My Sin of Pride

Despite my recent lack of training and all too full-some acceptance of the American way of life in recent weeks which has put untold additional pounds upon my frame I have to make a confession. Well no...truth to tell I don't have to at all...I want to.

"I take a guilty pride in thrashing the living daylights out of plastic dog-bowl wearing, lycra clad, super-light-weight pro cycling wannabes!"

There it is said.......on at least three separate occasions this week I have thrashed the daylights out of such examples of the supposed cycling cognoscenti....speeding up behind them and passing nonchalantly (despite near bursting lungs!) in an overtake and leaving them in my dust desperate to make up the ground.

Now I know in my heart that I am a shallow moral incontinent because of this failing....but oh it does feel so good to be riding in Panama hat on what they consider to be an "old Clunker" dressed in normal clothes and to speed past the lycra clad on their carbon fibre nano-weight speed-machines. I even managed to overtake a small peleton of them yesterday!

Yes!...Yes!.....I am sure they had travelled miles....perhaps they were saving themselves for the 120mile ride home....but God does it feel good!

Once again I know it is I who have failed in living up to my own principles....competition be damned....the spirit of real cycling is that the journey is more pleasurable than the speed of progress....but miserable failure that I am...I LOVE IT!

REAL CYCLING CLUB ANYONE?

Is it just me or is there a dearth of proper cycling clubs or cycling organisations to join in the UK?

Who caters for the REAL Cyclist?.....With the exception of the odd tweed run here and there it all seems to be carbon fibre, lycra and male bonding.

I am certain some well meaning soul will now bombard me with the hieroglyphics of internet addresses to "log on to", telling me of the joys of cycling clubs foolishly un-beknown to yours truly........ but I am not really talking about the sort of groupings of ageing Jacques Anquetil dopple-gangers or juvenile spotty faced wannabe tour de france riders....I am talking about REAL cycling.

The sort of cycling I am talking about is where a group of well dressed elegant individuals of both the male and female of the species all of whom are capable of reasonable conversation meet up on a Saturday morning.....ride out somewhere interesting.....do a tour of some stately home or historical sight or visit an otherwise interesting location and then pop a few bollie corks, scoff a few cucumber and fish paste sandwiches before wobbling back from whence they came.

Of course who could deny that the addition of females into the mix would make the whole thing so much more fun....I always think that any segregation of the sexes seems a rather bizarre way of going about ones fun, truth to tell any visit to a UK cycling club currently is similar, in terms of gender mix, as going hawking with a group of Bedouins in Saudi Arabia!

Following the bollie and sandwiches who knows, with a few females in tow, you might even get to visit a local haystack for a spot of horizontal petting....a damned site more inspiring than checking ones times after a windswept death ride up the local A42!

So why is this? Would there be any interest in setting up a REAL CYCLING CLUB?....are there any such about......would you join one? Is there something in the female psyche that would make them run a mile from any such enterprise..... I'd be interested to know as I sort of have a dormant idea lurking in the back of my head to set something up...you know a sort of weekly Tweed Run in our local area.....(obviously not only tweed...but in reasonable attire).....

Yours

GC

Unseasonably warm what?

Dear All,

Having just returned from yet another chance to sample the delights of corporate USA I realise that I am turning into something of a wage slave.....and that all the quaffing of British Airways champers, dire though it may be, driving and sitting about to endless "business lunches" is not doing my midriff any good at all.....so venturing onto the old velo over the past weeks has been something of a relief....not to mention sartorial necessity.

Having been "sans velo" and rather too "surplus vino" (although anyone visiting Seattle simply must visit Zig Zag Cafe....the skilled Murray managed a "blood and sand" of simply epic quality...top hole indeed!) I felt the necessity to make up for lost time....never a good policy on the bike or in the bedroom.

Whether down to additional pounds, inappropriate attire (those new breeks were rather too clinging in the crotch and buttock areas) or the warmth of the days I know not but I began to suffer rather more than I care to acknowledge and it got me to thinking about the unsuitability of testicles for cycling......

Yes Ladies you did read that right......I said testicles.....but based upon the opinion that a gentleman should do nothing he could not talk about at dinner.....I think the subject still worthy of discussion.

