State of play

On occasions all too rare I get to leave my svelte black trousered desk jockey life in the office and, in a whirlwind of flying lycra and Coolmax, turn myself into SuperBex: the hardened cyclist, train passenger and enthusastic geographer. So when the question was asked whether one of us ought to attend a three-day exhibition in Birmingham, I volunteered. The first step was to look at the map and find out where I was headed. Strictly speaking, it wasn't really in Birmingham at all but on the periphery, squeezed in alongside an airport, a motorway, a dual carriageway and a railway. Immediately my thoughts turned to the logistics of getting there and back again. I certainly wasn't going to drive, and I wasn't going to fly because my environmental conscience wouldn't let me for so frivolous a distance. And at any rate, the closure of an ash-filled UK airspace was yet to happen. Taking a bus, even from home to Waverley, would undoubtedly leave me distinctly green and unwell, so bike + train was the happy solution. More mapping took place as I measured various routes from New Street Station out to the National Exhibition Centre, and I felt that a nice eight mile bike ride could open each day nicely. Of course, that depended on where I was to stay; I could keep it simple and look for a hostel, or a bed-and-breakfast perhaps, or I could leave it to the travel agent and end up invariably in a nondescript, functional travel inn somewhere.

Anyone can catch a train from A to B, even me. Of greater organisational prominence was taking my bike onboard unfamilar trains and, at the destination, knowing where to park it. The trains to Birmingham as I was already aware were Virgin Voyagers and Pendolinos, which have a cupboard with little hooks to hang your bike vertically, instead of a handy driving van trailer with tandem and recumbent-friendly bike racks. But for sheer convenience I decided I'd use my folding bike in case I needed to take it inside somewhere.

Given its location I supposed that it would have a lot of amenities for visitors, but the NEC website only told half the story, falling over itself to tell me how much car parking was available, the range of bus stops and coach rides, the ease of access from Birmingham International railway station and Birmingham International airport, the proximity of hotels ... and nothing whatsoever about cycling or walking. And yet the website for the exhibition itself asked everyone to travel by the most environmentally sound method that was practical. Not to be outdone, I e-mailed the conferencey people at the NEC to find out about cycle parking availability and, wonder of wonders, they had some! That is to say, a grand total of nine bike spaces compared with 26 thousand spaces for cars, and with the rack located in one of the car parks somewhere. Can you see where this is going wrong?

Having gone to town with paper maps, internet maps and both aerial views and bird's eye views I knew where I was going and when. I was to be staying in a hotel within walking distance of the event which wouldn't involve crossing any big roads but did involve walking through an industrial estate. I decided I'd leave my bike in my room, except for the last day when I would need to get straight onto the train afterwards; I would have to check out that morning too, so I could either look for the mythical bike rack or take my bike inside the hall with me. I needed to decide on my luggage, too. The bike doesn't have a carrier rack, which meant using my messenger bag and handlebar bag, a combination that saw me down to the York Cycle Show and the National Railway Museum two years ago. With my nice leather boots taking up most of my bag, and conference paperwork being most of the weight, I pedalled down to Waverley and jumped onto a SuperVoyager, hung up my bike (noting that all of the webbing tie-down straps were missing from the cycle bay), met my friend, went to Wolverhampton, jumped onto a different SuperVoyager and arrived at Birmingham.

Finding the hotel was the easy bit: the signs showed the route I'd already worked out on paper. After a bit of a rest, my friend and I wandered around the NEC, finding the big hall for the exhibition being still set up but not finding anywhere to buy food. In fact, the place looked unsettlingly closed for business. We walked full circle around the place and headed across to the railway station, but could only find a Subway. To be fair, the food at the branches of Subway in America when I was riding across NY was quite good. But eating at a bunch of pressed aluminium patio chairs, wood and Formica tables, in a station concourse wasn't quite what I was looking for. Surely the airport would have somewhere to eat, we thought, since there could be lots of travellers there. We boarded the little SkyRail elevated train that's now a disappointingly conventional steel rope-hauled, rubber-tyred system compared with its hi-tech predecessor that, in 1984, was the world's first mass transit Maglev train. Of course, the airport was shut too, so we took a train into the city for our meal.

Thus was born the new slogan for prospective tourists:

"Visit Birmingham NEC, there's f**k all there!"

Day One of the exhibition the next day went without a hitch although my feet were tired by the end, and it was rounded out by another trip into the city for food that evening, during which time I took in the sights of Birmingham's marvellous Town Hall, looking for all the world like Edinburgh's National Monument on Calton Hill, but actually finished, and the Selfridges Building, which is one of the most superbly unlikely and out-of-keeping places I've ever seen, like a blob covered in drawing pins.

For Day Two of the exhibition I wafted out of my hotel after breakfast, determined to find the bike parking. What I discovered first was that my lovely assymetric black skirt was a little too floaty to successfully combine cycling and wind with modesty. Fortunately the perimeter road was quiet, and after a brief inspection of the southern entrance to the NEC to make sure that every expense had been spared on cycle infrastructure, I caught up with Car Park E. It was obvious to anyone who knew where to look. I could tell by all the motorbikes parked in front of it, and the absence of any bicycles.



Surveying the scene, it all becomes perfectly obvious. The rack is a simple set of nine wheelbenders, attached to the ground or the adjacent wooden fence by methods unknown. Bicycles, as one knows, are relatively fragile to the onslaughts of hacksaws and bolt cutters and thus relatively stealable, or at the least, damageable. Unlike a motorbike whose weight is a signifcant factor to a single person with dishonest intentions, a bicycle is rarely so heavy it cannot be lifted. A bicycle's wheels are designed to carry the weight of a rider and a bit of luggage, and to be lightweight but strong in the direction of expected forces. A wheelbender rack merely encourages other forces to dominate with predictable results. A motorcyclist has equally far to walk to the NEC entrance as would a cyclist, so distance is not the main problem: I already mentioned weight and ease of theft. A bicycle must therefore live closer to oneself, or at least be secured either through a fit for purpose rack or in a place that is covered by CCTV and in reach of security. The ideal bike rack should encompass all three factors. I measured the rack as being 360 metres' walk from the nearest entrance, and over 1km from my hotel using the shortest route through the buildings. When I'm in a hurry for my train, I don't have time to run that far to get to my little insignificant toy and ride it back.

But a folding bike has by definition one advantage over a cumbersome, so I wheeled myself straight inside and handed a compact package of tubes and wheels to a very bored looking cloakroom attendant whose sole raison d'être appeared to be her mobile phone. I opted to spend the day wearing my bike shoes and several times other conference-goers remarked on my sensible footwear and my undoubted wealth of experience of conference-going. Sensible, yes, but not quite as stylin' as I'd been.

