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!

Rare Steed of the Urban Proletariat...... or social leveller?

I wondered if I had taken leave of my senses today? For I rode a bicycle up to a car showroom in order to buy a car.

Having parked the velo outside, and after absent-mindedly chaining it to the stanchion of an awning I ventured into the petrol-heads holy of holy's.

Riding up on a bicycle to a car showroom is a rather foolish thing to be doing I have decided, especially  if you want to be taken seriously by anyone inside.

I had decided that after nine years of not owning a car there were journeys that I really needed to undertake, and having a car was pretty much the only way I was going to be able to take them. So having sorted out sufficent cash to go and buy myself one, I strode into the showroom full of glistening metal and decided to do the dirty deed.

I stood........I looked about me......bored sales people with not much to do avoided my gaze.....I saw a sign. "Reception" it said.......I walked over and said......"I'd like to talk to someone about buying a car." We went through a farce of me being asked to sit ......the receptionist made a fuss of standing and then looking about her for less than 15 seconds she announced....... "Ah this young lady might be the one for you"....and pointed over to a woman at a desk (rather odd verbage for a car showroom I thought more like a bordello? .......although judging from the ill fitting grey sweater dress that a rather plump "thirtyish" woman sales person was wearing, barely concealing rolls of her fat and rounded out.....and I do mean rounded....by cheap faux leather shoes, I assurred myself that car buying was all I was likely to be doing here).

Miss Clingy Plump Sweater Dress 2010 sassied over....I averted my eyes from the blancmange like wobble of the advancing hips... "Which model sir?" I was asked . "New or uuuuuuuuuuused" The distain at the word was palpable. I did not know.....what "uuuuuuuuuuused" cars of the model of my choice did they have available? "When would you like to buy this caaaaaaar?"....... "Well I rather thought I'd buy it today?"

I could tell that the woman could not concieve of anyone riding a bicycle having the wherewithall to buy a car. I'm not sure what sort of customer I came across as but even a cursory glance at my attire, bicycle, watch, shoes, bespoke waistcoat or the 28,000 quid in my back pocket might have told her differently? Whatever sort of customer I was .....she was a pretty useless seller, and did not possess the wit to make any sort of assessment of me.

She dealt with me with utter distain. I clearly appeared to be wasting her time.  "Leather or Cloth?" "Diesel or Petrol?" ......She ploughed through the hundereds of variations as if they were the labours of Hercules......and I wilted........what on earth was I doing here?

I made my excuses and left, vowing never to give that premises the benefit of any of my cash. Was I doing something wrong? I was courteous, direct, interested.....why did she not respond to the opprotunity of fleecing me for my 28K?

Is the bicycle a "social leveller" I mused on my way home....or is it seen as the "Rare Steed of the Urban Proletariate"? My attire might have been expensive, my shoes exquisite, my watch a rare master-time-piece....but in the eyes of the automotive masses.... am I a poverty stricken prole?

What a soulless thing it was to buy a car from one such as her. I dare say there are excellent salespersons in the employ of VW.......but not apparently at this branch. So if anyone knows where I might buy myself a manual silver VW Golf with SatNav from a sales person who might offer even the humble owner of a bicycle a modicum of courtesy I'd be rather thrilled to here from you.....or am I likely to reamin another 9 years without a car?

Of Bicycles and Personalities

The other day I was waiting at a set of traffic lights, (yes..... I realise that this is an increasingly unusual activity for cyclists in English towns and cities, but I really was) when I began to pay particular attention to the reaction of passers by, motorists and fellow cyclists to both my bicycle and I.

I was wearing what I believed to be a natty corduroy jacket, moleskin trousers with matching moleskin cap, a scarf together with brown brogues and a pair of finest Italian leather brown lambskin gloves. Simple enough attire you might think but the reaction I got standing there with my vintage style cycling machine was entirely different to the reaction I would have achieved without its presence.

Let me elaborate. Man in corduroy jacket, moleskins and cap on foot would merge in with the average crowd quite without reaction from his fellow pedestrians. I mean to say, look at some of the outfits you quite often see people wearing in an English town on a Saturday afternoon - the urgency of their scream for recognition of their individuality - is often much more overpowering than can be achieved by corduroy and moleskin, yet put that same classically clad chappie on a vintage style bicycle and hey presto you have more attention than is often comfortable. Why is this?

Do people think they can tell more about you from what you ride than from what you wear? Do they imagine that the choice of bicycle tells them something about the rider? Do they think that with your choice of bicycle they have a unique insight into your soul? Does a well clad cyclist on a venerable machine give the hint to proof positive of a decent character?

