boneshaker
magazine
issue #4
Bicycle, a two-wheeled vehicle. Its forerunner was the dandy-horse or hobby-horse, invented by a German civil servant, Baron Drais, in Mannheim in 1818; the rider propelled himself forward by pushing one foot and then the other against the ground. Kirkpatrick Macmillan, a young blacksmith from Dumfries, fixed cranks to the axle of the rear wheel of the dandy-horse, and operated them with his feet by means of two long levers; this enabled him to ride without putting his feet on the ground.
www.simonpeplow.com
A German mechanic fitted pedals to the front wheel of the vehicle, and a Frenchman made the front wheel larger than the rear wheel in order to increase the speed. This was the so-called ‘bone-shaker’, which was developed into the penny-farthing when the front wheel was enormously enlarged.
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© nick hand
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Boneshaker believes in the power of words, the beauty of images and the love of cycling. This issue the happy hum of tyres on tarmac sings again across every page: life-changing tandem adventures, learning to love your punctures, the simple pleasure of bike-frame badges. We hear about the art of bike dance, bike design, even about bikes themselves making art – and so the simple, joyful convergence of bikes and beauty and life are reaffirmed. Welcome to Issue #4. Nick Hand www.slowcoast.co.uk
Contents
Brotherly love 4 Schwinn: The stay-bed 10 Headbadges 14 My beautiful bike 16 Tandem acts of kindness 18 The joy of cycling 26 Slowcoast soundslide 28 Coming around to going around 30 Father and son 34 Joseph L. Griffiths 36 Bratislava: The city that only cycled at weekends 38 Learning to love your punctures 44 We don’t need more cyclists... 48 Ride like a grrrrrl 50 ‘Passage’ 54 ‘Car racing at rush hour’ 56
contributors
words.....mike white, tony abatemarco, john mcfaul, laura laker, nick hand, tom southam, tom hornby, jan sifra, jet mcdonald, joseph l griffiths doug gordon, vicky richardson, esther perry, rado masaryk drawings.....simon peplow, evgenia barinova, bex glover, nicola meiring, harry sankey, christoph ohanian, nick willis, dale edwin murray, nick souček, emilio santoyo photos.....james ellerker, adam faraday, 45rpm, dom gill, nick hand, hubert m. van doorn, stine stensbak, phil dixon, jonathan maus, the spokes, jonathan atkinson, paul green, berco balog, matej zoldos, eva siva, denisa tothova
backpats and handclaps
fingerprint distribution, yael ben-gigi, linda oliver, look mum no hands, restrap, taylor bros & the bristol bike project crew
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. ©2011 Boneshaker. Printed on paper from sustainable sources by Taylor Brothers Bristol Ltd. 13-25 Wilder Street, Bristol BS2 8PY / www.taylorbros.uk.com Conceived by james lucas / Compiled & edited by jimmy ell, mike white and john coe Designed and published by coecreative / www.coecreative.com Cover imagery by adam faraday / www.adamfaraday.com Superhero rider by evgenia barinova / www.evgeniabarinova.com
Words Mike White Photography James Ellerker www.jamesellerker.com
Brotherly Love Boneshaker meets Will and James, the brothers behind London’s Brother Cycles.
Yes, Brother Cycles really is run by brothers. James is slumped in corner seat in Look Mum No Hands bike bar. He’s got a hangover, and his younger brother Will is gently ribbing him for it. There’s an easy bonhomie between the two, the kind of unspoken understanding that only a sibling’s shared history can bring. We share a coffee, then saddle up and roll out across the city, heading east to the canals and Saturday bustle of Hackney, where Brother will soon be leasing their first workshop. As we swoop through the traffic, they spin stories of boyhood derring-do, a shared love of sad and bad music, and a new frame they’ll be releasing later this year. Point your peepers at their blog for the latest on that...
www.brothercycles.com 6
Can you remember the first bike you fell in love with? WILL: Yeah I can and it remains to this day one of the coolest bikes I’ve ever had. It was towards the end of the 90’s and I was really into my downhill and dirt jumping, so I built up this insane Azonic DS-1. The thing had tyres like a motorbike and was indestructible... which was totally unnecessary as I was shit. I remember riding through Dupont Circle, a big courier hangout in Washington D.C., and all the messengers crowding round to look at it... at the time I thought their skinny track bikes were ridiculous... little did I know. JAMES: I’d like to say it was the Raleigh Mini-Burner we kept at our grandparents, but really that was our older brother Tom’s. So in all honesty it would be the Huffy 10-speed I got for Christmas after we moved out to the States. It weighed a tonne, but it was my first bike with gears and also my first taste of freedom as after much persuasion my parents let me ride to school on it everyday.
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“ I think we were in the pub talking about how it would almost be easier to just build our own frame than find affordable second hand ones. The idea just kind of stuck and a few years later here we are.�
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What’s your ride of choice now? JAMES: Sorry to be boring – but it has to be a Brother! I’ve built it up with a Sturmey 3-speed hub and moustache bars which just suit my riding style perfectly, and it’s super comfortable. It actually gets more comments than any other bike I’ve ridden, mainly from old men with beards. WILL: Surprise surprise - I ride a Brother as well! Although built up as a brakeless fixed gear, completely differently from James’... I’m saving for a Dawes Galaxy though to do some serious touring on. And your favourite place to ride? WILL: It has to be Epping Forest. I’ve only just discovered it really, but I love how one minute you’re riding through the gritty east end of London and the next you’re on long winding country lanes. Perfect place for a Sunday morning ride. JAMES: That’s a tough one. Certainly my favourite ride of 2010 was on a dusty old cruiser up and down the Venice and Santa Monica boardwalks. Crap bike, great location. How did you go from just appreciating bikes to thinking ‘hey - let’s have a go at designing one ourselves’? James and I have always been into bikes. Never quite as fanatical as we are now, but we’ve always loved them in some way or another. It was about 5 years ago, I think I was riding a Cannondale at the time and James was on one of the early Langsters. We were in Portobello Market and the slightly dodgy bike dealers had a nice old Raleigh. In hindsight it wasn’t anything special but at the time we thought the sleek steel frame and lugs were beautiful. So we bought it and converted it to a fixed gear – a couple of days later a mate was having dinner at ours and bought it off us. So we built another one, and again someone bought it off us – and this happened 4 or 5 times until we thought we may as well try and make a business out of it. We spent the next couple of years, through word of mouth and a basic website, building custom bikes for people with vintage road and track frames. This worked well for a while, but when fixed gear bikes started becoming really popular the price of old steel frames rocketed... stuff we were buying for £50 was suddenly nearer £150! People go crazy for anything which says ‘531’ on it. I think we were in the pub talking about how it would almost be easier to just build our own frame than find affordable second hand ones. The idea just kind of stuck and a few years later here we are. What past experience/training feeds into what you do now? JAMES: I’ve been building things all my life. I’ve always been of the opinion that if I can make it myself I’d rather that than pay someone else to do it for me. It was the same thing with bikes – after a load of restorations and conversions the next logical step was to have a go at building an actual frame. So I started by going on Dave Yates’ frame building course. It was one of the most
