Boneshaker Magazine / Issue #11

Bonesha ker: Real Cycling Except th is isn’t

real, of co get your urse, it’s hands on digital. To a r eal Bone it and sm s h a ker, to fe ell it and el hide it in here. We y o u r p annier, go make oth er great b especially ike stuff to bicycle a o, r t p r in t s. Check out here. them And to le t your ea your min rs take d on a jo urney, th ere’s our new pod cast serie s.

Cycling makes me feel alive.

Not in the sense of being warmed from cryogenic sleep, more like doing a dance in a hailstorm in my underpants. It wakes me up. It pins me to the noticeboard of life.

And Issue 11 of Boneshaker is full of bright jubilant blinks of art, music, danger, wonder, joy and strangeness that whisk

ŠTim Floyd

the tears from your eyes like a downhill ride on a blustery day.

If you've got a bell on your bike ping it, if you've got a horn on your bike honk it and if you've got nothing else just pull up your underpants, let go the brakes and sing.

Jet McDonald www.jetsingssongs.com

Contents Tall Bikes and the Eccentrification of the World 4 Keep it close 14 High hopes and hump-backed scorchers 18 Wall of Death, Wheels of Life 20 Going downhill on a bicycle, a boy’s song 26 My Beautiful Bike 28 Big Dream 30 A Sketchbook Travelogue 36 Semmelweis 42 Buying bikes: The vicious eBay cycle 49 Soft Soft Soft the Sparrow Sings 50 We Cycle 56

contributors

Words... Jet McDonald, Benny and Willy Zenga, Mike White, Will Manners, Henry Charles Beeching, Chris Carlsson, Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau, Emma Shoard, Julian Sayarer Drawings... Tim Floyd, Ugo Gattoni, Jethro Brice, Julian Glander, Lucy Engelman, Emma Shoard, George Pollard, Dylan Taylor, Nick Soucek Photos... Jon Lohne, Benny and Willy Zenga, Mark Simmons, Steve Rideout, Andrew Paynter, Tim Bowditch, Emma Shoard, David Emery, Jet McDonald

backpats and handclaps

Anny Mortada, Andrew Riddington, James Perrott, Whiskeydrunk Cycles, Fun Bike Unicorn Club, Bill Pollard and The Men of Monday, Jude Brosnan, the wonderful peeps at Nobrow, Veleco, Nick Hand, Andrew Paynter, Benny Zenga, Alastair Mcintosh, Deborah at Anikibo, Alex at SpinLDN, the cyclists of Copenhagen and our mismatched cycle jackets & big bushy beards for keeping in the warm.

copyrights & disclaimers Boneshaker is a quarterly publication. The articles published reflect the opinions of their respective authors and are not necessarily those of the publishers and editorial team. ©2013 Boneshaker. At present, we are committed to remaining free from advertisements & advertorial.

‘New Found Land’ by Tim Floyd (opposite). The image shows a stretch of motorway in Boneshaker's hometown, Bristol, re-imagined in a happier future where apple trees have sprung from beneath the tarmac to form a linear orchard through which cyclists are free to ride in peace. www.timfloyd.co.uk

rinted by Taylor Bros Bristol on FSC ® certified paper P made from sustainable sources, using vegetable based inks.

13-25 Wilder Street, Bristol BS2 8PY / www.taylorbros.uk.com Conceived by james lucas & john coe Compiled, edited and brought to life by jimmy ell, mike white, john coe & sadie campbell Designed and published by john coe / www.coecreative.com Cover image by Jon Lohne / www.flickr.com/photos/jonlohne Inside front and back spreads by Ugo Gattoni, taken from his book Bicycle, published by Nobrow Press, available from www.nobrow.net

Words by Benny and Willy Zenga Images by Zenga Bros and Brian Vernor

T

he bicycle is the ultimate overland vehicle. It is an affordable, human-powered machine of precision and balance, which allows millions of riders around the globe to propel themselves forward in countless ways. Whether used to commute to and from work, cruise around the park, carry camping gear, ride down mountains, soar through the air, or spin in circles on the ground,

there are numerous popular styles of bicycle from road to mountain, BMX to MTB, cruiser to recumbent.

But there is one type of bicycle that remains on the fringes. One that is only embraced by the daring, the creative, the foolish: the Tall Bike. While riding any bicycle is a positive step towards a healthy lifestyle and personal enjoyment, it is the tall bike that has the power to change the world.

There was a time when the tall bike was poised to become the dominant two-wheeled pedal-powered machine on the planet. In the 1880s the penny-farthing provided what its antecedents could not – speed. Since bicycles of that era were powered by a set of cranks connected directly to the hub of the front wheel, a larger wheel meant the rider could travel farther with one turn of the pedal. Sitting directly over the wheel placed the rider up to 5ft off the ground.

Unfortunately if a rider encountered a rough patch, the bike would come to a complete stop throwing the rider over the handlebars into roadside plants. Rumor has it this is where the term “face plant” was derived from.

As technology progressed and too many gardens saw their plants crushed by the faces of reckless young men, bicycles lowered their stature and the tall bike moved into the periphery of the cycling world. After the penny-farthing came the lamplighter bicycle, which resembles the modern tall bike. This bicycle was used to light city streetlamps in the late 1800s. Most tall bikes after that era were used for advertising and entertainment purposes. Bicycle shops used them as rolling billboards; they were often seen in parades and became common in circuses. It was not uncommon to see these bikes piloted by the occasional bear or monkey, which says absolutely nothing about the type of person that rides a tall bike today.

In 1964, Popular Mechanics magazine published an article on how to make a tall bike which lead to a smattering of off-beat kids throughout the US experimenting with customizing their bikes. As television took up more of the leisure time of American kids in the late 1970s, their imaginations were slowly destroyed and tall bikes became virtually extinct. It was a group of overweight Satan worshippers that reintroduced the tall bike phenomenon to the world in the 1990s. C.H.U.N.K. 666 was a group

of chopper and tall bike builders who documented their drunken exploits and incredible custom bicycles on their website and in zines. Their apocalyptic rants, dark sense of humor and incredibly creative and dangerous creations captured the imaginations of street punks and eccentrics around the world and kick-started many tall bike or 'mutant' bike clubs. For two brothers from a small town in Ontario, Canada it was a revelation – rolling creativity on the streets for anyone with access to some tools, junk bicycles, an imagination and the willingness to look foolish.

We ordered a C.H.U.N.K. zine and began our journey away from normal.

9

Tall Bike Timeline

1880s

Early 1890s

1964

The first metal-framed bicycles are fast and tall. the High Wheel or 'pennyfarthing' is the chosen two-wheeled vehicle for thrill-seeking young lads.

As bicycles continue to develop they become lower to the ground and tall bikes are relegated to parades, circuses and as rolling billboards for bicycle shops.

A Popular Mechanics article on how to build a tall bike inspires young backyard builders, yet tall bikes remain an underground phenomenon.

“ It was a group of overweight Satan worshippers that reintroduced the tall bike phenomenon to the world in the 1990s.”

Motivated by a desire to make a difference, a few of us started a group called the Winking Circle. Our philosophy was called the Wisdom of the 3 Beans: Create - Redeem Be a Fool. Our goal was to encourage kids to be radically creative in the face of apathetic conformity. Our mission was the Eccentrification of the World. We met at a condemned house on the outskirts of our small town. We set up tables with cans of ‘miss-tints’ paint, paintbrushes, glue, old toys and a collection of old bicycles and began experimenting.

We taught ourselves to weld, cut up old bikes and began creating "art bikes". We made tall bikes, chopper bikes, spark bikes, butterfly bikes, arm-pedaled bikes and whatever eccentrified bicycles we could think up.

Soon all sorts of rolling art machines were cruising the streets of our sleepy little town. Our imaginations caught fire and spread, inspiring a creative explosion among us.

People began making their own clothes and screen-printing custom designs. Bands started and shows were organized and held in community centers, basements and bedrooms. We began working with local politicians to build a permanent skatepark and organized fundraisers and ramp jams. Finally,

1985

1997

1999

2001

A 13-year-old Willy Zenga sits atop a penny-farthing at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan unaware of the role that tall bikes will have in setting him down the road less travelled.

A gang of grungy tall bike riders from Portland, Oregon warn of the coming Carmegeddon in their C.H.U.N.K. 666 zine and on their website, unwittingly kickstarting the modern day tall bike movement.

The Zenga Bros get bored in their small town, discover the Wisdom of The 3 Beans and start building tall bikes: the Winking Circle is born.

After the Winking Circle build a fleet of tall bikes and other rolling oddities they begin to frequent the Toronto, Ontario Critical Mass rides on the last friday of every month, year-round.

observer, we became the observed, and participants in the local culture.

Our next trip brought us to the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia – the hottest and most inhospitable place on the planet. It is pockmarked by volcanic vents and covered in sulphur. The rocky ground resembles a barren, lunar landscape. When we were invited to film a bicycle trip across this hazardous region we jumped at the chance, knowing that it would provide an opportunity to ride a tall bike where none had been before. We worked for months leading up to the trip, fabricating a chrome-moly framed, touring tall bike that could be disassembled and reassembled in minutes. In most situations a tall bike is the element out of the ordinary but in the surreal landscape of the Danakil, being on a tall bike felt like the only way to travel over this otherworldly landscape.

after years of dedicated effort we built our dream ramp: the Tsunami Ramp, aka the Mini-Chin Ramp.

