Boneshaker Magazine / Issue #14

issue #14

Bonesha ker: Real Cycling Except th is isn’t

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© Maciej Dakowicz / maciejdakowicz.com

Beauty, adventure, failure. These are the things that bring life to life.

Our latest collection of bicycle thoughts brings all of these and more: a beautiful bike hand-painted with stories; an exploration of jewel-bright headbadges; wide-eyed adventure on the dirt roads of New Mexico and the streets of New Zealand; uncertain moments of learning and loss and a messy collection of fallings-off. We even glimpse a future in which cyclists evolve feathers and take flight…

Welcome to issue 14.

contents

four insignificant bicycle crashes in diminishing order of interest

4

a cycling lexicon

10

the workshop

16

digging in the dirt

18

last proper bike crash

26

perucha

30

the unnatural cyclist

36

fall ride

39

the history cycle

40

a lament to leopold

46

my beautiful bike

48

hackney bicycle film society

50

getting into the saddle

54

feathers 56 being forgetful

60

past glories

62

contributors

words… jet mcdonald, sally duffin, francisco ‘paco’ serrano, alyssa belter, christopher batchelder, cass gilbert, ajda fortuna, adam thompson, ross mackay, graeme dart, annie rutherford, phil carter, stanley donwood, mike white illustrations… sam brewster, sam pash, lucy letherland, james grover, sue gent, julien roger, jorge martin, peter locke, sharm murugiah, stanley donwood, adams carvalho photographs… produce dentera, stefanyia gutovska, maciej dakowicz, cass gilbert, ajda fortuna, nick mann, ross mackay, jeff conner layouts… mel skellon, john coe, jordan carr, chris woodward, luke francis, gavin wilshen, ali campbell, ben hamilton, jack sadler, max randall, alistair bagshaw

backpats and handclaps john murray press, leonard de vries, carter wong design, stanley donwood, penny norris, anny mortada, amy tocknell, andrew ridders, james perrott, knog, budels beer & betsy the cat

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. ©2014 Boneshaker. At present, we are committed to remaining free from advertisements & advertorial. 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 (taylorbros.uk.com) Conceived by james lucas & john coe Compiled, edited and brought to life by jimmy ell, mike white, chris woodward, luke francis & sadie campbell Lead designers luke francis (talktofrancis.com) & chris woodward (chriswoodwarddesign.co.uk) Cover image by adams carvalho (ffffixas.tumblr.com) Opening illustration (opposite) by julien roger

Four Insignificant Bicycle Crashes In Diminishing Order of Interest Words & illustration: Stanley Donwood • www.slowlydownward.com

© Stanley Donwood

One.

After I have expended a considerable effort, I reach the top of the hill. Breathing heavily, I suddenly realise that I have left my bag in the pub at the bottom of the hill. It is a winter night, and my breath is wet smoke, hanging in the amber glow of the streetlights. Wearily, I turn myself and my bicycle around, and sail angrily back down the hill.

I awaken in a bright place, coloured mostly white, beige and a shade of magnolia I do not care for. I am lying down on some sort of padded trolley and various faces peer at me. I do not know these people.

After some time has passed one of the people spends what feels like a very long time sewing my face together with a needle and thread. This experience is extremely unpleasant, and I give vent to a stream of expletives. When the person pauses with the sewing I apologise for my intemperate language, but then the sewing recommences; as does my swearing.

It stops again. I apologise again. And so on, for what seems to be a ridiculous length of time.

It is a day or so before I find myself in front of a mirror. Rather than the stoic, distinguished, wounded gentleman I had expected to crack a wry smile at, I am faced with a reddened, swollen, puffy-cheeked chimp head, stitched about with what looks like an entire spool of black thread. My most noticeable wound, aside from a considerable scrape above my left ear, looks exactly like a Hitler moustache made of congealed blood.

Two.

Despite the constant rain I pedal through several villages, and then, tired by the myriad hills of this quarter of the country, elect to propel my bicycle along the tow-path of a canal.

I am careful on the puddled tow-path; the rain is heavy, a grey shroud obscuring the scenery, running into my eyes, soaking my customarily inadequate clothing and chilling my ungloved hands into numb claws. The canal water does not look inviting. I invest a great deal of mental and physical energy into avoiding it. I have, in fact, cycled into a canal in the past, and it was a thoroughly dispiriting experience. I have, this afternoon, consumed four pints of beer, and will need to be extremely cautious.

I reach the town without incident. It is as I traverse a busy shopping street that I lose my concentration, strike the kerb with my front wheel, and land ignominiously on the wet pavement. I am quickly surrounded by concerned shoppers. I do not seem to be hurt, but I am quite dazed. Thanking, profusely, the fine citizens who have rushed to my aid, I re-mount my bicycle and wobble onwards. Everything seems to be a little blurry.

It is only afterwards that I discover I have broken my shoulder and cracked some ribs, and must wear my arm in a sling for a considerable time. My accident seems both unnecessary and a little ridiculous. I am consoled, however, by the fact that whilst I recover I elicit considerable sympathy from old people. I can see in their eyes that they are welcoming me into their world.

Three.

It is as I reach the checkout that I realise I have left my money at home. I hand the cashier my basket of salted snacks, chocolate and wine, assuring him that I live close by, and will speed home on my bicycle, seize my wallet, and be back to claim my provisions. Whilst making my selection, dusk has fallen, and whilst freewheeling down the path which crosses the park my progress is arrested by the tree-root.

I scrape my head, elbow, hip and knee along the wet tarmac as my bicycle and I glide inelegantly to a halt. I am quite annoyed; as if I had just missed a bus, or had come up with the theory of evolution just after Darwin had. I mount my cycle and continue home, one side of my body beginning to throb with pain, and blood running into my eye.

When I get back to the shop, my basket is waiting for me, and while I pay I regale the cashier with a detailed account of my accident. As he bags my purchases he looks at me, slowly shaking his head. He tells me that I shouldn’t have forgotten my wallet.

Four.

After buying a newspaper I effect my egress from the newsagents and unlock my bicycle, which is propped up outside. Out of the corner of my eye I notice a young couple approaching me. The pavement is narrow, and my bicycle takes up perhaps a third of the available area outside the newsagents.

I decide to turn my machine around and get out of the way of the couple, but somehow, whilst I turn the handlebars, the front wheel twists, I lose my balance, and before I am aware of any danger, I have entangled myself thoroughly with my bicycle and have collapsed ignominiously to the ground. The couple reach me, and stare wordlessly down at me. The woman asks the man, What is he doing?

I sigh, deeply, and elect to remain where I am. I ask the couple if either of them have a cigarette, but they don’t answer; they merely cross the road and disappear from my life.

Words Phil Carter / carterwongdesignshop.com Photos Jeff Conner

A CYCLING LEXICON Whatever the symbol, whatever the design, every badge has a story of provenance and personality to tell.

A peek inside the rather beautiful book ‘A Cycling Lexicon’ – a pictorial A–Z of bicycle headbadges collected by Jeff Conner, a professor of biology in Michigan, and curated and designed

by London-based Carter Wong Design.

“Many years ago I discovered a long-abandoned bicycle in a Spanish orange grove, its little brass badge begging to be rescued from the rusting frame. As a graphic designer with a passion for all things cycling, I still have this decorative headbadge sitting proudly by my desk. It serves as a reminder of the detailed craftsmanship employed by bike manufacturers of yesteryear, and is a constant source of inspiration for me along with other graphic ‘finds’.

Historically, the bicycle industry expanded rapidly at the turn of the twentieth century, providing the working class with an easy and cost-effective mode of transport. Given the emergence of choice there was a need for companies to identify their products.

The badge proudly riveted on the headtube became the mark that distinguished the manufacturer; a signifier of brand kudos way before fancy marques found their place on car bonnets.

Made from tough materials including stainless steel, brass, zinc, copper, aluminium and silver, and using elaborate techniques such as die-pressing and acid etching, manufacturers transformed these ‘badges of honour’ into miniature works of art. This is where their magic came to the fore as these artisans distilled the DNA of the brand into a piece of metal usually no larger than the size of two postage stamps.

The designers of these miniature marvels sought inspiration from many quarters, some more obvious than others. While they looked to create individuality there were many recurring themes across countries, evoking both status and spirit. Heraldic escutcheons abound: rampant lions, coiled serpents, strident eagles, regal crowns and leaping stags. So too the representation of freedom – the ability to take off unrestrained at speed with ease – symbolised by a plethora of winged wheels and swooping birds with names to suit such as ‘Liberty’ and ‘Glider’.

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Two other narratives that appeared repeatedly were those of strength and precision. For the former there are knights in armour, burly warriors, Indian chiefs, the mythical Hercules and the animal kingdom, represented by a rhino and an elephant. For the latter there are British firearmturned-bicycle-manufacturer BSA, and Royal Enfield with its strident ‘Made Like A Gun’ motto.

These headbadges signalled the era of affordable mobility.