Women seem to universally approve. The sight of a man so clad and mounted seems to break down the usual "bitch shield" adopted by many pretty women in an effort to stave off the most obvious attentions of passing male admirers. A number of attractive women have struck up brief conversations with me at traffic lights and road crossings, touching their hair and adjusting clothing. Matrons smile and sigh. Women ferrying children in rather horrible box like "people carriers" or "mini-vans" smile, nod and let me have right of way, often pointing me out to their juvenile charges too busy with their gaming consoles to pay much attention to anything less than imminent nuclear devestation.  Veteran females look up and smile perhaps remembering past fondlings and fornications al fresco with uniformed beaux amidst bicycles as horizontal and abandoned as they were once themselves.

Men take a more cautious and less open and obvious line. Many in mid-life cast a furtive yet slightly admiring glance, taking in the detail of garments and mechanicals to make an objective assessment of the suitability of the approach to cycling for themselves. The elderly ignore, thinking "What other attire would someone wear on a bicycle?" and reserve their distain for the lycra clad traffic light ignoring cohorts soon to pass them. The youthful and boreish look vaguely daggers or feign distain, one or too have scorned, but suprisingly few do it that openly. Homosexuals ravish. "White van man" is strangely cowed.

So does the bicycle you ride tell others something about you? I decided to play the game myself and spying a rather classically beautiful bicycle propped up in the antechamber to a tea room I tend to frequent on the way back from a certain lunch spot (yes dear reader, tea after a two hour lunch is rather piggy...but I still think form should be maintained) I began to muse upon its owner.

Classic bicycle, two whicker baskets, small ladies frame, some replacement non-standard parts, half chain guard. What did this tell me? Well the owner was female of course, of adventurous and open personality, partaking of tea alone. She would be of slight build, with short bobbed hair wearing a chic coat and had good dress sense. I further felt she wore leather gloves of a coat matching hue and had a pair of rather fine legs which she was not adverse to displaying.

What struck me was the accuracy of my predictions.  There on a corner table, wonderfully long crossed stockinged legs beneath an above knee length skirt sat a woman with a classically cut military style coat slung over an adjoining chair and with matching green leather gloves on the table in front of her. Her hair was shortish and her look in my direction open and unphased. I looked about the room and saw one or two free tables but decided to try my luck.

"I like your bicycle" I said "Do you mind if I join you for tea? .....I have this theory that a tea tastes better shared and I feel a bit self concious sometimes on my own."

"By all means" she said "But how did you know I had a bicycle?"

"Ah......I am begining to develop a theory on that too........."

New Year's Resolutions....

It is that time of year again. The time when cycling along the waterfront one sees a few more joggers, a few more people out for a stroll, dare I say it ......a few more people out on their bikes (albeit new, rather garishly coloured ones and often of the most bizarre modernist design...but I will not have them gainsayed...they are after all on two wheels...BRAVO!).

Realising the foolishness of their over-indulgence during the festivities of the past few days, they make an effort and decide to try to reduce their bulk acquired over the past 8 years in a single month of exercise madness. It is a familiar scene.....come Feburary 28th, with the wind lashing at their clothing and the freezing rain cutting horizontally into their faces it is only a truely loyal band that remain at their toil.

I remember very well how whilst out in the tropics in Service to Her Majesty I became struck by the innate foolishness of our western style of exercise for exercises sake, rather than as exercise as part of living. Stay with me for a while gentle readers for I shall get to my point.

Every day I would get up early and with little more than a mug of chai inside me run around our particular section of the boondocks thinking myself the most wonderful of chaps for making such an effort to stay trim. Everyday at the same time I would see this old man ride past me as I ran. He was on the most antiquated of bicycles loaded with cut fodder for his livestock. When I say loaded I mean loaded......an absolute ton of the stuff piled high on the back and front. He would wind his way back and forth for four or five trips during the day...bags of grain, bales of hay, everysort of animal feedstuff. I could see him clearly from my desk and at other times when my driver took me hither and thither. Each day I passed this man, (and yes I grant you that from a security point of view setting such a pattern is asking for trouble), he would look at me and shake his head in wonder. I could see him thinking...."that idiot, allah be praised, making work for himself when there is more than enough work to be done in the world!"

Suffice to say when returning to Blighty and freedom from indentured slavery to the government I represented overseas, I made my mind up to learn the lesson of the old man and his bicycle logistics. One New Years Day I binned the shorts and running kit and steadfastly refused to take another step in the pursuit of exercise for exercise sake. Surely to God I thought there must be a way of exercising without exercising and so my quest began to try to exercise without doing so.