Our next adventure involved filming a four-month bicycle expedition across Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town. Along the way we built the Tall Horse. Using nuts and bolts, plumbing pipe and angle iron we found at the Merkato, Africa’s largest market, we stacked one bike frame on top of another to form a tall bike. Traveling by a tall bike provided an immediate connection with the land and the local people. The Tall Horse not only exaggerated this experience, but reversed the dynamic of the spectacle. Upon entering a village the ensuing eruption of laughter was often at our expense. The locals could see that we weren’t to be taken too seriously and inevitably wanted to join in the fun. Locals approached the bike with a knowing eye, taking notes and asking questions related to the engineering of the Tall Horse. The bravest of them didn’t hesitate to take it for a test ride. We found that instead of rolling through lessertraveled places with the superficial superiority of a privileged

Our most recent tall bike adventure was the fulfillment of a long-awaited dream. For our parents’ 40th wedding anniversary we devised a plan with the entire family to spend two weeks traveling in a caravan down the coast of the Pacific Northwest. The Eccentrification Tour was born. Seventeen of us piled into two handpainted, brightly coloured vans with tall bikes strapped to the roofs. Along the way we hosted film screenings, concerts, art-car and tall bike workshops and ended up at the home of Megalon 5, C.H.U.N.K 666 member and the author of the zine we had ordered over 10 years before. To our surprise he wasn't the least bit chunky and if he did worship Satan he kept it pretty low key. He was incredibly hospitable, allowing 17 strangers to take over his home and yard for a couple of days. When we left he gave us the complete collection of C.H.U.N.K. 666 zines and we thanked him profusely for his crucial role in ruining our lives for the ordinary.

A highlight of the Eccentrification Tour was a 10-hour tall bike journey out of Vancouver to a remote campground in the mountains. Riding with family members, from 6 to 64 years old, out of the city, through subdivisions, past farmers’

2003

2006

2007

2007

The Winking Circle crashes the Gobsmacked! festival in Toronto with their art van and a trailer full of tall bikes. There they meet filmmaker Harrod Blank, inspirational promoter of art cars.

1970s Super 8 footage of rural teens performing folk stunts, riding skateboards made out of x-country skis, grass toboggans and tall bikes is compiled into the short film Ski Boys.

The 'Tall Tall' is built out of 5 frames and stands over 9 feet tall. It is ridden inside the Eatons Center, Toronto's largest mall. Radical creativity unleashed in the cathedral of consumerism.

Two specially designed, fold-up tall bikes are built to fit in a box 28x22x12 so that they can travel by train to the Joy Ride art show at the Bicycle Film Festival in NYC.

“ Traveling by bicycle provided an immediate connection with the land and the local people.

The Tall Horse not only exaggerated this experience, but reversed the dynamic of the spectacle.”

2008

2009

2010

2011

While in Africa on a cross continental bicycle tour, the Zenga Bros build the Tall Horse out of two touring bikes.

It becomes the first tall bike to travel from Ethiopia to South Africa.

Their documentary "Where Are You Go?", which features the incredible journey of the Tall Horse, tours with the Bicycle Film Festival around the world. At a stop in Montreal the Zenga Bros ride their tall bikes to the peak of Mount Royal.

Hillbilly Willy visits Vancouver where the Zenga Bros are hosting the SPOKED! bicycle arts festival. Tall bikes are ridden hard and fast but unfortunately no sasquatches are found.

The Joy Machine is built. A custom, chromoly-framed touring tall bike made especially for a bicycle expedition across the most inhospitable place on earth: the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia.

fields, up and down dark, winding hills into the night was an indelibly memorable experience. To travel on brightly coloured tall bikes in such a large group created a scene that those who witnessed will not soon forget. The smiles, waves, curious looks and spontaneous cheers of pedestrians and fellow cyclists reminded us that our journey was not just for ourselves but, because of our tall bikes, was a joyful experience we could share with others.

At this time in history, where a consumer-driven monoculture is spreading around the world offering empty promises of happiness through pre-packaged lifestyle accessories, the selfish pursuit of luxury, and a 24/7 connection to mind-numbing mass media, the tall bike is the ultimate vehicle of radical creativity. A tall bike teaches you everything you need to know to be a positive change in this world. To build a tall bike you exercise your imagination, test your scrounging skills, your D.I.Y. initiative and the ability to work with your hands. To learn to ride a tall bike you must have patience, courage and a

2011

2012-13

The Zenga Family Eccentrification Tour is a colorful caravan of art vans, motorcycles and tall bikes traveling down the West Coast with 17 family members.

Zenga Bros Studios continues to build tall bikes in Vancouver, BC.

“ Our goal was to encourage kids to be radically creative in the face of apathetic conformity.” sense of humor. When you ride a tall bike you transform any environment you pass through. You become the foreign experience. Your ride shocks the passers-by, awakening them from their daily routine. You are a rolling joyrider, signifying the possibilities of a world where true joy and wonder cannot be bought or sold, but created and experienced. The tall rider’s presence declares that this world is available to everyone with a willingness to use their imagination, get their hands dirty and actively put in motion their visions and dreams.

Words Mike White Illustration Jethro Brice, © Bristol Pound CIC Ltd. Photos © Mark Simmons

Blink the snowflakes from your eyes, push back against the winter wind, picture the distant fire whose woodsmoke now curls to your nostrils.

KEEP IT

CLOSE Travelling by bicycle brings the world close. It flings you into it, all senses alive. It gives meaning to distance; it affirms the value of the local. In a world where our social and economic interactions are ever more disparate, diffuse and global, the bicycle’s quiet tyre-marks redraw the maps of old, their curves and contours a litany for the legs.

Whether we admit it or not, to ride a bicycle is a political act – even if it’s not a political statement – and it’s an act of localism, creating a connection between person and place.

There are many simple parallels between using a bicycle to navigate your city and a local currency to trade within it.

Alternative local currencies are growing across the UK. Towns and cities like Totnes, Stroud and Boneshaker’s hometown of Bristol in the West of England (the UK’s first official ‘Cycling City’) have begun printing and circulating their own money as a way of keeping it within the hands of local people and local businesses.

About half of global trade goes to the offshore system and is lost to local economies and ordinary people, but the Bristol Pound directly challenges this, strengthening the city’s local diversity. It supports small and independent traders and ensures that money spent locally cannot be siphoned off by banks and out of the reach of local people. It’s a quietly effective way of restoring local focus, of putting people at the centre of things. It’s currency with politics built in.

17

“ I was looking for things that characterise the city’s strong community of people doing things from the ground up, like growing their own food and supporting DIY bike culture.

When Bristol decided to go ahead and launch its own Pound, a competition was held to design the notes. Artists and designers, children and have-a-go amateurs all sent in work and the Bristol Pound organisers selected those they felt best captured the ethos of the new currency. For the £1 note, they chose Jethro Brice’s drawing of a bicycle resting against an apple tree.

“This design was in response to the brief ‘our environment’,” says Jethro. “I wanted to pick up on what the environment of Bristol is to me, what it is in relation to what the Bristol Pound’s trying to do; so I was looking for things that characterise the city’s strong community of people doing things from the ground up, like growing their own food and supporting DIY bike culture.

That was my starting point.

“I wanted show our environment as a dynamic relationship. The bike is there to show the human presence, but it’s also a symbol for the local environment, a way of illustrating the concept of a small area, because it defines the distance from your point of departure. The bike conjures up a sense of travel, but it also gives you a sense of scale for that travel.

“Then there are the apple trees. For me they’re a landmark of the green fringes of Bristol, physically and culturally. You go through the city’s green spaces you see apples trees and birds eating the apples – and there’s a strong community of permaculture and green growing in Bristol too. The fox and the magpie eyeing each other up add an element of dynamic interaction into the image, to show the overlap and sharing of natural and human environments.

“When the design was first released, some people were quite angry about the inclusion of the magpie and the fox, saying they’re scavengers and cheats. I found that encouraging though, because it meant I’d hit on something I was trying to get at, that the environment in which we live is massively shaped by humans, and vice versa – humans have been entirely shaped by the natural environment. The reason that what we find in the city are foxes and magpies is entirely down to our way of living; the world that we’ve chosen to create suits magpies and foxes.

All that does is reflect our choices back to us, like a mirror: who we are, what life we choose to live. I love foxes and magpies so that doesn’t trouble me. But if you’re troubled by foxes and magpies, all that’s saying is that you’re troubled by your own way of living, by the society we’ve created.

18

“For me, cycling is a political choice and my interest in the Bristol Pound is political too, as a way of empowering the local community. It’s about relationships, about engagement and connection. If you’re on a bicycle, you’re in the environment in a different way from other modes of transport. You can feel it on your face; you can feel it in your legs. And you’re reducing scale and speed so that you can engage with the things around you.

“Because I cycle to work I know what time the sun rises through the year, I know when the first frosts hit. If I was driving, I wouldn’t have that same level of connection, and I think that that connection is a political thing – alienation is fundamental to the ways we’re going wrong socially, politically and environmentally, the ways we’re damaging the world and each other. Connection is the opposite of alienation. If you’re in touch with what you’re doing, with the costs of the things we consume, the benefits of the things we give then you’re able to live in a much better way.