There was one moment however when my footwear choice was ideal, as I paused at one of the information stands. Their draw was one of the new Boardman bikes set up on a turbo trainer, which was in turn hooked up to a wattmeter and a computer. The objective was to cycle as far as possible up a predefined gradient profile, with the resistance (and thus pedalling effort) accordingly controlled by the computer which measured one's overall power output and distance covered in 40 seconds. In proper Top Gear tradition, there was a leaderboard too, all shiny steel with white strips of magnetic rubber listing those who'd set their times already.

 'Roll up! Roll up! Try your pedalling prowess on our patent velocipedometer!' cried the cheerful man at the stand, or at least, that's what I imagined he wanted to be calling out. 'Miss, are you going to have a go?' he asked me as I watched two people taking their turns at maximum effort.
 '255 watts!' he exclaimed as the girl slowed her pedalling to a stop and climbed off the bike.
 'That's hard!' she breathed. 'I couldn't do that for 40 miles.' Her partner in crime took the bull by the horns for a seemingly all-out sprint.
 'Woah, you're nearly taking off!' cried the cheerful man as he put his weight on the turbo to hold it down. '328 watts!' he exclaimed a minute later as the man recovered from his exertions.
 'Is that all? That's rubbish!' he replied wearily. He was obviously looking at the top score, which was over 1000 watts.
 'You're still here, are you sure you won't have a go? See the board, we've not had many women on the bike.'
I clenched my quads and calves quietly as if to warm up without being noticed. 'Yeah, I ought to have a go, really.'

I thought back to the Arthur's Seat Challenge and my 2km, 279W output, I looked at the leaderboard and hoped I'd match some of the men in the high 200s. With the seat adjusted I climbed on, cinched up the toestraps and spun the pedals a little. I'd never been on a turbo before. It felt pretty easy though and I thought I might have a chance after all, so I knocked it into a moderate gear and readied myself.

 'Are you ready? Three ... two ... one ... go!' I hauled on the pedals and took off. Get the cadence up, change up a gear, another gear, shift onto the bar ends for more power, grab another two gears, keep the cadence, grrrrr.
He started calling out the power output. '400 watts!' '500 watts!' Hey, I might just do this. '600 watts! Go for it!'

By half a minute I was going at it hammer and tongs and my thighs felt the resistance ramping up quickly. I stood up on the pedals to rock the bike but realised my mistake immediately and found myself in too high a gear, and slowing down by the 40 second mark.
 'Nearly there! Three ... two ... one ... Finished!'
Bloody hell, I thought to myself, my throat'll feel that later. 'Our survey said?' I breathed out loud.
 'Wow, 522 watts Becky! Puts you in ... fifth place!'
Hah, that'll show them. Another two women were hovering there as I passed by the stand again late in the day, and by now I was the star whose score was met with incredulity. One managed a very respectable 350-odd watts while wearing wholly inappropriate footwear (and my fleece top tied around her middle for modesty) and the other in the low 200s. 'Do you cycle a lot?' they asked me.

I'm sure that smugness is an unappealing trait but I was still enjoying my fifteen minutes of fame even as I changed out of my conference clothes and back into my travelling clothes, and catching my connection into Birmingham New Street. Only the train's cycle compartment, securely locked to the public, dampened my spirits for a moment as I stowed myself in the carriage vestibule. That is one manoeuvre that Victoria the V2, all eight feet of her, would never manage! Onto another SuperVoyager and I hooked up my bike again for a couple of hours, and then a small regional train took me back to Waverley.

So to anyone thinking of cycling to the NEC, my advice is to take your folding bike, take your motorbike or better still, take the train and a pair of trainers!

Undivided

'Don't get me wrong. I'm an avid cyclist but ...'

Mikael Colville-Anderson talks about 'people riding a bicycle for utility/transportation', in that 'most people who cycle are hardly avid. Do they cycle in the dark? Do they always cycle on the road? Do they cycle in any part of the city? At any time of year? The answers are an emphatic no.'

And he goes on to ask, 'Why bother making the city a better place to cycle if the only people who will do it are the ones who are already cyclists?'

Copenhagenize is a big word that's gradually becoming entrenched in cycling minds. But as far as I've seen -- not being a Guardian reader I suppose -- it's still largely being promoted to those who already cycle, perhaps in the 'baby steps' approach of drip feeding the idea to less frequent or non-cyclists. I cycle quite a lot, and I would have no hesitation describing myself as 'a cyclist', in the sense that my life is geared very much around my bicycle. I do have a car driving licence and a motorbike licence, but I wouldn't say I was 'a driver', because I don't really like driving and I don't do that much of it; I was coming around to being dual-mode and applying 'motorbiker' to myself and perhaps once my machine is repaired I will try again on that front. Until I read Mikael's article, I would also have happily described myself as an avid cyclist, or an enthusiastic cyclist; a dyed-in-the-wool cyclist, a if-you-cut-me-open-I'll-have-'cyclist'-written-through-my-middle sort of cyclist. You get the idea.

But now I'm wondering: do the residents of Copenhagen, or Amsterdam, or any of the other Holy Grail cities, refer to themselves as cyclists? And of those who do, is it to distinguish or distance themselves from those who don't? Or is it, I might suggest, with cycling so pervasive and everyday an activity there that it is literally the majority of citizens who cycle, and the minority who drive? Are the online newspaper articles followed by dozens of comments from irate cyclists who think drivers should be given the boot? The problem is, that scenario can't be easily compared with anywhere in the UK, save for perhaps parts of Milton Keynes, because in many places over there, cyclists and drivers don't share the same roadspace.

Starting in 1900, build two towns, both based around the horse and cart for 20 years. Then in true SimCity style, over the years, adjust the planning of the roads and railways and taxes and so on with one town giving the car priority and the other pedestrians and cyclists. Run the simulation through the baby boomer period, the swinging sixties, the efficient eighties, the noughties, and what do you have? Two cities with equally densely developed CBDs and arterial and peripheral transport routes. Now without bulldozing left, right and centre, or spending bucketloads of money, turn Motor City into Human City. Crank up the taxes and the population will vote against you, but will probably pay up. Bulldoze your heritage and the population will vote against you, if the Government doesn't haul you over the coals first. Haemorrage money by making roads anti-car and the car loving majority will vote against you but the car ambivalent won't.

While Copenhagen did things from the top down by becoming essentially anti-car, another historic city went the other way. Copenhagenize as both an idea and an ideal seeks to change things from the bottom up, and in encouraging more people to ride a bicycle instead of driving a car, we have to show that riding a bicycle is the normal thing to do. That needs:

• Making riding a bike ordinary, without lots of special aspects like yellow jackets and helmets and lycra.
• Making riding a bike ordinary, but tailoring it to the specific cityscape.
• Making riding a bike ordinary, and less of an urban competition.

