An ill wind comes arising

On a rather ratty looking piece of paper, already adorned with some vaguely technical-drawing sketches of rear light mountings and a scribbled-upon photo of a rack, and printed on the reverse side with some stuff from the Illinois Department of Public Health concerning lyme disease, I've been doing some little sketches of pedals and booms. Frankly, I'm not really sitting comfortably, and I was jolly well going to find out why.

For about five years now I've had problems on and off with my left knee. When I did all my riding on my old Specialized Rockhopper mountain bike and Flite saddle, I noticed the peculiarly assymetric way my thighs scuffed the leather top and how my knees sometimes clonked the top tube as I pedalled. I spent many a minute looking in the mirror and observing the odd alignment of my knee joints, from my femurs to my tibias. For a long time I thought it was just me, for this was in the days before The Internet, but indeed the third paragraph on Wikipedia's page about the tibia agrees with the comment from a friend that in women, the tibias tend not to be parallel, to compensate for more angled femurs. Of course no-one told my pelvis, which stayed narrow. The upshot of this was that my knees like to be close together when I pedal, but slightly to the left. Indeed, my Flite is more polished on the right-hand side but it's been so long since I rode an upright bike every day that I can't actually remember which knee would hit the top tube.

It didn't become obvious until 2005 when my Speedmachine arrived on the scene. I'd tested one in 2003 and around the same time that I bought my Windcheetah, and only rejected it because I was finding it so difficult to balance. By 2005 my thighs had put on weight, except I hadn't really realised, and all of a sudden the frame around the headset -- a meaty two and a half inches across of metal tube and cables -- seemed very wide. The bike is fast, comfortable and well reclined, but also relatively heavy, and hard acceleration to which I am no shrinking violet allows a lot of force to be put through my legs. By mid-2007 I was riding my P-38 most of the time, a bike which instantly felt "right" ergonomically. But the suspension of the Speedmachine is so beautifully, wonderfully capable, which was why I could never part with it. Bouts of riding the P-38 felt great, while bouts of riding the Speedmachine sometimes left me with sore knees and particularly my left; a situation normally rectified by some rest and riding my little lightweight Dahon. But not altogether an ideal set of circumstances: was I too strong, somehow?

Well, in the summer of 2009 I acquired Victoria, my monstrous American RANS V-Squared, complete with remarkably wide-feeling pedals. That was down to a pair of pedal extenders, a good 5/8" of extra Q-factor to each side, as fitted by the previous owner. I figured I'd give them a go, as my friend and I set out for the Erie Canal, but after the first day something in my left knee didn't feel right. By the end of the second day I was feeling serious pain in my left knee; halfway through the third day I bought an adjustable spanner and threw the pedal extenders away, and iced my knee that evening. After that, the pedals felt remarkably narrow, but not at all uncomfortable. The only gripe was the Truvativ cranks, whose fairly straight profile allowed less inwards heel movement than the FSAs on the P-38, the cheap Campag cranks on the Speedmachine and the Middleburns on Speedy. It didn't stop me notching up over 500 miles over the two weeks, and in fact only two or three days after junking the pedal extenders, the bike as a whole elicited my comment, 'You know, right now I feel absolutely comfortable.' My knee, which had been rapidly swelling up to the inside and becoming intensely sore to the touch, calmed down within days.

This year however, something went wrong. An earlier suggestion of a collapsing arch in my foot, an opinion seconded this year by my local running shop, combined with various part-diagnoses of pelvic misalignment caused by my feet, and my widely reported shoulder pains perhaps caused by my lower back and by extension, my pelvis, led me to a chiropractor initially. The motorbike crash, while not related, put me off chiropracting and shoulder pain put me off riding upright bikes. All of this led to me trying some special insoles. Rather than go clever and expensive with custom-fitted ones, at least initially, I was recommended an off the shelf pair of Superfeet. Superfeet come in various colours designed for different activities, foot shapes and so on and I came out with the orange ones, designed for big-footed people who spend a lot of time on their feet: running, walking, standing. And you know, with those inside my shoes and me clumping around, my feet had never felt more comfortable!