A new dawn of engineering accuracy and prowess; from optimistic sunrises and shooting stars, to very ‘modern’ representations of the future such as speeding aircraft and space rockets.

Whatever the symbol, whatever the design, every badge has a story of provenance and personality to tell. We have the seemingly obvious Paris Cycles’ Eiffel Tower icon (all the while made in North London), Dutch brand Avada with its windmill, as well as the more idiosyncratic headbadge such as that produced by Hetchins. Having fled Russia during the 1917 revolution, and settling in London’s East End, Hyman Hetchins sold sheet music before turning to bicycle production. His headbadge proudly displays the City of London arms as a mark of respect for his adoptive home.

The bikes these headbadges once adorned have long since vanished. With the passage of time we will probably never get to discover the reasons why the smiling young girl appears on Mareze’s marque, or who Good Luck’s tophatted gent was.

However, it is reassuring to know that there is renewed interest in all things handcrafted and individual.

The collection of headbadges illustrated in this book is a testament to the skills of every designer and craftsman who undertook this enviable task. It is also a tribute to one man in Michigan, a professor named Jeff Conner.

Like myself, Jeff has been besotted with bicycles all his life and started collecting headbadges when his wife complained about the number of bikes cluttering up their house.

While these diminutive metal shields could not act as talismen to protect their manufacturers from demise, we do have Jeff and other avid collectors like him to thank for saving these graphic jewels from oblivion – and opening our eyes to a wonderful world of cycling folklore.”

Phil Carter

Phil Carter is Creative Director and fellow founder of design group Carter Wong, formed some 30 years ago. An avid cyclist, his daily ride to and from the studio feeds his soul and fires his creative imagination.

Jeff Conner is a professor of Biology at Michigan State University and is obsessed with all things cycling. Despite having amassed several hundred of the headbadges found in the Cycling Lexicon, he is yet to find an elusive ‘Q’ or ‘X’.

Š Sam Brewster / sambrewster.com

Digging in the dirt ADVENTURES IN NEW MEXICO

WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY CASS GILBERT / WHILEOUTRIDING.COM

Every weekend campout has been a history lesson in the making. A chance to dig deeper into what lies on our doorstep, to appreciate more fully the land along which we tread.

22

When it comes to travel and discovery, I’m a devout believer that cycling strikes a sublime and natural balance. It encourages an immersion within the planet around us, at a pace that’s in keeping with the evolution of our minds. A bicycle is like a magnifying glass, drawing us to the smallest of details in our surroundings. We can stop, lay down our steeds, and explore further. Travel by bus or car, and such minutiae are lost in a perpetual, mind-numbing blur. Our brains simply can’t keep up with the speed at which we propel ourselves. The best we can do is crane our necks round; but in a moment, it’s long gone.

For the last year, I’ve lived in New Mexico, a part of the world I previously knew nothing about. Somewhat at odds with its neighbours – Mexico, Arizona, Texas and Colorado – cycling has helped me to unfathom this cool, ramshackle and alternative state, overlooked even by the majority of Americans. Steeped in frontier history and folklore, it’s also cluttered with abandoned cars, derelict towns, disused mines… and a spiderweb of forest roads and primitive dirt tracks via which to discover them all.

Under vast, cinematic blue skies, in the high desert amongst clumps of sagebrush and wizened junipers, I’ve shared my two-wheeled explorations with newfound friends: Jeremy, a tattooed train hopper from Texas, and Tim, a tarot reader from Santa Fe. Together, we’ve chased dotted lines on a map, traced old railroads, hopped coyote fences and hauled our bikes through overgrown trails. Every weekend campout has been a history lesson in the making. A chance to dig deeper into what lies on our doorstep, to appreciate more fully the land along which we roll.

Take Ruidoso, a New Mexican settlement that lies nestled in the crook of a deep and chiselled valley. It’s not a place you’d likely stumble upon by chance, unless you were seeking out the most southerly ski resort in America. Set in the subtle yet beautiful Lincoln National Forest, the Sierra Blanca peak erupts from the brittle dry plains of the Chihuahua Desert, towering as it does 12,000ft above sea level. Founded in 1885, Ruidoso’s name – ‘noisy’ in Spanish – harks back to days when the quiet river it flanks was known as roaring Rio Ruidoso. Indeed, the whole area is steeped in history from pages of the Old West, notably through its association with Sheriff Pat Garrett and the notorious frontier outlaw William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid. The old courthouse in neighbouring Lincoln is still pocked with gunshots from his escape. Nearby Fort Stanton claims an equally colourful past, with protagonists that include cavalries of Buffalo Soldiers and Kit Carson (trapper, scout, soldier and a dime novel favourite of the era), as well as the Mescalero Apaches, whose ancestral home this region is.

In the local museums, old black and white photos depict moustachioed, banjo-playing soldiers, and Indian elders solemnly signing treaties.

Head further north in the state, and it’s a similar story. Speckled around the Carson National Forest like rough gems, I’ve uncovered forgotten, sun-faded hamlets; pockets of abandonment where time flows askew. Hispanic in character, these communities seem transplanted straight from the rugged and remote mountains of Mexico’s Sierra Madre. Amongst verdant pastures and corridors of red-tinged ponderosas, the houses there are downbeat and patched up. More often than not, collections of lifeless tyres and cars lie in open surgery cluttering their yards, guts removed, wires protruding.

It’s a discordant aesthetic within this natural space and beauty, but one I’ve come to learn is as much an integral part of rural New Mexico as the forest and the sagebrush are.

Forgotten, sun-faded hamlets; pockets of abandonment where time flows askew.

And in the high desert of Taos, a vast and open plateau cut by the deep gash of the Rio Grande, I discovered its Earthships – planted in a desolate landscape that hides ancient petroglyphs, hot springs and crumbling ruins.

There, a community of off-the-grid-dwellers, creative thinkers, artists and counter-culturalists share a new interpretation of the American Dream.

Resembling fantastical sets from a post-apocalyptic Hollywood movie, their abodes work in synergy with the land, harnessing the forces of passive solar heating with traditional adobe building techniques, using foraged-for recycled materials like tyres, bottles and aluminium cans. At times, these dwellings are barely discernible above the desert sagebrush. Mole-like, their inhabitants have burrowed into the ground; escaping the summer heat, yet coddled by the warmth of the earth in the cold winter months.

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Come summer, I feel the heat of the New Mexican sun on my back.

Time and time again, cycling has offered me an opportunity to dig deeper, whether it be on travels that span a continent, or a simple day ride with my family. It’s provided a sense of connection with my newfound home; geographically, culturally and historically. It helps me understand.

It keeps me connected. Come spring, I listen to the ancient sounds of water and wind. Come summer, I feel the heat of the New Mexican sun on my back. Come autumn, I watch storms barrel across the high plains.

Come winter, I listen to the scrunch of tyres on snow. And, camping out amongst the silence of the sagebrush, refuelling on tortillas cooked over a twig fire, it provides the quiet moments I need to assimilate it all.

A bicycle is like a magnifying glass, drawing us to the smallest of details in our surroundings.

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Words Graeme Dart Illustration Peter Locke / whatwouldpeterdo.co.uk

THE THE LAST LAST PROPER PROPER BIKE BIKE CRASH CRASH I might’ve been flying towards a windscreen, but it was a thought that hit me first. I realised that I’d been thinking about this for quite a while. Somewhere in my subconscious I was anticipating coming off my bike. I hadn’t imagined anything quite as spectacular as flying through the air on a cold January night, but this idea had been riding alongside me for a good year or so. And come to think of it, it had been a really long time since my last proper bike crash.

It wasn’t the worry of broken limbs or even the utterly devastating idea of scratching my then-pristine road bike that was the concern. It was really about the fact that I couldn’t remember what falling off felt like. And that a proper crash might completely change cycling for me – spoil the sheer fun of hopping on and riding off. It’s not like when I was a kid. If a crash happens now, I’d have people to convince (not least myself) that riding was safe.

There’d probably be a few nerves to overcome. And there

might even be a few guilty AutoTrader searches to look for an alternative commute. Perhaps these were things to worry about once I’d landed.

Few cyclists are thrown in at the deep end It’s not like freefalling or base-jumping, where the first real experience is, quite literally, all or nothing. Most of us go through a slow transition of learning with relative amounts of risk and sprinklings of danger thrown in for good measure. But it’s all good character-building stuff.

Consider your own cycling timeline: from stabiliserremoval and that first ride on the main road, to your very own adult bike and maybe your first flirt with cleats. And so on. Without a doubt, there would’ve been an incident or two along the way – the odd crash here, the occasional fall there. But the point is that the fear of falling off tapers once you get used to the reality of it. Going over the handlebars, scraping the skin off your elbows and knees – it’s a rite of passage for most cyclists. And if you 29

carry on riding and racing bikes throughout your teens and into adulthood, then it’s something you just accept as inevitability. The nature of the beast and all that.

