It's not how fast you can go

Three days since my last entry and I'm writing again? Not since the heady days of the lamented According to Bex has this happened, so something must have happened. Something good, for goodness sake; woah, somebody's coming!

Who's coming up behind you is in fact a black clad rider on her fully armed and operational Lightning P-38.

I jest, of course. On my way home from work today I tried chasing down two roadies with calf muscles the size of pint glasses, astride carbon fibre bikes and working a cadence seemingly so slow as to suggest complete nonchalance towards speed, but my body was having none of it as I enthusiastically created whole clouds of weather around me while battling something slightly gunky inside my throat. I'd breathed in and swallowed a fly earlier in my commute, but had at least the presence of mind to wash it down as quickly as possible with a generous helping from my water bottle. There were actually four people on upright bikes taking on the long hill, a slightly chopped up three-quarters of a mile with 140 feet of climbing, and I dispatched the first one easily after my patience ran out at 7.5mph. The second I could have caught but my exit arrived before that; the roadies by that time had cleared off and were a further few hundred metres up the road. But to be fair, neither of them was carrying any luggage beyond perhaps their house keys, and my bike wasn't made of plastic and soot. I had also not cycled yesterday, owing to a commute on the VFR which itself had been pressed into service to let me recover from Sunday's bicycular theatrics. My knee is almost behaving, too, but Tabitha and I have been apart for the best part of eight months. Victoria's done her best to keep things in check, but she is a touch more slight on the Q-angle and on the crank length. 170 or 175? Aluminium or carbon? 3500 miles on the latter says it works for me, but only time will tell.

Having spent longer than I expected on Saturday fixing up the P-38's boom and front brake, and with the bike sitting with its full lightweight race pack, consisting of a custom made front light mount constructed from a Dremel'd-into-submission Busch & Müller fahrrad-rückspiegel bar end mount attached to 90mm of the lightest handlebar I could find, replacing the undoubtedly massively overbuilt and overweight Topeak Spacebar of the previous four years, and the dispensing of the curly Vistalite extension wire, we were now ready to burn rubber.

In the morning I headed over to The Bicycleworks to meet Andy, David, and whoever else intended to turn up, but strangely although I was on time as usual, no-one else was around; even more unusually even TBW didn't seem to be open. Perhaps they've gone to Peter's Yard, I thought, so I pottered through the Meadows in covert monitoring mode. There were some bikes parked outside but not any I recognised, and nor did I spot anyone familiar inside, so I parked up against a tree and watched and waited. Just then David came flying down the path so I waved and caught up, and we headed back to TBW whereupon Andy appeared. On the citycyclingedinburgh forum we'd had a slightly ridiculous discussion about Edinburgh's steepest roads, everyone making suggestions and the list being reduced to the top 10 or 20, along with what Gugol's maps and spreadsheets thought were their respective gradients. Obviously the roads had to be tested for cyclability, and Andy suggested a route that took in twelve of them. Some I was familiar with from being driven up them, another one I'd cycled once or twice (actually, probably a hundred times), and others I'd never visited at all. I had my GPS to record the day's ride to get some Real Data, and to show the planned route. In the absence of proper GPX route planning skills, that seems to have become my standard workflow for cycling with my GPS. I'll knock up a basic track using something like BikeRouteToaster, roughly following the planned route rather than letting it auto-follow the roads because that creates more than 500 trackpoints which, once I've navigated the execrable RoadTrip™, makes my Garmin shrug its shoulders and proclaim that it's truncated my lovingly prepared track. I can have the city map onscreen as I ride, with my nice green line showing up, and all I need to do is follow it. I even added a dozen waypoints with cute little names like 'OldFishMkt' and 'Gloucester', although the chances are that I would recognise a bloody steep hill when I got to it.

We quickly arrived in Blackford and had a brief warm up as we ascended Maurice Place, before turning right for Blackford Hill Rise, and rise it certainly did. The switchback brought us out onto Observatory Road, so it was only fitting that we cycled to the top to take photographs and carry out a little breath-catching. So far, so good, though I suddenly realised that there were another eleven to go. Retracing our steps we headed west through Morningside, Craiglockhart and out along the Water of Leith path to the former Colinton village railway station. A short loop brought us to Spylaw Bank Road, which I think I'd only been up before on my motorbike. Andy approved of the wall of tarmac, hemmed in by tall greenery, and put the hammer down a touch to leave me opting to take my time in my lowest gears. 'Aye, it's a wee toughie, that one!' I exclaimed at the top.



With the obligatory photographs taken we looped back down to the village and turned towards Bonaly and a short hop to West Mill Road, part of my "longer than usual, just because" commuting route back in my university days. We entered at the top and rode down, so naturally we had to ride up it for it to count, and then rode back down again.



Taking the back way out past the luxury flats built on the site of Mossy Mill and crossing the Water of Leith on an early Arrol bridge, we climbed up to the Lanark Road and took the fast road north through Wester Hailes, Sighthill and Corstorphine village. Kaimes Road was next on the list. less than half a mile long but about 250 feet of climbing. And it felt like it went on forever. As expected, Andy was first to the top, and I chugged away in 1st gear, sometimes reaching the heady speed of 6mph. After taking in the view and watching the Inverness to Kings Cross HST making its way towards Murrayfield, we descended. But only halfway, because Corstorphine Hill Road, the next block over, was also on the list. That one was pleasantly short, but just as sharp.

A careful descent took us all the way back down to the main road, and heated up my front brake just enough for it to start squealing. Crossing back towards Corstorphine we joined the old Pinkhill and Corstorphine branch line to Balgreen and Murrayfield, then followed the Water of Leith path to Roseburn, and up and onto the Roseburn railway path that is still mercifully free of trams. A slight navigational failure took us through Ravelston Dykes which meant that Bells Brae, the long, subsided, bumpy, cobbled climb from the old ford crossing of the Water of Leith in Dean Village, was met at the top. So we rode down it, up Hawthornbank Lane which David suggested as a bonus hill, back across to the top of Bells Brae (it would, of course, have made more sense to turn around...), down Bells Brae, pause for photographs, then up Bells Brae for it to count, then back down Bells Brae for the third time whereupon my bike fell to pieces. It didn't really, although my mirrors were making rattling noises. We took to the Water of Leith path again and turned off at India Place, just near the newly made allotments that would provide each budding gardener with a poky plot that was possibly more double bed than flowerbed. Enough to harvest a family-sized crop of potatoes, though, if the sunshine can penetrate the clouds.