I know not whether the female genitalia is better suited to the bicycle saddle or not...perhaps we could do a poll?....but the male scrotum and testis certainly are not. Now however fond of the reproductive value of keeping the sperm producing organ outside of the body, one might have thought that in our infinite scientific wisdom man might have found a better way of cycling than allowing his gonads to swing about like a veritable pendulum overheating and soiling a perfectly good pair of strides.

What might be the answer?.....perhaps one could have a procedure performed whereby they might be made detachable in warm weather......unscrewed and popped into a neat little saddle bag awaiting their masters dismounting.....featuring a quick release mechanism that might be handy for speedy replacement when necessity for fertilisation of comely maids becomes apparent......for surely they are no good to man nor beast on board of a bicycle? Alternatively why have not Brooks invented the "Scrotum Double 2 ball bath refrigerated saddle"....a neat and convenient way to keep yourself comfortable during the months of June to September?

For those of you who fear that I have fallen into the realm of fantasy just spend an afternoon in a close fitting pair of breeks, trundling along at an above average speed on an old clanker and then tell me I am mistaken in my viewpoint?.......no I think not!

So come along all you inventor chappies out there..... put you mind to it ......see how to air-condition my unmentionables while maintaining a sartorial style befitting a gentleman.....anybody mentioning "wicking" or "lycra" at this juncture really HAS missed the point!

Hats - Prevention rather than cure?

I took my yearly trip along to Jermyn Street the other day, something I do at this of year in order to refresh the old wardrobe, loaded down with a considerable quantity of spondoolas crammed in the old back pocket. While the area is not what it used to be, it is still pretty much a one stop shop for the gentleman intent on a reasonable degree of sartorial style.

Spinning along Piccadilly, and dismounting opposite Fortnum's I spied another cycling chap rather strangely attired in a large while polo helmet and three-quarter-length pedal pusher type trousers.....you know the sort of thing?.....white trouser type things worn by girlies?

I have a faint horror of the three-quarter-length trouser worn by men over 12 years of age. What on earth possesses them? Horrid little spindly hairy legs protruding from the bottom of the said garment looking like a chicken ready for plucking. I rather think that the Metropolitan Police should be given powers to arrest on sight any male over 14 years in possession of the said sartorial monstrosities. Any how....I digress......

The Polo hat in question, white and large, was at least slightly more appealing to the eye than the re-cycled plastic creation beloved by so many London cyclists. His lid arrangement not withstanding, as he stood astride his mountain bike I began to muse on headwear, safety and its effect upon the motorist.

I continued my search of the various boutiques along the famous old street popping in to buy the most wonderful addition to my cycling shoe wardrobe in the shape of Church's “Shanghai” model from 1929, a copy of the designs popular at the time in the British colonies and characterised by the balancing of different leathers, canvas and wonderful contrasting subtle colours.

Now during these rather wonderful few days we have been having recently I decided to start wearing a white straw Panama, which apart from the brim blowing over my eyes on fast downhill sections, has been doing sterling service for yours truly. It is quite a white Panama and I have been told stands out sufficiently for me to have been spotted almost a mile away across Hyde Park by a young Norwegian gal of my acquaintance I hope to be performing some horizontal flirting with at some stage later this week.

To cut a long story shorter I am beginning to develop a theory that it is not so much the protective qualities of the construction of the headwear, as much as the protective quality provided by wearing a piece of headwear upon a bicycle per se.

Let me illuminate further......cyclist without headwear merges into the street scene.....cabbie just sees yet another head......the unadorned head being a rather common site on the streets of our cities....all hatless individuals tend to merge into one....avec velo or sans velo.

Now change that equation with the addition of a brilliant white Panama....dark band cutting a stark contrast against the white of the straw.....head appearing unusually large and somewhat prominent clad in the product of various Ecuadorian straw weavers.

Do you get my drift? Hat wearing gives one an advantage of making you conspicuous, providing a greater degree of visibility over the none hat wearing.....I might have scoffed at "Mr White Polo hat".....but I damned well noticed him.

It might just be that a hat's protective qualities need not concern the rider if it's real effect is prevention rather than cure?

So I'm off to John Lobb to find myself a fedora for the autumn season.....toodle pip!