But for some, especially those spurred on by the recent twowheeled boom, they can find themselves in cycling situations they hadn’t been in for years – flying down a 15% hill, not noticing a bastard pothole or getting caught in the middle of heavy traffic, for example. It’s daunting. It makes riders nervous. It can lead to wobbles, tumbles or falls regardless of whether another vehicle is involved. Whatever the circumstances, and however experienced you are, for all riders there can be a sudden epiphany that it’s been a pretty long time since their last crash or fall. Months or years may have passed without even a thought of stacking it. Does the fact make it more likely that it’s going to happen soon? Statistically, probably not. But in my case, that niggle of doubt had crept right up on me like Qunitana on L’Alp d’Huez.

Windscreens are designed to give Whatever kind of cyclist you are, a dark rush hour commute in the middle of January is never going to be an ideal situation. But there I was, flashing like a cheap child’s toy and wrapped in that rather fetching shade of luminous yellow – just like any one of the 750,000 cycling commuters in the UK that evening.

A CAR windscreen doesn’t shatter into a thousand shards when something hefty (like a human) lands on it. it

Back to the damage. To me: rolled ankle, sore back, patches of skin missing from hip, elbow and knee. To the bike: scratched pedals, buckled drop bar, dented frame and a bent derailleur hanger. I think I’d take that over what could’ve been a much more serious outcome.

Once I was on the ground, I felt the traffic stop. Everything was unnaturally lit by headlights and there was a weird hum of neutral engines. I got up, dragged the bike to the side of the road and checked myself out. The daft car then also pulled over, which allowed the traffic to continue and restore that natural six o’clock drone. The driver turned out to be an older woman, clearly shaken up and distressed.

I’d cracked the whole of her windscreen, which now looked like a crystal spider’s web. We both apologised to each other (all very British) and she then admitted that she’d not demisted her windscreen properly before setting off and ‘…just hadn’t see me’. Slightly difficult to take – I’m 6’5” and dressed in luminous yellow. Exhale slowly. Bite lip.

bU CKLE S

Pedalling along a straight road with a fair amount of traffic about, I was trying to take in everything I could: the cars, the lights, the shadowy pedestrians – imagine the Jason Bourne of the six o’clock commute. Here’s what I saw: there were at least three cars behind me, a string of parked ones in front and I was in a pretty good position on the road (as in, no one was going to try and squeeze past). There was also a car coming the other way and signalling to cross my path into a side street. The car had rolled to a stop, indicating right, so, naturally, I assumed it was waiting to let me pass.

I assumed wrong.

The car lurched straight into the bike, which disappeared from underneath me as I Supermanned it along the bonnet.

What I discovered just after that mid-air moment was this: a car windscreen doesn’t shatter into a thousand shards when something hefty (like a human) lands on it. It buckles. And if you’re lucky, you hit it and roll off like you’re in a seventies cop show. Which is, sort of, what happened to me. Remember – the Jason Bourne of the six o’clock commute.

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That familiar burning itch of skin on tarmac Just over 19,000 cycling accidents took place in the UK in 2012. According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, 15,751 of those ended in slight injuries, 3,222 in serious injuries and, tragically, 118 resulted in death.

It’s sobering. And at the time of writing we’ve just passed through a very dark end to the year with several cycling fatalities in London, Bristol and Bath. It’s sparked a lot of debate on cycling safety and the relationship between all road users. It’s a thorny subject, and probably best left to discuss on another day, on another page. But for anyone who has been in an incident (including the thousands that aren’t recorded) and has come through it, the overriding feeling is of relief and experience. Not complete cycling abandonment.

We said our goodbyes, as she was really upset, and in the confusion of it all I forgot to take insurance details or even her car reg. But I wasn’t far from home, so I limped back along the pavement. Once inside I got the bike and myself into the light to confirm the damage. A shower and a liberal spread of Savlon later and I felt okay. Invigorated almost.

A masochistic enjoyment? Not quite. But there’s nothing like coming out of an accident relatively unscathed to make you feel like a whippersnapper again. I wanted to tell people what had happened. So I had a quick Facebook rant and waited for my girlfriend to come home from work. Dinner on. Roast chicken. Oh yes.

Wet weather willies and downhill grannies It’s not a bad thing to be reminded of your mortality on a bicycle. But reminding your loved ones of the same thing is a completely different matter.

Vindicating the joys of the pedal after you’ve just taken a tumble is tough – the case you put forward can seem a bit flimsy. We are, after all, fast-moving fleshy lumps on lightweight frames with – if we’re cautious – a polystyrene bowl on our heads. This was the stance my girlfriend took, and it was a backlash that I hadn’t really been expecting from the windscreen-rolling incident. It sparked a lengthy debate on how safe cycling is, how safe I am on a bike and whether or not it should continue, and it was a verbal arm wrestle that carried on for a good couple of days (namely Saturday and Sunday, as the crash happened on a Friday night). When it came to Monday, there was still no resolution, but because I had to get to work, and my bike was the only feasible way of getting there, I just got back on.

It felt fine. I was going slower than before, braking a little harder on hills and taking corners with a bit more caution, but there’s nothing wrong with that. It wasn’t that I was

riding dangerously before, but being reminded of what it’s like to come off felt strangely healthy. The getting-straightback-on-your-horse idiom fits perfectly here. Yes, falling off hurts a bit. You might end up with a few grazes and bruises.

But that fact is completely outweighed by the sheer joy of cycling. The freedom. The achievement. All that poetic stuff that you read about. It’s just about getting back on and keeping that.

So, anyone feeling the impending doom of a crash should relax. It’s good to have that anticipation. It’s a human trait.

And if it slows you down on corners or makes you a bit more cautious in the wet, then fine. Even the safest, most careful among us can slip up once in a while. It goes with the territory. We can wear the most luminous gear on the market, buy lights that burn the retinas of nearby woodland creatures, get tyres that would be better suited to a 4X4, but the fact remains that every now and then circumstances may contrive to fling you at the tarmac. Take comfort in this, though: those who ride most are less likely to have an accident, mile for mile, than more inexperienced cyclists.

The more you ride, the safer it gets. And while I can’t say I’m looking forward to my next proper bike crash, at least now I can remember the last one.

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THE LAST CRAFTSMAN IN MADRID

WORDS Francisco ‘Paco’ Serrano PHOTOGRAPHY Stefanyia Gutovska & Produce Dentera ILLUSTRATION Stefanyia Gutovska

SEEING A MAN HIS AGE – AND ONLY A WHISKER OVER 5FT TALL – WORKING WITH SUCH ENERGY, GIVES A GLIMPSE AT WHAT IT MEANS TO REALLY LOVE YOUR JOB.

The first thing you notice when you step into the workshop is the boat, 32ft long and 15ft to the top of its mast. It takes centre stage in the only squatted workshop in Madrid where you can get a bicycle frame designed, built and repaired. The boat was handmade inside the room, in much the same way that little model ships are magicked into glass bottles, as a labour intensive way of resisting eviction, executed with a healthy dash of humour.

He and his family survived the Spanish civil war there.

He can tell you stories of foraging and hunting to survive those hard times. He was once knocked off his bike by a tank – he still has that day’s ruined cycling jersey hanging on his wall. Even though he’s retired, his open workshop remains an important part of the cycling community, a place for him to share the kind of knowledge acquired from 60 years in the business.

This is the second boat that Higinio Domingo ‘Perucha’ made over the years; the first was a 75-footer built in the seventies for a private owner, which is still sailing the high seas to this day. But it is not for boats that Perucha will be remembered. He was and is a pioneer of bicycle building.

He doesn’t just practise and share his welding skills, but also teaches anyone who’ll listen how to design and build their own tools and replacement parts, so that they too can build and repair bicycles. Thus, he empowers others to rediscover their capacity for self-sufficiency, contributing to the collective intelligence. His aim is not to make a profit, just to help the cycling community.

If a piece is out of stock or doesn’t exist he can figure out a way to sort the problem straight away, from making track dropouts out of a solid block of aluminium to fixing a treadmill for a gypsy man (to train roosters for cockfights, of all things). “No one leaves without their problem fixed”. It’s just his way of doing things, helping and teaching anyone who needs a hand, six days a week.

The work is mostly unpaid, though sometimes he’s rewarded with a donation or a drink at the end of the day.

At 79 years old, after a whole life lived in the cycling world, Perucha had to squat his workshop as a result of the political corruption that sent Spain spiralling into one of the worst economic recessions in its history.

Nowadays, many professional shops send Perucha the bikes they cannot fix.

He was born in Chamartin de la Rosa in 1934, and still vividly remembers it as a place surrounded by countryside. Nowadays, far from being a little village outside Madrid, it has become one of the many ‘barrios’ inside the city known as ‘La Ventilla’. The original workshop and shop were destroyed by order of the council and his land was expropriated for development.

So he decided to set up his workshop anew in one of the new development’s empty premises, which had been allocated for shops and business. Despite having the original documents proving that the land has belonged to his family since 1924, Perucha still has to fight an endless bureaucracy with repeated trips to court to reiterate his claim.