Gloucester Street was up next, another long, subsiding, bumpy, cobbled climb up to Gloucester Lane, which was even worse, and which climbed all the way up to Heriot Row, which itself is on the way to George Street at the very top of the valley, with the Water of Leith at the base and Ravelston Dykes on the far side. Andy and I took ourselves up the hill while David took photographs, and then we took photographs of David hightailing it up on his superlight recumbent bike. From there, the onslaught of cobbles continued as we made our way to Drummond Place and Scotland Street -- possibly the very worst example of Victorian road surfacing in the whole of Edinburgh -- and to the bottom of Dublin Street: a ruler straight ascent up the side of the remnants of the glacier that carved out Princes Street Gardens. Dublin Street, being a not uncommon commuting route for me, and in fact part of National Cycle Network Route 75, is actually shallow enough a hill to be climbable on a six-speed Brompton with standard gearing, albeit at 4mph, and on my P-38 it disappeared in fairly short order.



After recordeding our ongoing success we took to the main roads of York Place and the mighty Picardy Place roundabout. I say mighty, in the sense of cyclists who say, 'It's really dangerous!' and 'Ooh, I never go there!', but not mighty in the sense of impressive, and possibly gutsy road engineering as befitting, for example, the multiple mini "Magic Roundabout" in Swindon. But it was Sunday anyway, and the traffic was minimal, which was a fleeting disappointment to us three intrepid riders who eat roundabouts for breakfast.

And so to Calton Hill. Cobbled, bumpy, short, and very steep. Closed to traffic, too, for many months not so long ago but more for nearby demolition and building work than being too difficult for the poor little cars. I can't remember who took it on first, but it might actually have been me. First gear, feet on the pedals and go, go, go. A few cars decided to make the ascent even more technical by trying to come down the hill at the same time, but I was having none of it and steered around them without missing a beat. All too soon the road levelled out and I turned around, parked my bike and fished out my camera. Andy was there too, and David came up shortly after. After a quick break we carefully made our way back down again, picking routes that hopefully avoided the worst of the tyre-sized gaps between cobbles, we raced down Lower Calton Road, swung right to pass under the East Coast Main Line, and right again and across more chopped up tarmac that in most places was doing an entirely bad job of covering the old cobbles underneath. Cranston Street was another short little climb, this time up the side of the 'tail' on which the High Street was built, and to which the 'crag' is Edinburgh Castle. David and I went up together in record time, neither of us even bothering with our nine smallest gears. Andy took his time, having photographed the route from the bottom, and then really put the hammer down as I did my best to capture the moment. Two more to go.

Down to the Cowgate, via a quick pitstop for me to buy a banana and Jelly Babies, and along the dank corridor of arches, rock clubs, pubs, slightly dodgy looking hotels, and innumerable closes with dank staircases. Daylight reappeared as we reached the Grassmarket, and we casually took ourselves up West Bow and Victoria Street, going up past Long Tall Sally, assorted 20-something shops with black t-shirts and skater clobber hanging in the windows, the tattoo place, the coffee place and so on. Victoria Street was so common and easy a route for us that we'd turned left and cycled across to the Mound and not taken a single photograph. The final assault was Ramsay Lane, a cobbled, bumpy, short and extremely steep little road that seemingly runs right up the side of the Castle Rock. It used to be open to cars whose drivers wanted to avoid the traffic lights of the High Street and George IV Bridge, but they've sort of closed it these days. Tickling my bike into its lowest gear and with my back firmly against my seat I set off. After Calton Hill I wasn't quite so scared and in fact I zipped up, barely breaking a sweat. It's pure skill, I'm sure. City of Edinburgh Council had even been so good as to paint a lovely double yellow finishing lane across the end of the lane and we stopped right there with a quiet little whoop and a possibly more obvious punching of the air from the mysterious black clad rider with the long hair.

Twelve hills in one day! Twelve and a bit, actually. And according to my GPS, a total of 2000 feet of climbing and we hadn't even left Edinburgh. To celebrate our incredible achievements we parked up at The Hub, all of 30 metres away, and spent the remainder of the afternoon enjoying a late lunch of hot chocolate, coffee and chips. David parted ways and aimed himself at the pub, while Andy and I rode out of town a little way before I took off for some more hills and my old standard of a three-quarter mile drag with bumpy tarmac.

Don't go braking my heart

Victoria, my monstrous American recumbent, originally came with a pair of cable-powered Tektro disc brakes which in the hot dry conditions of the Erie Canal towpath were plenty powerful enough, and nicely progressive feeling. Even when racing downhill with a touring load there was about enough in reserve for shedding the miles-per-hour, but once in the Canadian thunderstorms the brakes squealed so badly that car drivers in front probably thought I was giving them both barrels on an air horn. Once back in the cold and damp of home, and in the close proximity of Edinburgh roads compared with the vast airy four-laners of Schectenady, the problem seemed even worse. It was downright embarassing actually. Dismantling the calipers, attending to tolerances and using copious amounts of copper grease behind the brake pads ended up, to my great bicycle mechanic chagrin, making no difference whatsoever.

