London Cyclist

After 4 vaccination jabs, 17 hours on a plane, 3 in-flight meals, 6 forms confirming I don’t have swine flu, 8 hours sleeping on a floor and one angry visa control officer I found myself in Vietnam. The first thing that I encounter is absolute mayhem.

The streets in Hanoi are nothing like I would have expected. I was amazed to see motorbikes and bicycles happily travelling on completely the wrong side of the road against the flow of oncoming traffic without a care in the world, I counted up to 5 people on a single motorbike and I watched as an elephant walked down the street with no one even batting an eye lid. To the outsider the roads look like absolute chaos but no doubt to the Vietnamese it seems completely normal. By the end of the holiday I would be putting my cycling skills to the test on these roads.

Halong Bay

Luckily my first cycling experience for myself and my good friend Mat (seen above) was in the more sedate environment of Halong Bay. For 90 dollars we purchased a 3 day tour of the bay and were taken to a small island near Cat Ba. The island and the bay in general are extremely beautiful and I would recommend them to anyone. What I wouldn’t recommend however are the rented bikes we were provided with. The breaks were questionable, the gear changing was none existent and the wheels were very wobbly.

After a slow start on my rusted bike, I encountered the first hill and I was certain the bike would not cope. Sure enough upon applying heavy pressure on the peddles the bike began shifting through gears and progress was impossible. Defeated, I returned to the dock where I was greeted by 10 bemused Vietnamese that could not speak a word of English. They attempted to rent me a motorbike instead, though that would be admitting defeat. After persisting with getting a new bike I acquired another highly wobbly bike and went to catch up with the rest of the group that had long since abandoned me.

The surroundings however, more than make up for the scrap worthy bikes. The island we visited remains untouched by tourism. After a quick refreshing drink we walked through the jungle and had a look round a cave filled with bats. The bike ride back was much more downhill and we even had a race. I came second. Out of two.

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I’m off travelling! Until the end of June I will be in Vietnam and then Cambodia. Its a great trip that I have really been looking forward to. Though I will miss this blog and you guys – I may even hop on a bike while I’m out there.

In the mean time enjoy Bike Week if you are in the UK and make sure you check out these excellent posts if you haven’t already:

• Top 50 cycling blogs
• Online cycling games
• Ugly your bike to prevent theft
• Top 6 things we cyclists love to do to annoy drivers
• Best quotes heard whilst on a bike
• Bike apps for the iPhone

Ha Long Bay, Vietnam by desden

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The latest tube strike, which is due to last 48 hours, is causing delays to London commuters’ routine journeys.

Businesses are losing out on trade, Maritime and Transport union is getting much flack and in general people are not too happy.

However, there is more to this than the predictable chance for newspapers to throw around the word: “Chaos”.

I mentioned at the start of the article that delays were been caused to “routine journeys”. This hints at the heart of the problem of why London bike adoption trails that of other major cities. People, myself included, fall into routines and do not question the way of doing things. When was the last time one of those daily tube users, stopped, took a breather (which is hard to do on the tube) and asked themselves: Could I possibly do this journey in a different way?

During the tube strike people are asking themselves this question. The London Cycling Campaign has the answer ready: Go by bike! 

Marketing materials, organised groups of cyclists following the routes of the tube lines (bike tubes) and a tube strike website where all part of the arsenal that London Cycling Campaign had prepared. Whilst bloggers have reported varying degrees of success for the bike tubes themselves, the success of biketube.org.uk is undeniable and it reportedly received over 30,000 hits in the run up to the strike. More importantly this experience may have been an eye opener for many commuters.

However, one day is not really enough. For real change to happen people need to continue to ask themselves this question. Then we may see real changes on the road. This is why I want the tube strike to continue.

From those that tried cycling for the first time there has been much positive response. Yesterday evening looking at the Facebook statuses of many of my contacts, people were saying how much they enjoyed cycling into work and how they had not considered it before. Many of my non-cycling friends spoke about how they feel fresher and more awake from cycling. The Times has a good article on people that took part and saw it as a positive experience that would not have occurred if it wasn’t for the strike. I believe this is the push that people need to adopt cycling. 

Sure there will be backlash against cycling with people tweeting about the danger of too many inexperienced cyclists but the overwhelming evidence is that more cyclists means more road safety. Therefore the existing cyclist community should embrace beginners. It can be scary out there for people when they first take up cycling but there are many benefits to be enjoyed.