“On that level cycling is about being rooted in reality, in touch with your immediate surroundings, so in that sense it is a political thing; much as choosing to use a local currency reinforces your connection with what’s around you.”

They’re two sides of the same coin – or note, rather.

www.bristolpound.org jethrobrice.com

Julian Glander / www.julianglander.com

HIGH HOPES HUMP-BACKED SCORCHERS

OR

Words by Will Manners ~ Image source: Cycling (London, England), Saturday, October 16, 1897; pg. 9;

W

hat use is the bicycle to society? Ask this question today and the response will probably focus on its ability to tackle problems of the 21st century. Ill health and heart conditions, says the doctor. Levels of pollution produced by commuting, says the environmentalist. The stress of fast-paced lifestyles, says most of the Western world. When the same question was considered in the 1890s, many writers also looked at problems affecting society. The bicycle’s ability to allow people to de-stress and escape into the country was just as important then as it is today.

Alongside this was the Victorian obsession with Empire. Many writers saw the bicycle as a means of producing the fit and strong young men capable of maintaining the British interests abroad and even wrote extensively on the possible role of the bicycle in warfare. The character building involved in bicycle racing was also a prevalent theme in cycling journals; one described how cycling ‘inoculates in us that determined spirit, that valour, that hardihood and power of endurance, which when called upon, Englishmen always so conspicuously exhibit’. From this, one begins to understand the pride and patriotism which many cyclists attached to the bicycle in the 1890s.

Surely then the bicycle was embraced by Victorian society, who saw the important role it was playing in moving the great British nation forward? Well, as a matter of fact, no. Reading newspapers and periodicals from the period, it’s clear that cyclists were certainly not the flavour of the month among large sections of society. Whereas nowadays the terror of the roads is the motor car, back then the fastest thing on wheels was the bicycle. Today, the cyclist is often left feeling shaken and enraged by the belligerence of some drivers – in Victorian times it was non-cyclists who were afraid and angry. And indeed other cyclists, as often as not.

Newspapers are full of complaints of ‘scorchers’, cyclists ‘riding furiously’ in crowded streets, cycling on the wrong side of public roads and being the cause of accident after accident. Soon a division emerged between considerate cyclists (sometimes called ‘wheelers’ or ‘wheelmen’) and the notorious scorchers.

Cycling, the most widely read bicycling journal of the period, contains many letters from correspondents complaining about scorchers or ‘cads on castors’. One from 1891 describes these ‘hump-backed, tearing, sweltering scorchers’ as ‘idiots’, with ‘faces rivalling the expression of an Indian warrior at the stake’. Another describes the scorcher as ‘that brute which every true-hearted wheeler loathes’ and there is a dramatic account of a ‘wheeling desperado’ bowling over ‘a poor old cripple’. Parliament in this period was subject to large numbers of petitions to find a means of registering cyclists so as to catch the ones who ‘race up and down the highways, causing obstruction to traffic and violating the local laws’.

All these complaints about cycling, as well as challenging conceptions of the bicycle’s use to society, had an even more worrying implication for the middle classes who dominated cycling and cycling journalism.

The reputation of cyclists as rude, aggressive loud mouths contrasted strongly with middle-class conceptions of hard work, politeness and respectability. One concerned letter to Cycling in 1894 commented on this trait being exhibited by the writer's friend ‘Juggins’. Juggins is ‘a very nice affable fellow’ who is ‘to all intents and purposes a gentleman’ but who upon riding a bicycle ‘harks back to some low ancestor – in a word he becomes little better than a savage’. He and his club friends ‘not only insult the pedestrian’ but ‘do not spare their fellow cyclist who happens to be in their way’.

However, accepting that the likes of Juggins were responsible for the bad reputation of cyclists would have been unacceptable for the middle classes who contributed to the cycling journals of the period. It would have completely undermined middle-class belief that their prosperity was due to their respectable nature and hard work ethic. Another explanation was needed for why cyclists were getting such a bad reputation.

This explanation came in the form of existing ideas on the class system held by the middling sections of society. It was not the respectable, gentlemanly middle classes who were giving cycling a bad name, but the irresponsible, loud-mouthed lower ends of society who had taken to cycling. In an editorial in 1892, Cycling actually argued for a tax on cyclists so as to exterminate ‘the rowdy element that has become an altogether too prominent feature of our sport’. If they could see some of today’s efficiently taxed drivers, they’d realise that taxation has no effect on manners – though their suggestion remains a popular one amongst certain motoring lobbyists.

To epitomize this rowdy element, cycling journals often referred to ’Arry, a figure who was the embodiment of the cycling rough.

He appears on ‘ancient machines’ with his wife ’Arriet, leaving in his wake devastation and strong odours of tobacco smoke.

You can find him in country inns after a bike ride, gorging ‘like a boa constrictor’, groping the waitresses and getting rudely drunk (Cycling complained in 1897 about those ‘who do not know that cycling upon alcohol is not quite the same as riding upon pneumatic tyres’). Groups of ’Arry cyclists can even be discovered bathing naked by a river after a ride, whilst using ‘language and sing songs in keeping with their general deportment’. ‘By their thoughtless conduct and stupid ruffianism, these individuals jeopardize every victory won for

today, the cyclist is often left feeling shaken and enraged by the belligerence of some drivers – in Victorian times it was non-cyclists who were afraid and angry. And indeed other cyclists, as often as not. the cause of cycling’, fumed Cycling in 1895. Writing on the bicycle therefore became entangled in existing conceptions of different classes, and these distinctions were used by the middle classes to explain the unpopularity of the bicycle.

What they overlooked of course is that consideration for others and good road manners have nothing to do with class. Arseholes are arseholes, whatever their social standing. Fast forward to the present day, and the bicycle has managed to untangle itself from the ideas of class which were placed upon it during the 1890s. Ruffians like ’Arry endure, of course.

Scorchers come from all social stripes; the behaviour of some cyclists continues to enrage others just as much as it ever did.

Look at the bigger picture though, and what’s changed about the bicycle’s position in society is that – ‘Arrys notwithstanding – it now represents a calmer, more utopian future for transport. If those nineteenth-century naysayers could only see what was to come after the golden age of cycling, could only see the snarling, poisonous corridors of death that are modern roads, they’d embrace cycling as the pennant of progress that it is. It is a democratic, safe and civilised conveyance that transcends class and social standing, and as motorised transport continues to thwart and suffocate itself at every turn, cycling’s position in society is more important than ever. Not to consolidate the British Empire of course, but to help make modern life just a little bit better for everyone. ’Arrys may remain – their numbers may even be growing – but they’ll always be outnumbered by those who have the vision to see the bicycle’s rightful place in society.

Will Manners is preparing a dissertation on cycling and class relationships in the 1890s. Send relevant ideas or interesting facts to email-wm538@york.ac.uk 21

Picture yourself on a bicycle, the smell of sawdust and sweat in the air, the heat of the lights on your face.

A blindfold is fastened over your eyes. You lean down, grasp the handlebars and begin pedalling.

h t a e D f o s l l a W A hand on your shoulder guides you to the right, where your front wheel meets an unseen incline.

The hand is gone, and you know you must pedal faster, even as you feel the bike lurch toward the horizontal, perpendicular to the ground. Pedal faster, or you will surely fall.

Words Mike White Bomberdrome photos Steve Rideout www.rideoutphoto.co.uk

e f i L f o s l e e h W Pedal faster, and hear the tyres rumble around the near vertical wall, the crowd gasp and whoop and holler. Feel the track buck and roll beneath your wheels, gravity wanting to take you down, your own speed keeping you up. Welcome to the

Bomberdrome.

24

And so our story begins, in the North of England, in a shed in darkest Northamptonshire, where the Men of Monday meet. This is the Shedquarters. These men are the self-styled Ministry of Bicycles. Why the Men of Monday moniker? Because Monday night is Project Night. These men, y’see, are wont to spend their Monday evenings holed up in the Shedquarters, getting up to mischief. Ministry mainman Bill Pollard spills the beans: “It’s usually pretty chaotic. There’s maybe a dozen of us – from clerks of court to punks on the dole, gas men, electricians, back room coders – a real mix of blokes who like talking bollocks, drinking beer and pissing around with bicycles. The default project on a Monday night is ‘let’s see how much beer we can drink’ but we do tinker with bikes too, customising, bastardising, and spreading what little knowledge we have amongst us.”

One night Bill saw a bicycle wall of death called the Whiskeydrome, in a video about the Maker’s Faire in the USA. It had been built by a band of mischief makers called Whiskeydrunk Cycles, a part of the Fun Bike Unicorn Club in Santa Rosa, California: “a loose collective of whimsical builders, inventors, artists and rabble-rousers” (they say) and “a bunch of great guys”, says Bill. “I saw that thing and I thought ‘you know what? I just need to have one of them’.”

And so, there and then, he vowed to build one.

Bill got in touch with Whiskeydrunk’s moustachioed mechanical mastermind Klaus Andreas Rappensperger, showing him a drawing he’d made of a contraption he called ‘The Bowl of Harm’ – later renamed the Bomberdrome – and so began “a cute little internet love affair” says Whiskeydrunk lynchpin Joshua Thwaites, taking over the story.