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Perucha’s teaching is traditional, coming from his training as a tool-and-die-maker [a specialist machinist who makes tools used in manufacturing processes].

No angle grinders or cutting corners when Perucha builds a frame. The only power tool used on a new frame is a drill. Seeing a man his age – and only a whisker over 5ft tall – still working with such energy, gives a glimpse at what it means to really love your job. If you don’t hold a file properly he’ll rib you for it and shove you off the vice to show you the right way – what he calls

NO ONE LEAVES WITHOUT THEIR PROBLEM FIXED. IT’S JUST HIS WAY OF DOING THINGS, HELPING AND TEACHING ANYONE WHO NEEDS A HAND, SIX DAYS A WEEK. ‘playing the violin’ with the file in his hands, all the while whistling or singing happily. Often we watch him bending tubes, and he always brazes without safety goggles. Sometimes I can’t help but say “Perucha, if I took you back to Britain you’ d have a queue of people wanting to learn from you”.

Some call him ‘the last craftsman in Madrid’. He constantly shares his stories and shows you photos of his inventions and adventures. His career in professional cycling also began in an unusual way. Cycling home from work when he was just 16, Perucha encountered a professional cyclist training on the road. So he decided to ride alongside, and they did 200km that evening at the same speed. Quite a commute. At 18, Perucha himself turned pro.

He moved to Paris and, after taking part in the Tour de France, decided to do some bike touring around Switzerland. There his life took another turn. His bike was stolen at the door of a café in Geneva with all his savings hidden inside the handlebars, his clothes and passport in the panniers. Forced to start a new life there, he got a job as a mechanic. Thanks to this he met his wife, Consuelo, another Spanish émigré in Switzerland.

Years later and with a new family, they came back to Spain to keep living and working around bikes. He was also sports director for teams including ONCE, and TEKA in the glory days of the late 80s, when KlausPeter Thaler won the cyclocross championships.

His experience, inventiveness and the diversity of his creations have taken him from designing bathroom fittings to creating irrigation systems for the Sinai desert.

His anecdotes seem drawn from several lifetimes.

Thanks to his supporters and a crowdfunding campaign, €10,000 was raised to help Perucha’s legal battle, and a documentary is being made about his extraordinary life. The future of his workshop remains uncertain but for the time being, Perucha still opens his doors six days a week. And when he closes up each evening, everybody has the pleasure of taking a glass of wine and sharing a good time with Perucha, Consuelo and their friends.

From everyone who has had the privilege of your company and your experience, here’s to you, Perucha. goteo.org/project/club-ciclista-perucha/home facebook.com/ciclos.perucha clubciclistaperucha.dentera.net

The

l a r u t a n n U Cyclist “You’ve never been a natural cyclist!”

My best friend can be brutally truthful but she’s right, I never have been.

I have always been fragile on two wheels. Some people have the knack of cycling and some of us don’t – it’s like a gene is missing. The problem is, as I get older (I say older, I’m 35 now) jumping back in the saddle after a fall is proving harder and scarier each time.

The absent cycling-gene expressed itself early on in life, at Brownie Guides to be precise. My fellow Brownies were seemingly born on bikes so our troop leader arranged for a Cycling Proficiency Assessor to visit our meeting and take everyone through their Cycling Proficiency badge en masse.

Everyone that is, except me. Being the only one unable to cycle properly, I stood outside the meeting hut with my bike whilst Brownies pedalled around me, demonstrating their turning skills and lending a sort of ‘Lord of the Flies’ vibe to the occasion. After an hour or so, in a last ditch attempt to gain a 100% Cycling Proficiency badge pass rate for the troop, the assessor held the back of my bike whilst I wobbled for a hundred yards down the road. I was far from proficient and the guilt of defrauding the Girl Guide movement stays with me to this day.

During my teens, I rode my Mum’s old Raleigh bike – turquoise and white with a knobbly leather seat. After crashing into a fence on the cycle track whilst badly negotiating a right turn, I restricted my movements to cycling only to my Best Friend’s house; it was left turns all the way there.

And a long walk home.

The world had a breather from my cycling manoeuvres for many years, until I was 28 and had a heart operation. ‘Hmm, cycling will get me fit again’ I thought, and toddled off to the bike shop to purchase new wheels.

Being essentially clueless about bikes I chose the prettiest one available, with 3 gears and a wobbly basket, and named her Vivien.

Words Sally Duffin Illustration Lucy Letherland | lucyletherland.com

I stood outside the meeting hut with my bike whilst Brownies pedalled around me, demonstrating their turning skills and lending a sort of ‘Lord of the Flies’ vibe to the occasion.

It wasn’t quite the speedy recovery plan I had hoped for; my first attempt at a mild incline resulted in getting stuck midpedal, wheezing, then falling off sideways in slow motion to the great amusement of a passer-by who laughed, openly and loudly. Gradually, things improved and soon I was zipping about all over town – no last bus home for me, I had my trusty purple steed!

Cycling was proving to be fun until the day a pedestrian – pushing a bike, no less – stepped out in front of me and I crashed down hard; face first onto the pavement. I was scuffed and bruised but once the scabs had fallen off I got back on, hesitant but determined to regain my pace. Months passed, then one cold January afternoon school-run, on the inaugural

outing of my new glowing cycling jacket (oh, the irony) a large van decided to quickly squeeze past me on a narrow bridge and knocked me off.

Now, I know this happens every day in every city and at some point, to every cyclist, and the majority of Boneshaker readers will have far worse war stories to tell, but for me this really was the final nail in the coffin for my confidence. There I stood, crying and shaking at the side of a road, wondering what on earth had just happened and being sworn at by a driver for having the audacity to be on the same piece of highway as his van.

I just could not face the fear any longer. Vivien went back in the shed, my jacket got folded away and I returned to treading the pavements, secretly envying every cyclist who whooshed past me.

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Trembling and chanting “Just breathe; the Universe will take care of everything else!”

I navigated through the city, and arrived a very respectable 45 minutes later - breathless, sweaty and grinning like a toddler in a sweet shop.

Before you think; ‘No! What a defeatist she is!’ I must mention my Boyfriend. He is the complete opposite of me: nine bikes, one tandem, one unicycle and an eBay history that reads like the classifieds in Cycling Weekly. My two-wheeled fears do not stand a chance with him around.

‘You’re scared? Get back on. The traffic’s awful? Get back on. Don’t like hills? We live in York, a very flat city, get back on.’ (You get the gist.)

Being a non-cyclist was just not an option with The Boyfriend.

Being cut off from an activity which I did, deep down, really enjoy was gnawing at my mind like a starving woodworm. I love handmade arts and crafts and the forms that appeal to me the most are the ones with simplicity, beauty and usefulness at their heart; knitting, patchwork, rag rugs – all these combine expression, skill and individuality and yet are accessible to anyone and everyone who wants to try their hand.

The same goes for cycling and I secretly hated the fact I was missing out on something simple, beautiful and useful.

The stalemate between fear of falling off and hating to miss a good thing lasted several long months until one bright sunny afternoon, when the urge to pedal was too great. I boldly unlocked the bike shed, a plan forming in my mind to surprise The Boyfriend by cycling to his house, seven miles across town – in rush hour traffic. Trembling and chanting “Just breathe; the Universe will take care of everything else!” I navigated through the city, and arrived a very respectable 45 minutes later – breathless, sweaty and grinning like a toddler in a sweet shop.

Since that day, Bike and me have slowly kindled, grumpily abandoned, and then timidly rekindled our relationship. Despite what The Boyfriend says, York does have hills – it is a fact. They’re all on my route to work. In rain, hail and snow they grow higher, steeper and harder so consequently there is an entire season left un-cycled by me. But what feeds my determination to keep cycling – and get better at it – is the firm faith in cycling as the one and only simple, beautiful and ecofriendly way to travel which carries my luggage, tones my bum and blasts away the clutter and chatter in my mind.

I might not be a natural cyclist, but I’m going to keep cycling anyway.

Sally Duffin is a nutritionist, writer and slow cyclist based in York, England.

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Š Ajda Fortuna / fortunajda.wordpress.com

the

history

cycle Words and images: Ross Mackay

A

s we approach the coastal town of Oamaru it looks like many other towns we’ve meandered through over the years; busy in its own small way, cars parked here and there, people milling about shopping, drinking coffee, talking. But as we turn right off the highway towards the centre there’s something different: everywhere there are people riding in Victorian period clothing, caught in strange juxtaposition with those from a less-distant past. It’s the 1880s meets the 1980s. On wheels.