When I think about how I descibe my own cycling habits, it's invariably about the clothing or about the bike, and while I would like to treat them completely separately, the more I consider them the more intertwined they become. The third option, floating awkwardly in the middle distance but still tenuously intertwined, is mindset. So let's think about it.

When I ride to work, traditionally I wear x, y and z.
When I ride to the supermarket, on the occasions my local shops don't have something, or are closed, I wear x and y, and probably z too, but that depends on distance.
When I ride on a cycle tour, I wear x, y and z, but also pack at least two of a, b, and c.
When I go out for a meal without any notion of cycling there, I'll almost always want to wear a, b and c, but otherwise perhaps a carefully concocted a-b-c-x-y-z hybrid.

So why, when I go to the shops or to work, don't I just wear a, b and c? Maybe it's because sometimes it's too uncomfortable. Or it's too impractical. The real reason is because too many of my clothes are actually type x-y-z.

My waterproof cycling jacket for instance, with its respectable dark blue and black hues a hundred miles from traditional hi-viz yellow, is, strictly, a cycling jacket and is designed and shaped for that purpose. It's also a hundred miles from the beautifully styled (if nauseatingly but understandably London-centrically named) offerings from Bspoke, such as their Angel jacket. There's something that really should fit the bill for cycling: it's waterproof with sealed seams and a bum flap; it has armpit zips and it's a shell, so you won't overheat in it. But dammit, look at it. It's a coat I'd wear very happily to the shops, to a concert, to a restaurant. It's also £130 in a world where the old standard, the Altura Nevis cycling jacket, still hits the shelves at £50. At perhaps £80-90, I'd really be thinking about buying it.

It ties in with the way my cycle clothing preferences have changed over the years. In the old days, I thought nothing of riding my bike whilst wearing jeans and hiking boots and a casual jacket (although I'd fallen at the first hurdle by already using toeclips on my pedals, and buying the jacket from a bike shop), and generally doing about 12 miles a day. But as the months went on I tired of regularly wearing out the backs of my jeans and so I graduated to wearing lycra shorts, lycra tights and proper cycling shoes with proper clipless pedals: stuff to make cycling more efficient. I carried on hauling everything around in a great big rucksack because panniers were akin to beards and leather shoes, tweed skirts and stockings. With dedicated clothing that flexed rather than rubbed, didn't flap and didn't let cold air down the front of my neck, I actually found myself riding even more. I stopped bothering with cotton t-shirts and went for cycling jerseys made out of fossil fuelled technical fabrics. That none of this was particularly fashionable was of no concern because I didn't do that much socialising, and I didn't care what anyone else really thought. On my bike, I was just part of the machine, and speed and efficiency was everything.

But using a bike for social transport, rather than commuter transport, places different demands on the rider. At least here in Edinburgh, a city built on seven hills, and not unlike other places such as Sheffield, you either ride slowly to avoid exertion or you wear something that won't stay soggy after you park your bike. How do you combine the two? You buy clothes that don't look out of place on the city street, but still function as effective cycling attire. Cycling tops with half zips and rear pockets and reflective panels can be eschewed for simple wicking t-shirts in plain black, grey, or whatever the prevailing colours are. Lycra tights make way for lightweight walking trousers, or if it's not too cold, ordinary tights in a nice heavy denier, coupled with a short practical skirt (or a kilt, if you're patriotic and rock hard). And in the summer months, lycra shorts can be replaced with their baggy and pocketed equivalent or simply covered with that same skirt.

As I became fed up with sweaty back syndrome, the rucksack of my younger self eventually went the way of my jeans, and a single pannier took its place. It was joined soon after by another pannier and, when I realised that heavy panniers weren't much fun to carry around off the bike, a vented rucksack designed for hard working cyclists. And followed various other bags contrived to maximise luggage carrying or symmetry or portability when on foot. I've never tried to bring my leather handbag with me on the bike, because I'd say I can't carry it reliably. What about that practical solution of a handlebar basket, so popular abroad? It's not for lack of availability, that much is true. What about laying it on my rear rack, held down with a bungie cord? And I could well ask myself, why indeed not?

My own excuses would include:

• Because the bag is a bit too nice to spoil with the harsh elastic of a bungie.
• Because it's not waterproof and I don't want to get road grime on it.

To which I would say that occasional use in this manner isn't going to harm it that much. And putting it in a plastic bag, later to be stashed underneath the saddle, could probably keep a shower at bay. I think it's leather, anyway. It's made of lots of offcuts all stitched together, so while a cow wasn't used mainly for making my bag, it still isn't a vegetarian's delight.

• Because it's not big enough on its own.
• Because I don't want to spoil it with sharp/dirty/leaky/awkward things.

For what purpose? Carrying my camera? A pot of paint from B&Q? A bottle of shampoo? It occurs to me that the times I bring my handbag are the times I prefer to look least like 'a cyclist' anyway, so logically to use my bike for transport on those occasions instead of taking the bus, we're back at a clothing problem rather than a luggage problem. Leather handbags aren't really set off by cycling clothes, to be honest. Though there are exceptions.

• Because I've got lots of special bike bags already, and I don't want to put a stupid basket on my bike.

Ah, now we're getting somewhere. I thought panniers were stupid, once upon a time. I think that means I'm too much of a bike snob, too much of the 'avid cyclist' Mikael writes about. I don't own a single pair of shoes that does me for every activity (although my current cycling shoes are coming perilously close), and I don't own just one bike. The recumbents like to stay set up for distance (and by extension, speed and efficiency) and a dose of touring practicality, but my town bike could very well have a basket on the front if I wanted. But it already has front and rear racks and all the other commuter accoutrements. Perhaps if it was a basket made of carbon fibre and sort of rounded for aerodynamics and... But bicycles with baskets aren't normally made for breaking speed limits, so it must be a fashion thing, and it's a superficial mindset that says I must not be a Serious Cyclist if I have a basket on my bike. Are we really that vain? Am I?

On the other hand, everything that Copenhagenize strives to show is that someone who regularly uses a bicycle for practical journeys *is* by definition a serious cyclist. It's no less important an activity than the rider who tears up centuries on a bike that weighs three grammes, but cycling is an activity that has for decades been about effort and energy, and this can't but build a pecking order. I can cycle faster from A to B than you, for longer than you, with more skill than you, therefore I am better than you. Pottering around town wearing a flowing coat and carrying a bunch of flowers in a basket doesn't quite compare with slamming a tough little BMX around a concrete park every day, and that doesn't really compare with strapping a tent on the bike and setting off across the glens, or chugging across the town with a load bike full of garden centre. In fact, aside from using a bicycle, none is comparable with another.