enjoyable and memorable weeks of my life -– I highly recommend it! That then gave me the confidence and know how to go on and start designing our own frames. What makes a great bike frame, in your opinion? JAMES: How long is a piece of string? I guess you have to ask what you want to use it for first and go from there. Also the frame is just the foundation for a bike, depending on how you build it up the results can be dramatically different. Our current bikes are a good example of this – same frame, totally different bikes. Oh and one other thing, I really believe you should try and get a frame that’s going to fit you. I’m amazed at all these guys riding tiny frames these days... WILL: It should say Brother on the seat tube. Does each of you have particular skills that you bring to the Brother team? WILL: Yeah for sure – James and I are really different in so many ways. James is a complete perfectionist, almost to the point of being obsessive. I’m much better with people, and promoting the company, but would probably make a load of mistakes if I had to design a frame on my own! It seems to make a pretty good combination though. What have been Brother’s proudest moments so far? WILL: One of the craziest moments was when our frame was featured in Esquire magazine’s fixed gear article, to see our work in such a massive publication was incredible. But I’ve got to say my proudest moment was when our first ever sale came in - to think a complete stranger liked our work enough to spend their money on our frame was a really incredible feeling. JAMES: For me it would be walking through Hyde Park last summer with my mum and seeing someone ride past on a Brother frame. It was the first time I’d seen one ‘in the wild’ since we’d launched and it gave me a real buzz. Any disasters/nightmares? WILL: Ha – to be honest there haven’t been too many issues (touch wood) so far. Although we did have a slightly awkward moment when the truck turned up with our first shipment of frames and the driver asked us to bring the forklift up to the back... who the hell owns a forklift?! Anyway we spent the next 3 hours carrying them down one by one as the driver looked on in amusement. Have the two of you battled much with sibling rivalry over the years? JAMES: I’d like to give you some juicy stories about the fights we’ve had over the years, but to be honest we’ve always got on really well and that’s still the case. Obviously we’ll have the odd disagreement but it usually gets resolved over a pint or two. Invariably one of us is wrong and just doesn’t want to admit it! 9
WILL ON JAMES
What’s your earliest memory of your James? I think it was actually James and our Dad teaching me to ride a bike over in America, I must have been about 4 at the time. Can you remember a time when he helped you through a dark time, or particularly made you feel proud or loved? Well it wasn’t exactly a dark time, but I remember at school in America the older kids used to have Coca Cola vending machined which we, the youngsters, weren’t allowed to use. Every now and then I’d see James and he’d give me a drink... all my friends were jealous as I had a cool older brother and I definitely felt really loved. Unlike lots of siblings who row and argue James and I have always been very close, our family have moved around a lot and I think this has made us stick together. Do you share similar tastes in most things? Any sharp or unexpected contrasts? Generally we are very similar – we’ll often turn up to things wearing the exact same clothes which is a bit embarrassing. Although as 10
you can see from our bikes we have gone for totally different styles! Do you assume distinct roles in Brother Cycles – is one of you the organised, bossy one, and the other a freewheeling, devil-may-care dreamer? Definitely – James is much more logistical and technical, so does the actual designing of the frames, shipping, accounts, web design etc. Whereas I suppose you could say I’m more marketing and PR (although I hate both those terms) – getting our frames out in the public eye, organising events, writing the blog, advertising, etc. As far as bossy-ness goes I’d say we both are – but just regarding different things. I think we’re both dreamers... which is why Brother Cycles started in the first place. If he was a bicycle, what would he be? Look at the picture of James’ bike... it sums him up perfectly. Stylish, well fitting, perfectly made but with an element of the ‘old man’ about it!
JAMES ON WILL
What’s your earliest memory of your Will? I’m six years older than him, so my earliest memories are of Will as a baby when he didn’t have a lot to say for himself. He certainly made up for that when he got older. Can you remember a time when he helped you through a dark time, or particularly made you feel proud or loved? As the older brother I guess I’ve always adopted more of the protector role. These days though things are a bit more even and we help each other out all the time. Basically he’s my best buddy and I know he’ll always be there if I need him.
Do you assume distinct roles in Brother Cycles – is one of you the organised, bossy one, and the other a freewheeling, devil-may-care dreamer? Very much so, I guess you’d say I do the technical and logistical stuff whereas Will is responsible for the communications, promotion and basically just getting out there and meeting people. Having said that we do consult each other on most decisions so it always feels like a team effort. If he was a bicycle, what type would he be? A Swiss military bicycle.
Do you share similar tastes in most things? Any sharp or unexpected contrasts? In many ways we’re really very similar - strangely so sometimes. But I do think we see life through slightly different filters. He likes happy music and I like sad music, that pretty much sums it up.
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A short story by Tony Abatemarco
The year after my mother died was quite a transitional one. Though I had made up my mind to function independently and fend for myself as an adult, biology had another plan. I was eleven years old. My father went through the motions of his previous routine, but he was derailed. A wayward man, too full of self-blame for a time to be present for his youngest son’s initiation into manhood, he deferred his remaining parental obligations to his grown daughter. My older, married sister and her husband took on the daily administration of me. Somehow, I didn’t resent this. In fact, I was happy to be supervised by a couple almost as young as I was. They were nearly of my generation. They understood how rock and roll could give expression to the chaos that had become a logical reaction to the atomic world. The post-war world. They were ‘with it’. They were expecting. They had charge of me. As an added bonus, the birth of their first was timed perfectly with the advent of my coming of baby-sitting age. For nearly two years, we lived in my mother’s house; my sometime father, my sister and brother-in-law, their infant son, and me. Seven months after my mother’s death in that house, in her own bed, my twelfth birthday came.
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Illustrations by Bex Glover www.severnstudios.co.uk
Throughout the years we lived on Tenth Avenue, a tradition of hiding big special presents in the two-car garage had been established. There was a door that led from our den directly into that garage, so you didn’t need to brave the elements to get in and out of the cars. One birthday I found a large gift-wrapped object there of indefinable shape which turned out to be a beautifully refurbished old schoolhouse desk with attached chair. For my parents’ anniversary my mother discovered a brand new white Ford Falcon parked in the spot where her old car used to be. She loved that new car – the second and improved model of Ford’s new compact line – and drove all over Long Island in it, sometimes getting lost for hours. Years later, that Falcon would be transferred to me so that I could get lost.
to me at that time. But the real wonders were in the style of both the seat and the handlebars. The seat was called a ‘banana seat’ because of its elongated shape and the handlebars rose in a ‘V’ over the front end of the bike, with red plastic streamers dangling from either of its white grips. What a conveyance! How did my family know that stylistically, this bike was on the cutting edge of cool? And me upon it… it was as if I, in my chinos and penny loafers and Madras shirt, astride my gleaming new two-wheeler, was photo-ready for the cover of the next Beach Boys’ album. I would be the envy of every teen in New Hyde Park the moment our garage doors opened for my maiden voyage next day.