In the end, I found a pair of second-hand Hope Mini hydraulics and promptly doubled their value by replacing all the pads, buying several metres of hose and the requisite unions, and rebuild kits for the brake levers. I'd had Hope Minis on my Speedmachine, and those ones worked superbly, so I had plenty of reason to assume these would be just as good. Mmm, no. I actually had to file down the diameter of the front disc because for some bizarre reason it was jammed in the caliper. But since then, the rear caliper has been dismantled, rebuilt and bled three times now because the pistons insist on extending more on one side than the other, resulting at best in a plaintive-sounding rubbing as I ride along, and at worst a stronger and stronger rubbing on the disc until it barely turns. If I'd had a modicum of sense, I would have rebuilt both brake levers and both calipers with new seals all round, but in my earlier enthusiasm I left things alone if they seemed good enough at the time. And when it rains, the Hope discs still squeal just as much as the Tektros. In fact, if I'd had any sense whatsoever, I would have bought Avid BB7 cable disc brakes right at the start.

I might've attended to the rear caliper pistons today, but I had more important things to do. I haven't been out on my Lightning P-38 since late last summer, after the frame clamp bolts distorted the aluminium boom. I'd had to install a new seat mesh because the original one started coming apart where the eyelets were pressed in, and the new wrap-around design actually shortened the distance to my pedals by about half an inch. Not much, you'd think, but half an inch is a big deal on an upright bike, and most recumbent seats have a fairly well defined sweet spot too. The raft of knee problems a year or so ago meant I was also trying out some shorter cranks, but that meant needing to lengthen the distance to the pedals as well. But the stubby little boom that Lightning supplied when I bought the frame simply wasn't long enough. So I mothballed my bike, and put the miles on Victoria and Henrietta instead.

But this week I finally received my replacement boom, in shiny black cro-moly steel rather than aluminium and a full two inches longer than the original (Lightning marked it as "XXL": this being installed on my already XL bike!). I had to bash a former into the frame tube first to expand the distorted clamp, although I'm not sure it made an appreciable difference. Then I left my brain in neutral while trying to install my FSA bottom bracket. Back to front. The worst thing was that I was nearly successful in screwing the left-hand threaded half of the BB into the right-hand threaded side of the BB shell. Pedals are easy: right-hand pedal, right-hand thread; left-hand pedal, left-hand thread. Bottom brackets: right-hand side, left-hand thread; left-hand side, right-hand thread.

It reminds me of that old sentence for remembering one's right from one's left. "I write with my right, and the one that is left is my left." But I, being left-handed, had to turn it around. Thus: "I write with my left, and the one that is left is my right." Well it's obvious, isn't it?

With the boom installed approximately, the bottom bracket, the cranks and the pedals quickly followed, then I cleaned up and installed the front dérailleur and the cable, and finished off with a few goes on the track pump for 85psi. A quick spin up and down the road told me I needed the pedals further out by a good half an inch, and this time there was boom length to spare. But look, the front brake pads are nearly worn out too! So on went a new pair of pads (peculiar orange and grey Ashima cartridge for V-brakes) too. Something wasn't right, though, and I realised that Ashima, like Clarke, has decided to make its pads twice as thick as Kool Stop does. My beautifully aligned pad holders then had to be realigned to take account of the wider spread of the V-brake arms, which then meant that my brake cable was just barely long enough to reach across. Perhaps I was being too much of a perfectionist but I think I revisited the pad holder positions about four times, trying to avoid the tyre sidewalls while setting precisely the right amount of toe-in and angling them just right so that they wouldn't drop off the bottom of the rim sidewall as they wore down. But with great serendipity I discovered in the bottom of my bag of spare parts my very last pair of Kool Stop pads! So the Ashimas went back on the shelf, and with the Kools in place I re-aligned the pad holders for a fifth time. After inspecting the brake cable I decided it probably ought to be replaced too, so I handily stole the original teflon-coated brake cable left over from my Brompton handlebar project. And heck, if I'm pulling out the cable I might as well replace the cable housing too and fix that missing inch on the length that's annoyed me for the last four years... After far too much fiddling—I even regreased the little bolt that holds the inner and outer dérailleur cage halves together—I think my P-38, the machine that was designed to be my flagship bicycle, is ready to hit the road again.

Meanwhile, little Henrietta Brompton, who lives in the corner, recently notched up her first 1000 miles. She's already sporting four new brake pads, a new rear rim and a miscellanous new spoke in the rear wheel as well. After work a few days ago I took a trip down through the Meadows, down the Innocent Railway path, past Portobello golf course and down to Portobello beach to pedal along the promenade and look at the big houses.



I finished up at the Dalriada Bar, having a mug of hot chocolate and a huge piece of lemon sponge cake, and sitting next to the open fire while reading my book for an hour or so. Of course, fold-fold-fold and Becky and bike went inside together. As I had expected and had prepared for by packing a jacket in my pannier, it was pouring with rain when I left to cycle home again. The Bar wasn't serving meals and I hadn't fancied eating in the Porto Café, which was both empty of other customers, and about half an hour from closing time when I looked in earlier, so I pottered the ten or so miles home on what felt like the most inefficient bicycle ever invented, finally giving up halfway to peel off my portable sauna of a Goretex jacket and opting to get wet instead. I was down on energy and I wasn't enjoying the saddle very much, but while my Brompton often feels too heavy, too slow, too undergeared, and too bumpy, the rest of the time it's so unbelievably convenient and disarmingly friendly that I always seem to end up forgiving it.

So many different connections

The past few weeks have been lovely for cycling in Edinburgh, down to long-sleeved Helly Hansen temperatures at times and almost no rain at all. The only problem is, I've been battling a cold (like everyone else I think) and then battling a cold that turned into a cough, which went into my lungs and into my sinuses. By the end of last week riding every day was getting to be just too much, when my usual chestfuls of fresh air were met with coughing fits and and endless supply of tissues. I would've admitted environmental defeat and taken to the VFR, but it was still in a garage having its exhaust mended.

But never mind my health, I wanted to support Laid Back Bikes in only their second proper public display at a bike show. I missed the more local show at the Royal Highland Centre near the airport, but I did make it through to the SECC in Glasgow. Having been a fairly frequent visitor to the Weege in recent months for other bikey stuff involving Bromptons, ferries, trains, snow, and beer, it was a pleasant but headwindy two mile ride from Queen Street railway station down a mobbed Buchanan Street to the River Clyde, out past the Meccanotastic Finnieston Crane and along to the venue. I was last at the SECC for a camping, biking, boating outdoorsy show, so long ago that I was writing about it in English class at school.