“There was an art festival that happened in Santa Rosa four years ago – ‘The Handcar Regatta and Exposition of Mechanical Wonders’, it was called - and we started building kinetic vehicles for it. And then I saw a bicycle history book called ‘The Noblest Invention’, and on the cover was a picture of a turn-of-the-century board track called ‘Keith’s Bicycle Track’. I rushed back to the workshop and said to Klaus ‘hey, can we build this?’ and we got excited. It was all kind of mysterious to us, so we looked at a load of old photos, books and handbills, Klaus worked out the dimensions and 1. Legendary comic artist, writer and musician – creator of the Watchmen and V for Vendetta, amongst others.

Photography © Jon Lohne

N

ot so long ago, life was nasty, brutish and short, even in the Western world. Death came swift and often, and life was lived hand-in-hand with risk. The showmen and women of old often took their lives in their hands as they took the stage. Like Dr ‘Diavolo’ Carter, in his cape and devil-horned hat, performing a deathdefying bicycle loop-the-loop night after night – until one night in January 1914 in Cienfuegos, Cuba that is, when his bicycle broke beneath him on stage and he could defy death no more. There were others, leaping great distances, braving hoops of fire. But the contraption that continues to capture the imagination is the Wall of Death. Although more famous as a motorbike stunt, those with strong enough thighs and a steely constitution need not use a machine to ride a near vertical wall. Real men (and women) use their legs.

“ It does rock and roll as we go round it, especially when you’ve got five or six riders on there, but it works.

And it brings smiles to everybody’s faces." we set to building it.” They threw parties and events to raise funds to build it ready for the Regatta, and finished it with a month to spare. Within a day or two of the Regatta they had their next booking, and in the two years since then the Whiskeydrome’s been to over thirty events – parties, music festivals, “all sorts of different random things. We’ve never tried to sell the Whiskeydrome to anybody,” says Joshua. “It just took off.”

Things were not so immediate for Bill and the Men of Monday, however. Like the Whiskey Punks, they had to find cunning ways to fund the dream. Bill had had Alan Moore’s1 keyboard kicking around his house for ages. “So I thought ‘right, let’s get the ball rolling’ and just before Christmas I put the keyboard on eBay. I ended up with £400 in my back pocket. Enough to get us started.” Then they began Crowdfunding, selling the individual planks of the Bomberdrome. “That got us another two grand. I lobbed in a couple of grand, I pinched a grand off my mum and that was that.”

Klaus sent over his designs, and talked Bill through the build process. “Klaus babysat me through it basically”, says Bill.

“I was asking all sorts of preposterous questions and he was calmly answering them all. I was taken aback by how happy they were for me to go ahead and do it. They seemed to be over the moon that someone else was doing this. Possibly because we’re across a couple of thousand miles of water – but

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they were all absolutely stoked when we actually managed to get it built. There was a lot of mutual admiration going on.”

The Bomberdrome – named after the Raleigh Bombers that now race around it – is basically three stiff hoops in eight sections with 180 pieces of four-by-two U-bolted onto them.

Three steel ropes are tightened around the outside as an extra precautionary measure. “And that’s it,” says Bill. “It does rock and roll as we go round it, especially when you’ve got five or six riders on there, but it works. And it brings smiles to everybody’s faces. Mainly those that ride it. People love watching it – especially when we crash, but the joy of teaching someone how to get on and ride it themselves is incredible.”

You never forget your first ride on a wall of death, says Joshua. “I’d been fantasising about that day for a while. I grabbed a 24inch BMX with no brakes, no seat – and I was wearing sandals – and I jumped right in and took my first lap. I came to a stop and let out the biggest yelp. We called up all our friends and said ‘come over and get dizzy’, and for the first couple of weeks we just had to ride it every day.”

“Just like yesteryear’s Walls of Death, they were built to show off, to wow a crowd.

The danger and the excitement are what draw people in."

Bill: “It was absolutely incredible. I’d just spent the wettest summer in the world, outdoors, trying to get this thing built. So for me it was a huge relief that it worked.

Obviously none of us knew how to ride the Bomberdrome when we first completed it, so there was a crowd of people there watching me, and it was a terrifying few minutes, it really was. But once you’re on the wall, you’re away. It was genuinely like a Polyphonic Spree concert for the other guys, they were all absolutely buzzing.

They just wouldn’t shut up. We went down the pub and had a few beverages afterwards, but that just made things worse.

I’ve never seen them like that – even my grumpy brother was over the moon. It was like he was on drugs.”

That excitement, the proximity of danger, is central to the Wall of Death’s allure. So far, the Bomber boys have avoided serious injury, but blood’s been spilled in the Whiskeydrome.

“The first year we’d just set it up on the concrete wherever we ended up. Then we had a really bad crash, where a buddy took a faceplant, bust his arm, took the skin off the inside of his bottom lip…”. After that they took “a hunk o’ carpet along” and set up the Whiskeydrome on that, to soften the 26

falls. “You just get a rug burn now,” laughs Joshua. For both the Bomberdrome boys and the Whiskeydrunk crew, the thrill is in the show, in getting their creations out into the world. “Festivals, village fetes, bar mitzvahs, funerals – we just want to take it out and share the joy and the idiocy of Bomberdrome,” says Bill. Plans are afoot to travel the UK with the ’Drome and ride it whilst dressed as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

“Every time we put it up the tricks increase – we’re doing opposite crossovers, Andy’s doing it no-handed, Dante’s doing it blindfolded. Every time we try it, someone pushes the boat out a bit further. It’s all going to end in tears, but it’s great if you haven’t got a stupid-switch, which most of the boys don’t seem to have,” says Bill.

Joshua echoes the sentiment from across the Atlantic. “The allure of the Whiskeydrome is the interaction with the crowd, the danger and the energy. We have a handful of tricks – riding swingbikes in the ’Drome, going no hands, playing games with hats.

It’s great to just stand back and see the faces of the kids watching, totally in awe.”

And herein lies the real value of these wonderful, hand-built ’Dromes. Just like yesteryear’s Walls of Death, they were built to show off, to wow a crowd. The danger and the excitement are what draw people in. But the real message of those rumbling tyres is that risk is good.

The greatest threat to the health of modern Western society is inactivity. An obesity epidemic is spreading across Europe and the US. Parents are too afraid to let their children roam outside the house. When they do go outside, they’re shuttled around everywhere by car. Because as a society we don’t move enough, don’t have enough adventures, don’t take enough risks – we’re becoming bloated, anxious and unwell. Risk aversion is the real danger; not taking risks.

So let’s hear it for Whiskeydrunk Cycles and the Ministry of Bicycles, for the Whiskeydrome and the Bomberdrome, as they link their sinewy arms across the Atlantic, flick two fingers up at today’s risk-averse society and remind us that danger can be fun. twitter.com/MinistryOfBikes whiskeydrunkcycles.com

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Handwritten Text & Illustration by Lucy Engelman / www.lucyengelman.com

MY BEAUTIFUL BIKE IS AN UGLY DUCKLING! I’ve got a standard blue aluminium frame with tall “apehanger” handlebars, like the ones we used to have on Stingrays as kids in the late 1960s. I injured my lower back a couple of times so I found riding in the typical hunched-over position that most bikes demand just wasn’t comfortable for me. I like to call it my “Cadillac pickup truck”. The essence of my beautiful bike is the brilliant utilitarian functionality of it.

I never cared much about cosmetics and have covered my bike with stickers, mostly from Critical Mass rides around the world. I also never developed any interest in parts or accessories, so I can’t tell you much about the provenance of the various pieces of my bike. A friend put it together for me about 13 years ago, and thanks to three locks (yep, three, count ’em: u-lock, cable, and euro back-wheel lock) it hasn’t yet been stolen, even in the Mecca of bike thievery that is San Francisco.

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Every Wednesday I ride a little over a mile to San Francisco’s ‘Heart of the City’ Farmers’ Market where I’ve been shopping for more than 20 years and am long-time friends with a dozen different farmers whom I’ve gotten to know over the years. My bike is always alongside as I shop, my beast of burden slowly absorbing the pounds of fresh produce that I acquire.

Then I pedal towards home via the best worker-owned cooperative grocery store in town, Rainbow Grocery, where I pile another load of stuff into a discarded cardboard box and strap that atop my panniers with bungee cords. Once or twice the load’s tumbled off the back, but I’ve gotten quite good at balancing it all, and then carefully strapping it down to take advantage of my rack and broad panniers.

My bike is such a regular companion that it sometimes seems like it has a mind of its own, wanting to go to obscure hilltops and lesser-known neighborhoods out of its own curiosity. I don’t tend to anthropomorphize objects in my life, and my nameless bike is no exception. But after the thousands of miles we’ve ridden up and down and all around this beautiful bike-able city, I do feel a real affection for it. I’m reminded of the novel True Grit when the aging gunman explains how the pistol is an extension of his hand—when I get on my bike after some time away,

MY BEAUTIFUL BIKE I feel instantly the easy merger of my body and my bike, moving through the streets almost without effort, sitting up high above the traffic, seeing everyone and being seen too, stopping to talk to friends whenever I want to, or speeding with cultivated recklessness through the carcentric streetscape. And I’m still wreck-less after 33 years of riding!