We head for the older part of town to see what’s going on, and find that we’ve stumbled on an annual heritage celebration – a casual salute to times gone by in this small and historically young country called New Zealand. It’s like standing in a time warp as people saunter past in their finery, walking the worn cobbles in period correct shoes and beautifully crafted hats. Just as we’re soaking it all in, down the street glides a septuagenarian on a penny-farthing; all grace and style. My interest piqued,

I duck into the officials tent to find out what the day’s events entail. The afternoon is mostly based around the celebration of the humble bicycle and an ode to the rise of cycling in 1980s New Zealand. Saturday brings penny-farthings, the safety cycle, the 20” Healing/Raleigh New Zealand championships and, new this year, the BMX class. We settle in to watch the action unfold amongst the stately architecture and grain sacks. The pennyfarthing pace is hot (and also slow) with plenty of planned and un-planned action for the hordes that line the streets to watch.

The slow race is a new concept for us, last over the line wins (no pedalling backwards or stopping); the slalom race sees one rider flying high speed over the handlebars – apparently he survived relatively unscathed. Last is a criterium around the block – drafting included, plus some exceptional high speed cornering to boot. The new BMX class showcased some fine examples of 80s NZ-made steel and 5-spoke goodness, although it was a little disappointing to see only one yellow Healing HMX 500 after the vast amounts that propelled many Kiwi kids through puberty and into the waiting arms of the 90s mountain-bike craze.

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it’s the 1880 s meets the 1980 s . on wheels.

T

he highlight for us was the men’s and women’s 20” champs - large fields enticed by the hefty prize purse ($1000 for both category winners) meant there was some great racing to be had on bikes that definitely weren’t built with racing in mind. Event co-organizer and retro grouch Chester Tiddys (not his real name) told us the event began as an addendum to the penny-farthing races about five years ago and has grown from there.

“It’s more of a social event than a race. People come from all over the lower South for it; it’s kinda like a horse race but you don’t know the horses!” He’s right – there are people from all over the South Island participating in this fine spectacle, bringing rust, chrome, rusted chrome, chromed chrome, panniers, Adidas stripes, Jetstar helmets, uncomfortably short shorts. A stylistic high-five to the 80s (shudder).

After the dust settles on the cobbles and the grain sacks are stacked away for another year, the winners are awarded their dues. Point of excellence goes to Sarge from Dunedin; although in his forties, he proved to the young bucks that they have some work to do, taking both the BMX and the Healing/Raleigh class. Women’s winner Clodagh Byars proved too strong for the rest of the field, showing a style and grace that would make any 80s Champion proud.

Riding a stripped-down race version of the Raleigh 20 – minus guards, carrier and with bars rolled forward – no one could match her pace. As the day wound up, we headed for a local whisky bar to find our late afternoon glow and recall the afternoon’s retro-race bravado.

So, if you ever find yourself in New Zealand in late springtime and are looking for something a little leftfield, do roll past this cool little vestige of Victoriana with a dash of 80s thrown in. w w w. v h c . c o . n z

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A LAMENT

TO LEOPOLD My charge, and my light, Blazing brash of steel, burnished red and right.

Creaks a bit cranky, jam of the brakes mid-drive, Pedal on, pedal on, no sighs.

Champion of cheer, taker of treads,

Cast-clad we kept humming, in new spaces, Over waterways to culinary places.

Click, the shift, ribbon of silver, Black-caked teeth gleaming with grease.

Then this day! I lost you.

Trod and true, rubber turns to shreds.

Oh, the years! I loved you.

My feet to push, your wheels to turn,

Robbed, I cursed.

All I give, is what I earn.

Night ride, street side, the stars streaming above,

Bereft, I cried.

Taken you they have, and gone so you are.

Teetering home, half-drunk with marvellous love.

But, Leopold, my Leopold,

Wind, sand, sun, snow,

You are me, and I was you.

Thump in my heart, lump in my throat.

Balloons a-bopping, limbs stretched clear to the sky, Swooping to fell, a Polo match gone awry.

Falling to land, with a dot of a scrape on one side.

Fancy free, no longer me.

We are wherever we are.

WORDS: ALYSSA BELTER ILLUSTRATION: JAMES GROVER | WWW.JAMESGROVER.COM

MY BEAUTIFUL BIKE THE STORYTELLER

One of the most charming things about an old bicycle is the stories that come with it. Some of them are revealed by its details, seen through scratches of paint and discovered under layers of dust. Others are left for us to imagine.

In early spring 2011 the Multipratik Collective1 organised a campaign as a part of which old, neglected bikes would be brought back to life. A group of local artists were invited to help accomplish this, and I was excited to be one of them.

Twenty artists, twenty old bikes and only ten days’ time, to refurbish and redesign them, each in its own unique style.

Our first task was to choose a suitable bike to rework.

We visited a local garage, piled high with abandoned bikes. Some were ready to be ridden, some disassembled and kept for parts. Somewhere in the middle of a big steel heap, there was a fluorescent yellow one that immediately drew my attention. The rust spoke of the times it had spent outdoors, the details of its age and the decals of its origin. It was a vintage Italian, Atala.

front of me. My imagination was still travelling through dreamy images of its past, and the fact the bike was much older than me filled me with a kind of respect. I thought ‘why not just write them down, keep those thoughts with it forever, so the new owner will be able to appreciate them as well?’

I started writing of the present, just random things that came to mind, how I found it, cleaned and polished all its parts. To find more stories, I asked my friends to do the same thing, write about the past that they imagined for the bike. These stories were then hand-written onto the frame.

At the end of the project the bikes were given away and I thought I’d never see it again. But as all stories are somehow connected in small towns like Ljubljana, a few months later I came across the bike and met its owner.

As the bikes were in pretty bad shape they were all repainted white and made ready for us to work on them.

It suddenly felt like having a blank piece of paper in

With every ride it takes, the moving tale of the Storyteller goes on…

Based in Slovenia, the Multipraktik Collective is a multi-disciplinary production studio, crossing the fields of design, video production, music, photography and other art forms.

Words & pictures by Ajda Fortuna fortunajda.wordpress.com

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hackney bicycle film society THEY COULD ONLY NAME SIX BIKE FILMS; NOBODY OWNED A PROJECTOR — BUT THEY DECIDED TO START A BICYCLE FILM SOCIETY ANYWAY Words: Adam Thompson Photos: Nick Mann / nick-mann.com Illustration: Jorge Martin / jorgemartin.org It was a cold, dry November night. Critical Mass’s monthly gathering of cyclists had wound its way through the dark London streets, and a group of friends who had been on the ride found their way to a Victorian pub on Grays Inn Road, not far from the famous Condor Cycles. The conversation meandered like the Thames, or like a CM ride; talk of types of bicycle and tours from Land’s End to John O’Groats, London to Paris and Memphis to Baltimore, and Critical Masses in Rome and Paris and Cork. Then a new topic caught on: ‘How many bicycle films can you think of?’

‘Three. No, six. Wait. Ten?’ ‘Go on then, name them.’

‘Breaking Away.’

‘Everyone knows that one.’

‘Ha! Everyone of a certain age… what about that one about bicycle thieves, and that cartoony one?’

‘Belleville Rendezvous.’

‘It’s not called that anymore. It’s called Les Triplets de Belleville.

They changed the name for the yanks’.

‘Well how come it’s not called The Triplets of Belleville then?’

‘And that one about bicycle thieves?’

‘Yeah Bicycle Thieves – we’ve already mentioned that!’

‘No, the funny one with that comedian. American, I think.’

‘You mean Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. I saw that in North Carolina when I was riding to Baltimore’.

‘What about documentaries like A Sunday in Hell? Do they count?’

‘Ooh, what’s that about? I’ve never seen that…’

And so the Hackney Bicycle Film Society was born. They could actually only think of about six films, but the thinking was ‘if we only screen one a month, that’ll do us for six months’. When the pub landlord offered the use of his function room for free, the deal was done.

Most of those foolish founders were also involved in the Hackney Bike Workshop – an intriguing mixture of altruism, bike mechanics, politics and socialising – so although only one of the band was

actually from Hackney and the films were never even shown in Hackney, the name stuck.

None of the party had a projector, though one had a laptop and another had access to a sound system and thought he’d be able to rig up a screen. A second-hand projector was sourced on eBay (£40); after a few months of struggling with the sound of buzzing and a screen which kept falling over (precipitating some lengthy arguments), a screen was bought from the same source (£80) and a sound system from a local discount hi-fi shop (£45).

Soon the first night arrived. Despite it being a snowy January evening, so many people came that an extra show had to be put on. The film was A Sunday in Hell: a documentary, but also a brilliant piece of storytelling. Leth Jorgen’s 1976 chronicle of the classic one-day Paris-Roubaix race is arguably one of the best bike documentaries ever made. The three-and-a-half minute scene at the beginning with Francesco Moser’s mechanic preparing his bike for the race seems odd at first, but sets the scene, the pace and the atmosphere for the coming story.

Cycle couriers are one of the favourite subjects for bicycle feature films; most describe the journey of someone who is not a courier becoming a courier and then usually leaving the courier business and cycling off at the end after some breath-taking thrills.