Being a clever little girl, I had already researched the bicycle parking facilities, revealing them to be somewhat limited: a couple of racks at each of the main doors, and each rack good for half a dozen bikes at the most; not that much capacity for somewhere hosting a bike show, I thought. But I rode my Brompton, so I didn't need to bother with all that tedious locking up outside stuff, or worry about security. It turned out that they had actually set aside the entirety of Hall 5 for cycle parking inside, but even by my fashionably late standard of 12.30pm it wasn't what you would call stowed out. Like most exhibitioney places, the SECC is well served with car parking, but unlike Birmingham's NEC, which is convenient only for powered transport, you can actually walk to the SECC very easily, or you can take a brisk half-hour walk from the railway station, or you can take a bus, or even hire a bicycle. The SECC was built on the old filled-in Queen's Dock, which is on a fairly central and therefore accessible bit of the Clyde, instead of being a barren patch of tarmac eight miles from the city and on the wrong side of an airport and railway line.

Fold-fold-fold-fold and in I went, left the little bike under guard and collected my ticket. I'd paid £7.50 in advance rather than £10.00 on the door, which felt like good enough value to me, and so I wandered over to Hall 3 to visit Laid Back Bikes. And y'know, maybe check out the other stuff going on there too. No sooner than I'd arrived and unpacked my camera than I bumped into my friend Susie, who'd already been round the exhibition and was just leaving. Then after two shots my flashgun's battery died, which at least lightened the load on my neck; unlike the outspoken Ken Rockwell I'm still using the undoubtedly awful standard Nikon strap, which to his credit is actually quite uncomfortable. Laid Back Bikes was doing a roaring trade by all accounts. I said hello to David and Irene and was about to wander somewhere else when I bumped into George the Cameraman. I didn't recognise him at first, but we'd met six years ago when I helped out (she says, modestly) with a video he was making with Laid Back Bikes. And then I bumped into Keith, the very happy new owner of my infamous Speedmachine. I miss that bike, actually, even though my knees don't. On display at the LBB stand were two trikes and three bikes: I'd seen the silver Challenge Alize trike before, parked outside The Bicycleworks back in Edinburgh, and enjoyed its 'jet plane' looks. The dark red ICE Sprint possibly stole the show, though, even alongside a bright orange Challenge Fujin SL. Of course this was Laid Back Bikes, and the Nazca Fuego—almost David's signature bike now—was on prominent display and resplendent in a deep blue that was like looking into a river.



So I went wandering around, past Ironwood's build-your-own-wooden-bicycle stand and past some slightly anonymous and not very memorable stands demonstrating roadie stuff (too much carbon, not enough money) and BMXey stuff (too much radicaldudeness, not enough gears) and arrived at The Bike Chain's display, and bumped into Adam who'd much earlier furnished me with a long-handled allen wrench for my Brompton; TBC's owner Mark was flitting around between bikes and customers and being busy as, well, a bee. I like The Bike Chain a lot. By then some of the Edinburgh contingent from the citycyclingedinburgh forum bumped into me and we powered around the place, taking photos of the BMX area, complete with a quite impressive ramp setup and some daring riders. I only saw one accident in which the unfortunate rider landed backwards and fell hard onto the floor on his back. There wasn't an awed silence from the crowd, half of whom wouldn't have seen it anyway, nor from the riders themselves, who were all well hard. I did wonder though if he would be wearing a back protector in future; that's something that's on my shopping list for motorbiking to replace the foam thing in the back of my Hein Gericke jacket, and the excuse for a foam thing in the back of my leathers.



Later on two more of the Edinburgh forum arrived, having cycled all the way, and into the wind, and we decamped to the back of the arena to drink fruit juice, eat incredibly sugary, fattening things, and try out some of the Electra crank-forward(ish) bikes. Not as crank-forward as RANS builds, but enough that you could immediately feel the sit-up-straight, shoulders-back, relaxing riding position. We took turns to ride to and fro, while taking photographs and smiling and shouting encouraging things.



After being shown how to clean my sprockets using some very hi-tech long flexible bristle brushes with fleece woven into them (I think someone actually invented them a century ago, and called them pipecleaners...) at one stand, and being really impressed by Trakke's locally made messenger bags (like Crumpler without the sexist, vulgar advertising, or Carradice with cheery primary colours), and had I not already bought my Timbuk2 bag I would've been very tempted to buy, I ended up back at the Laid Back Bikes stand and chatted to a lady who was most taken with the ICE trike. She told me all about her cycling history and how much she'd enjoyed riding her custom built touring bicycle back in the day.

I still hadn't had any lunch though so I visited the little cafe for a hugely overpriced chicken and mushroom pasty ("D'ya wannit warmed up, luv?" "Yes please.") which I promptly discovered was so warm it burned my tongue, although it was actually very tasty. After leaving a pile of pastry flakes on my napkin and saying a farewell to some of the Edinburgh people, I was back in the sunshine on Henrietta Brompton and rolling along towards the station again.

Next year for the Scottish Bike Show? Probably, but to support local businesses more than anything else. Apart from the Trakke bags, I wasn't tempted to buy anything at all, or put in an order for anything. To tell the truth, these days I kind of have everything I need for cycling these days. But 2011 was the very first Scottish Bike Show, and the organisers took a pretty good stab at it.

I disregard the writing and I play just what I feel

With the odometer sitting today at 676 miles, I have to say that I'm getting on really quite well with Henrietta Brompton. I haven't really written much about the little one who lives in the corner, but to be fair, I haven't written terribly much about anything of late, except perhaps how to justify owning more bikes.