For about two months I happily swapped the insoles from cycling shoe to cycling shoe, to hiking boot, to trainer. They did feel strange for cycling, at first, but the arch support and heel location felt great. Then during another bout of enthusiastic riding of my Speedmachine, my left knee began to really, really hurt. In fact, it was so bad that I had to spend a week and a half not cycling at all, while grimacing every time I had to push the clutch pedal in my car, while vigorously burying my finger into the side of my knee to relieve the pain and massage the tendons. I also spent most of that time with an elastic bandage on my knee and several evenings with a bag of frozen peas in place. When my knee started to feel a bit better, I took the pedals off my Speedmachine and buried the bike behind Victoria in the garage. I put the Superfeet back in their box and put my original insoles back into my cycling shoes (how wise of me to keep them all!), and vowed to ride only the bikes I knew wouldn't hurt me again: my P-38, the V-Squared and, though it was still sitting clean and tuned up but unloved next to its American stablemates, Speedy.

Taking it gradually, my legs began to feel better. Every ride home is still punctuated early on by a solitary but solid click as my kneecap moves into place, and I try not to go breaking records unless I have a tailwind or a hill. Following a physio appointment last week, my knee has been hurting again. I think this was due to the poking and prodding he did to make an initial appraisal, and believe me, he certainly found the source of the pain as I yelped. More physio beckons, with some exercises to practice meantime. But something was nagging at the back of my mind: why did my P-38 always seem to feel right, and why did my Speedmachine always seem to be behind the outbreaks of pain? The physio mentioned words like "patellofemoral" and "meniscal", unhappily followed by words like "damage". I then realised that perhaps the accident in early 2006, in which I was broadsided on my left-hand side by a car whilst navigating a roundabout, and a subsequent accident in which I slid on the bike in winter, landing on my left side, might have contributed to some twisting shock to my knee.

So to return to the point of sketching pedals and booms, I spent this afternoon vernier calipers in hand, measuring my bikes. The findings are very, very interesting. I use Shimano SPD pedals, both PD-M520 and PD-M540 models, and Speedy has a pair of PD-A515 roadie SPDs. Happily, every one of these measured 54.5mm from crank face to mechanism centre. I then measured the boom diameter at the point at which the pedal axles pass, and the distance from the boom to the outer face of each crank where the pedal abuts. From this, I can determine the Q-factor for each bike, for both the left and right-hand sides. Knowing these measurements also lets me vet any potential pedal replacements, such as Crank Bros Eggbeaters, or Time ATACs.

Bike	Q-left	Q-right	Cranks
P-38	135.0	133.0	FSA Pro Team Issue, ISIS
V-Squared	127.0	131.0	Truvativ Elita, GXP
Speedmachine	141.0	138.0	Campagnolo Veloce, ISO-JIS
Speedy	137.8	137.8	Middleburn RS7, JIS

Is it any wonder I've been having problems since 2005, when I more or less stopped riding Speedy every day and started on the Speedmachine? Is it any wonder my riding position on Victoria is off-centre and that it felt so narrow? Only the machine built in a small workshop in Manchester by one man, a machine designed by the master himself, Mike Burrows, a machine with a CNC-produced bottom bracket axle and whose cranks hail from the cream of British manufacture, Middleburn, is exactly symmetric in its Q-factor. My lovely P-38 with its full complement of FSA bling is two whole millimetres out. The V-Squared is a whopping four out. And not only is the Teutonic tour de force itself an uncomfortable three millimetres out right to left, it puts its pedals a whole six millimetres further out on the left than my P-38 and five millimetres on the right. The Campag cranks were never designed for the bike's JIS-taper FAG bottom bracket at all, and in my accelerative exuberance of pedalling and unwillingness to address the issue by disposing of the Campag cranks, my knees have probably paid the price. Fitting JIS-tapered cranks of the same profile would see the pedal centres move inboard by up to 4mm, according to the late Sheldon Brown, and this is consistent with the existing gap between crank and bottom bracket cup that is quite obvious when examining the bike, and consistent with the results I saw when I tested the Middleburn cranks on the bike instead (an experiment which, perhaps due to its dramatic effect and consequent lack of perseverance, was short-lived).

But more issues abound, too, such as why my left knee has the tendency to move inwards to brush the steering column of my P-38 at its maximum bend, despite that side being 2mm further outboard. As near as I can tell, the left and right cleats on my usual shoes (Shimano MT70) are identically aligned. There is the ergonomic difference of the riding positions of all four recumbents, where two of them enjoy 175mm cranks and two enjoy 170mm, leading originally to my theory that in a more closed riding position I preferred longer cranks for slightly greater torque, and shorter cranks on a more open, reclined riding position to allow me to spin the pedals better. Now that I have some hard numbers on (mis)alignment, there are even more variables at play, and it's making it almost impossible to draw any firm conclusions without having the wherewithal to conduct a series of tests such as varying the crank length alone; varying crank length while adjusting the gearing to the rear wheel; varying the torso-hip angle against crank length, and so on.