The average speed of cyclists over in Denmarkcityland isn't breakneck, but then their terrain is relatively modest. The lie of the land in the wilds of Scotland naturally places different demands on a rider, his or her clothes and the bicycle. Going up hills requires expenditure of energy - there's no getting away from that - and unless one is either extremely fit or extremely slow and relaxed, energy generation and expenditure requires working one's muscles, and that generates heat. Heat likes to be carried away at a specific rate: not too fast or muscles don't function at their best, and not too slowly or you get too hot. To make reasonable progress in a city in which the car is still king, fast is safe, as Richard Ballantine and John Franklin would over-simplistically put it. While Edinburgh has a useful selection of flat railway paths, they don't serve every part of the city, especially anywhere south of the middle, and hills are something one simply deals with. It is a bit like using a computer from 1995 in 2010: it still crunches the same numbers but it is no longer considered good enough for the prevailing needs of the user. A nice woollen three-quarter length coat might be a good piece of clothing for cycling at 10 mph in a flat land, but it isn't as suited to cycling in a hilly land at 15 mph, or 20 mph.

Vexed with continually breaking parts of his increasingly modified Ford F-250, it was his friend Jim Kramer who said to Bob Chandler, 'Why don't you just keep your big foot off the gas?' While my component breakery hasn't reached those heady heights, I have asked myself the same question from time to time. Another school of thought came from a Tour de France rider, that increased fitness didn't make cycling any easier: he just went faster. Simplistically, I cycle fast because I can and because I have big muscles from years of putting the hammer down. Although fast is often safe, Ballantine and Franklin actually meant that safety can be improved when the speed differential between rider and motorist is minimised. This holds true for most environments but particularly so in cities where cyclists and motorists share the same roads. But I often cycle fast when there isn't other traffic around, which suggests that the optimum force and speed of my leg muscles is due to a profusion of fast twitch fibres which, much like the chicken and the egg, have been developed and trained by years of trying to ride fast.

This excuse for not being able to ride at a relaxed pace is, of course, complete balderdash. There are other factors at play, including safety inasmuch as one tries to maintain motor vehicle speeds in an urban environment in order to actively influence the behaviour of other road users, and the notion that cyclists are constantly engaged in a war with motorists, resulting in one's efforts to avoid any inferiority complex by maintaining motor vehicle speeds and thus defend against claims by motorists of being held up (as they race to join the end of the next queue). I like to present my road behaviour as that of a bona fide vehicle, not as an obstacle to be passed at any cost. This marks me out as a legitimate presence, which is only necessary because of the current attitude towards 'bloody cyclists', which is due in part to the paradox of Government ambivalence coupled with the dichotomy of Government policies, and in part to the potential cycling population being discouraged through the constant reminding of the fact that cycling is somehow not ordinary and everyday. Let's hear it for a Slow Cyclists Movement, a cross between Tai Chi and a peaceable Critical Mass that promotes safety in numbers without the demonstrations and the aggressive beat of a portable PA.

Right now we have to share the road more than do the cyclists in the Enlightened World. We need speed more than they do, or at least we think we do. We have more terrain to deal with. We have to spend more time saving our own lives because the majority is allowed to act more dangerously. We don't, as yet, have the ability to collectively slow down on the road and work together. Universal promotion of flowers and dress trousers and bicycle clips and leather bags isn't going to work straight away. The idealology is perfect, but it needs fine-tuned. The 'edinburghchic' cyclists already look slightly different from 'londonchic'. It gets colder here, it snows more, and the roads are made of holes. We don't have much in the way of underground transport. We like mudguards and bigger tyres, and springy saddles. A lot like continental bikes then, but all ridden with those tensed shoulders and hair trigger eyes.

To call myself 'an avid cyclist', rather than simply 'a cyclist' is nothing more than creating a sense of smug superiority. We're all cyclists -- people who like the freedom and flexibility of a bike -- we only exist in different flavours. But even that isn't enough: 'I don't always want to look like a cyclist' she bleats, but that is one phrase I imagine is seldom heard in Copenhagen. In a city or a country where just about everyone is a cyclist at one time or another, it simply doesn't matter.

Shoot high, aim low

Great Britain: a name only accented correctly by either a stiff upper lipped, handlebar moustachioed flying ace from 1944, or The Queen. A name evocative of motor cars handbuilt with the natural understatement of lashings of cowhide and burr walnut; of green liveried steam engines with red pinstriping; of complex machines controlled only by rods and levers and valves; of a land where everything stops for tea. I'm British, and therefore I crave disappointment. Far be it for a train to arrive or depart exactly on time, like the trains in Japan do to the millisecond. For the fact that we, the British, invented train travel two hundred years ago in a land of hills and consequently have no geography-be-damned racetracks, the challenge to surmount the Cheviots, the Pennines, Exmoor, the Lake District, is such that control of time is at best limited by human experience. British trains should not run on time: it isn't wrong, but we just don't do it. And there is a legend, however unqualified, that during those fateful two and a half hours in April, 1912, in the ensuing scatter of organisation, disproportionately fewer British passengers were rescued than American passengers because we queued politely to board the lifeboats.

Britain does not have icebergs, nor does it have seasons; it only has weather, in the sense of outbreaks of sunshine turning to scattered showers in the southwest, heading north, temperatures dipping down to freezing and rain turning to snow on higher ground. Drifting is likely in exposed areas with snow lying elsewhere but dying out eventually, heavy showers expected in the west and hail to the north, turning to sunny spells for a time but staying overcast in most places, ten degrees (50 Fahrenheit) across most areas, reaching 25 degrees (77 Fahrenheit) in the south -- warm for the time of year. That is the weather forecast for the year ahead, but equally it could be tomorrow's forecast.

Despite this, they've worked out that statistically the average British commuter cyclist will be rained on just twelve times a year. Although my records began in 2001, no notes were ever taken with a view to proving or disproving this theory, but a back of a fag packet calculation suggests it's not far from the truth. Of course, a proper British bicycle has to be designed for more than 12 hours of rain a year. That's why hot-dang Sram hub gears stop working with their oil and grease gradually turning to inky black salt while Sturmey-Archers, being made of sterner stuff, keep going. It is entirely possible to use a dérailleur geared bicycle year-round, as long as one keeps one eye on the jockey wheels, one eye on the parallelogram pivots and one eye on the cables, but technology can help. The eponymous Scottoiler, invented by a Scot called Fraser Scott, has its beginnings in the grimy M6 motorway between Manchester and the Weege, saving the lives of many a motorbike chain. One of its derivatives lives onboard Annie the Blue Bike, which when coupled with spiky tyres becomes my snowbound winter transport. Too many people, mostly those with carbon fibre road bikes I think, scoff at having a little dispensing device on their bike instead of just carrying a bottle of Triflow. I think it's rather better because it's self-contained and puts the lube exactly where it's needed whenever it's needed. Some say it's nothing more than chainsaw oil, and I couldn't comment with any certainty, but it's a device that is suited perfectly to weather where it rains in the morning, washing your chain clean, only for the sun to come out at lunchtime and bake it dry, or when you're ploughing through slush and grit and you just know that it can't be good for your bike. Hub gears with their innards hiding away are ideally suited to British weather. So suited, in fact, that for some reason none of my bikes has one.

