It's Raining!

Rain on the commute has never really bothered me. In fact I’d go so far as to say I really enjoy riding in it.

As long as I remember to put the Raceblade on the back (check) and have my waterproof jacket (donned) and waterproof overshoes (velcroed) then I’m ready to go. I’ve never been troubled by wet legs, so the 3/4 troos remain and I venture out into the dampness. I’ve written before about how riding in the wet and (usually) cold is a great thing once you reach your destination (with someone who has driven not knowing that joy of climbing into warm and dry clothes and tasting that first coffee of the day). but there’s another aspect I like.

And it’s that no-one else seems to like it. Not just cyclists, who thin out on the streets, but pedestrians who make their way into buses or, more likely given the incresed number on the roads, into their cars. The tailbacks lengthen considerably, and frustration levels multiply. Only this morning the Merc driver who took exception to me being in the cycle reservoir ahead of him, who accelerated past with an exaggerated blip of the throttle, was joyfully (for me) met by a static line of metal less than 100 yards further on. I must look like some kind of maniac when riding in the rain, given the almost permanent fixed grin.

As a by the by, a couple of issues ago our Numbers Game had a figure for the number of times a cyclist gets wet a year commuting. It was presumably a UK average, and meant those times when you get properly soaked, but even so the figure of 12 times seemed frankly absurdly low. Okay, so Edinburgh is likely wetter than London, but we’re not even through March yet, and my count (which I started keeping after reading the stat) now sits at 7. I can’t see April foregoing its traditional showers either… Which is great.

People who know me will know I’m not great proponent of bright yellow cycle clothing. For night riding I’ve got a jacket with reflective piping which I reckon is much more effective, and at all times ride in a manner to get myself seen, rather than relying on my clothing to do the job. Because, frankly, no clothing is up to that job. However…

Whenever the debate begins over bright-coloured cycle clothing there are examples that come out from people saying, “ah, but look at this photo, see how the yellow merges in with the background grass and becomes virtually invisible.” It’s a convincing photo as well, and certainly does exactly what the debater is saying. The problem is, it’s one example. Just one. Okay, show me ten more examples, they are still just ten. And the reason I’m so dismissive of the ‘example as proof’ is that it’s damned easy to find an opposite example.

Take, if you’ll pardon the pun, this for example.

Yellow!

The image is straight as it was out of the camera, snapped quickly on the way into work (not, I must add, with the intention of making this post). ‘Proof’, as it were, that hi-viz yellow really stands out from the background. Except I don’t see it as proof, nor offer it as proof, because I know that in different situations, with a different background and the sun in a different position, that jacket will be pointless.

So do we change clothing depending on what people can see around us? Pop a new jacket on or off whenever the sun creeps in and out of cloud cover? No. What we do is leave things to personal choice, rather than arrogantly assuming that we ourselves are right and everyone else, who happens to be doing something different from us, is wrong. There’s a phrase that goes something along the lines of ‘the plural of anecdote is not data’ – I think the same could be said of the plural of ‘example’, especially when it’s so easy to find an opposite.

Of course, whether those yellow jackets create a culture within which drivers are ONLY looking out for things so brightly coloured is a different debate for a different day…

The last time I was in London was about a year and a half ago. Cycling made up a huge part of that trip, and I remember being astounded by the number of cyclists I saw. Okay, some of them managed to perpetuate the stereotype of London cycling being something of a battle zone where you had to break the rules to stay safe, but you got a genuine feeling that this was on its way to becoming a true cycling city.

Now I’m not so sure. Which is odd because this trip involved no cycling, but without looking for them I saw a lot more cyclists and bikes. True, I didn’t see the new ‘Cycle Superblueways’ but the cycling provision remained somewhat lacking, and the overall sense was still of cyclists running reds and taking risks (usually up the inside of a bus).

We always assume, and postulate, that more bikes means more cycling visibility and more chance of a cycling culture. I think London proves that, in the UK at least, there’s a more fundamental change required to the traffic psyche…

Hopefully all will be well for the next issue next Friday!

An Ex-Pedal

This became an ex-pedal by shearing off its spindle. It did this as I noticed traffic lights ahead for a right hand turn I wanted to make turn green thereby causing me to stand on the pedals to put a bit of a spurt on. This resulted in a 20mph+ dismount, followed by a ten yard slide on the greasy road surface, wearing away the bar tape to the metal, and putting holes in my cycling jacket and mid-layer underneath. Remarkably this road-rashing did not transmit through to my arm, nor did any other part of me come off badly in this unexpected road interaction.

Of more annoyance was that it took me a few moments to disentangle myself, with traffic behind and a bus to my side, and not one person could even bring themselves to wind a window down to shout a query as to my one-piecedness. Nor did that happen as I scrambled to the side, having spotted and picked up the pedal, showing it to the traffic behind to explain my sudden horizontal move, and examined the bike on the pavement with the traffic resuming a slow filter.

Second big off in a couple of weeks, and while the first one was entirely down to my own stupidity, this was I really can’t see how I could have saved it… The problem with the pedal isn’t something I could really have detected earlier, nor would have shown up in the service I gave the bike the other day (I don’t go as far as stripping the pedals down), but maybe I’d be better off on the bus.