All I know right now is that my P-38 is fractionally out of alignment but not desperately so, to the extent that I do most of my riding on it; it's clear that my V-Squared needs a bit of work (I blame Truvativ's ridiculous GXP bottom bracket design, myself) with some washers and things; and if I'm to keep my Speedmachine and enjoy riding it again, I have to sort out those cranks.

I'm only in my 30s, and cycling is my life. If I damage my knees now, I will never forgive myself.

Into the lens

What would a bicycle ride be without photographs? Now that the world has advanced beyond the standard chunky SLR film camera and pokey little Instamatics, we have digital technology practically being given away in breakfast cereals, hiding inside phones, on top of baseball caps and bicycle helmets, or inside your computer screen frame. But you can't wield a MacBook webcam back-to-front for holiday snaps, nor can you buy huge hunks of magic glass for your mobile phone, even if it does have eleventy billion pixels behind its pinhead-sized lens. So as always, you trade off ease of portability for performance, compactness for versatility. Until last year I was making do, quite well on the whole, with my little Olympus with its whizbang 2.1 million pixel capture. It's still capable of taking perfectly good photographs and its feature set, good for its time, includes full manual control and an IR remote that does much more than simply activate the shutter. However, its slowness in focussing betrays its era and requires the user (i.e., me) to help it along when the action is quick. That was why I moved to the world of digital SLRs.

But now I have a problem: my Nikon has moving parts inside it; little fiddly, shiny, polished components that were aligned precisely by people wearing white suits and breathing masks. It's also bigger than my Olympus because it has a great big lens on the front, an angular-shaped flippy-up bit on the top, and it needs special batteries and everything. My have camera, have bicycle, will travel requirement hasn't changed though. My fun-sized D40 came with a LowePro TLZ1 bag; well, I say bag, it's more of a triangular pouch really. It's the ideal convenient size for the camera with the kit lens, and just small enough and padded enough to throw into a pannier alongside my usual paraphernalia. Underneath its zipped lid hides a small pocket for memory cards and remotes and so on, and a front pocket is available for batteries and remotes and a purse or wallet perhaps.

The slippery slope of photography, however, is not one to be ignored, and my little TLZ1 immediately lost out when I wanted to carry any accessories. For a time I was making do with my regular rucksack which is more than large enough but has no padding or other protection whatsoever, and that wasn't a good thing at all. Moreover, my telephoto lens came without a case, and the case the camera shop had thrown in for free (after my having to haggle, naturally) had turned out to be too small. In supporting local businesses rather than super purchasing power websites like Warehouse Express, I had paid full retail price, so I decided they'd had their chance. I needed a bigger camera bag.

I visited the larger but less local camera shop to see what was what. My soon-to-be sister-in-law, a freelance photographer, uses LowePro to contain some very expensive hardware and that was a good enough recommendation for me. I started by looking at small cases like the Cirrus 140, which was big enough for a camera plus either (and only either) a second lens or a flash, thus needing accessory bags; the Stealth Reporter D100 and D200 were neat and versatile, capacious, but big and square; and the Fastpack 200 was a very neat rucksack top half, and camera case bottom half. I was quite tempted by that one, actually.

But the more I thought about it, the more none of them seemed to fit the bill. Of paramount importance was a bag I could use while cycling, whether to put inside a pannier or to carry on me. However, I wouldn't be able to wear a rucksack while recumbent, and the height would preclude hanging it over the seat frame. A smaller shoulder case to fit inside a small 12 litre pannier wouldn't be big enough anyway, even though the camera hardware on its own would easily fit the pannier. A larger shoulder case could go inside my very biggest pannier (21 litres, plus or minus) with relative ease, but not all of my bikes are equipped with a pannier rack, and the boxy style with just a shoulder strap wouldn't work for riding. But then I found the Inverse 200 bag, which was a cross between a sideways Stealth Reporter and Specialized's ancient Power Pack 2 bumbag. That one disappeared off the shelves in about 1990, around the time bumbags went out of fashion, but featured a central square bag of decent size flanked by two waterbottle holders.


LowePro's Inverse 200, the grown up version of the 100, has a biggish single compartment that'll take a professional (read: big and heavy) DSLR with a medium zoom lens on it, plus another couple of lenses, and maybe a flash squeezed in there for good measure. The front panel of the bag has on its inside a thin expanding pocket for cables, remotes, keys, Powerbars, chocolate bars, and so on, and the panel itself can expand outwards to hold bigger stuff like notebooks, sandwiches, mini tripods or a Gorillapod perhaps. The very front (or the rear, I suppose, when you're using it) of the bag has a webbing loop on which you can hang an LED bike light. The bag also comes in a seawatery blue and a clovery green that I actually prefer to plain black.