As I mentioned, I binned my running shoes and set aside my speedos. Having been a lycra clad cycling Johnnie myself once, I put away the fair Colnago, put away thoughts of Campagnolo derailleurs and of Shimano brake levers and took up the Pashley as the very ideal of the "lifecycle".  I rode to work, to the shops, to cafes, for a beer, to my accountant, to my solicitor, to meet friends, on dates, over to my fathers house, up to my tailor, to the airport, on the ferry,....but no longer did I ride to exercise...I rode to live!

The funny thing about this change was that actually I seemed to get fitter without even trying......my weight reduced (I have developed this rather odd theory that gyms actually make you fat.....just look at all the fat women on step machines...I tell you its true!) my girth shrank, my muscles developed (try getting a fully ladened Pashley with a weeks worth of steak and potatoes up a 1 in 4 gradient; something I did for the past two years...legs like steel steel hawses!).

My point?

Well it would be churlish and more than a little hectoring to make one really...but you probably get the idea.

Oh and my New Years Resolution?.....to find a butchers somewhere without a 1:4 hill to climb after making the purchase!

Bonne chance mes amis!

Christmas; A tale of snow, sirens, too much booze and far too many puddings

Dear All,

I am rather ashamed to admit this, but the blog, and my commitment to cycling, has been somewhat underplayed during the festivities. I fear, dear fellow travellers on two wheels, that I ended up becoming distracted by a surfeit of wine, women, and song ...(not to mention lashings of over-sweetened puddings).... in the wilds of Exmoor, all to the sad exclusion of my dear, dear Pashley and the open road (albeit that the open road seemed rather blocked due to mountains of the white stuff!).

I put it down to personal gullibility on the female issues....(and I seem to have developed a rather unpleasant itch "down below")......, a lack of personal restraint on the alcohol front, and the influence of the winter solstice upon my latent singing talents, (or non-singing talents as you may wish). In respect of my dearth of cycling, I put that down to an overly concerned attitude to the effect the great quantities of salt heaped upon our roads in the past few weeks might have had upon the brave Pash’s steel....poor dear boy.

The grave reality of all this unrestrained bed hopping, wine guzzling and throat stuffing (itching aside) has been a considerable gain in girth. Two whole kilos!...that’s 4.5 lbs to all you Yankee leaning Johnnies!

I got to musing upon the effect of cycling upon the old calorie count. How effective would my return to cycling be in reducing my girth?....(the effect of cycling upon itching genitalia will have to wait for another post).

My research suggests several factors impact weight loss, yet in simple terms, you must burn more calories than you consume to lose weight. To lose one pound, you must shed 3,500 calories through exercise, diet or a combination of both. The experts contend that exercise helps you maintain a healthy weight because generally, as your weight and intensity of activity increases, you burn a greater number of calories. So much for the basic science. I must admit that before becoming a gentleman of leisure, I was always struck by the refusal of fat colleagues at work to see that the process of weight reduction was such a simple process. East less. Move more.

I am reliably informed that taking a gentle stroll around the park for half-hour at a pace of 3.5 mph burns around 120 calories for the average 125lb person. The same activity burns 149 and 178 calories, respectively, for a 155- and 185-pound person. So interestingly fat people can get thinner faster than thin people. If you increase the pace of your walk so that conversation with a chum might be a tad difficult, say up to 4.5 mph, the 155-pounder loses 188 calories. Turn your walk into a jog, averaging less than a 10-minute mile, and a 155 pound person burns 223 calories.

Now here is the interesting bit for all the devotees of the velocipede. According to my research, which includes the pages of some august Harvard Medical Journals, and rather counter intuitively,............ cycling delivers greater calorie expenditure than walking.

Over the course of a half-hour leisurely 12- to 13.9-mph bike ride those of you weighing 155lbs and sensible enough to adopt two wheels will burn 298 calories. At 14 to 15.9 mph, that number climbs to 372 calories. Twirling the pedals along at a serious pace of 16 to 19 mph facilitates the loss of 446 calories. At a race-worthy pace of greater than 20 mph, a 155-pound person stands to lose 614 calories each half-hour. How utterly splendid I hear you cry.

So if I can manage 15 hours cycling over the next two weeks, according to my calculations I can reduce my girth back to pre-Christmas proportions........its effect upon the discomfort in my nether regions however,......... is yet to be calculated.