The HBFS has shown courier films made in the States: Quicksilver, probably the most pointless and diabolical movie ever made [have you not seen Premium Rush? – Ed.], Nebraska Supersonic, a much better movie, even if it was made for pennies; from Japan, Messengers; from Finland Cyclomania; and from Canada 2 Seconds, which subtly toys with the format: the lead is a woman downhill bike racer who loses her nerve, missing glory in a race by two seconds. Hence the title. The early scenes of the actual racing are beautiful and compelling, skillfully explaining how downhill works and what it’s like to compete. A scene in a cable car where the lead slowly loses her bottle as the other women downhillers recount the accidents they’ve had is classic. The transition to becoming a messenger and riding in the city is a bit clunky but 53

funny nonetheless, finding humour in the way others regard couriers and how difficult it is to get attention from people who regard you as scum. The joy of this film though is how it deals with a subject familiar to all cyclists: grumpy bike shop owners.

How many times have you waited at that counter and wondered ‘was this person born like this, or has some terrible calamity befallen them to make them so irascible?’ The answer is perhaps that establishing a bike shop involves dreams – but running a bike shop is hard and those dreams are slowly eroded.

Or maybe being irascible is a way of keeping out those who do not belong. 2 Seconds shows this with sensitivity and humour, also commenting on the latent (or in this case blatant) sexism in cycling.

Vimeo) will turn up thousands. The annual Bicycle Film Festival now predominantly shows short films made and submitted by film makers from around the world. The downside is 80% of the online films/videos are… how does one say it… boring.

YouTube and Vimeo, being mainly social media, have thousands of videos of children taking their first ride: fascinating for their parents but not the thing to get an audience through the door.

Similarly large numbers of people around the world have gone in front of the camera to explain in steady monotonic voices how to remove your bottom bracket or why you should wear a bike helmet. So trawling the net for worthwhile short films can be time consuming – but is ultimately rewarding. You get to

“WHAT STARTED AS A BIT OF A JOKE HAS PROVED TO BE SOMETHING VERY SPECIAL …”

Clearly most film makers – even those who make bicycle films – are not often cyclists, because bike shops only feature as back drops except in one other film, A Boy, a Girl and a Bike. Made in 1949, it starred Honor Blackman and Diana Dors; the bike shop owners in this film were also crooks, allowing A Boy, a Girl and a Bike another great bike film theme: bike theft.

The second HBFS show was slightly less manic than the first, but there were other problems. Cyclists don’t appear to be the most social bunch, often just sitting down and not engaging with their neighbours or moving along the row of seats as the room started to fill. Perhaps it is the solitary nature of cycling – or just a London thing – but this brought something of a life changing event. The two main organisers (who were chronically shy themselves) would have to introduce people to each other and interact with the audience as well as set up the cinema.

Difficult double-act to achieve, but once learnt, a skill you do not forget. These once-shy wallflowers became ringmasters and leaders of men. Sort of.

Second problem was people turning up late and packing into the back of the show, which was also the most crowded area because of all the people not knowing how to move up the row or being too scared to ask their neighbour to do so. The solution proved simple: show some short films at the beginning, giving a breathing space for people to arrive late. The funny thing was that the short films proved so popular that people stopped turning up late.

Short bicycle films are easy to find on the internet. A quick truffle in YouTube (or for better quality both of production and story,

learn the names to avoid, for example The Ultimate Bike Repair Movie Bicycle Maintenance sort of gives it away by mentioning bike twice in the one title. The Handbuilt Bicycle, on the other hand, could be a little geeky but is a very interesting series of interviews with six of America’s bespoke frame builders.

Generally you also get to know who makes good films and go back to them. The excellent Australian series Once Bitten was found by accident whilst getting ideas for a London Bikefest from the Melbourne Bikefest. The search for interesting shorts led to the pages of the blog Copenhagenize and a series of lectures called The Green Machine by the scholarly radical writer Iain Boal. The film makers are always asked if it’s OK to show the film; in Iain’s case he came along in person and spoke about his book on the history of the bicycle. This then led to one of the HBFS organisers giving a talk on how the bicycle won the Vietnam War. A documentary on six-day bicycle races led to a guest appearance by Maurice Bishop, Britain’s first black champion cyclist and a six-day racer in the 1970s and 80s.

To date, the HBFS has shown 40 feature-length films over four years and has another 18 months worth of films to show, to see us well beyond our fifth birthday. What started as a bit of a joke has proved to be something very special, but like anything good it takes a lot of energy and our competitors are starting to catch up. When it started it was difficult to find any bike films; now the web is littered with pages proclaiming the top 10 bike movies.

What will happen next? Well, we will have to wait and see.

Perhaps it’s time to retreat to that familiar Victorian pub on the Grays Inn Road and do some beer-fuelled plotting…

Y BIKE FILM SOCIETY SHOW, TO ATTEND THE NEXT HACKNE GMAIL.COM 11@ EMAIL HBFS20 PM AT THE CALTHORPE PUB MONDAY OF THE MONTH, 7:30 OND SEC THE CLUB! ON Y ALL USU SHOWS ARE ? START YOUR OWN BIKE FILM DON. DON’T LIVE IN LONDON …

BIKE A ON THE GRAYS INN ROAD, LON ING SOMEBODY) RID IT’S AS EASY AS (WATCHING NEY.BICYCLEFILMSOCIETY WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/HACK ELECTRICPEDALS.COM SEE , FOR MORE INSPIRATION

Getting into

Saddle

Words Annie Rutherford  Illustration Sharm Murugiah | sharmmurugiah.com

I can’t help grinning as I lean over the rust-worn bike, tugging at the spanner with my oily, aching fingers. Three weeks ago, my father had been fussing over my own bike – raising the saddle, fixing my dynamos, worrying over my brakes. And now, as I guide my Iranian friend’s fingers to help her lower her saddle, I cast a glance at the reddened chain, make a mental note to give her my now redundant LED lights, double check whether her front brake really works.

The bolt is finally tight. I step back and watch in bewilderment as my friend tries and fails to swing her leg over the saddle.

Something tells me the miniskirt isn’t the problem.

‘Did you, did you have a bike, before?’ I ask her, hesitantly.

‘In Iran?’ She looks at me. ‘We used to cycle in the parks as children, but it is forbidden to cycle in public, as a woman.’

My friend is twenty eight. I wonder when she stopped being a child, but bite back the question. Instead, I fetch my own bike and show her how to hop on and off easily, even in a skirt.

The maxim that you never forget how to ride a bike occurs to me. Clearly getting on the actual thing doesn’t count…

But then she totters off like a ten-year-old in her big sister’s heels, winsomely confident in her uncertainty. I look after her with something akin to pride – and, perhaps to the surprise of the smokers clustered nearby, I set off at a jog, catching up and keeping level with her pedalling with the ease of my father almost twenty years ago, following the beribboned princess bike of my five-year-old self.

With a shudder I realise that I would as soon have my books taken from me as my bicycle.

Cycling is one of the simplest freedoms there is, so simple that we often forget it.

We must have stayed there for at least half an hour, laughing with exhilaration and taking it in turns to loop back and forth, as I explain what gears are, and how dynamos work, or why hers doesn’t.

Afterwards, I cycle home more slowly than usual. The lack of liberty my friend had left behind when she came to Europe to study had always been abstract to me. I had tried not to judge a culture I had little knowledge of. But with a shudder I realise that I would as soon have my books taken from me as my bicycle. I had never questioned the simple freedoms y bike (and two roomy panniers) allows me, whether social or economic. My two wheels had taken me to parties as a teenager, carried me out of the city when I was skint and needed space, and sped me between various summer jobs.

Over the summer, thousands of us rooted for one girl’s struggle for that freedom as we watched the Saudi Arabian film Wadjda. As I write, women in Egypt are demonstrating for the right to cycle without being harassed with the campaign ‘We Will Ride Bicycles’. The invention of the bicycle proved a significant tool for Western feminism: suddenly middle class women could travel across town on their own – and less constrictive female clothing became necessary and acceptable.

Cycling is one of the simplest freedoms there is, so simple that we often forget it.

We just have to be able to get onto the bicycle first.

Words: Jet McDonald / jetmcdonald.com Illustration: Sam Pash / sampashillustration.com

F

eathers Last night I had a dream that I was riding through the night sky on a bicycle, covered in feathers, a thousand different coloured quills. Ever since Elliot pedalled ET across the moon on his BMX, I’ve wanted to be up there with the birds.

And last night I was the bird and I was the bike. And I wasn’t just soaring. I was velo soaring. I am dear friends, a Velosaur.

I am the peak of the evolutionary arc.

For Jung, the psychotherapist, flying dreams represented transcendence. For Freud, the psychoanalyst, they represented, like almost everything else, sex. I like to hang out with Jung more than Freud (Freud is always stubbing his cigar out on my brake pads, “Hey Freud, leave those pads alone.”) Jung, with his archetypes and metaphors, understands my Velosaur, my cycling bird of paradise.