My brash American upstart of vélo origami, known more fondly as the Little Dahon, hasn't weathered the weather quite as well as one would wish. Its back wheel went bang one winter when a single spoke, one of 16 strung so tightly their voices bordered on ultrasound, let go, the salt of the roads having set in the rot in the cavity of the rim drilling. Its rear dérailleur, itself a product of a company which when only two years old sued the mighty Shimano and won, reacted equally badly to salt ingress. Of course, some time and some careful workshoppery solved those issues. But most of all, while indeed a brilliantly lightweight machine for handling both the zipping around from home to railway station to workplace and car booting for assorted trips, its original purpose of accumulating mileage has been taken up by its recumbent siblings. For an almost car-free (and to all intents and purposes, also motorbike-free) owner, foldingness is becoming important, and three bicycles must come to the fore: Dr David Hon's beautiful Dahon Curl, Jon Whyte's mechanical Mezzo, and Andrew Ritchie's resolutely British -- nay, English -- hub geared Brompton. The Curl, notwithstanding occasional forays into Taipei bicycle shows, maintains an almost mythical status that has bettered even that of Philip Brook's Canadian GoBike. The Mezzo, coming from the man who for a brief year was the star XC mountain bike designer, promised a future of gunmetal grey angularity and clever frame design and somehow delivered an uninspiring whole. And yet the Brompton bicycle, first brought into being more than 30 years ago and refined ever since to a refined audience by an uncompromising engineer who crafted the ultimate compromise, still ranks at the top of smallness and convenience. You may have any colour you like for free, as long as it's black. Or black with red bits. That the most recognisably national edition, painted in dark green, is a custom colour currently asking of you up to 50 of Her Majesty's British Pounds is to me a singular mistake. One can only assume that Ritchie was not an ardent international motorsport enthusiast, or that quite simply black paint was more readily available in the early days on which tradition must be based.

I am not, as you will be patently aware, a Brompton owner, but this was supposed to change at the turn of this year. I was looking forward to it greatly in fact, for I had my red, white and blue Union Flag sticker poised and waiting to be applied; I had everything mentally planned for rail journeys free from mucking about with bicycle bookings; and like Juliane Neuß, Harry Bickerton and countless engineers before them, I had a series of ideas to improve upon something that was good but not quite good enough. My Speedy, another bastion of British cycle industry (in the loosest senses, admittedly) had gone to live with a recumbent dealer, and everything was set. All I had to do was wait for my brand new little Brompton to arrive. Like a proper British citizen, I had patiently waited eight, then twelve, then sixteen weeks, calling in for occasional updates and being assurred that all was well and forthcoming. And then came the call. The problem was, it seemed, that the shop with whom I had placed the order -- and henceforth the custodian of Speedy -- found itself quite suddenly cast adrift from London's folding bike maker, and there wasn't a bike with my name on it.

A bit of telephoning around revealed that not only was there not a bike with my name on it, there wasn't even a pile of parts in the factory with my name on it. But I could have my Speedy back if I wanted, or have the shop sell it for me. A number of e-mails plied the information superhighway, in one direction only it transpired, and a lot of telephoning around to Government organisations and much studying of sales legislation revealed that I had a case, but somewhat frustratingly not much of one. I picked up the telephone again. I sent more e-mails, and I waited. Days passed. Since my efforts weren't being reciprocated for whatever reason, I picked up the telephone yet again. More e-mails circulated, this time with more success.

Twenty-three weeks -- nearly half a year -- from my original order, the big yellow and silver cheetah has made its way back to the tall athletic girl who seven years ago looked kindly upon it, tended to its front paws and made its insides all better. Unfortunately, while Annie might have been missing its low-slung friend, Tabitha and Victoria have no such qualms, and they were quite looking forward to meeting their new British stablemate.

But the cat came back, it just couldn't stay away.

Gravity

Today I was reading a discussion about commuting routes, and in particular how hilly our terrain was.  Most seemed to be using Bikely for plotting journeys and calculating the changes in elevation, but since the site was either down or busy, I had a play with a speedy little site called BikeHike instead. Marvel at my mighty four mile ride to work.  That dip at about 0.6 miles ought to be good for 40mph if I really went for it, and 30mph can be held along the level on a fresh legged Monday morning.  Up to about the two mile mark I can sit at 30mph if the traffic is light, but there are rather too many places along the way where other vehicles might emerge so normally I'm feathering the brakes and in hyper-observation mode.  Total time: about 14 minutes, reducing to 12 minutes in exceptional conditions and up to 18 minutes in winter traffic jams.

But I greatly dislike this route when riding home again, for the Great Long Hill is a 9mph slog amongst eager homeward-bound motorists in silver Mercedes, black BMW X5s and red Ford Focuses (Foci?), so my preferred route is carefully designed to take in the delights of ornate 19th century flats and a relaxed wheel along refreshing tree-lined parkland.

 Apart from the early downhill run to 1.6 miles, where I would normally expect to hit 30mph and hold above 25mph, it's deceptively uphill. It has to be, of course, but the circuitous route allows a few opportunities to give my bike its head.  It's a 7.6 mile ride that is just long enough to get a workout and with plenty of diversion options if I'm feeling tired or adventurous.  I might, for example, ride right through the middle of the city, down past the Scottish Parliament and up around Arthur's Seat and out past the currently, and sadly, closed for refurbishment Royal Commonwealth Pool.  At the 5-and-a-bit mile mark the land drops down off a ridge, one of two marking the Colinton Fault that stretches from Torphin Hill by the southwest of the city, under the West End and all the way to Leith Docks and indeed into the Forth.  This section could be another speed test if only the tarmac was mended once and for all.  But I like this route enough that it's become my standard ride home.

On a slightly more grandiose scale, and just for fun, this is the elevation graph from one day of my all-too-short cycle tour in the summer of 2008:

That evil spike at about 27 miles might be remembered by intrepid cycle tourists as much for its gradient as its dank scenery.

"Halfway up the tarmacked cliff I came to a church, set a little back from the road, and I eased off the pedals ready to stop for a rest. My momentum carried me on ever so gently though, as I took in the mossy grey stone walls and the wooden gateway, stained brown and and green from years of damp, shaded exposure. The church was very small, its windows dark, and it looked as though it hadn't seen a service in thirty years. I wondered idly as I passed if nature might be reclaiming it gradually for herself? The organ perhaps home to families of Great Tits, nesting amongst a miniature New York skyline of square wooden pipes. The gas lights long gone, their supply bright with verdigris. The pews, surely carved two hundred years ago from deep brown oak, turning a pale green with mould, an occasional shelf of beige fungus hanging from one end. Perhaps it was because it was a Saturday and the lights weren't switched on."