Only time will tell if this experience will have a lasting effect on the London transportation scene. To those on strike I say go ahead and strike for a few more days it may end up doing a lot of good for London. For the regular cyclists out there, ask your colleagues - why are they stuck on the tube day after day doing a journey they don’t enjoy?

Some useful links:

• http://www.biketube.org.uk/
• Bike to work: Bike the Strike book special from popular cyclist Carlton Reid
• Beat the popular reasons for not taking up cycling
• Is it time for you to buy a bike? Make sure you get the best deal possible with our negotiation tips
• Defeat that puncture that has stopped you getting into cycling for ages with our online bike repair resources or recommended bike repair books.

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I have a friend, lets call him Peter, who will literally look up things on his iPhone more often than he will look up and talk to me. We will be talking about plasma TVs and he will feel the urgent need to look up plasma TV prices on Amazon. This highly irritating habit always gets my blood boiling. Anyway, I recently relieved my iPhone obsessed friend of his prized gadget for a few hours to try out these bicycle applications. To him it must of felt like an eternity.

Bike route tracking on the iPhone

The first set of applications I will look at have the purpose of tracking your bike route.

Click for full view

The limitation you need to be aware of with most of these apps is that they will rapidly run down the battery and are heavily dependent on GPS signal quality.

Trails

This is a highly recommended iPhone app that allows you to record, import and export your tracks. These can then be loaded onto popular track websites to be shared with others. I enjoyed using the easy interface and the ability to edit the track to correct GPS errors.

iTunes link | App website

EveryTrail

This free application is a little buggy but  useful. I particularly liked the photo button that will GEO tag the location of a photograph for easy reference.

iTunes link | App website

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Have you ever been shocked at the high price of repairs that bike shops quote? The solution is simple and is available in the books listed in this post.

Whilst we have already covered online bicycle repair resources books can be an authoritative source of information and sometimes easier to follow. The prices range from around £10 - £14 but each one has the opportunity to pay for itself many times over. First of all lets start with a quick comparison of the top sellers:

There are some commonalities between the books. They all have introductions to the kind of tools you will need, they are all written by huge bike enthusiasts and all have troubleshooting sections which are great for resolving common problems such as squeaking breaks. Let’s have a look at each one individually.

Mountain Bike Maintenance: The Illustrated Manual (US version)

In terms of illustrations this is the clearest of all three books. Each step has its own colour picture making it very easy to follow.

The book has large clear headings so you know what each page is covering and the content feels well spaced out. Where other books may switch between components, which can be confusing, this book focuses on one component per section. For example V-brakes are covered first, followed by cantilever brakes and then disc brakes. This also makes it very easy to use as a quick reference guide for repairs and adjustments.

Mel Allwood writes in a very clear style and of all three books I found it the easiest to follow. This makes it very well suited to beginners. The vast majority of repairs you are likely to come across are covered. However, for more advanced repairs and a wider coverage of components it is best to look elsewhere.

Just a quick note on the availability of this book. I personally ordered it from Amazon.com rather than .co.uk as it worked out much cheaper, even with shipping.

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This list shows a collection of the best cycle blogs in the world. I hope it helps you discover something new. It took me absolutely ages to put together, so if you enjoyed it I would hugely appreciate any tweets/stumbles/diggs. Some notes on the list:

• It was calculated by looking at over 100 cycling blogs
• The rank is based on a number of elements such as Google Pagerank, Twitter Rank, Alexa Rank, number of comments and Technorati Authority
• Certain blogs have been excluded where the primary focus of the site was not really on the blog as I felt this would be unfair
• I have not included London Cyclist on the list for two reasons. 1. It is clearly an awesome blog 2. I did not want to be seen as biased
• Where blogs have a twitter account I have linked to this in the rank number on the left
• You may look through the list and think: “Why didn’t you include X blog” – I realise I may well have missed a great blog so apologies if I have but these are all the ones I could find in a reasonable time frame. Feel free to email me any suggestions for future lists
• UPDATE: I have added a few more twitter links that were originally missed. Apologies!
• UPDATE: Number 50 has been changed to Bike Noob because the Bike Geek appears to have been deleted
• UPDATE: Epicurean cyclist now has a link to their new blog
• UPDATE: I now have a list of blogs to be included in the next update. Keep sending me more!
  

