A little bit of the commute
I’m experimenting with timelapse settings, for possible future projects. Here’s a very quick bit of my commute.
Bikes
On yer Ebike
If I was in a permanent job, rather than working as agency staff, I would long ago have got myself an ebike through the Cycle to Work scheme. I may have ridden through most of the winter, too, rather than putting of getting back in the saddle for far too long.
Schemes like Cycle to Work may be relatively expensive as ways to cut carbon emissions, but they have many other benefits that more than make up for that. The authors of the article below have considered some of them and looked at ways to increase uptake further.
Easy Riders
I missed the announcement that Raleigh were releasing a reworked version of the Mk2 Chopper, or I’d have told you about it before the first batch sold out.
What I’d like to see is a modern reimagining of the bike as well- slightly larger, for adult riders, with geometry tweaks from the lessons learnt in the decades since the original. Give it a five or seven speed hub, or maybe even make it electric. I doubt the market wouldn’t be as assured as for the retro version, so it’s unlikely to happen.
For those, like me, who can’t afford a brand new (or rusty old) Raleigh Chopper, there are always toy versions. I stock 1:12 scale replicas, and versions for model railways.
The e-bike Wild West
I’m back to kicking around ideas for Another Summer of Hate, my next novel. One possible plot thread would involve the death of a kid on an e-bike, so I’m following the news about the incidents so far this year. (And one of them happened close to where I used to live, so there’s that as well.)
I don’t like the repeated suggestions in this article that it would somehow be perfectly safe to chase riders who wore helmets. Protective headgear, bike helmets in particular, provide limited protection against a limited range of injuries. They are not the magical lifesavers some people think they are (see also the zombie Helmet Debate, recently returned to eat the brains of politicians).
Criminal gangs, and reckless kids, use e-bikes. There is no straightforward way to deal with them, and I hope Police are deciding how, and whether, to pursue them based on more than just what’s on their heads.
World Naked Bike Ride 2021
The naked cyclists were out and about in the city centre again yesterday. I wasn’t a participant this year, but managed to get some photos at the roll out and on Canal Street. The album is on Flickr.
The first ride since lockdown
I finally left the flat for something other than work or food shopping. Just an easy ride into Manchester city centre to check out car free Deansgate, then around a few familiar places, and back again. You may have to click through to enjoy the full gallery, depending upon what mood the embedding code is in.
Sunday Morning Manchester Ride
I’ve been meaning to do this for a while. Today, I finally got around to it.
Getting up at 4am, I had a cup of tea, pumped the bike’s tyres up to a good running pressure, and headed into Manchester city centre. I videoed my ride around some random streets, and added some music, and here it is.
Okay, it’s no C’etait Un Rendezvous, but I had fun. If someone would like to lend me an electric motored mountain bike, and maybe some GoPros, I’d have a go at a point to point across the city centre, with a higher speed up the hills, and overall. (I might set out later, though. I hadn’t expected there to be so many people still around at 5am. Maybe at 7 or 8, the clubbers would mostly have made it home, and there’d be fewer cabs on the road.)
Put a lid on it (if you want)
I put off writing about it at the time, but The Helmet Debate resurfaced just before Christmas, along with rumours that the Government may consider making cycle helmets compulsory*.
So a few quick thoughts on the subject.
The argument for making helmets compulsory is that they’ll make cyclists safer. This is toss. My helmet doesn’t make me any safer. It doesn’t throw up a forcefield to deflect close passing cars, or fill in potholes in the road ahead. Nor does it psychically alert pedestrians that they should look both ways before stepping into the road- even if all those cars are standing still. It’s not there to make me safer. It’s there to minimise a specific type of damage, for when its nonexistent magical abilities don’t prevent an accident caused by bad driving, crap roads, inattentive pedestrians, or my own mistakes.
So many of the things that people think of as safety devices are, likewise, really just damage limitation features. Staying on the roads, seatbelts aren’t safety devices. Nor are airbags, crumple zones, side impact protection, or strengthened pillars. Whilst you want your car to have all those things built in, to save your life, you don’t want to ever have to use them.
Safety devices are the things that can help you prevent the damage limitation features being used. Brakes, good tyres and suspension, a well maintained and marked road, and, most of all, actually using that thing between your ears.
If campaigners and politicians are genuinely interested in making the roads safer for all (but especially cyclists, in this context), they should ignore all calls for mandatory helmets, and look at ways to improve driver awareness, and build better cycling infrastructure.
*Based upon flimsy evidence, admittedly. But we have a ridiculously flimsy Government at the moment.
A Writer’s Life 3- Mobiking Around the Northern Gorehouse
Shortly after the service launched in Manchester, I took a Mobike hire bike out for a test ride. Whilst I was about it, I visited some of the locations of Northern Gorehouse (aka Zombies V Vampires). Here’s A Writer’s Life, episode 3.