It was the secondary spike at about 29 miles that nearly finished me off, marking the first and last time I tried a day's touring on a full Scottish breakfast!

Before and after

An entry in here devoted almost entirely to the minutia of recabling a bike feels a little like making you listen to Tales from Topographic Oceans. I'm sure the album was the product of 30 year-old musicians' ambition and bloodymindedness, and has some great themes, but it's not without merciless filler. The intention behind that album was to embrace nature, all its lifeforms, and the whole planet, condensed into about 80 minutes or, depending on your point of view, sprawling across four whole sides.

I pulled the Speedmachine out of the garage this week for riding to work, for couple of days anyway; I'd gone with my faired P-38 at the beginning of the week because it was so cold and I fancied the weather protection, and the next day switched to Annie for some errands in town. Were I treating the gear shifter experiment scientifically, I'd not have changed everything at once, for now I don't know which aspect gave most benefit. But something is working: the ability to change gear accurately was something I'd kind of taken for granted on my P-38 and I'd been putting up with things on the SpM the same way I had put up with Speedy's formerly finger-tearingly stiff brakes. I'd never had drum brakes before and, naïvely, had assumed they were full of incredibly strong springs and simply felt that way; only later did I discover the truth, which -- rather predictably -- led to much renewing of rusted cables. It turns out that I got the ergonomics spot on for my thumbs and index fingers, and the slightly closer position of the handlebars, probably my most major change to the cockpit since I bought the bike, actually feels better than before. The shifters are up to Shimano's usual high quality for its XT groupset: solid, chunkily minimal, and precise. I'll leave "svelte" to the collection of adjectives ascribed to XTR components. The addition of new cables and housing I think has made as big a contribution. I've been harbouring plans, hinted at last time, to replace the Campagnolo chainset because I'd been continuously frustrated with the bum shifting, despite pinned and bumped teeth geometry. FSA makes exceedingly good chainrings and a simple swap might be easiest, but Campy has its own rules and only Spécialités TA seems to make anything compatible. I've used and worn out a number of very pretty but cheeselike TA chainrings. There's also the hugely embarrassing aesthetic clash of silver cranks against an otherwise all-black bike, and FSA or Middleburn would be ideal there. But the new cable and shifter has transformed the front end of the bike: I can be accelerating up from 15mph to 35mph and not have my thoughts occupied with wrenching on the Gripshift enough for the chain to make the big chainring but not so much that it overshifts onto the crank, thus requiring nursing back into place.

One trait that remains though is the aggressive up-changing on the rear of the bike. Knocking the Gripshift a click or two around under hard acceleration, with momentary pauses in pedalling effort to allow the chain to switch sprockets, produced quite a lot of noise from the rear end. While the XT's little release lever has a much softer action, the result is the same. I think it's the combination of a strong dérailleur spring, a gently restrained section of power-side chain tube and the characteristics of the shifters that does it. Both the small S's Gripshift (and Triggers) and the big S's Rapid Fire shifters employ fairly heavy duty ratchety shapes inside and when you click up a gear, the cable tension is released sharply and the dérailleur snaps across the cassette. Good old fashioned bar end levers don't have much of a mechanism inside: just some indentations and a spring-loaded bally thing, and you can control the lever (and cable) movement completely. Less of a kak! kak! (Gripshift) or ka-chick! ka-chick! (RF) and more of a thd thd sound.

It's been steadily warmer the past few days and reached a balmy 6.5ºC a couple of days ago. Only the clumps of orange-brown grit clinging to kerbs and pavements, and the occasional great mound of compacted snow left behind by the shovel, betray the cold white landscape we had but a month ago. The long-sleeved Helly Hansen, overlaid with a Polartec fleece mid layer and covered with Gore-Tex jacketry is gradually giving way to the short-sleeved Helly Hansen, fleece and jacket, and yesterday, only the long-sleeved top and the jacket. But then, I was riding quite hard. This winter has been by far the coldest, snowiest and most protracted for more than 20 years, and I feel quite happy that by and large, I've suffered much less from the cold than even last winter which was, quite literally, a wash-out. In years gone by I would wear my thin lycra tights with shorts underneath, a t-shirt and my (original) Gore-Tex jacket, perhaps with some waterproof trousers on and a pair of snowboarding gloves, but my fingers always had the last word in discomfort. I've softened. Now I'll have my winter weight Thermolite tights on top of lycra 3/4s (that is, knee length on me) and I'll do everything I can to keep my torso warm, and thus my core temperature up. I also finally started putting on my Buff under my helmet because although my ears don't feel the cold, my forehead does. And some days I'd have to ride slower than I'd like, just to keep my head warm! Keeping my middle warm to the point of slightly too warm has had a measureable effect on my hands. Only twice this winter did I resort to my old Specialized Lobster gloves, instead managing quite well with a pair of original Altura Night Vision gloves that I bought cheap in a sale. Of course, the latter are my preferred winter gloves because, being covered in swathes of reflective, they're that much better for signalling if vehicles are following me. Black fleece gloves by themselves don't show up too well. But with the slight temperature increase, I don't always need the Night Visions with their "Thinsulate" insides, so I'm still using reflective ankle bands on my wrists (as well as my ankles). My fingers, remember, can turn white and numb just by listening to a January weather forecast.

I've also been enjoying a new pair of cycling sunglasses. My ancient Oakley Mumbos (pre-M Frames, readers) broke a year ago, and then while still vaguely working, broke a second time. A pair of Smith V-Ti specs has been doing the job since about New Year, and I'm very happy with them. The lenses are distortion-free, they swap out easier than the big O's, they deflect wind from my eyes better and, dare I say it, they suit my face better too.

Every little thing

While the dynamics, the kinematics if you will, of bicycles are a little beyond me, the mechanics are fairly well understood. I've been at it long enough and I have quite a lot of reference material without recourse to 'teh Internets', Sheldon Brown and so on. So when I'm asked what bottom bracket and chainset is needed for a vintage ten speed, of whose provenance I have no idea, or whether I can get away with running a V-Drive 22/32/44 and a roadie cassette and still maintain the sort of gearing range I'm used to, I can make informed guesses at worst, and straightforwardly find the answer at best. The only real problem I've seen is that the going rate for a bicycle mechanic, even a workshop manager, would mean a pay cut. One makes more money, presumably, by designing instead of maintaining. Maybe that's why in my gradually-falling-asleep-in-bed time, I come up with brilliant ideas for bicycle designs and modifications, but have no way to fabricate them.