“ What I hoped it contained was less than what I got. I had hoped for a new bike. I got the Cadillac of bikes. The Schwinn.” But this year, 1964, when I turned twelve, I opened the garage door early in the morning not really expecting much of anything, and I got a bike. A brand new, bright red and white Schwinn. It was still in the box when I first saw it, but I knew what it was despite my sister’s careful wrap job. You always know what’s in those boxes at the key passages in life. For a woman, there’s no mistaking the box that contains her engagement ring. I’m sure that there are still some male executives on the brink of retirement with X-ray specs who don’t have to tear the paper to know what’s inside when the company hands them their kiss-off Rolex. I knew beyond any doubt that my bike was in that box. What I hoped it contained was less than what I got. I had hoped for a new bike. I got the Cadillac of bikes. The Schwinn. That night, after cake and candles, we slipped on our jackets and braved the chill of March permeating the garage. My brother-in-law did most of the assembling with my father and me assisting. It was a bit complicated following the instruction manual, but even in the most rudimentary stages, tearing through plastic bags to expose the individualized parts, I could tell that no expense had been spared. The body of the frame gleamed with a glossy cream-colored veneer across which the embossed Schwinn logo stood out in deep blood-red. The fenders were the same color as the logo, with cream trim. Handsome reflectors were screwed in place behind the seat and on the silver book carrier over the rear fender. There were three speeds, adjustable by turning the left hand grip while in motion; a technological innovation
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I would be hailed from block to block on my trusty metallic Palomino! Hail, Lancelot! Knight of the Motherless Adventure! Vanquisher of Grieving Time. All Hail! And with a pocketful of crisp dollar bills folded in my brand new calfskin wallet, that is what I did next afternoon. Vanquished grieving. It was an unseasonably warm though overcast day as I activated the automated garage doors open after school and set out in chinos and madras on my new Schwinn on a quest to purchase some ‘Top Ten’. Caldor’s was the store. It lay a few towns over, in Roslyn. It was always stocked with the biggest selling records. It took about twenty minutes to pedal there. I knew, since I had done it once or twice before on my old, single-speed bike, huffing and puffing all the way. This day, I glided and flew. I switched gears, rising up difficult inclines with ease. I out-distanced the two envious friends who accompanied me, no sweat, my plastic streamers flapping and crackling ‘so long, suckers’ as I gave those kids the slip time and again. My Schwinn was a thing of beauty. It emboldened and enlivened. I grew brazen. I tackled tight curves and launched myself from precipitous curbing, the shock easily absorbed. In the last blocks before the superstore’s inclined parking lot entrance, I even considered standing on my seat as my downhill velocity picked up, but thought better of it. Not for that first outing. But soon.
Cheerily, blithely, we three friends parked our bikes in the rack outside the store and headed in to scan the bins of hits. Murray the K and his Swinging Soiree, our chosen radio host and show, spun the AM hits we craved most, and with six or seven vinyl 45’s under my arm packed in triple-bag protection so they wouldn’t crack in my rear fender book carrier, we hurried out to the parked bikes to get home before the sun went down. We would still have time before dinner and homework to lie around my den and listen to ‘Where Did Our Love Go’, ‘Under the Boardwalk’, ‘Do Wah Diddy Diddy’, ‘A World Without Love’, ‘Wishin’ and Hopin’’, and my favorite #One Hit of the moment and anthem extraordinaire to my new wheels, The Beach Boys’ ‘I Get Around’. The Schwinn was gone. I hadn’t locked it, though I had the equipment to do so. I had been too cocksure, too excited with the great ride and prospect of my new purchases to bother. My friends’ old bikes were there, unlocked, parked where they had left them to either side of a now-empty slot. But theirs were not taken. Theirs were not worthy of the taking. My Schwinn was. I began walking, the wind knocked out of me. My friends solemnly walked their bikes alongside in solidarity. I didn’t bother looking for the Schwinn. I knew it was gone. Anyone could have taken it. Someone did. It was too cool to resist, a masterpiece like that. A block or two on, I cried like a baby cries but I kept walking, inconsolable. Eventually, I accepted when one of my friends offered for me to ride side-saddle on his bike as he struggled to pedal our combined weight home. Walking in, near dark, having parted from my friends with nary a nod, I faced the impossible. My sister, standing at the stove with her baby on her hip, knew in an instant what had happened, and turned away from me. She didn’t need to say what she saw on my face. I think she may have mumbled, “I can’t talk to you”, steam rising toward her beautiful cheeks as she tilted her sad visage toward the task of stirring a pot. The baby looked happy to see me. I went upstairs. Since my older brother had married I had inherited his
bedroom. The attic room. It was a long, A-shaped room, painted mint green at the top of the house, with two sash windows dressed in Venetian blinds. I left my triple-bagged 45’s on the dresser near the windows, unplayed. I took off my penny loafers and got into bed fully dressed. I pulled up the covers. I dove down deep. I sank below the world up in the attic. A fever dream of sometime moving shadows in broken parallel lines, as day merged into night merged into morning. A stay-bed, I lit no lamp. I took no food. My sister came and left with trays, with water. A figment of God’s grace. My pieta. Three days, the house below me vibrated with life and then went still; vibrated awake and ground to stillness. I was nowhere to be found among the movement. Eventually I rose. I peed a little blood. I descended to the kitchen to report it. My father was there, the baby on his knee. “Puberty” he said. “It’s natural.” I sat with him. So commenced my thirteenth year. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Los Angeles-based Tony Abatemarco writes, teaches, and creates theatre internationally. He also has a long list of film and tv credits and can be reached directly at abatemail@aol.com
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Headbadges by 45rpm
www.thebearded45.co.uk
Illustration Nicola Meiring / www.nicolameiring.com
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Words John McFaul / www.mcfaulonbikes.com
I don’t have just one, I have many. Not as many as friends of mine, but enough. One for every terrain perhaps. I don’t differentiate between disciplines you see. Riding is riding. I simply ride. It’s in the doing that I find love, pain, fatigue, overcoming and release. All those things and much, much more. A crummy metaphor for life I suppose, in its simplistic form. I don’t do downhill though, that never ticked any of my boxes. I don’t find my soul whilst hurtling downhill at speed. Well, I do to a certain extent but it doesn’t harbour that struggle that I always gravitate towards. Downhill is, for the most part, fun. Life isn’t ALWAYS fun! I’m a designer, art director and creative consultant. I had led a very successful creative agency up until April 2010 and then at the ripe old age of 37, after 15 years, I decided to go it alone once more and bring a bit more life back to the tumult that is my existence. For the last god-knowshow-long I have had one thing in mind and that one thing was making McFaulStudio the best creative agency in the business. Whether we were or not is of no interest to me now. I don’t care for the accolades or the associations. I know what we did and how we went about our business and I certainly would not have changed a thing. Well, a couple of things perhaps but hey, how good can things get? Along the way we had some unimaginably great times and incredible opportunities and I thank everyone both within the company and outside for making it so. Early this year though, now with two beautiful children, I had something of a breakdown. Maybe breakdown isn’t the right term; I didn’t actually breakdown... I just began to see. An awakening then. I began to see the things that weren’t right. I wasn’t loving it. I wasn’t getting out of it what I was putting in. I was out of balance. I had lifted the carpet and under there was everything I had chosen not to acknowledge these past 15 years whilst busy 24/7 : a lot of shit! I had forgotten who I was. The industry had made a monster out of me. It was using me. It does that. It doesn’t care for life. I do! Throughout tough times I have always had my family and friends. My wonderful partner Rachel, who I’ve been with for so long now, and latterly with our two beautiful little girls make up my unit. Close friends too. I wear my heart on my sleeve (obviously!), and together we can talk troubles through. Sometimes we can work them out. On occasion though, some things are simply too big to even begin to discuss. Early 2010 was certainly that sort of time... a time when I just wanted to be alone as I couldn’t actually articulate my problem even if I had wanted to. I needed to ride. Riding defines me. The process of riding a bike is my every sinew. I love my bikes. They are my pride and joy. Riding has provided me with the highest highs and the