Cycling and Alcohol...a cautionary tale

With all this wonderful weather about at the present, I thought that a trip out to a public house might be a good idea, although it required a dreary combining of business and pleasure. Of course as a Gentleman I hesitate to admit this fact, trade indeed.... but a chap has to put food on the old table from time to time and the barmaid there is utterly divine and seems a little vulnerable to my charms, so hey ho I thought!

The said hostelrie is out in the sticks and can be reached by one of two routes, one a cycle path alongside a dual carriage way (whoever built it has no soul, and has certainly never cycled), the other is via a rather challenging set of hills but along a wonderfully picturesque set of lanes.

As I have previously mentioned I enjoy a good challenging pedal up and down, and so despite the old Pashley's heft I decided upon the latter route.

One of the huge advantages of using the Bicycle for Business (ah...I feel another post coming on!) especially for the business lunch, is that you cannot get endorsements on your UK driving licence for an offence of being "Drunk in charge of a Bicycle". The peelers may nab you.....they might even incarcerate you for a few hours .....but pretty much the magistrate is only empowered to give what amounts to you a jolly pathetic financial slap upon the wrist.

In any case I duly arrived at said hostelerie, and during the course of a meal consisting largely of steak and asparagus as far as I can remember, I downed with my compatriot a rather good bottle of Domaine Romanée-Conti. Well I am a gentleman, and this was a very, very fine gastro pub.....well what on earth did you expect? Wetherspoons? The business was done, coffee was served, another contract was signed, & forthwith off I did trot!

In the car park, as my colleague walked over to an unspeakably large 4x4 I realised I had probably downed more of the wine that was my fair share. I was vaguely aware of the waitress I had mentioned earlier walking over to examine my bicycle making cooing noises about how fit I must be if I really cycled all the way from home. I rather blundered my way through an attempt at conversation, offered her my card, and said that as she claimed to be a cyclist herself we should ride out to a wonderful spot I know for a picnic and perhaps other things on her day off, to which she demurely agreed. As she wandered back to her clients even a cursory glance at her shapely calf and rounded pert buttocks in the pencil skirt revealed that she may very well be cyclist.

However this was no time for flirtation, I had a fairly serious 17 mile pedal to complete, the sun was up and I felt like a 3 year old at the Oakes waiting for the off. Studies have shown that small amounts of alcohol increase muscular endurance and strength output, but that these benefits are very short lived. After around twenty minutes, the problems start. In short all the negative side affects of alcohol fully outweigh any possible benefits, something I was rather quickly about to experience. For despite our love affair with the stuff, alcohol is poison and a whole medical dictionary of physical problems arise out of downing too much of it (even the velvety Domaine Romanée-Conti) before getting astride ones wheeled steed.

As I began I felt marvellous. Full of the joys of spring and rearing to go. But the sad fact was that after a relatively brief interlude I felt my strength, endurance, aerobic capacity, and ability to metabolize the food I had just consumed begin to leave me. Alcohol I understand affects the nervous system and brain and my nerve-muscle interaction appeared to be reduced immeasurably resulting in a considerable loss of strength and rather a lack of communal understanding on my part for people on the road in automotive forms of transportation.....Oh, and those ruddy hills started taking on the look of the north face of the bloody Eiger!

As I was about to learn, Alcohol is also a diuretic, so besides being almost unable to perform any degree of hill climbing, I'm now busting for a pee!

I have to admit that at an absolutely vicious part of one particular climb I stepped off from my machine and pushed. Oh my goodnes...the indignity of it.....as I crested the rise I felt like my bladder would rupture at even the thought of one more step.

At this juncture with my fine corduroy jacket soaked in sweat, my cap stuck to my head, my tie burning into my neck like a noose, despite my gentlemanly pretensions I stood the bike up, wandered to the side of the road and turning my back pulled down the fly of my trousers and withdrew my male member......

The sense of release was truly wonderful, a veritable torrent cascaded down into the ditch showering golden flecks of iridescent light upon the tall wafting grass. I stood .......and allowed the torrent to become a flood.....oh bliss!.....utter bliss!....and as I stood there,...... my member in hand....peeing to my little hearts delight..... a car whizzed past me and the face of an angel looked out upon the unholy scene.....the face of an angel I doubt I will be riding to picnic with anytime soon!