Note to self: buy an oxy-acetylene kit, a lathe, a milling machine, and a bunch of tubes.

So when the idea occurs to junk the increasingly recalcitrant Sram Rocket Gripshifts on my Speedmachine and replace them with Shimano Rapid Fire triggers, it's perfectly easy. Whip off the handlebar grips, extract the gear cables, lose the Gripshifts, bung on the triggers, thread the gear cables back through, install that spare pair of handlebar grips left over from another project, and set up the dérailleurs again. Of course, this is my Speedmachine, that tour de force of Teutonic recumbency, and I should have known that nothing would be simple.

I already planned to replace the rear gear cable because the strands were unwinding and I wasn't sure if it was contributing to the poor gear changing where I'd been having to click down two and back up one to get onto the next largest sprocket. I've also generally disliked Gripshift, especially on upright bikes; I like my handlebar grips to stay in one place. On a recumbent bike where you place very little pressure on the handlebars, they work much better and are in fact one of the preferred systems, along with the brilliantly simple bar end gear lever. However, Shimano has traditionally used a 1:2 ratio of cable pulled to dérailleur movement, while Sram designed its components to use a 1:1 ratio which is more tolerant of squiffy alignment and mud-caked cabling -- but with the tradeoff that twice as much movement is needed at the handlebars, not generally a problem with the twisting action of Gripshift. And since my shifters were controlling Shimano front and back they had the 1:2 ratio, and it doesn't half make them hard work. I've been using Rapid Fire levers for nigh on 15 years on Annie the Blue Bike and the Rockhopper before it, so that was my intention for the Speedmachine. By way of reference, my P-38 uses bar end levers, while my V2 uses Gripshift but controlling a Sram rear dérallieur, and by and large, both systems work beautifully (until the 2500 mile mark at which one's P-38's rear cable will break -- a slight design flaw which I'm going to have a shot at fixing).

It wasn't long before I came up against the first hurdle: the curves of the handlebar, which give it a real handlebar moustache shape but actually designed for leaving space for one's knees when pedalling. The ideal position of the shifters was quite far inboard with the brake levers mounted to the outside: the opposite of what Gripshift dictates. The curves meant that the rinky-dink gear indicator on the top of the shifter stuck up at a rather silly -- and slightly knock prone -- angle, simply because Shimano designed it for flat handlebars. Then I discovered that the hydraulic hose to my brake lever wasn't long enough. Moving the shifter further inboard was an option, but then my knees would bash its lower trigger when I pedalled. I could extend the telescopic the stem towards my chest, but that would use up valuable millimetres of the hose length. Perhaps tilting the brake lever away from me would free up some of the length, as long as it was still comfortable to operate. But I couldn't tilt it very far without it trying to occupy the same space as the shifter, which I'd angled to be comfortable for my thumb and forefinger... So I decided that since I was a grown up cyclist, I'd remove the gear indicator and, not having the little grey bit of plastic that Shimano would have no doubt sold me at inflated cost, I improvised a cover with waterproof tape.

But extending the stem meant I now had to unpick all the tape and cable ties that oh so neatly tidied the two gear cable housings, the two large wires for my headlights, the wires for my headlight switch (which had to come off anyway because the other side's brake lever would need to go there), and the wires for my cycle computer's speed and cadence sensors. It was about 3ºC outside, and not much warmer in my garage, so this was all being done with a selection of numb fingers. Still, after about four hours I'd got the right-hand shifter in place, sans indicator gadget, plus the brake lever, I'd cut about a centimetre off the end of the handlebar to accommodate the grip (having first managed the impossible task of locating the pipe cutter) and the gear changing felt pretty good. So it was a straightforward job to repeat this for the left-hand side.

Hah. The Speedmachine has a very neatly routed front gear cable which runs down the outside (formerly the inside, until I changed it) of the stem, loops around below the headset bearing and then enters the boom of the frame. It runs forwards inside there and emerges, via a rather tight bend, from a hole just below the front dérailleur. I didn't like this at all: too much of a risk of kinking the cable housing and I was fairly sure this had happened and was making it harder than it should've been to change up to a bigger chainring. It got worse. I discovered the existing gear cable was equally kinked when I pulled it out, so I took out a new one. When I tried to install it, it went in halfway and stopped. I pulled and pushed again, it stopped and then kinked in front of my fingers. I tried again and it just wouldn't go in, and by this time the end was fraying as quickly as my sunny mood. So there was nothing for it but to replace the entire housing as well, and within moments I'd hauled it all out. It was kinked in two places and worn where it entered the frame. Fortunately I'd bought lots of spare housing last time around. To get new housing installed though, I had to remove the front half of the boom completely which wasn't something I'd do lightly because the plastic shim had already been cracked by the bike's original owner and when reinstalling the boom, it has to go back in exactly the same amount as it was before, otherwise you upset the distance to the pedals. And of course, it has to be straight.

Then I had an idea: left over from building my P-38 was one of those little curved steel tubes that are used on V-brakes to route the brake cable out and upwards; I could use that inside the boom to replace the tight bend! Well after an hour of trying, I decided it wasn't worth the effort. I could only insert the little tube from the outside, but since it wasn't attached to the cable housing -- it simply located the end of the housing, and used the cable itself to keep everything aligned -- the housing had to go in from the inside. That was more difficult because the boom was now in two halves. I threaded an old cable through in reverse to tie everything together but couldn't quite hold it while I reinserted the boom. And then I realised that once I installed the new gear cable, it wouldn't push the old one out at the end: it would just push the cable housing away from the little tube. Rant, rave, stomp, sigh.

'Right then', I growled to myself, 'I'll just do it the normal way after all.' And so it was that I managed to get new housing threaded through the two parts of the frame, the boom reinstalled and the new cable threaded through to the dérailleur, clamped in place and the excess chopped off. All that remained was to tidy up the cables and wires along the stem, and with a few cable ties and some more tape it was all about done. The last item on the agenda was to reattach the cadence sensor next to the crank and run the wire along the boom and up one one of the light's wires.

Naturally, I discovered I'd made too neat a job of tidying up, and didn't have enough length in the sensor wire to attach it in the right place and run it back to the stem as I wanted. When you're pedalling miles and miles with your thighs in very close proximity to delicate wiring, you pay attention to where you route your accessories. So I unpicked everything again, got the sensor in place and then little by little tidied up. Click click click, spin the pedals through the gears and tweak the cable tensions to perfection. Ta daa! Finished!

