expensive and less "fetish" looking

Old Bikes

What better way to have a "lifestyle change", than to open a shop restoring vintage road bikes. I shall be cycling up to Sargent & Co in Finsbury Park soon, to check it out.