lowest lows. A bike isn’t simply a vehicle of choice for me, it is my tonic to much of what life chooses to dish out... or at least it affords me time to think, which in this day and age, ladies and gentlemen, is a luxury in itself. Early in 2010 I spent a lot of time on my bikes. The studio knew something was seriously wrong! There was of course, and my relief was hour upon hour in the saddle on road and trail. I was riding mile after mile seeking answers without really knowing the questions. I just knew things had to change. I wanted my life back. I wanted to smile more and bring that smile home to my family every night. I owe them that, surely. They don’t want to see me so depressed, stressed, fed up and working all hours. I’m not a young man anymore (well, I am really, but not as young as I once was you understand) and I can’t do what I used to do. I have bigger responsibilities now too. So, I suppose, it was all these things that were burning a hole in my heart. I did find answers. Amusingly, the studio blog at the time caused a bit of a stir when I wrote the ‘29/04/10 – my first day’ post. Some thought I’d finally gone mad. Quite the contrary, I could see for the first time in a long, long time. I could see past the facade. I wanted no more of the surface and bullshit. I found my answers and I’m still finding them daily. My beautiful bicycles are more than ‘just for riding’. They make me who I am. They educate me. They facilitate my understanding. Of course it’s just a machine; a vehicle on which to delve deep and lose oneself but it’s a necessity for me. Indeed, sometimes I find myself so lost in emotion and thought that distance and time are of no consequence. Riding the Marmotte back in 2009 I was reduced to tears up the final climb of Alp D’Huez. I don’t fully understand the whys? I wasn’t too well on that ride. I’d had a chest infection and was advised not to ride. I had to though, as I don’t get to ride in the Alps too often! Crying though? What was that all about? A confirmation that I’m bloody good at something perhaps. In fact, not just good…on my day I’m great! I don’t mind admitting that either. Physically below par I still managed this flagship course in good time. I know it. Its in my genes; my father was a rather classy rider too. Perhaps that is baggage in itself. I lost him when I was 21. Large suitcase of baggage there, but baggage I’ll leave for another time... If I don’t ride I am grumpy and my smile loses its shape and slowly turns to a frown. I don’t like seeing myself sporting a frown and neither does my family. McFaulStudio is now virtual and only undertaking projects that I fancy. It’s where John McFaul does art & design stuff. He is also an art director and creative consultant where the same rules apply, working with like-minds and those who I believe in. It’s a little too good to be true, but that’s what I have chosen and the bikes keep telling me I’m doing the right thing. 19
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Words Mike White Pictures Dom Gill
“ I BEGAN THIS JOURNEY HUNGRY TO PROVE THAT I COULD DO IT, THAT I WAS STRONG ENOUGH TO SURVIVE, FULL OF MACHISMO. SLOWLY, EVER SO SLOWLY, MY PRIORITIES CHANGED, AND I LEARNT THE REAL WORTH OF THIS JOURNEY. COMPANY. SHARING. FAITH IN THOSE AROUND YOU WHEREVER YOU ARE…”
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ime was when adventure came easy. Much of the world lay unexplored, uncharted, unknown. Those brave souls seeking sights unseen could follow a battered brass compass in almost any direction and find themselves off the map before too long. Not any more. When bold adventurer Dom Gill stood before potential backers of a journey he had in mind – to cycle, unaided, the 20,000 or so miles from the northernmost tip of Alaska to the most southerly bit of South America, and make a film of it – the response was little more than a shrug. “Not exciting enough.” Not different enough to capture the imagination of today’s demanding adventure fans. So a bolder, madder plan was concocted, a plan which would make up for the landscape’s lack of ‘unknown’ with an utterly unknowable factor: strangers. Dom decided to make the ride on a tandem, but (here’s the clever bit) he’d set out alone, and fill the rear seat with random folks picked up along the way. He had only one rule – always say ‘yes’. If someone wanted to join him, they did. And thus began an almighty voyage into the unknown, a voyage that became as much about the people along the way – and, perhaps more importantly, about the spaces between those people – as it was about the miles covered. That voyage in turn gave rise to another, further journey into what it is we do and don’t know about ourselves. So this is a tale of not one but two adventures. Dom’s adventuring spirit had always been there – “it’s my mum’s fault. I would have probably been very happy with a nine to five if she hadn’t carted me up Snowdon when I was about four; I remember when we went up again when I was something like nine, Mountain Rescue reported us as missing in the worst weather in years... By the time I was eleven or 22
twelve she was taking me up the Alps. Ever since then I’ve had the disease of adventure.” It was five or more years ago now that Dom decided he “wanted to do a big adventure”, and having cycled from Vancouver to San Francisco before, he decided he’d go one better, and do the whole American land mass, both continents, North to South on this stranger-powered tandem – a mission that was to become known as ‘Take a Seat’. The plan was to make a film of the trip, so as well as the 100 or so kilos of bike and trailer, his handlebars and frame were rigged with camera grips and battery packs. He set off on ‘Achilles’ the tandem (a rugged-looking Thorn) in June 2006 ‘with lots of school-boy bravado’, through the barren tundra of Alaska. “I was thinking, ‘I’m pretty tough. I’ll cycle this damn bike all the way on my own’, but within four or five days I had become quite humble. I realised that I was extremely lonely, and from that point onwards, from the point of meeting my first partner, my aim of just getting to the bottom of South America and making a documentary very much changed.” Dom began to realise that his journey was to become “about getting as much as I could from just learning about humanity, and hopefully inspiring people along the way.” And so it proved to be. As Dom’s tandem snaked further south, pedalling by day, pitching his tiny tent by night - or staying with the good people he met - he found the true sustenance of humanity is not food, but friendship. Through snow-blasted wilderness, thigh-burning hill climbs, sweat-trickling jungle he went. Hailstorms, lightning storms, snowstorms. Flies, mudslides and a thousand punctures. Dom and his irregular stream of companions kept on. Tank crews and toddlers, travellers and tribespeople. Alone