Well, almost. I hadn't ridden the bike since well before Christmas when the snow, and the salted grit, had arrived, and the water in the hosepipe had frozen solid. There was about a month of lightly festering salt crystals on the brake calipers and the rims were covered in grime, so today was the first chance to wash everything properly. I should have made do before, as I'd done with Annie while riding through the worst of the roads, with a bucket of hot soapy water and another to rinse. But I'd obviously been somewhere between lazy and preoccupied until now. The bucket was enough to clean up both Annie and the P-38 too, and it's really quite satisfying knowing that once again you've washed off all that nasty salt and grime.

I owe myself about £90 in bicycle mechanic time. I think that calls for a beer, don't you?

I've seen all good people

I wouldn't be a real cyclist if I didn't have at least one mishap per year, would I? I remember many years ago I lived not so far from a patch of wasteland that perhaps 150 years before had been the wilds leading to a quarry; flat for the most part and bounded by the natural rolling slopes of the area, while the quarry itself was not of rock but of sand and soil, for ground level was in fact the top of those rolling slopes: moraine left behind from the last glacier. We would take our bicycles on adventures to this made-for-stunts place: a network of humps, bumps and trees that would've made Danny MacAskill have kittens; and it was a place of names handed down from generation to awed generation: The Devil's Elbow, the Velodrome, Route 66, Strawberry Hill, River Rapids, the Juke Box ... and I'm sure there are another couple I can't remember now. 'Can you do Devil's Elbow?' we'd be asked, and skilled and wise beyond our years, we'd demonstrate to the younger ones. Of course, tales abounded of horrible crashes involving trees and handlebars; I remember watching a friend leaving his bike mid-descent from ill-placed tree roots, and I certainly remember seeing two instances of falls ending in mild concussion. I'm sure blood was spilled at least once, too.

Despite this superbly tomboyish lifestyle, somehow I escaped my childhood with no broken arms, legs or wrists. I remember a succession of painful pedal-shin interactions (at least, until the advent of mountain bikes and toeclips), some grazed hips and elbows from one too many skids, and the occasional bent pair of forks. Indeed, my left shin still wears a ten inch-long line of little dents left behind by a genuine old school Wellgo BMX pedal, the aluminium slanty ones with eight horrible spiky studs for extra grip.

And then it all went quiet: they cut down all the trees growing in the quarry, built a load of houses there and on our playground, and a generation of children was immediately deprived of somewhere to go to prod frog spawn, to go wading when everything flooded, to build jump ramps from bricks and random pieces of wood, and learn how to fall off a bike without getting too bashed up. Growing up these days must be no fun at all.

As one's skills in bike handling improve over time, assuming one rides frequently, the number of bumps should decrease. The same goes whether one rides offroad through the hills to take photographs for Flickr groups, offroad on downhill courses where people use ten inch wide tyres and pepper sentences with words like gnarly and sick (I'm presuming, of course, that rad is as passé these days as purple anodising), or in the cut and thrust of rush hour traffic. I've had a few moments in my time, I have to admit. I rode down a short but steep slope in my wasteland days and went over my handlebars, across the pavement and into the side of a van. While riding home from university one day I lost my front wheel on a slippery piece of tarmac, which set my confidence levels for steering back at least ten years. More recently while piloting my Speedmachine recumbent in the early frost of a winter, my front wheel skidded sideways, then gripped again as my back wheel skidded out. I was flung to the ground in an instant and left with a series of bruises. A motorist T-boned me on a roundabout whilst I was riding home once, after which I was hurting in about ten different places. And although it's technically outside the scope of this blog, a year ago I did finally break some bones. There's a bit of a pattern here I think, or possibly two: older people break easier and hurt more; and the more road riding I do, the more accidents I seem to have.

Last time I wrote it had been snowing for four or five days; the snow is now melting rapidly in the sweltering 3ºC heat of yesterday and today, although they think another flurry is due. My local bike shop's sale came along after New Year as I expected, but my plan to buy some big knobbly tyres didn't work, what with prevailing trends for low-rise knobbles (for which read 'worn out looking'), and I ended up buying spiky tyres at full price. If I'd done more research I might've discovered the Schwalbe CX Pro, a chunky but narrow tyre for cutting through the snow in the same vein as the venerable Panaracer Smoke Lite; but I needed tyres urgently because I didn't trust the ones I had, so I bought a pair of Panaracer Fire XC Pros. Initial impressions were good: traction aplenty and steering was remarkably precise considering the churned up snow and slush I was riding through. I managed to last without an accident until about four days ago, with the irony that it was nothing to do with snow and ice at all.

In fact, it wasn't that much of an accident really, except that afterwards I worried for two days straight that I'd broken my shoulder again. With the assistance of a thousand kilograms of car, in one of those combination moves that elude memory, I found myself flying slowly through the air and over my handlebars, heading for the gutter. I landed on my hand and shoulder, possibly with my fall broken by my rucksack and the snow on the ground. I remember my bike flying slowly through the air and about to land on top of me as I attempted to deflect it, and I remember tucking my head down as I rolled onto my back. Some small presence of mind prevailed, as I lay still for a moment to check vital systems like arms and legs, and as I picked myself up I was annoyed that I might have ripped my good cycling jacket. My shin hurt, I noticed, and for a moment I took in the line of cars waiting behind and thought to myself, 'I'm afraid you'll just have to wait', while I realised that they were now spectators.

The driver of the car hurried out to my side, apologising. I wish I'd had a little more restraint, to be honest, as I gave her a piece of my mind about road vehicle behaviour. I would have quoted Highway Code rules too if I actually knew them by rote. I pointed a lot, shouted a bit, or at least to the extent that my too-cold mouth would let me in minus several degrees Celcius. Then she actually offered to drive me home, and to get me checked out. I was so surprised that I nearly agreed, before deciding that although I only hurt in one place and was likely to hurt in several more later on, nothing was broken and therefore I could probably ride home. In the event, perhaps I should have gone to get checked out, if only because I didn't know if my shoulder was now weaker or stronger than it was originally. I was still intent on brushing off the slush from my jacket, and I hauled my bike onto the pavement to give it a quick once-over. Spin the wheels, try the brakes, a quick fingertip examination of the frame joints and headtube. My bike seemed to have survived. It was only a little somersault, remember, and mountain bikes were made for being bumped about. In the information overload of the moment, my speed of thought had slowed down and I clung to my mantra of 'Get details'. My arms and legs all worked and I thought some more, brushed my jacket again and I remembered how much I'd been enjoying being out on my bike up until then. I decided that it was probably worth the risk and that details would only complicate the day. While I was still a bit shocked from the spill, it was obvious that I was handling it the better, as great big tears welled up from her eyes and she wobbled in the realisation of what had happened in only a few seconds. What did I do? I put my arms around her and gave her a big long hug.

Presently she climbed back into her car to resume her journey, while I readied myself for the remaining ride home. No-one had come to our aid, and I was sore, but I left the scene hoping that some sense of forgiveness had been shown and that anyone else watching might have taken heart.