Recently in the UK we have had a series of Tour de France winners and Olympic medals and cycling is, according to the press, “undergoing a renaissance”. But renaissance is the wrong term. Resurgence seems more appropriate. There is more of everything now, more bikes, more cyclists, more cycle lanes, more sports drinks, more Lycra, more cycle computers, more wraparound sunglasses. But I am not yet convinced there is more understanding. And by that I mean an intuition of what cycling is and can be.

Hey Mr Righteous Dream Cyclist Velosaur, who are you kidding? More cyclists: right. Less carbon emissions: right.

More fun. Huh? Hey? 59

As yet another body-suited bike ninja blanks me, looking less like a cyclist and more like a torpedo, a lactic acid drone, being controlled by ambitions far beyond his ken, I do wonder.

I wonder how much of this ‘renaissance’ is about achievement and not just about the simple pleasure of achieving. A medalspattered thing, in which to ride you must consume the podium, you must break the pain barrier, you must, you must, you must. Where you do not nurture your feathers, you pluck them and ride Lycra skinned through the flightless dark.

Feathers are God’s gorgeous gift to the nude dinosaur, or perhaps, more scientifically, Darwin’s birthday present. All the fossil evidence suggests that birds are the last remaining dinosaurs and are not, as some have argued, reptiles with wings. The dinos got downy feathers to regulate temperature, and then flight quills to soar above the ground. (The biologist Thor Hanson has written eloquently about this in his book Feathers.)

Yet despite all this evidence there is a small group of deniers, known as BAND (Birds Are Not Dinosaurs) who argue the opposite; that birds evolved from reptiles and feathers are a logical extension of the scaly plates on lizards.

Why, say BAND, would dinosaurs develop flight, being land-based animals and sand scratchers? Well, if you study young partridges (bear with me here cyclists, your time on the evolutionary arc will come) you discover that they like to climb up the sides of trees, and flap their wings as they do so, not to give them flight, but to act as a hydrofoil, in other words to give them downward pressure and maintain their stability as they climb into the branches. This, one argument runs, is how dinosaurs might have run up the sides of trees, Buster Keaton like, before their first plunge into the unknown.

(This is called Wing Assisted Incline Running, or WAIR, in case you’re interested.)

Jet McDonald, being a fantastical writer of a Jungian bent, would like to convince you that the next development in Cycling Sports Science should not be millisecond-stripping plastic bodysuits, but feathers.

Feathers would take us further. They would take us higher.

They would take us up the sides of walls and into the sky.

And they would take us there in a thousand different colours.

One of the main drivers of the multimillion pound cycling clothing industry is the problem cyclists have with temperature regulation. We generate heat, we shed it, we ride up hills, we tumble down them, we put one layer on, we take another off. “Buy our breathable, waterproof, triple layer, carbo-polyreactive-thermoregulation smooth suit,” the adverts tell you.

And buy it NOW. I say to you don’t buy their perforated tea bags. Just evolve.

Evolve feathers. And evolve them NOW.

Birds live in the widest range of habitats of any hot-blooded animal. From the Arctic to the deserts. And this is down to their downy feathers, neatly layered beneath the waxy waterproof sheen of their flight and contour feathers.

If cyclists had feathers, imagine how far could they go, and how far could they survive, in sweat-wicking comfort.

“OK”, you say to me, “Mr Feathers, Mr Jungian boom tune fantasy cyclist, that’s all well and good but I’m a cyclist, right.

I’m a pragmatist. I’ve got to get from A to B now. I haven’t got time to evolve first.”

Well I say to you, evolve your psychology, evolve your thinking, evolve your dream-life. And then maybe you can fly and cycle through the night. I’ve done it. With a thousand coloured feathers. You can’t do that in a jumpsuit sponsored

by Sky. Thor Hanson explains how the feather pillow production chain begins. A single trader in China bicycles round his local villages picking up bags of goose and duck down, surplus from poultry meat, and when he has enough he packs them into a truck which transports them to a regional factory and thence a larger processing plant before it all gets shipped to the West to be graded and made into comforters and high end camping gear. I like to wonder what would happen if that small trader on a bike didn’t get sucked into this vortex of global duvet production. If he kept those feathers to himself, if he glued them to his arms and legs, covered them with flight vanes and, pedalling the Himalayas, went moon cruising.

It’s not like other cyclists haven’t been thinking the same thing for over a century. The first flying machines were built around bicycles and prop mechanics. “Put wings on it,” these entrepreneurs thought, “make it fly.” “All she needs is a coat of feathers,” said Dan Tate, assistant to the Wright Brothers in 1902, “and she will stay in the air indefinitely.”

Nowadays human-powered flight is a bit of a joke. Beginning with events like the ‘Birdman Rally’ on the South coast of England in 1971, people rolled home-made machines on bike wheels off the edge of piers and into the sea, in the hope of a picture in the paper and a damp pint in the pub afterwards.

This is all a jolly good laugh but it belittles the possibilities of our two wheeled hero, it relegates to the funny pages the feelings of flight that the bicycle inspires.

We live in an era where the weather is wacky and the seasons unseasonal. But we seem unable to imagine an alternative.

The cities get ‘greener’, the cars get cheaper, the motorways get widened. We need to evolve our thinking, to imagine the unimaginable. Despite all the new cyclists, the majority of the population still understand cycling as being ‘old’, a forgotten technology, which the combustion engine has long ago supplanted. But we need to re-evolve our imagination into wilder pastures. Bikes needn’t just be good for a trip to the shops, we need to believe they are good for a trip to another continent. They needn’t just carry a can of beans, they could carry the whole family. They needn’t just be there for the run to the shops, they could be the shop, bringing the goods to you.

OK so I may never float through the sky like Elliott and ET, but I reserve the right to dream of it.

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A bike that we have ridden day in day out is an extension of who we are, its tubular core a light touch beneath our hands.

And on a fair day with a tailwind, it is a feather taken flight.

Here is a poem by Louis MacNiece from 1957: To Posterity When books have all seized up like the books in graveyards And reading and even speaking have been replaced By other, less difficult media, we wonder if you Will find in flowers and fruit the same colour and taste They held for us for whom they were framed in words.

And will your grass be green, your sky be blue, Or will your birds be always wingless birds?

And sometimes this is how I feel about the Kindle and the e-reader. With its grey, slate-like screen, its single unturning page, its dull thudding gaze over the libraries and once inked presses. You can smell the world from a bike like you can’t smell it from inside a car. You can smell the page of a book like you can’t smell the ‘backlight’ of an e-reader. If we want to preserve this world we live in we first have to live in it. If we want to dream a sensuous future we first have to live in its sensuous present. Am I saying we should all cycle to hermit caves and read the King James bible from pieces of parchment as the world rockets past? No. But neither should we just jump on the rockets, plug our eyeballs into a USB port and hope for the best.

The word ‘pen’ comes from the Latin word penna for feather and the quill. The natural hollow core of the feather shaft or rachis provides a perfect reservoir for the ink into which it is dipped. The experience of writing with a quill is unequalled.

“If I dropped a feather into your hand you would feel its touch but no perceptible weight,” says Donald Jackson, a calligrapher.

“When you fashion a pen from weightless material, it becomes part of you.” You should be able to walk past a quill writer and “pluck it from their fingers without them noticing”.

A bike that we have ridden day in and day out is an extension of who we are, its tubular core a light touch beneath our hands.

And on a fair day with a tailwind, it is a feather taken flight.

OK, so I’m pushing the metaphor here until it breaks. But Jung would have approved. The feather, like the bike, like the human body, has a fragile strength. And when we fall asleep, when

the plug on the unconscious is pulled and all these ideas spill out into dreams, the meanings merge, and you find yourself a feathered birdman on a floating bicycle.

Many had childhoods haunted by Cold War nightmares of nuclear apocalypse. But my particular nightmares grew out of news reports of oil slicks and seabirds washed up in black tides on the beaches near sunken tankers, footage of hardy volunteers scrubbing wings with buckets of detergent. It felt like these white feathers were engaged in a moral war; light against dark, good against evil, white clouds in hand-to-hand combat with the terrifying shadows of childhood, a darkness beyond the cot.

These dreams come back to me when I see ‘Ghost Bikes’, memorials to victims of traffic accidents, bike frames painted white and chained to the side of the road. I am reminded by the ‘die-in protests’, where hundreds lie down alongside their bikes to advocate for road safety. When, during a terrible two weeks in November last year, in which six London cyclists were killed, the UK press went into an apoplexy of risk rhetoric and the black slabs of headlines suggested you weren’t just risking your new trousers, you were risking your neck in the tides of petrol traffic. When we all know the benefits of cycling far outweigh the much smaller risks of accident. It’s almost as if there is a wilful slick of propaganda lapping at the door of the free-flying cyclist.

At the annual mass naked bike rides, I want to turn up with a tub of wallpaper paste and some feathers and adorn a few sexy human bodies with the multi-coloured power of flight.

When I dream of feathered flying cyclists I dream that we are both absurdly fragile and utterly powerful. I dream I will not be defeated by your tin box petrol junctions, by your binary statistics, by your gravity of information.

