Traffic Lights and why people stop.

A rather curious thought has been working its way across my consciousness over the past few weeks and it all revolves around the contentious point of stopping at Red Lights. Now there is no point in boring you and  especially me with working through the argument of to stop or not at red lights, some do and some don’t. A majority of people that either stop at lights or don’t have their genuine reasons. The careful cyclist (and let’s be honest that means usually a female) will stop at all lights and progress at a steady and elegant rate (this I also think is the general continental way of riding a bike, but more on that another day). Then there is the bike nutter who considers it an insult to his human rights to make him stop unless he personally wants to, this type of person will take all manner of risks and for the purposes of this post I shall take this as so.

I personally think I tend to fall in-between both of the above groups. I stop for red lights at junctions / crossroads or where traffic ahead will come onto my road from the left. I will not stop though if it is a pedestrian crossing and no one is on it or if the lights are for traffic coming in from a lane on the right and the left hand side of the road I am on just continues straight with no roads coming on to it; I still proceed with care, as I know vehicles joining my  road from the right will not be expecting me there and although I am not in their way, I still am aware I am doing a manoeuvre outside normal practice. To summarise I only go through red lights when I know it is safe or where the risks are within my control.

So to the crux of my post – there is a group of people who I whole heartedly sit in my group of riders (and I think I sit in the majority when it comes to red light jumping) yet they often stop at every set of lights. So who are they and why do they do  it?

Cars to Avoid on the Road

So I assume I am not the only person to do this. So for others of you who do the following and have felt alone, wondering if anybody else kept a similar list but not daring to ask, I shall run through my mental list of Danger Cars.

In my mind as I cycle to and from work I have been making a mental note of what cars on average it is worth avoiding or at least taking more care when near them. What follows is a list of the cars and drivers to take special care of when they are near.

The Fear

Well been away and am back again – between having to travel abroad, afternoon meetings (making the use of the bike impracticable) I have not been in the saddle anywhere near as much as I should have been lately. Last week I only had a chance to ride in once, this week it will only be about 3 times.

The issue perturbing me currently though is the suggestion of a friend at dinner on Saturday. He wants me to join him on a 70 mile bike ride at the end of August, this fills me with dread. I do two 11 mile rides a day – generally speaking that is enough for me – the thought that I could complete 70 miles in one ride totally fills me with dread! Can I really go that far?

An Excellent Article

I saw this article on www.londoncyclist.co.uk

It is basically a “10 lessons I learnt in my first year of cycling” written by a person who has obviously like many a Mambo taken up cycling again in his 40’s.I want to link to it as I think it was well written and had some good points in it (not the usual absurd opinions you hear from me here). So rather than reproducing it here (obviously showing the source) I thought, in true Twitter style, I would just link it. If you are relatively new to cycling it is worth a little read, to be honest I wish I had read a few more articles like this one before I started off. I do totally disagree with his idea of using cheaper clothing though – one does have certain standards to maintain!

10 Lessons learnt from cycle commuting for a year

Speed Cameras

I have a dream – well an ambition really, but I hear things that start with “I have a dream” do quite well at getting a crowd going.

On my favourite hill (see earlier posts) well going into work it is because it goes downwards, there is a speed camera near the end – now I have never been able to go through it at full pelt - normally some car is worried about getting a fine and gets in the way (their fault for having a number plate).

Today I manage to have enough clear road to go through it at 36 mph, I believe I could get a max of about 39 – 40 mph with a clear road (please remember I am on a hybrid and I have 50 teeth on the front cog only) though it is feasible that I might spin my legs off totally. Even still the speed camera did not get up the gumption to take a picture of my magnificent feat! So just how fast am I going to have to do – I know my wife got a ticket for doing 39 mph in a car through it – maybe bikes are just too small to register?

There is just one question, if I did manage to set it off – say at 40 mph – I would want a copy of the picture. Do you think if I went to the police they would let me have it, or would they be their usual spoil sports and give me a fine instead? The fine and points on my license might be worth it though for such a glorious moment!