S......... L.......... O.......... W........ Cycling

The modern world seems to identify slowness with inefficiency, poor service or downright ineptitude, but there is a movement that is keen to slow everything down and encourage all of us to savour the moment.......the International Slow Movement.

Begun in 1986 by Carlo Petrini and a few friends who were more than a little upset about another McDonald’s opening up in their town they decided to start Arcigola, which is known as the Slow Food Movement. The main idea behind Slow Food was to begin a new philosophy around food – to enjoy the taste of food by knowledge and pleasure. A few key principles were developed: 1) disseminate and stimulate knowledge of the origins and preparation of great food, 2) preserve the biodiversity of crops, and traditions of food growing, and 3) protect the historical and environmental heritage of traditional places of gastronomic pleasure. (No more plastic chairs and brightly lit industrial chomping stations!)

Since those small beginnings the slow movement has developed into something more than being just about food. Yet while there have been many attempts at generating a slow bicycle movement I have to admit to being somewhat unimpressed with the results. For while your chosen search engine will throw up numerous entries they all seem rather underwhelming.

Now I'm not certain if I should rejoice or weep at this fundamental failure of the Slow Cyclists to get the movement much beyond a twinkle in the eye of the velocipedial savy sauveur? Might I suggest that if they do not have time for setting up a website, perhaps it is because they are too intent on gently twirling their pedals, smelling the wild flowers and enjoying multiple cups of tea at out of the way tea shops strung out along their meandering route? So engaged are they in the simple joys of cycling, that they care not a hoot for the mundanities of the inter-web?

However I fear that my dreamy musings may be too much born of hope rather than genuine expectation, and that the advantages of slow cycling really have not yet been developed to a degree befitting the wonders of the machine. The world of cycling is too much dominated, I am afraid, by the lycra clad speed obsessed cognoscenti to allow much advancement of slow cycling in the murky never-world of cyber-land.

Now there are those who might contest that such a "Machine" as the bicycle is not fitted for a place in the slow movement......slow horse riding you may have...but slow cycling...NEVER! But it is my contention that the real purpose of the bicycle is amply suited to the slowness of the slow movement; a sort of mechanized antidote to the motor-car or other forms of mechanised transport. The bicycle is a special vehicle, propelled only by the rider, without resort to noisy combustion (given that the rider has spared themselves a plate of beans on toast that a.m.!) and ideally suited to the aims of the slow movement. A machine upon which when ridden slowly you may converse, flirt, and generally engage in social communion, whilst travelling at a speed which allows you to take in your surroundings and commune with the natural world about you.

So accepting of the fact that despite fitful attempts by some at getting the slow bicycle movement off to a wobbling start we have singularly failed, how might the aims of slowness be applied to cycling?

Perhaps if we look at following the Arcigola movement in the establishment of three fundamental principles we might begin to develop a slow cycling credo which in time will benefit from sufficient momentum as to become a slow force to be reckoned with?

So what should these fundamentals be? I offer the following as a starter for ten but I am absolutely certain that others would be far more effective in developing a code worthy of the ultimate aim:

1)      Disseminate the purpose of cycling as a means of elegant transportation, useful both for idle pleasure, and as a means of supporting the communal movement of people in everyday life?

2)      Maintenance of the traditional design and proper attire of cyclists so that the pursuit brings elegance and refinement to the world, rather than wheezing sweat be-spotted skin tight coarseness.

3)      Protect the historical and environmental heritage of traditional places of velocepidial pleasure (our country lanes, tea shops, tow paths and other cycle friendly car free areas).

Cycling in the Former Soviet Union

Привет товарищи как вы все?....... or rather "Hello Comrades how are you all?" I am sure some of my more regular readers might have noticed my absence.......or perhaps not.

Well the past six weeks has seen me spending time pedaling like fury across various southern parts of the former Soviet Union. Yes I know....what did possess me? Well to tell the truth the dreaded "W" word. While a Gentleman hates to admit it, there are sad occasions when it is necesary to put ones shoulder to the wheel as it were and earn a crust. This being just such one of those times, I thought it might be rather interesting to look at velocipedial issues Soviet style.

Yes I realise that the Bolsheviks have long since disappeared from view, but the Former Soviet Union is still an entity of the mind, if not in reality. I have to say the experience has been rather a pleasant one and not at all what one might have expected from my narrow minded initial expecations.