as often as he was in company, he wound his unhurried way through fifteen countries, filming each new sunrise, storm and breathtaking vista as he went, and diligently recording the highs and lows, the friendship, heartbreak, delirium and despair in his journal. By the time he’d reached his destination, Ushuaia, at the very tippiest toe of Patagonia, he’d had 270 proper riding companions, “but there were probably 500 or 600 more along the way - kids that jumped on, whooping through villages, random people that took a ride round a parking lot.” The ‘always say ‘yes’’ rule was a brave one. “I took it as a really important lesson in tolerance, to accept everyone and then learn how to deal with it. There were ways I would gently dissuade people - if I was worried about some 500lb American getting on the back of the bike I would do my best to be fairly negative about the journey. But there was only one that I wasn’t entirely happy about having on the back – a very young French-Canadian traveller up in Northern Canada, who turned out to be an obnoxious 18 year-old telling me how to live my life. And not only doing that but also not pedalling the weight of him and his forty kilos of hemp, or courgettes, or whatever was in that bag of his. When, after a day of cycling, he woke up the next morning and told me he hadn’t slept a wink and couldn’t carry on with me, I wasn’t actually all that upset!” More often though, the problem was the opposite the repeated closeness and loneliness began to take its toll. “Countless times I’d make such a good friend that I just didn’t want to say goodbye. Friendship’s an interesting thing on the road. I noticed myself getting into a habit – after a period of intense loneliness I would arrive in a town and I’d want to rest. And with rest I would also want companionship. So I would meet people and absorb them into my heart and soul much,
much quicker than I would’ve done at home, because I wanted something to counteract the loneliness. Then a week later I would sort of break my own heart, by forcing myself to move on. The huge loneliness of the road was only made worse by the fact that a few hours before I was sitting amongst new found friends. And this cycle repeated again and again – it became like a bit of a drug. Probably the most profound, damaging and intense aspect of my journey.” This level of intensity brought with it a kind of timewarp, until the journey felt like “a life and all its emotions concertinaed into two years. When there was peak in happiness it was just as high as a lifetime’s highest moment, and when there was a trough it was similarly low, but they were within days of each other, not years.” The surprising thing is that in all the miles, the months, the moments of close contact with strangers, only once did Dom feel threatened. Heading through Mexico, he’d been invited to camp in the yard of a friendly old fisherman. They were swapping stories, the grandchildren playing all around, singing. Then the drunken, macho son of the household pulled up in his car, and ended up going after Dom with a rusty machete. Dom was on his bike and off down the road “feeling the hairs on the back of [his] neck prick with fight or flight adrenaline.” And yet, once his nerves had calmed and he was safely away, Dom – in his trademark philosophical way - put the danger into perspective. “It’s funny; that was probably the only human interaction that scared the crap out of me. If there’s a message from this journey that I would like to transmit to the world it’s the fact that in two and a bit years I met tens of thousands of people and only one of them threatened to hurt me. And that in a world that is plagued by this relentless stream 23
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of bullshit bad news is something to think about.” The challenges of making your own documentary on the hoof are not inconsiderable. Dom rode without a camera unit and so for each spectacular vista that opened before him, he’d stop, set up the camera by the road, then cycle past it again to get the shot. “I probably ran about 150 miles, just running ahead, putting the camera down, running back to the bike, cycling past, dropping the bike, picking the camera up again.” But the solo effort was crucial: “as soon as you have a camera unit with you people’s reactions change. You can’t view reality with a film crew. I don’t think there are many other examples of what I do - most other sort of ‘alone-across-Australia’ documentaries and they get 25 hours footage while they’re doing it and then go back later on motorbikes and get all the rest. But my budget wouldn’t quite extend to that.” There were two big soul-changes Dom carried with him after ‘Take a Seat’. The first was about trust. “If I had to be a preacher, and some people accuse me of being one sometimes, I’d encourage people to take the leap of faith with each other. I find I get back to this country, or even the States, and people
sleeping bag’s worth of floorspace at the waitress’s house. At nine o’clock sharp the next morning, Ernie was waiting “in his freshly ironed, ancient looking cycle wear” and the two of them cycled 60 miles to Santa Barbara together. “He nearly died on the way but he was incredibly happy, really pleased to be getting out and doing stuff again.” Ernie, you see, was 70, and suffering from chronic, progressive leukaemia. “He told me on the way that six months ago to that day his wife had died of a long, painful illness. He’d been in a pit of despair ever since, and he thought that the ride would help turn that around. And you know what? We got to the end of that day and he’d turned some kind of a corner.” Ernie was glowing at the achievement, and in the weeks that followed, a small newspaper article was written about the trip, which ended up in the hands of Ernie’s longestranged son and daughter, who contacted him for the first time in 30 years, healing the family rift. Dom began to realise that this trip could really be something special for people, much more than a foolhardy adventure and a marketable film.
“ I’VE REALISED I DON’T WANT TO MAKE DOCUMENTARIES ABOUT SOLO ADVENTURES. I WANT TO INVOLVE PEOPLE, TO SHOW THAT YOU CAN GET UP AND SQUEEZE WHAT THERE IS OUT OF LIFE IF YOU WANT TO.” are unwilling to trust even their own neighbours. I didn’t do it because I’m some kind of a wise man, I did it because I had to. I wouldn’t have been able to eat or sleep or anything else if I hadn’t trusted everyone around me. And when I did do it, I found that the benefit was so great that it would be ridiculous not to do it in future – we only stand to gain from it.” The second was that a journey of this kind – a collaborative, cooperation-dependent endeavour, can, perhaps unsurprisingly, bring out the best in others. “I’ve realised I don’t want to make documentaries about solo adventures. I want to involve people, to show that you can get up and squeeze what there is out of life if you want to.” And that leads us nicely onto Dom’s second adventure – ‘The Dom and Ernie Project’. When Achilles the tandem paused in Lompoc, California, Dom met Ernie Greenwald. “I was sitting in an ice-cream parlour trying to sweet-talk my way into the waitress’s house for the night, when I saw this old-looking man outside examining my bike. So I went out and chatted to him, and though he seemed very frail, he said that forty years previously he’d been a very keen cyclist and he’d even planned to cycle across the States with a friend.” But that was decades ago and life had overtaken Ernie. Dom suggested that he join the ‘Take a Seat’ challenge for the next day’s ride on to Santa Barbara. “At which point he said ‘No, I couldn’t possibly do that’. He was scared, I think.” Ernie reeled out the same dog-eared excuses that most of us come out with: commitments, paperwork, stuff to be done. “I told him that I’d be in that cafe for another half hour in case he changed his mind. He wandered off. I couldn’t believe it when I actually saw him again twenty minutes later and he said ‘I would really regret it if I didn’t take this opportunity, so I’m going to come with you.’” Meanwhile Dom the charmer had secured a
Once he was home again in the UK, editing hours of footage, struggling to write the accompanying book, Dom’s thoughts returned to Ernie and his lifelong wish to cross the States by bike. The leukaemia greatly reduced Ernie’s oxygen capacity – but with a tandem, Dom reasoned, it might just work. He started hunting around for the right machine, and settled upon a German-made Hase Pino Tour which Dom took to calling Huckleberry. Huck was a tandem with a fully recumbent front seat, the pilot sitting upright behind. The key benefit was that the front-rider could free wheel while the pilot carried on working at the back. Eventually, Dom sourced funding off the success of ‘Take a Seat’ (the film went on to win awards and the book’s selling well), and Ernie was “obviously very anxious, but still keen.” Dom got to work organising it all, flew out to the States and shot a pilot film with Ernie. “He wasn’t all that fit but we figured that with a good little bout of chemotherapy he’d be good enough to make the journey.” In June 2010, Dom flew out again, this time for the real thing. But it soon became clear that Ernie wasn’t doing well. “I refused to believe the trip couldn’t go ahead. I just carried on telling him to look after himself. Subsequent screening revealed Stage 1 prostate cancer as well, and Ernie was taken into hospital in Santa Barbara. Dom was forced to accept that Ernie wouldn’t be coming along, but he still didn’t give up. “Not me! I was thinking he could perhaps join me for the last stage of the trip, in a few months time, and started to scramble together the plan of inviting other disabled people to join me in the mean time.” The original departure date came and went. Two weeks later, Dom had found a companion to cycle the first leg from Santa Monica to Las Vegas with, and the trip grew wheels again. 25