After the false start in 2009, when the bike-to-be turned out to be no more than a potential collection of components, my Brompton arrived at the end of June 2010 with the help of Biketrax, here in Edinburgh. I'd previously test ridden several bikes in order to try to decide what options I would like: a two-speed with the low, flat handlebars was pleasantly light and stiff, but while Londoners get by very well with the minimal gearing, we have hills; a six-speed with the classic handlebars felt pleasantly tall, which was good news for my neck, and rather too flexible, which was bad news for my muscles; and in any case I found myself hopeless lost with the unusual gear changing between two sprockets and three in the hub. Over at Kinetics in Glasgow I'd tried a titanium version and marvelled at the weight reduction compared with steel, and I took myself around the block on a bike with the multi-position handlebars. I'd bought my Dahon with the intention of occasional folding and frequent riding, probably at some speed, and having decided that speed and distance was a recumbent bike's domain, my Brompton would stay in the court of more gentle and genteel trips.

I wanted to like the 'P-type' touring handlebars, with their controls on the top level and a narrow, low-level position for riding into the wind, but it felt like steering the top of a door. I quite liked the classic 'M-type' handlebar arrangement, but its two-inch height advantage over the flat 'S-type' bar also meant it used a shorter and more vertical stem. If I ever decided that I wanted lower handlebars, I might struggle to find medium-high rise conventional handlebar. On the other hand, with the S-type bar the riding position was low but not stretched out, and potentially good for cranking along and hill climbing within the range of acceptable power output for the bike. And if I ever decided that I wanted the handlebars a wee bit higher, or further forward, an aftermarket adjustable two-inch riser could be fitted, perhaps in tandem with mountain bike riser handlebars. I opted for the flat handlebars.

Gearing was really a no-brainer. Single-speed? No way. Two-speed? Aye, on a 1 in 7 hill? Three speed? Getting there but needs more range. Two-speed, and then fit a double chainring? Potentially a good idea, but it worked out about the same weight as the six speed. So, six speed? My final decision was for the six using the wide-ratio hub and a smaller chainring, which would get the bottom gear around 29 inches which is sufficient for most places in Edinburgh, and on the top end presumably I could simply freewheel if need be. Mudguards were required for weather, and I didn't need any lights because I had them already. I had planned to get Biketrax to order me an aluminium telescopic seatpost, as I had found that even the extended seatpost was laughably short for me. But when I discovered the price of it, and after I'd picked up my jaw from the floor, I decided to stick with steel and hang the extra weight.

And so remained the most important decision of all: the colour scheme. I spent literally hours playing with NYCeWheels' color picker page, and to tell the truth, I came up with several combinations I really liked: Race Green extremities (that is, fork, stem, swingarm) with Apple Green frame, Apple Green extremities with Race Green frame, Cobalt Blue extremities with Arctic Blue frame, White extremities with Arctic Blue frame ... and I tried other combinations to invoke national identities. How about the Cobalt Blue frame paired with White extremities to recall the halcyon days of Ecurie Ecosse motor racing; or the Race Green frame with Yellow extremities for Team Lotus. I even tried the vaguely camouflage colour scheme with the Race Green frame and Sand extremities. In the end, I chose the Arctic Blue frame with Sand extremities, since Sand was the closest colour to the lovely cream colour that Brompton formerly offered. Blue and Cream was, of course, the colour scheme of the English Electric DP1.

That was then. An early modification was to replace the foam handlebar grips with Ergon GP-1s for more contact area. Victoria already had them, and I liked them a lot. I also added some stubby bar ends, wrapped with bright blue tape to match the frame. A cheap Cateye Micro wireless computer from eBay seemed to do the job, and I installed one of my Smart 7-LED rear lights under the saddle. The hard plastic trolley wheels soon made way for a pair of Brompton's excellent Eazywheels, and I added my otherwise spare carbon fibre bottlecage to the stem. Before very long, I took the homemade aluminium rack that I'd built for my P-38, I prior to its Blackburn EX-1, and fashioned it into a frame to take a second pair of Eazywheels at the back of the bike. The Brompton rear rack would have done, at the expense of even more weight; my frame wasn't designed to be structural. Now the folded bike could be rolled along with aplomb.

For 500 miles and more that was my bike. But those S-type handlebars while fine for my hi-NRG commuting were just too low down for more than 15 or 20 miles at a stretch, and something had to be done. A sidenote in an edition of Velovision had shown the adjustable riser, ostensibly for tandem stoker bars, and JD Cycles the only apparent stockist. Having hummed and hawed for months, they were out of stock when I actually wanted one. At long length I found one on the ThorUSA site, and at even longer length found one on the eBay arm of Practical Cycles in Lancashire (where both Hope Technology and Carradice reside). And from the sale at Edinburgh Bicycle I came out with a carbon fibre riser handlebar. The big changeover wasn't quite that easy, because all of the cables on a Brompton are fairly specific in their length: too short, and the bike doesn't fold properly; too long and the pedal or the crank or your foot will catch on them; put them on in the wrong order and the bike doesn't fold properly... With the riser and the handlebar, two brand new gear cables and two brake cables, plus four lots of housing, it was a day of measure, test, check, measure, check, cut, and four times at least. But it all came good in the end, and with the handlebars cut down to the same width as those of the Dahon, and my original Onza bar ends installed at last, I was in business!

And then while riding to work one day, I had my first flat tyre on the bike. Naturally, it was the back tyre, and I hadn't rehearsed the procedure for removing the wheel. It wasn't terribly far, so in the interests of saving money by not catching a bus or a taxi with my bike, I trudged home and went out on Victoria instead. It turned out to be a tiny arrowhead-shaped piece of grit that had gone through the Schwalbe Kojak's tread (if you can describe a slick tyre as having 'tread').

The rear wheel process turned out to be very easy once I'd looked at the pictures in the owner's manual and ignored the text -- after all, it wasn't rocket science: second gear, bike upside down, remove the hub toggle chain, remove the window nut, fold the wheel, detension and unship the chain, remove the tensioner whole, loosen the axle bolts, wheel out. The only picky bit is setting the cable tension on the gear cable, which is simple with a torch: in second gear the end of the screwed rod lines up with the end of the axle, as you look through the little window nut.