Except I know I’d last one trip before pining once more for the bike. Which means a lunchtime wander to the only place I think stocks a particular type of pedal I’m going to change to (over the years the durability of Crank Bros was starting to grate). This will involve waling a short section of Leith Walk – and you can almost guarantee, the way my luck is going, that this will be the day I see an otter or kingfisher…

*grump*

a POB yesterday

There’s many the time I’ve railed against the use of ‘POB’ as some sort of distinguishing factor between the speaker as a ‘real’ cyclist and the actions of some other ‘Person Onna Bike’. It’s not a dislike of acronyms (though I’m likely to beat anyone who says ‘lol’ too much with a track pump), and I have no awful childhood memories of a spitting television puppet (one for a certain generation there…). It was simply because I thought it was a bit arrogant.

Joe Driver Bloggs or Jane Pedestrian Doe can’t tell the difference. Won’t tell the difference. And when faced with the myriad anti-cyclist rants I don’t think it’s particularly helpful to point out someone in the middle distance and simply claim they’re not ‘real’. After all, when we complain about ‘drivers’ if the only argument that came back was ‘yeah, but he’s a boy racer/taxi driver/BMW driver, not a ‘real’ driver’ we’d rightly think the issue was simply being dodged.

But today the use of POB started to bother me for another reason. I was thinking about the humanisation that comes about quite naturally with cycling. Without a cage around us we’re able to interact with each other and pedestrians in ways in which drivers could only dream (if they could think, quite literally, outside the box that is). We can even interact with those in cars and buses a lot more. Filtering up traffic one morning my wheel kicked up a stone against a car door. I could immediately stop, realising it had happened, check for damage, and have a quick chat with the driver explaining what had happened and that the door was mark-free.

The space I got as she passed me half a mile on was as strong an indication I could have got at having connected as ‘people’. Humanisation means that we see people on bikes and people in cars, not cyclists and drivers. It breaks down the warring tribes (and I use the word knowing that suggesting there’s a ‘war’ is touchy, and it isn’t something I subscribe to, but for the minute I can’t think of a better word). What we need to be saying is that person there who just ran the red or rode without lights is a ‘Nutjob Onna Bike’ (a ‘NOB’ if you like), because when I ride a ‘person’ is exactly what I want people around to see.

After all, you never see Daily Wail articles ranting about ‘People’ being a menace.

Chic/Fear

So close, and yet so far… I’ve considered in the past setting up an offshooot of Copenhagen Cycle Chic for Edinburgh, but really I don’t think there are quite the number of ‘chic’ cyclists to sustain it, and I’d have to count myself in the non-chic group. While over the world the Cycle Chic concept has grown ever more prominent, from the small acorns of one photo by Mikael Colville-Anderson, here in Edinburgh I’ve only ever really managed a handful of such shots.

Naturally many of them are from around the university, but wherever I stake out streets and lanes armed with the camera, the proliferation of bright yellow and plastic hats renders the search for cycling ‘normalisation’ particularly fruitless. Sometimes you get a wonderful glimpse at what might be, but as I considered the idea further in Edinburgh it started to take on the approach of a satirical/sarcastic blog – extolling the fashion virtues of ‘cycling specific gear’.

Flowery Chic

Copenhagen, while flatter than Edinburgh, is subject to similar weather, but perhaps normalisation is something that can only happen when the powers-that-be start treating cycling not only as normal, but as ultimately desirable. We clearly have a chicken, and we have an egg, when it comes to getting more people on bikes in the UK, and at present they’re playing a game of ‘after-you’ that isn’t getting us anywhere quickly.

So in the meantime we’ll still have to be content with nice hats, suit, and work shoes, worn together with a big bright yellow tabard.

Childish Chic

The answer, if you’re so-minded to learn, was around 13 months, but the counter was reset this morning. And unlike last year’s tumble, which was brought about by rutted ice hanging around purposefully under some fresh snow, this was 100%, entirely, and completely my own stupid fault.

Filtering is something of an art, and one which I had come to assume I knew inside out. So while following another cyclist down a cycle lane on the left of some traffic, and seeing ahead a couple of vehicles in the cycle lane, and both indicating left, I decided to continue following his lead as a gap opened up to switch to the right of the traffic. The video really tells the story…

Blessings counted, and lady luck thanked, I got away with nothing more than a banged up knee and wounded pride. The car and bike were both unscathed, and even landing on the headcam refused to reduce it to a cluster of broken metal and plastic. It just goes to show that you can get a little over confident in your own ability to deal with traffic. I’d been going too fast for the move if anything about the gap changed. And it did change, with the car braking while my attention was diverted to checking in a different direction. I managed to display an impatience that I chastise in others (though without a metal shell around me I’m unlike to have done anyone in this instance harm save for myself).

If the driver (who is a cyclist, so this might happen) ever reads this, or sees the YouTube clip, I have you to thank for that not turning into an unnecessarily messy incident – I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so calm at the prospect of there have been damage done to his car.

In the meantime I may be a little more defensive when filtering for a while. At the very least this banged up knee isn’t going to let me ride quite as quickly…

Issue 55

Well, issue 55 of citycycling went online last Friday. It’s always a bit of a relief getting it all up and running, although this issue appears to have gone down quite well. The biggest relief of all comes from seeing that final file uploaded, and after that happens I tend to take a week or so off, returning to being a daily cyclist and nothing more. Which isn’t bad at all.

But I really should start thinking about issue 56…