My beautiful bike is not the vehicle most people would expect to see someone charging up San Francisco’s steep hills on, but that’s what I like to do for exercise and as a way to meditate on the past, present, and future of the city I live in. My favorite ride is up to the 900-foot summit of Twin Peaks, the tallest hills dividing the east and west sides of San Francisco. It’s one of the great treats of local cycling, being able to leave the city below and enter the last curves of the road, first passing through a forest of invasive Eucalyptus trees and German ivy but eventually emerging to curve through slopes covered in restored native flora. The soundscape changes as the wind comes barrelling off the Pacific Ocean to push the fog relentlessly onto the peaks, or on a sunny, warm day, the white noise of the city fades into the background as hawks and ravens soar overhead, butterflies cavort on the slopes, and I float over the thrumming city below.

by Chris Carlsson Chris Carlsson, is a writer, San Francisco historian, bicyclist, tour guide, photographer, book and magazine designer. He helped co-found Critical Mass in 1992, (now a worldwide phenomenon) and has ridden with Critical Mass rides in a dozen cities on three continents since then. He also conducts award-winning bicycle history tours a dozen times a year, and hosts an ongoing Public Talks series in San Francisco.

Highly recommended are his book ‘Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-Lot Gardeners are Inventing the Future Today!’ and his TED talk about our two lives: tinyurl.com/carlssonTED www.chriscarlsson.com www.nowtopians.com www.foundsf.org

Main photo by Andrew Paynter www.andrewpaynter.com 31

Words Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau / www.dekersaint.co.uk

BIG DREAM MEN, ALONE. OR IN GROUPS, BUT STILL ALONE. Absorbed in their reading: numbers and words that are helping them make sense of what is happening in the surrounding environment.

The men in the pictures are in-between one moment and another. They are frozen by the camera, caught considering their position; never to move on.

Photography Tim Bowditch / www.timbowditch.com

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Keirin, that is why the men are there.

They are betting on Keirin races, a form of track cycling that originated in Japan in 1948 and became an Olympic sport in 2000.

They are looking at the form of the riders in the Keirin equivalent of the Racing Post, making notes and working out their bets.

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ambling is illegal in Japan. Well, in general it’s illegal, but there are some exceptions and Keirin is one of them. The ‘Public Sports’ (the others being horse racing, motorboat racing and motorbike racing) are state run, and the government takes a cut of the money made from bets placed on the races. The pamphlet that photographer Tim Bowditch picked up while he was at one of the tracks – 'Your Guide to Keirin for Beginners' – makes much of the positive social uses of the gambling money. It has, the pamphlet promises, provided “equipment to be used in basic research for the treatment of lifestyle-related diseases”. Tim got speaking to a drunk guy at the velodrome who told him that most of the gamblers were jobless, homeless or alcoholics.

Maybe the lifestyle-related diseases are related to the lifestyle of the typical Keirin gambler?

Tim's photo essay Big Dream was researched and planned before he went out to Japan. He went to three race days at three different tracks, spending his time wandering around the betting areas, the stands and the outside spaces. In the outside spaces he found these men, studying the form of the Keirin riders before the went inside to place their bets. Apparently the stands – where you bet or watch the race or get some food from a canteen – were really busy. But these outside spaces with their plastic chairs and vending machines and blank concrete were empty. That was where the men gathered, alone or in clumps, to think and study and work out the odds.

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'BIG DREAM' IS A KEIRIN-SPECIFIC BETTING TERM. IT IS AN ACCUMULATOR BET, PLACED ON THE LAST FOUR RACES OF THE DAY.

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he images in Tim’s Big Dream project manage to capture the infinite, unlikely, ever hopeful possibilities of gambling. The odds upon odds upon odds that make up a hypothetical win. All the men are facing in different directions, hoping for slightly different results. The concrete structures cut through the images, directing the gamblers along different paths, towards different futures. The spaces depicted by the photographs are in-between, non-places, they are on the way to somewhere else – the betting counters or the track-side stands. And the sport itself is a means to an end for the gamblers; a temporary diversion on the way to the pure adrenaline of a big win.

‘Big Dream’ is a Keirin-specific betting term. It is an accumulator bet, placed on the last four races of the day. If you pick the first two finishers in those races, you can win a huge amount of money. Big Dream – it is a term that seems literal and clunky, an endearing cliché of Japanese to English translation. But it perfectly describes the feeling of looking at these photographs.

The concrete is almost shining in the sun, gleaming with promise. The air is clear and feels clean. The men in the images are frozen in hope. They’ve worked out the odds, put in the time. There is no reason why today shouldn’t be their lucky day.

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A Sketchbook Travelogue

by Emma Shoard

This summer I suddenly booked a ticket to see Patti Smith in Amsterdam, and shortly after, a ticket back home for a month later, from Paris. I had found myself quite suddenly, once again, without employment, rental contracts or romantic commitments and decided to take the impractical route of escape and unplanned adventure.

I had been longing to take my bicycle, a well-loved Dawes Galaxy, on tour, to do something that people may not have expected of me, travelling alone. I decided that I would spend the month moving at my own pace through the Netherlands, Belgium and France, documenting my travels through drawing and 35mm photography.

I use film because I am more selective and observe more through a viewfinder with a limited number of shots. My drawings are also all about observation, documentation and making a record. Both mediums allow me to immerse myself and to intensely experience certain moments, before setting them aside and moving on to the next.

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I chose to spend some time in hostels but also couch-surfed, hosted first by a Dutch boy named Merijn, a musician and philosopher living as a property guardian in Rotterdam. He was a man of strong opinions, wild philosophical ideas and many tales of hallucinogenic experience. Despite not having time to show an awful lot of the city, Merijn did tell me about a portal to another universe that had opened around the corner.

We also fed goslings in the park.

He was possibly the most open and inviting person I have ever met.

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After a brief couch-surfing experience in Utrecht with a very kind girl named Ineke, I cycled south to Antwerp via Dordrecht and was caught in five hours of torrential rain, arriving distressed and bedraggled to meet my next host, who allowed me to drape my wet clothing around his nice orderly apartment.

Up until now I had been navigating towns using only my compass, the single most useful item I packed, but here I was given a personal tour.

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After Antwerp and Brussels the only city left on my route was Paris. For the final ten days or so I traveled with a young Amsterdammer called Jim. We met in a jazz bar on my last night in Amsterdam, and we navigated through small French towns with a map attached to a calendar given to us by a toothless man on his porch in Plomion.

We arrived in Paris several days after the Tour de France and set up camp.

On our final evening together, in Montmartre, we celebrated with Parisians feeling free and playing the piano.

Heading home was sad in a way; the journey that I had enjoyed planning and navigating was slowing down and coming to an end, but this was soon eclipsed by the sense of completion and by my mind busily planning where I might go next.

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Words Julian Sayarer / www.thisisnotforcharity.com

Photos David Emery / www.davidemeryphotography.com Drawings George Pollard / www.elkepollard.com/georgepollard

Norman Baker looks like a lot of politicians. The droop of his ear lobes, the round, comfort-eating belly of the politician and the scalp:hair ratio all conspire to show his age. When he opens his mouth, Norman Baker sounds like a lot of politicians.

The first time I heard him speak, after the UK’s 2010 All Party Parliamentary Bike Ride, was depressing evidence of the similarity of politicians. I turned to my friend with a sigh, 'all Conservatives really are the same'. My friend turned to me and smiled…

'He’s a Liberal Democrat.'

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aker is Britain’s Parliamentary Under Secretary for Transport, and as such he now and then has to open his mouth about bicycles. I’ve heard him quip about sharing his first name with Norman Tebbit, the politician who famously told unemployed workers of the seventies to get on a bike and look for jobs. I’ve heard him routinely plead that the Department for Transport can do nothing about cycling because it’s all down to local government. Norman Baker’s lips will move for minute after minute, and when they stop moving, he’s still said nothing at all. It’s not that he doesn’t care about anything; Baker has written a book about the assassination-cum-suicide of the UK government’s Iraq weapons of mass destruction scientist, David Kelly. That’s part of the problem, you get the impression that Baker feels his services to democracy are above the rank of pedal power and two wheels. Given the passion and expertise that exist within the cycling community, it’s embarrassing that British cyclists have wound up represented by Baker. But stop me… I’m performing a character assassination based on quick judgments, and it’s much fairer to let Norman Baker assassinate himself.

“I went to the station in Leiden (the Netherlands), which is a medium-sized town. I think I am right in saying that there are something like 13,000 bicycles parked there every day and no cars—or hardly any cars. We are never going to get to that situation but we can make a lot more progress” Why aren’t we going to get to that situation? Baker furthers the idea that cycling culture landed in the Netherlands (or Danish and German cities) from out of thin air, a clement blessing of transport nature. He is

1 - More number crunching on the Radwagon blog (radwagon.blogspot.com)

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either unaware or plain quiet on the history of Dutch transport politics, when the 1970s saw such campaigns as Stop der Kindermord! (Stop the child-killing!) bring about a cultural change where children could cycle and play on the country’s streets without being mown down by adults in a hurry. Just as good as Norman Baker is his former transport partner in crime, Mike Penning.