Or maybe I should just grow up and act my age and not my shoe size – how dull.

Been Away.

So, it has been a while since my last update. I have been away on holiday, which was a total disaster. It was terrible weather (the weather in the UK was far better) I got Flu, I was bored and ended up having to do work whilst away – the only difference being that my data usage cost me 10,000 times more because I was abroad.

Needless to say I was glad to be back, the only problem being that I have to go back there for 3 days because the work I did out there needs to be closed out with some conversations, [sarcasm]I can’t tell you how excited this concept makes me [/sarcasm].

So what else I miss – well the dog of course, though I am not sure the feeling was reciprocated, he seems to have a great time at my sister’s house and seems to get far more attention there and comes back spoiled and annoyed with me for deserting him. Also within 30 minutes of being home I popped into my garage and said hello to my bike, how I missed my daily exercise. I did try going to the gym whilst I was abroad – I had this great plan that I would use the time I was away to do some strength work but the aforementioned flu put paid to that idea. On top of that I still have the leftovers of the flu to deal with, so for my first two days at work I have had to use the train (maybe tomorrow I will get back in the saddle). Either way my feet are twitching and my desire to dice with death on the roads of London grows hourly – see you all out there very soon, meanwhile I shall console myself by looking wistfully at other cyclist as they ride by on my walk to the station.

Bad Wind

No this is not a post about me eating too many greens! So the sun in London has definitely come out to play. The roads are swarming with cyclists and all in all it is a total pleasure going into work by bike, but when I say “going into” I really do mean the morning ride – in the evening going back it is a whole different story.

Firstly let’s start with gradient – on the way onto work (as I have mentioned before I have a lovely long slope of ¾ of a mile which starts steep and then gradually levels off – this is perfect for getting to top speed and then maintaining it. The problem is I have to navigate this same hill on the way back – so at the end of the ride I have this killer hill that sucks all your energy out on a long gradual slope and then kills you off with a final steep bit at the end. Well I could deal with this slope a lot more effectively if it wasn’t also for the fact that I also seem to be cursed with a strong wind blowing into my face for most of the journey home and the wind seems to double on this final hill.

There are two things in cycling I am not dealing with fully, one is hills and the other is wind. When the two are combined I feel like crying! So I am thinking on finding a solution. I could maybe put drop bars on my bike (currently it is a T bar) but this would ruin the whole reason for buying the bike in the first place. Or maybe I could put those triathlon aero bars on the bike – but this looks so try hard. To be honest I am at a total loss, every time I think about looking like a Muppet I decided not to change or add to the handlebar, then every evening I hit that hill and the wind blows and I regret being so timid.

Daily Commute - a curious accident - Ouch.

Right now I am working on a long post about how to get more people on their bikes (very Norman Tebbit of me) in London. But I had a bit of a weird accident on my way to work today so I thought I would just post about it and let you have a laugh at my expense again.

Make mine a short - pair of that is.

An important topic of discussion, now that we have had a sudden jump in the quality of the weather this week, is that of which shorts to wear.

Now these lycra / spandex shorts are all well and fine when you are on the bike, nothing out of place there, but the minute you get off the bike you look like a total Muppet wearing a nappy. So the obvious solution is to wear a pair of shorts over them, any such shorts need to meet a few requirements.

• Look good off the bike 
• Look good on the bike 
• Not be too flappy  
• Hide the nappy underneath 
• Be comfortable (sealed seams and all that malarkey). 

Now wearing a pair of sport shorts etc. may look good in the gym or on the beach, they are just not going to cut it if you walk into a pub or restaurant, basically you will look like a builder just come off site and what is the point of owning a bike if you can’t stop off at a pub mid journey? Besides their nappy hiding abilities are at best limited.

CycleStreets App

So I hunted high and low and I found it – yep an app I don’t really like, neither do I find it that useful (hang on aren’t those two things one and the same)?  The name of this wonderful find is CycleStreets.