But 676 miles later, today I was finally fed up with the notchy, self-centring steering, the gritty front wheel bearings, and the rattling fork hook. So I took everything apart, replaced yucky brown grease (where there was some) with shiny black Castrol Moly Grease, and put everything back together. The headset's locknut washer decided to rotate as I tightened things up, which didn't help matters, and the cones on the front axle were seemingly either gritty and tight, or rattley and loose, but I bent them to my will in the end.

Next stop: tweaking the cones on the rear axle, and eliminating the monumentally annoying rattle of the Brompton 3-speed shifter!

With our wild kinetic dreams

The correct number of bicycles one should own is determined through a mathematical formula well known to internet-savvy cyclists. Stephen Hawking resolved not to include any formulae in A Brief History of Time because he felt each instance might halve his sales, although he did eventually relent and quote one from Einstein. I however am not out for sales, and anyway, it's only a very little formula:

C = n + 1   [1]

where C is the correct number and n the current number of bikes.

So there is supposedly always another bicycle required to fill that little functional gap. It's about the need to transport a couple of bags of peat from the garden centre when you don't have a car and are too cheap for taxis; it's the need to travel with a bike on a train and take it into a hotel, and not worry about bookings or raised eyebrows; it's the need for something stable and unfalloffable for snow and black ice; it's the need for a really lightweight lowracer for smoking those roadies; it's the need for something with an all-enclosed multi-speed drivetrain and weatherproof brakes for hills and salt-encrusted winter weather; it's the need for a decent mountain bike with disc brakes and nicer front end geometry because you're tired of wearing out rims and getting a crick in your neck after 15 miles of trails. Own only one bicycle? That's crazy talk, man.

On the Team Estrogen forum there are various suggestions in the thread Do I need two bikes or one?: 'You need at least two bikes; three or four is even better.', or simply that one needs three or four. One contributor even owns the seemingly ideal 3.5 bikes (the 0.5 apparently being crash-assisted).

In the discussion Is the perfect number of bikes REALLY always N+1? on Singletrack's forum, one contributor stated that 'Four bikes is all I need, and I think that's indulgence. Couldn't go below three though.' Clearly, owning only two bikes would simply make life impossible.

During 2008-09 the Cyclechat forum hosted the discussion How many bikes should a cyclist own?. The first suggestion was the beautifully disarming 'as many as necessary'. Another view was that 'five bikes are quite sufficient, unless you like off road biking in which case you need a couple of MTBs too.' Despite six pages and 80 posts, there was little agreement reached over what the correct number of bikes was, except that the formula itself was correct, more or less. For some a more appropriate version was (n+2) or perhaps (n+3). Indeed, a contributor on the London Fixed-gear & Single-speed forum noted that multiple bicycle ownership, whether realised or aspirational, was 'worse than crack'.

The Blasphemous Biker, writing in December 2010, explained his rationale for needing three bikes. These would, in his opinion, comprise a road/touring/Audax bike, a mountain or mountain-type bike, and a bike to use in cities and in bad weather.

In fact, Peter Walker of The Guardian picked up on the (n+1) movement and the Cyclechat thread in July 2010, in his article Confessions of a serial bicycle buyer. Walker himself said 'I now own four bikes ... it makes perfect sense.' The 69 comments on that article quickly demonstrate the relatively few people who own only one bike, though one commenter (commentator?) came tantalisingly close to a magic single machine with his Rohloff-hubbed multiple-tyre optioned Thorn Enduro. At least one person picked up on the dichotomy of need vs. want, and considering the environmental impact of owning many bikes, but until it's proven that four, five, six bicycles has a greater environmental cost than one car -- especially a modern 5-seater petrol hybrid -- I remain on the side of the human power movement even with its ongoing materialism.

Fortunately there are already rules in place to help govern such desperate soul-searching and financial husbandry. Within The Rules: the simple truths of bicycle etiquette, and under Rule 12: Fundamental Principle of Bicycle Ownership, it is stated clearly that three is the minimum acceptable number, with the correct number calculated using the (n+1) equation. The three are explained in greater detail in the Badass By Association: Winter Riding discussion and may be summarised as i) a rain bike; ii) an inclement weather bike; and iii) a nice weather bike. However, one contributor helpfully pointed out that road surfaces, frame materials and frame types should be additional considerations, and '117 bikes per person' was therefore justified.

But as we saw from The Guardian, if we start to distinguish between want and need, our happy 'correctness' goes out of the window; that is to say, correctness tends towards optimality. We might, therefore, look for an empirical solution, N, to the equation

N = n + (F_d * F_e)   [2]

in which the absolute desirability factor, F_d, would include subjective things like price of a bicycle (or multiple bicycles) divided by expected mileage, peer group rarity, size, total inertia, and total rolling resistance; and the enabling factor, F_e, ranges from -1 to +1 and includes measures of household or relationship stability, price divided by expected salary, security of rarity, and available space.

This is all fine and good, but such empiricism requires hard numbers, not just statements and good ideas. While the correct or ideal number of bicycles is clearly 'one more', we can look at reported ownership to determine a real-world optimum. Obviously it will be at least one, and presuming it to be fewer than infinity, and on the available data being post-limited to personally owned bikes rather than including those in the garage/hall/shed but belonging to other people, we must consider not just the bog-standard average but all three statistical averages, that is, is there a normal or offset-normal distribution of the results, and where are the peaks? Also to be borne in mind is the possibility that all reported results are skewed by all the I'm-not-a-cyclist, I-only-ride-to-the-park single-bikists steering clear of internet discussion forums and little surveys, and indeed, pottering around completely oblivious to the value of their collective bike usage. In fact, the oblivious might make up a statistically significant proportion of bicycle owners, if not in the absolute numbers of bicycles.

Davis, in California, reputedly has 2.1 bikes per person. A census on the DavisWiki website, with returns from December 2005 through to November 2009. suggested that across 132 wikizens there were on average 1.9 bikes per person, which is a pretty good result. Ownership was perhaps slightly adrift of statistical rigour, because the numbers ranged from one bike to as many as 18 (though perhaps understandably, not all 18 were high quality mileage machines, and not every contributor gave a precise breakdown of bikes per household member.