The two of them were like Laurel and Hardy at the Parliamentary Select Committee on cycling. Penning shuffles some papers as he announces that he’s found some statistics, “As you massively increase the amount of people who cycle, your figures for deaths go up. On the European table I have here, the Netherlands is fourth from the bottom, with 0.84 per 100,000 of population, whereas we are seventh with 0.17…” Penning goes on, pleased with himself… “I think the Netherlands might want to come and see us to find out how we are making sure that so few people are killed in cycling terms.”

The correct numbers should be by kilometres cycled, not by population, and for anyone who has ever cycled on a Dutch road and an English one, it’s no surprise that the Dutch kill 0.92 cyclists for every 100 million kilometres cycled, whereas British drivers manage to take out 2.33 cyclists from the same number of opportunities.1

By Penning’s logic we could also cut crime by staying indoors, but whether it was statistical illiteracy or disinterest that caused the mistake, the episode

demonstrated one thing very clearly: our politicians see bicycles as contraptions, as semi-recreational machines scarcely worth the research time. To a British politician a bicycle is not a transport solution, an environmental solution, an asset in improving public health or the infrastructure of congested cities. The bicycle is only a contraption.

–––––––––––––––––––– * ––––––––––––––––––––– A different environment, a different speaker… about as different as could be. Mike Burrows’ Norfolk workshop always smells of oil and rubber, classical music is playing from above, and Burrows will be leaning on a large lathe, wearing his wooden clogs and blue overalls.

Burrows, who is some fifteen years the senior of Norman Baker, and still riding hard each weekend, is testament to the fact that age has nothing to do with the ability to think creatively. For a couple of years, on and off, I’ve been working with Burrows and a few others to smooth out some design problems and bring his 8Freight cargo bicycle to a wider audience. Along the way I’ve spent a good amount of time in his workshop, which is as much a workshop as it is a cycling museum. It would be a sizable understatement to say that Mike Burrows thinks outside the box, to Burrows there isn’t a box, and you need only look at one of his bicycles to see as much. If you haven’t heard of Burrows himself, you may be more familiar with Chris Boardman and the Lotus carbon fibre monocoque that he rode to Olympic gold at Barcelona 1992. That was a Burrows bike.

Although Burrows is warm and good natured, now and then you sense his irritation that the initial attention given to an innovative bicycle design was quickly snatched away and given to Boardman. His design was a victim of its own success, and an it’s all about the bike reaction was made into an it’s not about the bike celebration of Boardman. That the International Cycling Union (UCI) went on to outlaw the design, and the wind tunnel tests that showed it to be around 4 seconds quicker than a conventional bike over the 4km pursuit Boardman won, suggest Burrows played more than a small part in the gold medal. The rush to give an athlete godlike status served to diminish that there had been a tiny revolution in bicycle design. In itself, this doesn’t seem to trouble Burrows. He doesn’t seek recognition, but he has the sort of mind that constantly sees the bigger picture of the world, a world that is inherently political. Before our first meeting, a mutual friend described Burrows to me as a “cycling Trotskyist”.

On the occasion of that first meeting, he was railing

against the multi-million pound widening of the A14 road to Felixstowe port, a project justified by its supposed economic benefits. Burrows was unequivocal, “it’s a subsidy to China! The Chinese build products, they ship them to Felixstowe, and we widen the road for the lorries to drive it in! It doesn’t help British manufacturing, it kills it!” I remember he once described government as a machine desiring “power over everything and responsibility for nothing”, a judgment that makes me think of Norman Baker and his incessant buck-passing to local authorities.

It is, however, for the UCI that Burrows saves his sternest criticisms, accusing them of outlawing bicycle innovation so as to elevate riders above their bicycles.

“If the UCI had always been around we’d still be riding wooden wheels,” is how he puts it. “The thing is,” he goes on, “the UCI aren’t like other sports’ governing bodies… you can change the shape of a rugby ball and it doesn’t mean a thing to anyone outside rugby, but with a bicycle we’re not dealing with a rugby ball… we’re dealing with an invention that can make the world a better place.” Burrows argues that his Lotus bicycle caused a stir, got people talking about bicycles as something new and cutting-edge, “the UCI have made it so that at the very highest level, the form of the bicycle is stuck as something old and dated, and because of that the bicycle is being associated with the past and not the future.”

" THE BICYCLE WILL NOT SAVE THE WORLD. FOR STARTERS, THE WORLD DOES NOT NEED SAVING SO MUCH AS THE PEOPLE LIVING ON IT. "

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s Burrows suggests, the timelessness of the bicycle is one of its great charms, and yet it also seems to stop people taking it seriously as an answer to modern problems. Transport is responsible for around a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Bicycle. The American Medical Association has said the health service would save billions in treating heart disease if everyone cycled a mile a day.

Bicycle. Britain is said to suffer from a child obesity rate of around 20%. Bicycle. The urban motorways that dominate our inner cities mean a British child is five times more likely to be run over in a poor neighbourhood than in a leafy suburb. Bicycle.2 Cyclists are good for the economy, spending more than other transport users when they shop, and visiting local shops too.3 Bicycle. Areas with calmer traffic, fewer cars and more cyclists generally experience a rise in property values. Bicycle. And that’s just the problem, it’s such a good idea you almost end up sick of yourself for saying as much… getting politicians to take bicycles seriously is like getting children to eat spinach.

taxpayer’s money, nobody takes them very seriously, if they did then British and American bicycles would be treated more like their Dutch and Danish equivalents.

For an economy obsessed with short-term gain, the prospect of people not buying petrol, insurance or new cars is not very good for tax revenue, employment or corporate profits. I’m not presenting a conspiracy theory here, I’m not saying anyone has deliberately suppressed the bicycle, but because it’s a machine that makes people self-reliant, there’s a reduced economic incentive for people to start promoting it. The bicycle will not involve hundreds of millions of pounds in new buses, will not see multi-billion pound contracts for new tunnels and trains, will not require raising private finance at lucrative interest rates. A quick look at a public body like Transport for London (TfL) demonstrates as much, on the board of directors sit representatives from car-hire companies, road-haulage associations, the Royal Automobile Club, the aviation industry, London Taxi Drivers Association, and the standard presence of the former banker “with a background in finance”.5

And yet it goes beyond that, because the fact that the bicycle generally saves people money is another merit that weighs heavy against it. If costs can be divided as either external costs or direct costs, then it’s safe to say that a modern economy is obsessed by the latter and disinterested by the former. We think nothing of forking out £28billion a year to police a society of people who need policing because their society gave them very little to believe in.4 We don’t lose much sleep over £18billion worth of traffic accidents a year, or the cost of London’s 4000 annual deaths relating to poor air quality. Because we pay all of these costs in either lost productivity or with

Precisely because it doesn’t come with a gravy train, there are fewer big institutions fighting to jump aboard the bicycle and start lobbying. Bicycles could feasibly revolutionise the transport and the culture of a city like London, where under half of the population own a car and 30% of rush hour traffic across London’s bridges is already by bicycle. Despite this enormous potential, and despite 16 tragedies in which people were killed whilst cycling in London in 2011, still TfL has not a single representative to advance the interests of pedestrians and cyclists. There is a bright side, because from Londoners on Bikes to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, the cycling community has slowly started to rally itself as

2 - Road Safety Analysis Group, 2010; 3 - Transport for London study, 2010 4 - As a proportion of GDP, Britain is the world’s biggest spender when it comes to domestic policing, having overtaken the US during the nineties. This according to a 2009 study by the think-tank, Reform.

5 - Be wary of people “with a background in finance”

a political unit, the bicycles we own and ride helping to provide the icon any successful movement needs to mobilise around. A look to the world of pedestrian campaigners makes cycling campaigning look positively straightforward; it’s hard to define yourself by something that everyone does some of the time, the only common feature of which are feet and a pair of shoes.

You can go on and on about the factors stacked against the bicycle. Something so fundamental to twenty-first century life as the out of town supermarket would not be possible without the motorcar, and as two-car families became three-car families, so supermarkets and cars have grown together, sucking the life and commerce from high streets, communities and local business as they did so. Then there is the empowerment factor that comes with cars, the ability to go whoosh at only the push of a pedal.6 Having your own personal carriage, and the means to drive it at speed, is one of the individual liberties that people have been permitted inside a political system that is overwhelmingly disempowering. The problem is that when you get out of the car you’re still disempowered. In efforts to refloat the sinking ship, and evidence that mass car ownership is more cultural institution than transport solution, MTV’s parent company, Viacom, were this year enlisted

by General Motors to try and help make cars cool again.7 The bicycle, in both transport and political terms, is a case of conformity versus creativity, a duel of Mike Burrows versus Norman Baker.

–––––––––––––––––––– * ––––––––––––––––––––– t the time of writing, it’s exactly three years since I was cycling through a desert in northwest China, on my way to breaking a world record for a circumnavigation by bicycle. In the end I completed the 18,049 mile trip in 169 days, at an average of 110 miles a day. My ride was overtly political, and so I suppose I also set up my credentials for Boneshaker to ask me to write for them about politics and bikes. I rode under the title-statement This is not for Charity, aiming to raise the profile of organisations like the Tax Justice Network and the New Economics Foundation (NEF). To save myself a paragraph, I’ll just reproduce NEF’s maxim, “The economy as if people and the planet mattered”. I rode in opposition to the previous record, sponsored by banks and investment funds, and packaged in a documentary that made touring by bicycle look like something miserable and superhuman rather than joyful and simply life-affirming.