The lid opens up with a pull on the finger loop, and to its underside are a couple of pockets for memory cards. The soft material is expertly placed to keep the screen of your DSLR happy and dust-free. As expected, the centimetre thick foam dividers of the main compartment are all adjustable for position, and are held in place with some of the strongest Velcro known to man.


By way of example, the modest collection of hardware contained within the bag includes a Nikon D40 with its standard 18-55mm lens, a Sigma 70-300mm telephoto lens, a Nikon Speedlight with a case, a second battery pack, and a couple of remote controls. The bag is actually big enough that I can put my camera inside (lens down, of course) whether it's wearing the telephoto or not. A 70-200mm f2.8 might be a bit long in that orientation, but would certainly go in if laid flat.

Turn the bag around and upside down and things get more interesting. The Inverse has an enormous waist belt with huge amounts of padding and wicking mesh material all around, and a great big quick release buckle with its own straps for adjustment. The sides of the belt have their own adjustment straps too to keep the bag tucked into the small of your back, and are perfectly placed to grab and pull. These are especially important if you add weight to the bag and bend forwards on the bike. But there's more; two D-rings at the top of the bag let you add a shoulder strap, which provides excellent three-point stability for walking, running, hiking, and even cycling. The waist belt, faced all around with two inch webbing, also includes two flattened loops for LowePro's 'Sliplock' accessory pouches which hook onto those loops and are secured with slabs of Velcro. You could alternatively hook on other accessories such as a mobile phone, a few karabiners, a torch, and so on.


To one side is a waterbottle holder made from stretchy mesh and with the usual strongly elasticated top and a firm base; to the other side is a smaller version that's not really designed for a bottle. It'll stretch to accommodate but the bottle will interfere with the lid of the main compartment. It's more of a pocket for stashing things like lens caps, chocolate bars or your glasses case.


Along the bottom edge of the front panel, where the orange label lies, is yet another pocket. Two strips of Velcro keep it snugged down, and lurking inside is a full raincover. LowePro has arguably missed a beat here by selecting a shiny grey colour instead of hi-viz yellow, but you'll find as many adherents to each colour scheme as detractors. The raincover is permanently attached to the lining of the panel which makes it a little more tricky to dry out, but does keep it handy.

Underneath the bag you find two more straps, this time with rather neat buckles combining quick release and locking adjustment, and there are Velcro tabs for orderliness. Here you can sling your monopod or tripod. A useful addition which LowePro has missed out would be a non-slip pad to help prevent a tripod sliding to and fro, though some rubbery material could perhaps be added to the tripod's legs instead. My tripod is 25" long (or wide) fully retracted, and is actually a little on the big side for manoeuvrability. Of course, it doesn't have to be a tripod; you could probably stuff a rolled up lightweight fleece there too.


So what's it like to use in the real world? I've done about equal amounts of hillwalking and cycling with the bag and it's very comfortable. I particularly like using the waist belt and shoulder strap together because it feels similar to my messenger bag and super stable. I could probably rely purely on the waist belt but I haven't tried it. To access my camera, I simply undo the belt and swing the bag around. I pull open the lid with my left hand and grab my camera with my right. The camera, the lenses and accessories slide in and out quite happily thanks to LowePro's standard interior of smooth grey polyester.

The front panel is a bit odd, I have to say. It's held in place a bit too well: by its own quick release buckles, the side straps to the waist belt, and the small sections of elastic at the base which prevent small items falling out. The zip to the inner pocket is on the inside, so it becomes a bit of a faff to access things. The waist belt with its luxuriant construction is almost impossible to stow away, although with some fiddling it can be buckled together behind the lumbar padding.

And were I designing the Inverse 200 mk2, I would line the base of the main compartment with twice as much high density foam, or with some stiffening. With the telephoto lens on my camera, the base of the bag sags and it's always the first bit to touch the ground. The Inverse isn't really designed for 1.2kg of camera and 1.3kg of lens, but it ought to be happy with my 0.5kg + 0.6kg combination.

But those are all niggles rather than outright failings. It's exceptionally well thought out and ideal for outdoorsy-type people who want faster access to their camera than a rucksack might provide, and a safer and more comfortable package than a regular shoulder bag. I'm keeping mine.

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.