Winter preparation

I have to admit to having been defeated today. Frozen roads, frozen tempreatures, and I had little desire for frozen face, hands and gonads. What then does a gentleman do when the snow is piled up outside and the road surface a significant challenge for even the most intrepid bicyclist?

Well staying tucked up warm inside, tippling single malt and planning his next European Tour is probably a reasonable approach, and one that I have most certainly decided upon.

For this year a quick Amsterdam to Lake Constance jaunt down the Rhine Valley seems to have captured my imagination. The intention to combine the pleasures of Amsterdam with the historical interest to be had from the border between France and Germany. I have my trusty Baedeker guide book....the 1903 version.

I have developed a love of cycle travelling according to out of date guide books. Here I must admit that I do not really like the current crop of guide books. I have developed a strong loathing for the of casual flippancy and inanity of Lonely Planet guides and the twee nonsense pedalled by Dorling Kindersley. I much prefer the style and candour of the older versions. A recent tour to the south caucusus found me using a translated version of a Tsarist era guide book which recommended the best brothels in towns along my route and made special mention of the quality of fellatio delivered in each one.....now thats what I call a guide book!

More of this once planing gets properly underway. Who knows I might get to plan a link up with some German chums watching my musings on this site and we could go for the odd drop of beer of an evening?

Prost!

Apple bikeability

Dear Reader,

While I have been wittering on for some time about the old ways being the best ways, and the height of cycling being somewhere between 1897 and 1938, I have decided to suspend my "vintagephilia" for a brief sojurn into the age of "New Technology".

Yes, yes,...quite so.... I am a traitor to my cause etc. etc..... I admit it..... Guilty as charged your honour...., but I have to profess that the subject of this aberration is probably having as much revolutionary effect upon me as the nuematic tyre had on our forebears. Might I hazzard that the "Ipad" may be to cycling, what the telegraph was to the Steam Locomotive.

Unlike most computers, rather than tying you to a desk, the ipad allows one to surf the net, respond to emails, and do all that is necessary to run a small business almost anywhere and almost instantaneously and it has placed upon me the most appauling dilemma; Should I or should I not get one?

At present I perform the task of emailing, writing this blog, managing my business interests, buying stocks, purchasing books etc etc from the comfort of my office/study. The ipad appears to offer the radical opportunity of allowing me to do the same thing at my morning coffee spot, at the side of the road lounging in the grass underneath the spreading oak or in the arms of some delicious nymph. Don't get me wrong, its not that I've refrained from thinking about work whenever I ply my 50 odd miles per day...its just that to date my trusty moleskin and pen have sufficed; the techno bit coming later in the day.

What has caused me to consider the options?

Well first of all portability. As you already know I'm not a frantic weight obsessed cyclist...(see previous blog)...an extra pound here and there helps me get fitter I believe...but the size issue has always precluded me from regular laptop cycle carriage....however at:-
Height: 9.56 inches (242.8 mm)
Width: 7.47 inches (189.7 mm)
Depth: 0.5 inch (13.4 mm)
Weight: 1.5 pounds (0.68 kg) Wi-Fi model;
1.6 pounds (0.73 kg) Wi-Fi + 3G model

....what is not to like?

The damn thing also fits wonderfully into the absolutely mint 1941 Russian Officers leather map case that I managed to purchase while on a visit to the South Caucasus one barmy afternoon in the company of one Katerina, who I met at a road junction wearing a glorious diaphanous peach coloured dress and riding a 10-speed "Sputnik" (and whose inner thigh, sampled later in the day, tasted like sweet alpine honey...see previous post).

It fits so well in fact, that it looks like the damn thing was made for the Ipad and not for maps of Mother Russia! I hardly notice it over my jacket, and it allows me to carry pens and stuff in the perfectly made pen holders section.....so beautifully made......must have been the property of a very special Comrade (and I'm not talking about Katerina!).

Secondly the Ipad is simplicity itself, even someone striding over from their 1897 time machine could not but help feel at home with it after a few minutes. The long battery life means that riding all day even with frequent stops and good usage will not daunt it.

Is the Ipad on a bike Liberator or Slave Master?

I muse on this question trying to consider; does it provide me with even more opportunity to take to the open road, or will it sap my resolve and draw me into its satanic techno lair only to fatten me up on the pleasures of sloth?

As I continue to agonise over whether the Ipad is a legitimate purchase for one such as I, a self affirmed "slow lifer", I guess the only real question is; "Will it distract me from my cycling forays.....or can my office now be anywhere?"

Tune in.... turn on.... and ....for god's sake don't drop it!