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We have covered some of London’s adverts encouraging people to cycle before but there is a new campaign by M&S Saatchi, the agency in charge of parts of the TfL account. It encourages people to rediscover their bike to enjoy London.

For all 4 posters see: Campaign Live. It is interesting to see the adverts are of cyclists that are not wearing helmets.  Not that a helmet would have helped in the recent clip that emerged of a near miss by the mayor of London as a lorry slams into a parked car.

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My good friend Ed Barrow that I met whilst studying at Aston University just completed an impressive cycle challenge for JDRF. I thought I should share his ride report for inspiration/laughter. Ed would still appreciate any donations and you can give any amount at: http://www.justgiving.com/edbarrow

6:45, alarm goes off. Not a great start to a Sunday, my Sundays rarely start before midday. ho-hum. Anyway, it’s downstairs for porridge before putting the bike in the car and heading an hour north, for today was the 65 mile JDRF cycle challenge.

The weather forecast wasn’t great, with some showers predicted, but with a 10am start, I was hopeful of missing the worst. What I didn’t expect was a monsoon, lasting from 9:45 until about 11:00, soaking everyone through and turning what could have been a pleasant day into a thoroughly miserable one. I was aiming for 4 hours, an average speed of 16.25mph with no breaks.

Unfortunately, my speedo enjoyed the rain even less than I did, packing up with a mile down-and 64 to go. Cue the car overtaking me through the deepest puddle in the Malverns, soaking my legs and shoes with cold, muddy water. Take the hint motorists, you have wipers and heaters; cyclists don’t.

Happily, by the time I’d reached the first rest stop after 20 miles, the rain had gone away and the sun had come out. Checking the time, I’d done the distance in 80 minutes, 15mph, not enough. Time to get a spurt on.

The second leg was a happier affair, the sun shone, and I averaged 17mph, even with a few hills and a bit of wind. It was hard going, but with the speedo coming back to life it was easier to pace myself, and keep to a constant-ish speed. I passed a group of riders that had left an hour earlier than we had, and sailed straight past them at the 40 mile stage. That felt good. Reaching the second rest stop after 42 miles was a nice feeling, Mr Andrews from JDRF awaited me with his selection of nutri-grains, tracker bars and bananas on display, so I loaded up, adding to the jelly babies and homemade flapjacks consumed so far. Hard constant cycling burns somewhere between 600 and 800 calories per hour, and I’m a bit of a fan of eating. Seemed like as good a time as any.

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How to steal a bike from David Cameron:

The above criminal mastermind guide of “how to steal a bike” has been well used on the Conservative party leader.

This is the second time David’s bike has been stolen. He famously uses it as a green symbol (and presumably as a way of avoiding congested public transport). Recently however it was revealed that his chauffeur-driven car follows him to work with his briefcase and shoes. This has led some commentators to suggest a solution for Cameron: to have a car to follow the car that follows Dave’s bike when he’s cycling.

Before you shed a tear for David Cameron, remember that the first time the bike was stolen it was retrieved through a business man’s local contacts (Admittedly missing the front wheel). Lets see if that happens again. David of course is not the only one to get their bike stolen. Take for example Jonathan Coppack who rode his bike 6,000 miles for charity and then had his bike stolen from outside his home. Unfortunately, many cyclists do not return to cycling after a bike theft.

David, if you are reading this then maybe you should have checked out our video with tips on how to prevent bike theft and perhaps how to made your bike look less desirable.

In London new solutions to bike theft include an M shaped stand that encourages a cyclist to secure the right parts of their bike. The police have also trialled leaving notes to cyclists that have not properly secured their bike.

As for Cameron; oh well, lessons learned.

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The London Cycle Hire scheme is well underway and the Guardian even has a low-res picture of some of the proposed locations. No doubt more information will be out soon from TFL. So far what we know:

• Over 6000 bicycles
• 400 sites to pick them up
• Plans for each docking station to only be around 300 metres apart
• Camden looks set to be the first location for the cycle hire scheme
• Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (dangers of drunk people thinking its a great idea to hire a bike to cycle home – I think so)

Will keep you up to date with more info as I hear about it

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