So what is it?

Well it is a route planner – much like Google maps – the only difference being it is not a very good map that is shown with poor resolution but it is supposed to map out perfect routes for cyclists - I wish.

Internal Combustion Engine Vs. The bike

Maybe this is a little politically incorrect of me, this being a cycling Blog and all, but I cannot fail but to be impressed by the internal combustion engine. I mean really think about it, I have on more than a few occasions, as I have been sweating and puffing my way up some steep hill, thought about the fact that I could be reclined in a nice comfortable leather seat – the sound system wafting music set at the right level into my ear and with a little extra pressure from my right foot I will bound up to the top of the hill at 50 mph without a by your leave. Really it is a marvel of modern engineering that my 2 tons of cars can fly up the same hill as I am working so hard to get up on my carbon fibre bike. You may not like the car but you cannot fail but be impressed at how brilliant the engineering is. Two tons of car me and 50 mph – all for ¼ a cup of fuel, and this is before we get into all the safety factors, air bags, crumple zones etc. Sometimes I really wonder why I push myself up that hill when 3 pence of fuel (even at current prices) could do it for me.

Daily Commute 2 (part b)

To continue my story of last week’s commute....

Despite the ignominy of two comedy dismounts, I also had a couple of successes and a useful lesson.

Daily Commute 2

Well with all the pothole related posts at the tail end of last week I didn’t even get to do my Daily Commute update which is a shame because a few things happened both good and bad and quite a few my error!

So let’s deal with the humiliation of last week first and get it all over and done with – I was not cool on a number of occasions last week. To expand let me give a little background, I have as a few keen eyed readers will have spotted had “issues” with pedals (you can read about it here if you care) so I took the plunge and went for some clipless pedals (basically I started using cleats). I read all the reviews, determined that this would be the last pair of pedals I would buy in a long time – I will go through all of it in a later post – anyway the reviews were full of glowing recommendations about the pedals and listed how they had not had a comedy dismount with their new pedals, righty ho I think to myself these are the ones for me.

Fill That Hole!

Following on from my rant yesterday about potholes I feel it is time to up the timing of this post and provide you all with some additional advice on how to report potholes.

Why report a pothole?

A reasonable question but there are two very important things to know one legal and one political.

A Holy Rant

Time for another rant I feel, my bile levels are up but, to be honest, I don’t think they could ever be high enough to deal with this topic. Being of sound and reasonable mind and as I may have mentioned before  “Oh best beloved” (look at me coming over all Rudyard Kipling) I am rather good at buying the right things. So when I bought my bike I went for Carbon Forks – these had Specialized FACT carbon legs a system to dampen bumps in the road, so sorted!

No matter how early I get up in the morning I seemed to be programmed never to leave the house until 08:30. This is fine in the sense that I can cycle to work in 38 minutes, but then comes the hassle of waiting for the dopy doorman to open the electric gate to the underground parking where I leave my bike, pulling off the various detachable bits on my bike that can be stolen with ease, next I have to lock my bike, get the lift up to the ground floor, walk to the office and then struggle to find my door pass that has moved to some hidden recess in my rucksack. All in all it is usually about 09:20 by the time I am at my desk - I also have to get changed into my suit, but I have always remembered the wise words a senior manager told me when I was a callow youth “never take a dump at home, always make sure you do it on company time”. So therefore I am not overly concerned about the time I take to get changed into my suit.

Nevertheless, I would dearly love to leave the house at 08:15 or earlier, so I could just take a casual ride into work sometimes and arrive fresh and not covered in sweat. Also it would give me a chance to avoid the topic of my rant. So there you are, you have struggled up a hill and are now bombing down the other side, the wind is in your face, you have selected the highest gear and you are breaking the speed limit – result! Then it happens, thunk, front wheel wobble no padding in your pants, let alone your fancy carbon forks, is going to deal with the Potholes that you have just hit.