They set sail on Independence Day, leaving Santa Monica in high summer, the thermometer creeping past 120º as they crossed the desert. The first front rider, Ryan, had suffered a traumatic brain injury from a car accident a few years previously. “His balance was off, but that really only affected his walking – and getting out of the tent in the morning was always a spectacle. He was a very funny guy, not least because the filter between what he thought and what he said had completely disappeared; he had none of those firewalls to prevent unsuitable things from coming out of his mouth. We all think these things but most of us don’t say them.” After Ryan there was Carlos, a visually impaired student (and aspiring triathlete) from Salt Lake City. After him came two brothers, Warren and Chad Woodbury – both of whom are living with the muscle-destroying condition MMD. Warren rode for a day – Warren for a record-breaking 24 days. They were camping in the grounds of a deserted school on a hill top. “It had swings and a rusty roundabout – there’s something very sinister about a children’s playground when it has no children in it! A little bit Hitchcock.” Dom checked his emails and found one from the hospital in Santa Barbara saying, ‘We have tried to get in touch with Ernie’s family but can’t find their contact details.’ Ernie was worsening. Dom gave them all the information he had, still hoping for the best. “A week later I was sitting watching Old Faithful in Yellowstone and we got the call that Ernie had died. Of course it wasn’t out of the blue or anything, but I was incredibly sad, because part of me had never really given up hope of him joining us for the last leg, and seeing him live out that dream.” Pulling himself together, Dom pressed on, always heading east, picking up a total of ten people with a range of challenging conditions along the way. “I figured that’s what Ernie would have wanted more than anything. His initial inspiration had allowed ten other people to each experience a piece of his longed-for adventure.” This trip was very different to Take a Seat – there was, through necessity, a support driver, and Dom’s girlfriend Nadia, along with various companions along the way. So loneliness wasn’t an issue this time. But the logistical difficulties were greater, meticulous organisation paramount. “It was much less free and much harder work than the first journey, but there were some amazing highs. Probably the best was going through the desert in Nevada. It was stunning, the emptiness. It was the closest we got to the wilderness, and camping and survival, which is what I really like. But the heat was also incredibly unpleasant – the thermometer up in the 120s by day, and hardly dropping at night. Huge tracts of North America are just phenomenally beautiful. Going through Yellowstone and Pennsylvania - by the time we got there it was autumn.” Dom smiles as he realises that if they’d left when they’d originally planned, they wouldn’t have seen those autumn colours – “it was like a parting gift. We couldn’t have planned it better if we had tried.” As with ‘Take a Seat’, Dom’s journey became defined by the relationships he built on the road, though there were plenty of challenging moments. “I’m not going to say that it wasn’t incredibly frustrating. It often was. Not least because of the emotional and psychological baggage that frequently goes with a disability. I hadn’t foreseen that really; I thought it would be a case of helping them pedal and they would be happy. It’s a lot more complicated than that.” Sometimes he found his companions were “slightly deluded as to their level of ability,” and thus got a shock when their on-tandem performance failed to match up to (their own) expectations. “It just made it much more of a challenge for me, after 7 or 8 hours cycling, usually for my weight and most of their weight, trying to be all 26
philosophical and friendly at the end of the day, when actually all I wanted to do was ensure that they didn’t get back on the bike! But it was a massive learning opportunity for me to deal with this, to rise above it.” Naturally, the journey was a huge challenge for the front riders too. Take Jimmy Klingle, an Iraq war veteran in his late twenties who survived a rocket-propelled grenade attack, returned to the frontline and was blown up again by a roadside bomb. Left with Traumatic Brian Injury and several broken vertebrae, Jimmy nonetheless rose to the challenge of three straight days of hills and rain helping Dom get from Cleveland to Pittsburgh. Take Rachel Swanson – a smiling 31 year-old with cerebral palsy, who Dom met through Bicycle Bill’s shop in West St. Paul, Minnesota. “We knew she wouldn’t be able to pedal very hard, but I’d overlooked the fact that her feet wouldn’t even be able to reach the pedals!” Make-shift wooden blocks were fixed in place to make up the shortfall. Rachel was probably the most severely disabled we rode with, so she only joined us for a three- or fourday stretch. But it turned out that despite her severe disability, she was so free of emotional baggage that we would have happily carried on with her indefinitely.” Dom’s last companion was Amy, a professional dancer and yoga teacher whose fourteen years living with Multiple Sclerosis had left her “at the very peak of psychological anxiety. She had got used to these pathways in her brain that told her she could do this and couldn’t do that. For instance she just decided, for no very sensible reason, that she couldn’t put on her jacket when she was sat on the bike.” This is where Dom’s girlfriend Nadia’s “special powers” came in useful. “The females would have been impossible if Nadia hadn’t have come along,” says Dom. “She was able to give Amy a good talking to, basically, saying ‘Listen, we’re not going to put up with this.’ People respond to that and sometimes it’s the only way of progressing.” By the time they pedalled into New York at journey’s end, both riders were utterly exhausted, “but Amy was very grateful that we had just bitten the bullet and got on with it.” Dom’s typically candid about how hard it was: “I was so pleased to see the back of her as far as the bike was concerned, which is a sentiment I’ve stopped feeling bad about. But we did what we said we were going to do. She made it to the end and had herself a fairly profound experience I think, and so mission accomplished.” The challenge of other people brought home another truth for Dom. “When you look behind every large so-called idyllic adventure, you can break that down. There’s no such thing as a completely happy family, and I don’t think there’s such thing as an idyllic adventure.” Was it a relief to be finished, then? “Yes and no,” Dom says with a rueful laugh. “I don’t like endings. When there’s an ending there’s a hole where you want a new something. We arranged to finish beside the fountain in Central Park, but Nadia and I got split up, and I somehow got there ahead of her. So I actually ‘finished’ three times, cycling round and round the fountain until the camera could film us both together. There was a lovely bunch of school children from Washington High that had made signs and banners, and they held them up every time I came past, cheering more each time, until we got the perfect ending!” After all those miles and smiles, trials and tribulations, Dom’s very definite about what he’s learned. “In a funny way, it’s proved what I’ve always bandied around, which is that anyone can have an adventure like this, with a little help. People say that I did a lot for these people; they wouldn’t have been able to do it without me. But that’s not true. They had the strength of mind to be able to think ‘I’m going to give this a go’ and they pedalled and they camped and they got there. All they needed was a little help to get started.”