When I open my eyes I have this same sense, not as a thought, but as the afterglow of dreaming. I pull on my shoes and head into the sunlight as my girlfriend picks a bit of fluff from my beard.

Cycle always. Ride boldly. Take flight.

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Being

Forgetful The bicycle is a forgetting machine.

With every turn of the crank and rotation of the wheels, there is the possibility of surrendering past and future.

The act of balancing on a linear plane in motion has the power to still the mind in a way that opens a door to the present moment, beckoning you with the wind in your face and the measured staccato of knees inscribing the impossibly real perfection of a circle over and over again, mile after mile.

The bicycle is a machine for exploring the mystical relationship between here and there, near and far, hard and easy, sharp and soft, mundane and sublime, human and divine.

It’s easy to miss, because the bicycle has such a strong ego.

It is intoxicatingly bold and daring, inviting your inner hero to jump for joy, revelling in all the colourful jerseys, power meters, fixed gears, machismo, adrenaline, idealism, environmentalism or whatever it is you get hung up on.

It takes a warrior to silence all of this pomp. To exercise the discipline and perseverance to stay present. To stay with and in every turn of the crank and rotation of the wheels, balanced on a linear plane in motion, opening a crack in the universe for you to roll through.

It takes courage to follow this path. To follow the forgetting of the bicycle with awareness.

A journey toward what is real and also nothing.

Words Christopher Batchelder Illustration Sue Gent | suegentdesignandillustration.com

T S A P S E I R GLO

There’s a fine line between genius and madness.

Those that first sat themselves astride two wheels and rolled unsteadily away may have been mocked for their folly, but imagine a world without the enriching evolution of their mad genius – a world without bicycles.

When Boneshaker chanced upon the anthology Victorian Inventions earlier this year, our reactions were manifold – some of the cycling-related designs seem surprisingly modern, in their intent if not their technical execution – like the ‘godfather of GoPro’ and the Family Bike. Some are so wildly inventive we’d like to see them resurrected – like the Cyclodrome and the tricycle printing press. Others are just plain bonkers – witness the Velo-douche.

The book containing these strange contraptions was intended to ‘evoke the admiration of its readers for the ingenuity of our Victorian ancestors’, who gave us a great many things – the telephone, the electric light, X-rays, cinema – and bicycles, of course. Victorian Invention’s text, drawn from magazines and journals of the late nineteenth century, has a charm of its own, so we’ve lifted a few whimsical excerpts to share…

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“The urge to move rapidly and easily from place to place is inborn in every human being,” said De Natuur magazine in 1882. “Thousands of years ago, man ceased to be content with the limited powers of his locomotory organs and he looked longingly at the four-footed animals who moved so much faster than he, as well as at the denizens of the sea and sky. First of all he used the appropriate types of animal to enable him to travel faster and this led to the invention of a vehicle with wheels.

Later he built boats… balloons… steam-driven ships and railway engines.”

Then came “the endeavour to invent a machine which can be propelled by a man, alone and unaided, and which will enable him to travel more quickly and easily over fairly long distances than would be possible on foot.”

1. A NOVEL UNICYCLE, 1884 The gentleman’s hamster wheel.

The built-in umbrella is a stroke of genius.

“Not long ago we had occasion to read the following words,” continues De Natuur. “‘Those models which have but two wheels… should be rejected absolutely.

The constant need to preserve one’s balance may perhaps be a source of pleasure to those who are skilled in the art of gymnastics, but the velocipede can only become an important aid for daily use if models with three and four wheels are designed and built. Generally speaking, people are not very fond of propelling themselves forward with their feet.

It’s a well-known fact that the vigorous movements made by the lower extremities while the rider is seated have even now frequently given rise to ailments of the lower part of the body. Ladies cannot make use of their feet in such a manner without offending against decency.’”

“We do not share those opinions and consider that the two-wheeler driven by the movements of the legs has by far the best chance of success, while the use of the three-wheeler will remain restricted to the transportation of two or three persons, or of persons with a poorly developed sense of balance.”

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“In any case, tricycles sacrifice speed entirely to the safety of the rider. We are equally in disagreement with the recently published statement that ‘it must be regarded as Utopian if people think that the bicycle can ever be anything more than a means of amusement for the young’.”

“If we are not mistaken, plans are already afoot in Great Britain to equip the country postmen with bicycles, and the day is certainly not far distant when many workers will ride by bicycle from their remote homes to the factories in the large towns.”

“Here we show some of the latest models of bicycles and tricycles in the conviction that they will be used as ‘the horses of those who cannot afford a horse.’”

“The velocipede has all the advantages of a horse without possessing any of its disadvantages.

It costs nothing to maintain or feed. Only a slight effort is required to bring it into motion and in addition it provides a means of physical exercise which is as healthy as it is pleasant.”

2. A FAMILY BICYCLE, 1896 “Mr von Scheidt, of Buffalo, New York, is a frequent visitor to the Niagara Falls.

For these trips, of 15 to 20 miles, he uses a single bicycle on which he loads no fewer than four children. The cycle, a normal model of the make ‘Eclipse’, easily carries the total load of over 400 pounds.”

3. THE CYCLODROME, 1897 “One of the main attractions of this winter in Paris is the Cyclodrome invented by Monsieur Guignard. A bicycle placed on rollers is no longer a novelty since so many derive physical benefit from exercising on such a machine.

But the cycle champions owe it to Monsieur Hurel, a Paris entrepreneur, that a genuine cycle-race – including all the thrills and excitement of such an event – can now be held in complete safety, despite the most adverse weather conditions, on his indoor race-track.”

Four riders, four bikes.

“The roller underneath the rear wheel of each of the machines is linked both to a measuring instrument which records the speed as well as the distance covered and, in addition, to a miniature cycle with a midget rider moving on the replica of a cycle-racing track The movements of the four tiny cycles on the track correspond exactly to the distance covered by the real cycles on the rollers, thus permitting the spectators to watch the progress of the contest as closely as on a real race-course.

At the sound of a pistol-shot, the cyclists start.

Pedalling ever faster and faster, they bend forward over the handlebars. The needle of the speed-indicator creeps along the scale: 25 miles per hour, 30, 32… Cries of encouragement arise from the public, the contenders cast a stealthy glance at their speed-dials and intensify their efforts, they pedal faster, perspiration pours from their foreheads, their speed steadily rises… 35… 40 miles… One of them is slowly gaining on the others, his speed-indicator crawls towards the 45 mark and beyond… and to the accompaniment of loud cheers from the spectators he attains the enormous speed of 50 miles per hour!

The total distance to be covered being 30 miles, excitement still runs high among the crowd. When the winner finally crosses the finishing-line, the public burst into spontaneous applause to vent their enthusiasm over this brilliant sporting contest which, thanks to Monsieur Guignard’s Cyclodrome, could be held in spite of the severe snowfall and icy roads outside!”

4. A SOCIABLE FOR THREE PERSONS, 1883 Judging by the expressions on the riders’ faces, this one isn’t as fun as it looks.

7. TRICYCLE AND PRINTING-PRESS COMBINED, 1895

5. A HOME TRAINER, 1888 Turbo-training, 1880s style.

“An unusual vehicle has recently been observed in the streets of Paris: a complete, mobile printing-press!

The rear wheels of the tricycle have rims to which solid rubber tyres have been secured with strong, elastic bands: on its outer circumference, each tyre carries embossed printing-types enabling all sorts of short advertisements to be composed.

A tank behind the driver’s seat feeds the printing ink through a tube to rubber rollers in continuous contact with the rear wheels. Between these inking-rollers a rotating fan, driven from the wheels, blows a downward stream of air on to the street to free it from dust.

6. A PHOTOGRAPHIC TRICYCLE FOR TOURISTS, 1886 Nowadays on-board video is commonplace in cycling. But the godfather of GoPro was a good deal more cumbersome.

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In this way, the advertisement is printed on a clean background to make it legible for a prolonged period of time.”

8. A VELOCIPEDE SHOWER-BATH, 1897 “At the Bicycle Exhibition recently held in Paris, a prominent English bicycle-manufacturer introduced a fascinating novelty, the ‘Velo-douche.’

This device combines the morning wash with a means of keeping in training, and remaining in condition, in a truly ideal way. It is, in fact, a combination of a bicycle and a shower-bath which does not waste the driving power created by pedalling, but uses it to drive a rotating pump which forces up water from a tank.

The harder one pedals, the more powerful the flow of water. A heater can also be placed below the water-tank, thus making it possible to take a hot shower-bath. In our opinion the Veto-douche will prove a particular asset in the cycling clubs and cycling schools which have been set up in such numbers.”

Victorian Inventions by Leonard de Vries, compiled in collaboration with Ilonka van Amstel, published by John Murray Press, 1971. (Text in quotation marks taken from the book). Sincerest thanks to John Murray for their assistance, and all respect to the late Leonard de Vries for bringing the book into being.

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The first real grip I ever got on things was when I learned the art of pedalling.

SEAMUS HEANEY