The first thing to say is that the distances are huge, so for pity's sake don't go trundling off from Krasnodar thinking its just a gentle run down to Sochi. It is most certainly not. I have restricted myself to mostly urban cycling in the immediate environs of towns and cities transporting my bike by various means between hotels. Sartorially I have probably let the side down being reduced to moleskin trousers, jhodpur boots and my Swiss army Pea Coat, but I did manage to buy the most wonderful old style Politburo worthy mink hat (an "Ushanka" for those in the know) for an absolute steal which has proved a godsend. Quite what the locals have made of an idiot Englishman cycling around their neighbourhoods in a 1960's fur hat God only knows, but everyone has been most kind, if at times a little alarmed.

Soviet Russia claimed that the nation invented the bicycle in 1801 when a peasant named Efim Artamonov is supposed to have presented the world’s first bicycle, to Russia’s Tsar Alexander the First. “Artamonov’s bicycle” convieniently reappeared at the Nizhnetagilsk Museum in 1923 as an example of worker ingenuity, but after analysis of the metal components it has been proved that it could not have been constructed any earlier than 1876. A statue of Artamonov now stands on the Vaynera Street in Yekaterinburg.

Anyhow, enough of history what of my travels? Well the great advantage of travelling in the region is that tea and alcohol are both available in great abundance....in fact I've even had tea WITH alcohol in it!  Sustainance for the cyclist can also be had all over the place for an absolute pittance. I particularly like the flat squashed roll thing full of mashed potatoes...a sort of Russian pasty which always went down well for breakfast and I have probably consumed a veritable herd of pigs in the form of pork shaslik. 

The other most significant thing is that bicycles are notable by their utter, or almost utter, absence. People looked askance at me whenever I took to two wheels. Why would I not travel by car? The indignity of riding that machine when you appear to be well heeled? Have you taken leave of your senses? "Он является английский" (He is English) seemed sufficent to excuse my rather bizarre behaviour amoungst the indigenous population.

Apart from the rather unrestrained driving methods employed by locals and a few near misses at junctions, brought about no doubt by the sheer absence of such two wheeled hazzard on the roads in ordinary circumstances, the experience has been wonderful. In one location I encountered a former soviet scientist reduced to selling vintage pocket watches, who spoke the most extrodinarily good English yet who had never left the former Soviet bloc in his life. At another I met a woman selling enameled jewellry who once again spoke the most wonderful English yet told me she had learnt it over forty years ago at school and had never travelled further than Moscow (....come to think of it that was a dashed long journey from where she was!).

Whatever else the Soviet Union might have stood for, the quality of its education system cannot aparently be denied. Which leads me to a not unrelated point of running repairs .....not thankfully to the bike.....but to my spectacles, as one of the arms gave up the ghost in the vicinity of a little known southern outpost of the former Communist domain.

Damn I thought!......sellotape might be the only solution.... but I'm hardly going to cut a dash with any of the local fillies with plastic wrapped around my goggles. Pedalling on a little further, mercifully blind to the dangers of a Lada heavy rush hour braking out around me I came upon a suprisingly up-market opticians. Thinking it might be a couple of days before something could be done about repairing them if at all I resigned myself to a blurry visioned 48 hours at the very least. Not a bit of it! A rather glamourous assistant, again with impressive command of my mother tongue, took the glasses from me negotiated her price and summonded a bespectacled gentleman from the rear of the premises. The glasses were made of tungsten and had snapped clean off .....surely this would be beyond repair save for replacement? Rather alarmingly Uri pointed to an overlarge piece of opticians equipment which bore striking resemblance to an oxyacetylene welding torch. Ten minutes later, miraculously the thing was as good as new!....

Travelling through these regions is rather like travelling back in time to my childhood in the 1970's. People sit, they talk, they meet friends on the street, they are interested in each other, they don't facebook or text, they interact face to face. The country may be poor, people may be struggling, but what my brief experience of the area has also taught me is that the people here are tough, resilient, and yet open in a way that we English now are not. The make do and mend culture may not be something to hark back to, but if the friendliness and openess of the people and my welcome has been anything to go by, it can have its advantages.

До свидания товарищи!