Naked Bike Ride 2017
I’ve been quite busy since the Naked Bike Ride, and only just managed to get a few images edited and uploaded. Unfortunately, Flickr won’t let me embed the gallery here, because of the flesh. But you can visit it here.
Zipping around Ancoats and the Northern Quarter 1
I went out for a ride in the sun last Sunday, and recorded this trip through the back streets of the Northern Quarter and Ancoats. I’ve sped it up, to suit the bounce of the soundtrack I found for it.
Music- EDM Detection Mode by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1500026
Artist: http://incompetech.com/
Critical Mass, August 2016
I got a clip on wide angle lens for the phone, which will be good for photos and timelapse, but upsets the autofocus when there’s too much movement. I’ll know better next time.
Critical Mass, July 2016
Rather shaky. It’s not easy cycling whilst filming with your phone.
Fire bike!
I found this whilst looking for something else completely. It looks awesome, though I imagine the weight of that hose so high up in the frame would make cornering scary.
Craziest Bike or Bike Parts!! in Bikes, Parts, and Gear
Source: Craziest Bike or Bike Parts!! – Page 1542 – Pinkbike Forum
RIP Dave Mirra
Police in America say veteran X Games biker Dave Mirra has died aged 41.
Source: Veteran X Games biker and BMX star Dave Mirra dies in North Carolina aged 41 – BBC Newsbeat
A wheeled wander past some Solstice locations
2015 isn’t likely to give us many more days as nice as today. So I got on the bike and went for a little ride- something I’ve consistently failed to do this year.
I followed a route I took several times last year- down to the Irwell, then upstream a way, freestyling the exact route on the many tracks available. If you’ve read Solstice, the weir above is the spot where the first body is found. In the story, it’s June, and the river is lower than this.
(If you haven’t read Solstice, you can get it from Amazon, Smashwords and several other online shops.)
This rather lovely location is just over two and a half miles from where I live. Two and a half miles in the other direction is Manchester city centre.
At one point, the track got a little crazy. Lacking Boudicca style scythes on the bike, I worked a little way back and crossed the river on an old canal bridge nerby.
Having taken a photo of the weir where the body was found, I had to make it far enough upstream to get a shot of the location of the first murder, and opening scene, of Solstice. This track runs under the M60. I turned around and headed back along trails I didn’t discover last year. The ride was just under ten miles long. I did much longer ones last year when I was in the habit of heading out for a random ride most weeks. I need to get on my bike more often.
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a rat rod style scooter bike 1
I spotted this across the road whilst wandering around town, and just had to have a picture. How cool is this rat rod style scooter?
When I stop living in the sky and find somewhere with a garage (which won’t be for a while), I’d love to have something like this for the occasional cool buzz around town. Of course, I’ve heard that older scooter engines can be very polluting for their size, so it would have to have a newer motor fitted instead or, for the ultimate mod (but not Mod), it could go electric.
I also spotted this cool chopper. The riding position looks close to that of a recumbent, so it mightn’t be as hard to pedal as you’d first think. Steering could be tricky, though.
That back tyre is actually three mountain bike tyres fitted to some sort of custom rim, which is an interesting way of doing things.
Naked Bike Ride 2015
I nearly didn’t bother taking pictures at this year’s Naked Bike Ride. The first and second times I did the ride, it was a bit of a surprise to have photos taken from inside the pack, rather than by giggling folks on their mobiles. So I was getting something a bit special.
Yesterday, it seemed that every other rider had a camera, some of them had more than one, and there were GoPros in evidence. So I set off thinking that it would be okay, I’d let everyone else take photos.
But, I’d brought my camera, and then we stopped on Oxford Road and this was the view ahead-
And this was the view behind-
I knew I had to get a few.
Most of the shots came out dark or blurred because of the overcast, but there were a few more I liked.
These guys had issues. But they’re the sort of people who have issues with everything, and whatever the guy with the megaphone was saying was drowned out by the sarcastic cheering of a hundred or so naked folk.
On the left hand side of this shot, you’ll see the coolest rider of all of us, a three year old kid on a balance bike, who managed to keep up with us for nearly half the ride. He’s a star.
Obligatory Beetham Tower with naked riders in front of it picture.
‘Change the law so car-drivers are automatically blamed for cycling accidents – unless they can prove otherwise’ | Metro News
Dutch driving laws force motorists to play it safe. Isn’t it time we adopted strict liability to protect cyclists in Britain?
There’s a vote option at the bottom of the piece. The result won’t make a difference in the grand scheme, but I recommend clicking Yes for the benefit of Metro readers.