I rode to try and demonstrate that a do-gooding liberal could pedal through far flung countries to demonstrate a political message, just as the financial industry could

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have sponsored the other man to demonstrate that they were the most fearless and borderless of all investors. I wasn’t riding against the idea of charity, I know charities doing amazing work, and I’ve benefited from countless acts of generosity I’d gladly call charity were it not that – to me – the word now has connotations of giving your bank details to organisations promising to improve the world so that you don’t have to.

At the time of my world record, my axe to grind was with the human kindnesses and adventure of the open road being sold as a front for businesses that exploit honest people and sponsor the destruction of the environment. I know how that sounds. We live in an era of self-censorship, and talking about planets and human beings has an unfortunate tendency to make a person sound immediately unrealistic. “If you’re not an idealist at twenty then you’ve got no heart… if you’re an idealist at thirty you’ve got no brain.” We’ve created the idioms by which society justifies cowardice in the face of all that’s wrong with the world, and we have become so obsessed with the ideals of financial markets that you’re liable to be painted as an extremist for making utterly reasonable points about environmental destruction, private sector control of the state and an increasing presence of poverty, eating disorders, drug addictions and mental illness. Even with all that to consider, Facebook still see no need for so much as a ‘don’t like’ button, and I fear the Orwellian world of the ungood is now upon us, an age of positive in which criticism is painted as negativity and analysis as boring. I am not the extremist here, it is business-as-usual and the myth of endless economic growth that has gone insane.

When I returned from my ride I shot my mouth off, colourful language aimed at the previous record holder; an episode I’m not proud of, not least because I failed to communicate my values to anybody who did not already

6 - Read J. G. Ballard’s Crash for a brilliant dissection of our society’s emotional obsession with cars and power.

7 - ‘As Young Lose Interest in Cars, GM turns to MTV for help’, New York Times, March 22nd 2012

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share them. I also made the mistake of criticising a tiny cog for the failings of the very large machine he was endorsing, and in the mild-mannered community of cyclists and touring cyclists I earned the moniker “angry young man.” That was three years ago, and since then the UK has bailed out more banks, forgiven Vodafone £6billion of tax, put a £30,000 price tag on universities to keep the riff-raff out, started privatising prisons (because someone said making profit from locking people up is a good idea), and now we’re in the process of changing laws so that debt-ridden schools can sell the fields that children play on. I’m certainly not advocating hatred, and I’m not advocating losing your cool in response to the problems we face as a society, but if you’re not yet angry at what’s being done in your name then perhaps you should be. All the finest elements of a liberal, democratic society were established because people got angry at the injustices preceding them.

So where does the bicycle come in to all this? My short answer would be that it doesn’t. I don’t believe in silver bullets. After my world record I met a producer from a television company, a man looking to make a documentary from that very angle, something about a hypothetical road warrior. We met in a courtyard in Bloomsbury late one evening, as he cuts right to the pitch, looks at me, “So… would you describe yourself as a cycling radical?” It probably didn’t help that I smirked at the question before replying, “I have radical politics… and I ride a bicycle.” That was the beginning and the end of my television career.

So will the bicycle save people? I can only speak from experience, and I know that as a ten-year-old I discovered that a bicycle could take me out of a town full of only drugs and dead-ends. I worked as a courier with a

24-year-old father who’d broken up with his child’s mother.

“I don’t care about the miles… I just want to work. I feel better when I’m riding” was what he said to me. I know a mechanic, a competitor and coach on the national BMX circuit who freely says that without his bicycles, growing up in Brixton he’d have fallen into gangs. I’ve been on a cycling trip to Epping Forest with an inner London youth group, and I can tell you they were smiling big smiles as we rode through the trees and down the trails. I rode from London to Brighton with four unemployed young men, and when the 20-year-old in the group reached the seafront he stood beside the pier and said through a big grin, “you know what?

I think that’s probably the best thing I’ve ever done with my life”. I once gave a talk to a cycling club in Kent, a good number of the members with lucrative pensions from the sort of corporations I criticise. They agreed with my ideas but were sure to make plenty of friendly jokes about what a do-gooder I was. At the end of the talk, one man came up to me, perhaps the oldest of the group, with a trouble in his knees that meant he was no longer able to ride each Sunday morning, and was leaning on a cane that Saturday night.

He looked at me as he shook my hand, his lip quivering and eyes wet as his voice cracked with “you’re right to say what you’re saying… it’s not all about the money… you ignore this lot”. He thanked me for the talk, gave my hand a press, and I suppose he showed that there comes a time when our bodies begin to let us go, when the bike rides and the simple things we’ve enjoyed come to an end.

Come then the money and the markets probably don’t mean so much, and the people we leave behind will not thank us for building their futures around only those two things. As we become only eyes and minds to look out at the world we’ve passed through, I imagine that right then all the trivialities we’ve slaved for and the lines we toed at work must weigh pretty heavy on the soul. I don’t know how people can live happily together when we’re forever being disconnected from the processes of life itself, isolated from one another in an existence of windscreens, television screens, computer screens and touch screens.

I don’t know if the bicycle can save people; why not ask yourself that question? Go for a bike ride… ride hard and smile, or ride slow… and smile. Just go for a bike ride… and ask yourself that question.

Julian Sayarer Julian works as a journalist, author and occasional public speaker. He travels extensively by bicycle and has created a type of writing which he loosely defines as politics by bike. The manuscriptfor his book about his 2009 world record is currently with publishers. He lives in London.

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T H E

V I C I O U S

E - B AY

C Y C L E

Soft Soft Soft

the Sparrow Sings Words and pictures

by Jet McDonald

I

’ve always carried a guitar with me and written songs along the way. And so when I decided to cycle to India from the UK it wasn’t a luxury, it was a knockabout essential. I took a Yamaha ‘Junior’, solid enough to not mind being battered, small enough to fit on the back of a pannier rack, cheap enough not to worry if it got nicked (though I would have wept long and hard). My girlfriend Jen who went with me sewed a foam lining into the case and I wrapped the whole thing in a tarp. It hung off the back of the bike and was a touchstone for hysterical kids when we pedalled into town, holding on for as long as they could as if deep down they knew it was a toy instrument and theirs by rights.

I wrote a bunch of songs on my year away. I've taken eight of them and put them on a Boneshaker ‘bandcamp’ website for you to have a listen; they're in the same order as in the article, so you can click on the song as it’s mentioned, but you may prefer to read in perfect silence or bounce up and down on a trampoline of old inner tubes eating chips. The songs were written and played on the Yamaha ‘Junior’ with Jen singing in the background and my friends Virpi and John adding fiddle and mandolin and recorded by my pal Alex in Bristol. www.boneshakermag.bandcamp.com www.jetsingssongs.com

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A

good song can carry the emotions and rhythms of a journey in a way that the written word can't manage. If you listen to Woody Guthrie you can hear the rhythm of the box car trains he used to hobo on. I've got a simple strum-andpick style that wouldn't have impressed the great man and yet I can still hear the echo of a day’s cycling in the songs, the slip of the tyre, the click of the gears.

It took Jen and I a long time to get into the rhythm of our ride after we left Bristol. Our legs felt like old rope so it was a relief to freewheel down from the Black Mountains in Germany to the River Danube and the bike path that runs alongside it. The Danube trail is advertised as a kind of cycling utopia but in peak season it’s a tourist monorail into which you lock your wheel and switch off your brain and wait for the next cake shop. But the river sang to us. The mojo we’d lost in our limbs (and had caked up in our stomachs) we found again in the natural world, a theme we returned to again and again on our trip. I wrote ‘Danube’ after another massive strudel lunch, half asleep under a picnic bench, gazing at my bike and the river.

‘DANUBE’ “ Danube I should damn you / with your cake shops and your values / but the river keeps on rolling every day / a rippling and a strolling every way...

So get your boots on / get your shoes on / go a rolling go a riding / river keeps on rolling anyway / a rippling and a strolling every way...”

We followed the Danube as far as Budapest, took a sharp left to unhitch the monorail and ploughed east. Cycling across the plains of Hungary in mid-July is like being a knob of butter 54

sliding across a frying pan. Romania and Bulgaria came after with ever-increasing heat and disintegrating roads as we were chased by clouds of little flies. The gnats would chase you like cartoon fugs of black anger and the only way to escape them was to click into a higher gear. But that meant getting that bit hotter in what was already 38ºC heat and 90% humidity.

(Jen said 13km/h was too slow and at 14km/h you could just escape them, which doesn't sound like very much but uphill on a fully loaded bike on terrible roads with terrible drivers with no hard shoulder in a furnace of a summer it's just cruel). So when we eventually burst into the fly-free border with Turkey it was like a cork popping out of a bottle.

A couchsurfer put us up in Istanbul and we carted our bikes up four flights of stairs before collapsing in his apartment.