THE ‘TAKE A SEAT’ BOOK IS OUT NOW. ‘THE DOM AND ERNIE PROJECT’ BOOK AND FILM WILL BE FINISHED SOON. CHECK WWW.DOMINICGILL.ME FOR UPDATES. 27
Words Laura Laker / lauralakergraph.blogspot.com
My bike is like a set of wings. Moving fast enough for the journey to be fun, yet slow enough to savour my surroundings, flying around on two shiny wheels I have a unique perspective on my city. Travelling without walls opens up a host of sensory treats for me, from the smell of a hot tarmac when it starts to rain, to passing parks full of trees and their mysterious, earthy aroma. Wood smoke in winter takes me far away to the peaceful countryside and the smell of food can evoke distant exotic places, each breath transient and changeable as the wind brings us together and separates us again. It is all of these sights, smells and sounds that immerse the cyclist in every aspect of his or her environment. This relationship I have with the place we live is enhanced the more I understand it, helping me develop a unique respect for my city. The roads I pass offer up people from all walks of life doing things in public that they think no-one will notice, as much of urban life rushes by in cars. Out in the open, the air offers up snatches of conversation from the mundane to those that sound like classic one-liners I want to write down. From lovers on park benches, to the oddball having a solitary conversation as he strolls aimlessly along, on a bike, life in all its richness is laid out in front of me. While cycling we are uniquely a part of our surroundings. My early morning rides reveal a city waking up, when commuters stare blank-faced at bus stops, while the sky above is all reds and pinks and empty roads are like a playground as my world slowly gains its daily momentum. While shopkeepers unload deliveries, road sweepers go about their rounds like silent knights of street cleanliness,
and I imagine postmen being chased by small dogs. During office hours a different demographic fills the streets, though. My main cycle route takes me through a big, open park with elderly dog walkers, roaming crows and people without jobs to go to. There’s nothing quite like watching dogs run at full speed through fallen leaves, tumbling squirrels and balls in their wake. Then as the night draws in, London is a quieter, more magical place, belonging to cats and foxes who roam silent and beady-eyed in their nocturnal quests. Night rides reveal damp, secretive smells and a cool air of calm punctuated by excited voices from bars, clubs and wandering groups of young people. Midnight revellers stagger haphazardly home or simply stand swaying in the street, making for interesting games of dodgems. But the pull of cycling, the thing that puts a smile on my face is being able to travel as humans were meant to: independently, using our bodies. Unrestricted by traffic jams and able to see 360 degrees, anything is possible and everyone is your neighbour. The experience of travelling in packs is a worthy one. Not in long, depressing lines of fuming traffic moving in aggressive bursts, but in glorious glittering shoals. With a common interest, and pitted against the at times roaring traffic, cyclists gradually gather together in the morning along the city’s arteries, becoming one pedalling mass. Congregating centrally again after five, one by one they separate out and disappear into the night. A cyclist also knows the changing weather like no one else. From the gentle spray of watery mist to the torrential rain
Illustration Harry Sankey / www.harrysankey.co.uk
“A cyclist also knows the changing weather like no one else. From the gentle spray of watery mist to the torrential rain that pours down your face.”
that pours down your face, the more extreme the weather, the funnier the exchanges between riders. The world’s strongest gust may have you pushing for all you’re worth on the pedals, to little avail, but all it takes is a glance at the nearest rider and you’re both smiling. When it’s bitterly cold and there’s snow flying in your face like little icy pins, every cyclist is a fellow adventurer. No matter the weather I can have the satisfaction of glancing over my shoulder at the person next to me and with a knowing look remembering this is another of life’s rich experiences, where every day is a different variety. The homogenised climate behind the wheel of a car simply can’t replace that thrill. For a species so good at socialising it is satisfying, in a world increasingly dominated by cyber interaction where travel can be so solitary, to enjoy the simple pleasure of actually sharing your journey with another human being. The kind of solidarity one experiences on a bike is heartening, and if someone drives dangerously close to another cyclist, I try to offer some words of support. If someone’s tyre is flat or their clothes are dangling perilously near a wheel I don’t have to even wind down a window to let them know. Friends have told me innumerable stories about falling off and in every case another cyclist comes to their aid. Being on a bike you can pull up alongside someone and ask for directions at pretty much any time, and frequently I have directed someone or been directed while cycling with them. This is also a novel way to make friends. Indeed, cyclists are in a unique position to be a useful part of their communities and I often imagine that if I saw someone in trouble on my daily trips around London that I would step in and help. On my bike I
feel like I never felt before that this is my city; I know its intimate little back streets and I understand the people who travel them. I see its idiosyncrasies, some funny, some bewildering and like an old friend whom you know and love, if they were in trouble you would step in and help. Whereas drivers may see someone falling down or whose shopping has blown away and cannot intervene, a cyclist can merely put on the brakes, hop off and help. With no worries about disrupting the flow of traffic, parking, or realising you’re too far away by the time you’ve decided what to do. Cyclists are quick-response urban defenders. Recently I was cycling along the canal when I saw a man dashing towards me with a phone in his hand. Up ahead there was a crowd gathered around someone on the floor. It was a man who had fallen against the wall and his head was bleeding, and I realised the running man was calling an ambulance. Afterwards, I thought to myself that if I were to fall, I’d much rather it happens on a cycleway where people would stop, than on a busy road where everyone would likely just drive past. I think travelling in the open air engenders a responsibility for one’s environment that you cannot benefit from inside a metal box hurtling along a highway. Town planners are increasingly taking down railings that separate pedestrians from motor traffic because by removing physical separation you reduce risk-taking behaviour. In other words, people drive slower when they feel they must take responsibility for the safety of others. If there is nothing between you and the people and place around you, that very human instinct to be sociable and altruistic and to care for your world is unrestricted. 29
Dominique Lieb Puca Press Dingle, County Kerry
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In the summer of 2010, I completed a bicycle adventure around the coast of the British Isles by riding around Ireland. As before, I met, spoke with and recorded some of the artisans I met along the way; people with a passion for making or doing something. The resulting 100 or so little films are a homage to the inspirational people who live on our coastline. Boneshaker continues with its series of these encounters. Nick Hand, slowcoast.co.uk
“My name is Dominique Lieb. l was trained as a graphic designer in Lausanne in Switzerland and when I came here to Ireland, I got into contact with a man who ran this letterpress here in Dingle. He told me he wanted to sell it. My plan was just to stay for a year. But my daughter went to a school that was very good, so I decided to buy this press and to stay here. It was not very expensive. As far as I know, Puca Press is the only working letterpress printer in Ireland. There is a letterpress in Dublin, but it is in a museum. In the first year or two, I was mainly doing business cards and letterheads for local businesses and some invitations. But somehow the jobs got a bit less. There is also a copyshop in Dingle, and he’s a bit quicker. And then I am learning Irish as well. This is because my daughter has learnt Irish in school and I am interested in the language; it’s a nearly dead language, but I don’t mind. Through learning Irish, I got into contact with people who I wouldn’t normally. They are somehow very special people, farmers mainly, and poets. I found out that they were very good [Irish] speakers. I decided that if I do books, like these small book that I have here, then I would like to have the Irish language in the books. Because this is also somehow an exchange, I do the images and someone would write the text. And if it’s in Irish, then something new would somehow come out of it. This is now my main interest – to mix these two cultures. It’s a very slow process. It is labour intense. And then when I set these words and Irish texts so slowly with the letters, then this helps me learn the language. Yes, it’s hand-made, and I don’t mind if it looks hand-made. It should be done carefully and it should be clean, it’s a bit more heavy maybe. But I like this simple look. It looks a bit plain and no plastic, no gloss. You can really choose the paper, the material is more important. And then you have content, a story and images. It’s just different, I believe”. 31