Closer to home, the Cyclechat discussion referred to above saw returns from 39 people and counted a total of approximately 133.5 personally owned bikes (the 0.5 referred to a tandem, whose other rider seemingly didn't participate). The average number of bikes owned was 3.4 per person, with both a median number and modal number of 3 bikes per person.

A more detailed survey, How many bikes are there in your shed/garage/house?, conducted on yACF in 2008 covered 91 forum members (accounting for repeats and updates) and a total of 511 personally owned bikes. In this survey, the average number of bicycles owned was substantially higher, at 5.6 per person, with a median number of 4 bikes, but the modal values occurred at both 3 and 5.

And on .citycyclingedinburgh, the small but succinctly named question How many bikes do you have in your possession currently?, asked in late 2009, has had at the time of writing returns from 29 people, who together own 79 bikes. Including one forum member who reported being particularly well-wheeled, the average number of bikes owned was 3.9 per person, and again both the median and modal number was 3.

So perhaps there is some truth in the Velominati definition. And in fact, the eternal question isn't limited to only pedal bikes. A Kawasaki KLR owner goes with three motorbikes as the optimum: 'One to do this, one to do that, and one you are trying to sell so you can get another one you crave to do the other.' A member of the Suzuki SV650 forum said that his significant other 'failed to comprehend why on earth I might want more than one bike at a time. The optimum number of bikes to have is four, no less.' Honda VFR owners, on the other hand, are clearly the most financially comfortable of the group (or are the most adept at finding examples that are roadworthy but ancient, and therefore cheap), suggesting that the optimum number of motorbikes must be at least six, according to one owner, to as many as nine according to another.

While a small proportion of riders manage perfectly well with only one bicycle or motorbike, the evidence for multiplicity is compelling. It may all be summarised neatly using the definition of resilience.

"N+1 Redundancy ensures maximum uptime and continuous availability."

However, UPS units and RAID arrays and duplex cabling are not normally associated with familial harmony. An additional criterion is the number of bicycles, s, at which your significant other will announce an intention to leave you if you bring home another bike. This threshold limit is normally defined as:

C = s - 1   [3]

which of course is the simplistic form of equation [2], and appears as a qualifer in Rule 12. The threshold limit appears in a reworked form in another suggested modification of the original equation, again on the Singletrack forum. Known as the CHB Bike Theory of Everything we account not only for the number, n, of bikes owned currently but the number, a, of bikes made redundant by the additional two, and the number, b, representing the difference between n and the number of bikes one's significant other thinks you have. Thus:

C = n + 2 - a - b   [4]

If a is found to be greater than 2, there is generally an error in the types of bicycle which one might aspire to own. Clearly C must be greater than n for all n, otherwise one might reasonably assume that there is a significant risk of a rupture forming in the bicycle-time continuum.

Jill Homer, a cyclist in Montana, owns five bicycles and, worryingly, says she doesn't actually enjoy it despite each having 'a particular function that I Can Not Live Without.' But she redeems her alarming thought of selling one, in order to make space for another, by modifying it instead. She sounds a lot like me, actually.

Perhaps at the root of 'one more bike' is our desire to try new things and competitive spirit encourages us to go faster, further, longer using less energy. You can ride bumpy, wet offroad trails using skinny road tyres on a frame with no mud clearance, but you might slide and fall off. You can ride on tarmac using tractor tyres and full suspension, but it'll be hard work. You can carry planks of wood and tow bicycles on almost any upright two wheeler, but a load bike or a trailer lets you carry more, more safely. You might be able to take your long wheelbase recumbent bike with four panniers into a hotel room, but a folding bike could make it a lot easier. Indeed, three was the Magic Number which De La Soul referred to in the 1990 single, and it looks good for cyclists and motorbikers too.

Finally we come to Bob Gannon, a photographer in Pennsylvania, who in a comment to Jill, elegantly summed up the growing awareness of Bicycle Acquisition Syndrome: 'I think you should resolve the issue by getting a larger apartment.'

Guidance systems break down

Well here we are in the depths of almost-winter. It's still only December, and in my mind, winter should start on January 1st. Three months per season please; and none of this 18 inches of snow before the end of November, thank you.

The big 6V 4400mAh battery I assembled lovingly for my Vistalites several months ago has been powering the 5W and 10W pods very happily, until today. First the centre terminal in the socket wouldn't contact properly, requiring much wiggling of plugs and mild swearing. This evening I've had half a dozen false peaks in succession on my Pro Peak digital charger, and cranking the charge current to 3A, in the hope of shoehorning more electrons in before it noticed, didn't help either. This is a slight problem.

My original (and hitherto backup) 2200mAh battery is now being recharged for tomorrow's snowbound adventures. I'm going to have to pull apart the big battery and test the cell voltages, because it sure as heck isn't playing today. How fortunate, you might say, that I designed the battery to be taken apart with greater ease than its predecessor.

As I'm patently failing in my duties as a blogger, and even a rare one at that, perhaps another précis of events is warranted:

• Henrietta Brompton, who lives in the corner, joined the august ranks of Becky's Garage back in July. We've been on the train to and from Glasgow many times, she's been stowed in car boots, and in October we spent four days pounding the roads of London. Henrietta is perhaps the single most useful bicycle I have ever owned.
• The Stealthmachine, that big black beast that was party to so many bizarre encounters with the motorists of Great Britain, went to live with a new owner. It's still in Edinburgh, though, and so I shall smile broadly if I happen to see it on the road with Keith at the controls.
• Speedy remains with me, and we've been out on the road three times in as many months. While the ride is as bone-jarringly rigid as ever, the sheer chuckability and guaranteed stability is, in these icy days, quite the treat. The SKS/Moulton mudguards I adapted have not fared so well, with every one of the pop rivets having corroded into powder. Even the aluminium layer between the plastic had corroded and split.
• Tabitha, the P-38, isn't very well with a distorted front boom resulting from over-tightened pinch bolts, which themselves resulted from the boom being too short. Tim Brummer will have a little explaining to do.
• Victoria, the monstrous American recumbent, is even more monstrous with her Terracycle tailsok in place. I've drawn the line at a front fairing, for now. Using some spare carbon fibre plate and four Cateye multi-fit mounts, I also knocked up a pair of Terracycle-esque accessory mounts to run my headlights on the fork blades. That would be the headlights for which my big battery isn't working, then. Sometimes a bunch of AAs and another Cateye EL135 seems the way to go.
• And Annie the Blue Bike, ah, dearest Annie, is into her 20th winter and still going strong, mostly. For a few days we dabbled with a stripped-back, mountain biking guise, but full length mudguards and a pannier rack were just too useful to do away with. Riding in -10ºC didn't exactly work wonders for my Scottoiler, as the lubricant froze in the reservoir, the delivery tube fractured, and the valve inside the squid dispenser broke. And of all the unusual things to happen, the chain broke! Well, nearly, as one side of a link had peeled open while I was riding along Edinburgh's foremost highway: the bus-filled, thronging, yet slightly shabby, Princes Street. Of course, I'd already detected a regular-irregular ticking through the pedal feedback and mentally traced it to the chain and immediately reduced my pedalling effort, so I was spared any traffic light hyperacceleration plunging-to-the-tarmac accidents. I've never broken a chain before.

And what about me? The first day of snow, and I nearly broke my ankle as I slid, lost my footing, found the ground, lost my footing, and fell into a snowdrift. Three weeks (or is it four weeks?) later, I'm still hobbling, still lacing up my hiking boots as tight as possible, and still cycling. Another eight days and I can put my feet up for a while.

Tender timing

"Wanker!"

Of course, riding an odd looking bike through a conservative city's inner suburb is always going to elicit a range of wild and imaginative comments from the public. The perceptiveness of different age groups is quite interesting to note, given that my usual attire in the lessening sunshine of a late afternoon in September is frequently a nonspecific black. Black socks; grey and black shoes; black shorts; black fleece, perhaps enlivened with a hint of a shocking pink or muted blue t-shirt lurking underneath; black even is my headwear which may equally involve polystyrene or a microfibre cotton-poly mix. Eyes formerly hidden behind reflective sunglasses now plainly observe the world through UV-A and UV-B rated polycarbonate with 85% light transmission. Small children on their way to school, accompanied by their mother or father keenly restraining any bemusement, express mild wonder in their unabashed enthusiasm for the lady on the funny bike. The need to keep one's side up, however, in the cut-throat internet- and Big Brother-educated worldly socialism of both pre-teen and teenage cliques and social circles rides roughshod over any such earlier innocence and, it appears therefore, the ability to tell boy from girl. The w-word, my foot.

If such playful misidentification wasn't enough, so many times while commuting and in hot pursuit of no-one in particular, I find my onlooker to be posted on the other side of the road. I find that most annoying, in fact. In the hustle and bustle of traffic and with me moving at anything from 10mph to 30mph, it is rarely a simple matter to jam on my brakes, mirror-signal-manoeuvre, and swing around in a glorious U-turn of canted-over control of tyre versus road. And even if I could, my retort of instant, withering wit would surely and inconveniently desert me in my moment of triumph. In today's otherwise ordinary ride through an ordinary city street, a street perhaps a little worse for wear in its grubby stonework, its tracksuited, shopping bag carrying denizens and its cut-up tarmac displaying a once-proud red painted cycle lane, on a low brick wall there lay in wait a threesome of grey-clad twentysomethings. I wondered, as my head flicked around upon that single shouted word to be met by three toothy, vacant, beer lubricated grins, if they were new to the area, for Victoria and I were certainly no stranger to those parts. But, my great inertia carried me onwards without a moment's hesitation even as I held their gaze for a second longer.

I held my tongue, too, not entirely out of politeness but out of the immediate failure to conjure up that deadly verbal barrage, contrived precisely to penetrate the slow thinking mind with a short, sharp expression, while simultanously retaining a suitably supercilious delivery aimed squarely at the bows of said physically unlikely suggestion, and designed to confuse and embarrass in equal measure.

Once home of course, and with all the time in the world for such fancies, my mind started constructing the proverbial arrows.

"Feck off!"

That most endearingly sanitised insult still sits somewhat uncomfortably as a rather unbecoming turn of phrase, and would do little to further the benign reputation of a majority of road users. However, such concerns might be moot in the present company, and one must certainly admire its minimally syllabic pointedness and the effectiveness of an almost unrivalled speed of articulation.

"Tosser!"

Right back atcha! One would however still be plumbing the depths of good taste, and with articulative speed no better than before the receipient would be equally far back along the road. However, the extended û sound of the last syllable provides for a splendid lingering delivery as one speeds away.

"Takes one to know one!"

Too commonplace I think; impossibly clichéd, and even in jest would be intimating fault where in my surely holier-than-thou manner none existed. Through its everyday manner any desired insult is diluted beyond reasonable effect, and it borders on a delivery time that may be measured as 10 metres or more of tarmac, by which time the guilty party is already long gone, hidden by later vehicles and falling off one's immediate attentions.

My mind started working on effusion instead, incorporating half-remembered snatches of comedy sketches involving a man coming to repair a harpsichord, and an adaptation of litarary greatness that would have Jane Austen herself blushing furiously.

"Fair Sir, I fear not. I do find however that a strap-on is quite unable to deliver the same wonderful sensations with which I'm sure you yourself are so intimately acquainted."

Traffic lights notwithstanding, I would be quite tested to carry my voice 160 metres for the final words to my most expressive acquaintance. In the heat of the moment, I decided that in order to minimise further reaction time I should merely direct at him a look combining amusement and superiority, and thus the half-smirk, half-glare was created. The effectiveness of this approach is highly debatable, yet as I continued on my happy journey I detected no subsequent laughter.

Except mine.