Our host went to break his fast and smoke as many cigarettes as humanly possible while I wrote ‘Pedal Pedal Pedal’. Jen unfurled a map of Turkey and we gazed at the enormous tracts of land populated only by cattle herders and fools on bikes. It was daunting but also liberating. If the Danube bike path was a monorail, Turkey offered infinite paths and ancient hills you could see the edge of the world from. It was the holy fast of Ramadan and food was scarcer than ever. leather saddles hadn’t softened and our bums felt like slabs of beef.

It was going to be tough but it was going to be tough on our terms. And no ****ing gnats.

‘PEDAL PEDAL PEDAL’ “I'm a hobo I'm a bum / on your couch I'll surf for fun / and the road it is a temple that awaits me.

Flies get in my eyes / and I bake them into pies / well you've got to eat something when you are hungry...

Pedal pedal pedal / saddle saddle saddle / it's a hard ride / Pedal pedal pedal / saddle saddle saddle but it's my life.”

By the time we’d cycled to the other side of Turkey the reality of the vast distances had hit. We were cycling through ‘Kurdistan’, rougher than the rest of the country with Turkish military outposts guarded by bike-hungry dogs. The Kurdish nationalists had been waging a slow war of attrition with the Turks but throughout our journey we had been blessed by the hospitality of both the Turkish and Kurdish villagers. To pause at a tea shop or chai shop was to be welcomed into the community of that village. Payment would be refused and a hand pressed to the chest with “Salam Alaikum” or “peace be with you.”

However the further we went the more irregular that chai became. The only thing to do was stare at the road and make up songs in your head, a parade of images from the path behind and fantasies of the trail ahead as the mountains echoed around us like hoary gods.

‘CHAI STOP PLEASE’ “Pumping up the tyres/ pulling out the wires / strapping up the backbone / really want to go home / feeling kind of hungry / listen for the drumbeats Monkey on your knees/ chai stop please / Monkey on your knees / Chai stop pleeeease.

Sky blue ride through / switchblade first aid / lemonade tea tray / tow truck bed bug / high speed low speed/ no win no fee / dead dog hedgehog / up down go stop / hiss brakes dead snakes / salt lakes ice skates /

Monkey on your knees / Chai stop please / Monkey on your knees / Chai stop pleeease” We made it through the mountains of Kurdistan before winter and somersaulted into the desert frontiers of Iran.

We were both knackered after the humpback passes of Turkey and Jen now had to cycle in full Hijab (head to toe clothing). Back in Romania we’d had a massive argument which culminated in a redistribution of payload. Jen had been carrying the two-man tent and I’d been carrying the guitar.

A quick calculation showed the toy guitar weighed a lot less than the two-man tent and so we swapped. Given that I had a tendency to race on ahead we agreed that Jen would take the lead and I would follow behind. In this

fashion we pedalled across the vast distances of Iran, Jen in regulation headscarf, wrist length jacket and trousers, me in shorts and t-shirt.

There were whitescreens of desert punctuated only now and then by oasis towns. All I could focus on was Jen cycling ahead while the wider landscape seemed both near and far beneath the bleaching sun.

‘THERE GOES MY GUITAR’ “There goes there goes my guitar / There goes my lover riding afar / I could count the clouds on my hand / And I could count the grains of sand / And I could count the distant stars / They would not reach my distant guitar...”

The reckoning with distance was really a reckoning with myself. Cycling becomes a meditation. The rhythmic ticking of the bike and the flat landscape lends itself to inward stillness but coming from a culture of striving and propulsive ambition the concept of inner calm was hard to accept and then articulate.

There’s something bootcamp about those Buddhist retreats where you’re holed up in an undecorated room with a few gongs and a bowl of lentil mush. But then there’s something equally masochistic about long-distance cycling and in both cases the firewire connections of your brain eventually calm down. Beneath that surface noise you find an aspect of yourself that connects with the stillness of the land around you.

In fact the bike begins to feel like it doesn’t exist at all and pedalling, like a mantra, loses its meaning, becoming a precursor to a meditative state rather than the state itself. We cycled across central Iran with the snow-topped Kurdish mountains on one side and the desert on the other, a single bird above as if guiding the way.

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‘BIRD ABOVE SNAKE BELOW’ “I am the bird above / I am the snake below / I am the ocean river melting snow I am the soil in your hand / black against the spade / I am the rose light wandering / from the morning shade / I am all things to everyone / cold and bright beneath the sun

My veins run through / this land / my sight runs true / blue against the sand.”

I thought a lot about birds during the trip even though we didn’t see that many in the Middle East. It felt as if there was an odd connection between us. Those few birds in the sky and us rolling through the desert searching for a place to stay before dark.

Denied the overland route to India via Pakistan because of visa issues we took a ferry from southern Iran to the United Arab Emirates and then a cargo ship to Mumbai. When we arrived in India the trip should have been over. But we carried on cycling to replicate the Pakistan distance by biking down the coast of India to its southernmost tip. But somewhere in this journey, amidst the cartwheel of colours and culture, a weariness set in, infused with a yearning for home.

‘HUG ME IF YOU CAN’ “Hug me if you can / Push me if you can't / Roly Poly down the hill / Mucky in a hole / Pullovers for goals / The world's a stadium of light / The leaves upon the trees / They go a shaking in the breeze / Like I go shaking in your arms.”

By the time we got to the southernmost point of India we were utterly exhausted. We took the train to Mumbai, took another container ship to Malta and thence Italy. We cycled up the coast to hilly Tuscany and conked out. We couldn’t cycle another mile and shacked up at an out-of-season campsite. It was empty and we found a perfect pitch gazing out to sea one side and the Tuscan hills on the other. We decided we would rest here a week and refuel on pasta and pizza and birdsong. The campsite owner had other ideas, however. There was an old caravan a few pitches down and he started to take it apart piece by piece. We spent the next three days watching him dismantle it to a soundtrack of crunching metal and split timber.

Unlike Iran the land was lush and abundant with the first hints of monsoon rain and yet we struggled to achieve the sense of ‘stillness’ in cycling we’d achieved before. In Iran we might not have seen a single soul all day where as in India we saw everybody all of the time. And while the Indians were often

The more he tore it apart the more you could see the spring colours of the Tuscan hills behind, as if the edges of the caravan were making the frame of a pastoral painting. On a label beside a glassless window was the word “Progress.”

We had travelled 14,000km to get here. We had met people

‘SOFT SOFT SOFT THE SPARROW SINGS’ “Soft soft soft the sparrow sings / unto unto the earth / it knows that evening’s beauty / becomes the midnight’s curse / high high the sparrow sleeps / till it finds air inside its mouth / deep deep deep the valley swings / unto the river heading south.”

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kind and helpful, the hospitality of Persia was less evident, the coastal villages haunted by tourism and digital cameras. 'Hug me if you can' was written on a beach just south of Mumbai. A paraglider appeared out of nowhere and landed beside me in the sand. He nodded gruffly, gathered up his parachute like a jelly fish, and disappeared. He, clearly, wasn’t in the market for a hug.

The only solution was to keep on rolling. We had created our own microculture, the long-distance cycle ride, always passing through, never arriving. There is freedom in movement but it can begin to bind if you never reconnect with where you started; fivea-side games with your mates back home, kicking through leaves in the park, the kinship in land and community.

and seen sights that would have been impossible any other way. But we had also seen how the world was changing. How a container ship burnt a million dollars of dirty diesel every few months to bring tat to the West, how the sides of the roads in India were littered with plastic water bottles, how the embargoed trucks of Iran guffed smoke like Dickensian factories, how it hadn’t snowed in Transylvania for the first winter in living memory, how it had rained for the first time in the dry season in the Ghat hills of India.

We started our trip in order to see the world before it changed forever. We were kidding ourselves. The world had changed long before we started and would continue its cycle of sequins and dust long after. And yet the beauty of the back roads continued to draw us on, nature’s irrepressible joy brimming over and keeping us rolling, gathering us home.

I’ve still got the Yamaha ‘Junior’ and it’s in better nick than I am. Put your nose to the soundhole and you can smell plywood and glue.

The label inside says “Made in Indonesia”. Maybe I’ll take it back there one day. Maybe I’ll just put my feet up for a while and strum. But the more I pick and strum, pick and strum, the more I hear the ticking of the wheels and the whirr of the open road... and the whole cycle begins again. The thrill of adventure. The songs rattling round my head like loose bearings. These songs were mastered onto an old reel-to-reel tape machine and when I leant close to it I could smell the ferrous tape like hot brake pads, like the taste of blood in your mouth after a long ride; cycling becoming songs becoming wheels of iron oxide. Once you’re locked into cycling everything seems like a journey and every departure a new song to sing.

‘AN ABANDONED CARAVAN CALLED PROGRESS’ “An abandoned caravan called progress / has travelled too far on its tyres / now all that it finds is a crowbar / its timber is just wood for fires / no car it will pull on its trailer / no feet they will tread on its floor / there's mountains where once there were windows / there's no handle for there is no door / And the joy of it all / Yes the joy of it all / is watching / is watching / is watching / is watching it fall..”

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PHOTO BY STEVE RIDEOUT

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To ride a bicycle is in itself some protection against superstitious fears, since the bicycle is the product of pure reason applied to motion. Geometry at the service of man! Give me two spheres and a straight line and I will show you how far I can take them.

ANGELA CARTER