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Words Tom Southam / www.tomsoutham.com
Illustration Christoph Ohanian / www.christophohanian.de
COMING AROUND TO GOING AROUND I can still clearly recall my first bike ride. When I say ‘bike ride’, I don’t mean just riding up and down my street, that’s just play, I mean the first time I went out just to ride my bike. You see, despite the fact I make my living riding a bicycle, simply going for a ride on my bike is something that I’ve hardly ever been able to do. That first ride would have been approximately six miles, on my red Bacini mountain bike (it was 12-speed, that was what mattered) on a Saturday afternoon with my old man. I was nine years old. I remember that ride so well and I think what makes it stand apart in my mind to this day was that I wasn’t yet a bike rider. I was just a kid, cycling just for the sake of cycling, and loving it. In going six miles I felt I had been on a voyage of discovery. There was only one real ‘hill’ and I remember every metre of it, trailing behind
my dad like the son in the fields of the Seamus Heaney poem, Digging. It felt like an epic struggle in his tyre-tracks, gaining ground, then losing it again, and losing some more, standing up out the saddle, then sitting. That climb of just a few hundred metres went on forever. All the while I remember pulling bits of bracken out of the hedgerow, clutching at it and yanking it out as I passed. I don’t know why I was dong this, maybe that childish love of wanton destruction. I loved it – my motion was enough that when I grabbed hold of something it would pull it free. All it determines is that I was definitely moving pretty slowly, and had no real concern as to going faster, I was just enjoying moving – on a bicycle. The idea of bike riding for the pure pleasure of it seemed to disappear quite quickly. I loved cycling instantly; I went straight out and sold my Sega Master System so I could buy a racing bike with thin tyres. I was a bike rider before I knew it. As soon as I started to want to get better, I wanted to race, and as soon as I wanted to race, I knew that every time I set off on my bike, it was for a reason. It was never a clear-cut thing. I didn’t instantly start putting lactate threshold intervals into my training rides, but I just had in my mind that I was going out there for a purpose. I would have the route mapped out in my head, and instead of thinking about what that route might unveil to me, or where I might arrive at the end of the day, I could only see the places where I would be fast or slow, where it would be difficult to keep the pace, where I would really be hurting, and where I might get to recover for a few kilometres. 33
All I would do on these rides was dream – as all kids with an imagination should do – I imagined the races I would one day win and imagined how I would win them. I invented scenarios, and raced imaginary foe. I loved these days growing up on a bike, but with that purpose in my mind; I was never riding for the love of cycling, I was riding for the love of racing. Throughout my career I avoided strict training methods like the plague. I used heart rate monitors only intermittently, have only ever put a powermeter on once and my attempts at keeping training diaries are sporadic at best. I rode my bike for a living to keep myself free from the shackles of a routine, but without knowing it the enjoyment of riding my bike had long since started to be lost to exactly that: routine. Becoming a pro-cyclist isn’t an easy thing. In my case it was the culmination of a lot of hard work and many steps down a long, tough road. I started racing at 12, as soon as I possibly could. I had secretly thought I would somehow magically win my first race and instead, sprinted it out with my now lifelong friend for last place. I lost that too, dead last, but was far from put off. For the next six years I raced all over the country and occasionally got to taste the real thing in Europe in my school holidays. Every spare moment was spent cycling, or racing or travelling. Eventually the time came when winning races became not just a possibility, but a certainty. I moved from the National Junior team, onto the newly founded World Class Performance Program and just never looked back. I left everything I knew aged 19 to go to France to try and make it, ignored University and friends and put everything into that elusive professional contract. The three tough years it took to make my way into the paid ranks could verge between Hell, hard and much worse. There was nothing simple, quick or 34
glamorous about learning the trade, taking beating after beating until eventually starting to come out on top and it was only from my third year in the Elite amateur category onwards, that I started to place in the top ten, and then win. It felt like it took so long, that when finally I caught the eye of an Italian pro team at a race in Germany and made the deal to sign my first real contract, it was simply confirmation for me, and I saw it as the beginning of a new road. I could finally call myself a pro cyclist, but there was more work to do now than ever before. As a professional racing cyclist you can’t get away with just going out on your bike; there is an undeniable correlation between structured training and monitoring of workload and success. The trouble was, that wasn’t really what I loved about riding a bike. Things like coaches, training plans and intervals were exciting to me as a young man and made me feel like I was doing something. While my mates ate off dirty plates and kept their clothes in cardboard boxes during the two drunken years plus one of sobering panic that is the UK university experience, I was cycling up mountains with the national cycling team in Spain. The years led me from one country to another, competing, training, and riding, riding, riding, further and faster than ever. My training days in my early twenties were up to seven hours on the bike. Typically three and a half hours at a high tempo in the morning, and three and a half hours sprinting up hills in the evening. My backdrop was incredible; I lived a few doors down from George Clooney in Como, and raced in some of the most amazing countryside in Europe on a weekly basis. But, paradoxically, in making my living as a
bicycle racer, I could no longer claim to even enjoy riding my bike. In ambition and competition I had lost sight of what it was just to ride a bike. I had to ride my bike each and every day, and not just ride my bike. I had to play the game of convincing my body to move the bicycle at unnatural speeds in exchange for the minimum amount of physical effort. It’s not riding because it’s fun, and I simply started to hate riding my bike.
always linger. I went out late in the afternoon, with no plan, no route or idea. I didn’t wear my sponsor’s fancy kit; I didn’t care whether I rode at 20 miles an hour or five. I rode with guys who didn’t wear lycra. I chatted, and I stopped as many times as I wanted, to buy snacks or look at a view. It was the strangest sensation. It was liberating, and gave me time to think, which for the most part was about nothing other than what I was doing.
It’s true that the days that the sun was out and the required kilometres were few could lessen the growing dislike. But on the grey days, the cold days and the long days I would wake with a genuine shudder at the thought of pushing pedals. Throughout my whole professional cycling career I suppose I struggled to
It made me come back to a conversation I had had with my dad once, that has stayed with me even though I hadn’t truly understood it at the time. He walks a lot, my old man. I mean a lot – five to six hours a day, and as a thrusting twenty-somethingyear-old I just couldn’t understand the appeal of it.
“I WENT OUT LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, WITH NO PLAN, NO ROUTE OR IDEA.” work this balance, and I think it was only recently that I found out why: I simply hadn’t been for a bike ride. A bike ride for the sake of going on a bike ride, a ride rolling along in the spirit of Jerome K Jerome’s ‘Three men on the Bummel’. With no haste, no plan, no rush and time to pull foliage out of the hedgerows. Recently though, I broke my elbow in a fall during a race. After several months off the bike, and a world away from competition, when my team kindly left me to do whatever I wanted, I began to go out cycling again. I had no real need to, I had no races and there was no rush to regain fitness. I rode alone, staying clear of my pro cyclist mates, where some element of competition could
It got him nowhere but where he started. He wasn’t training to do anything with it, he wasn’t ever going to get better at it; he was just walking. What was more, he didn’t have to do it. When I asked him why he did it, his response was, ‘there is no bloody advertising when you’re walking’. Now I understood; walking is a freedom for him. It frees him from what he can’t stand – in this case, the constant barrage of shit that the world throws at you as you go through your life. The TV shows, magazines and songs, the things to buy, to race, the competition. I think that was what I found when I started riding my bike for the pleasure of it again. A million miles from pushing my body through its limits past noisy crowds on hillsides in Europe, I found that after the love and the hate, having seen cycling through every stage from fun, to competition and to work, deep down I still just love riding my bike. 35
At the blurry boundary between two things is often where you’ll find the most interesting part of either. And so where bicycles meet art, where collaboration meets creation, Boneshaker meets Joseph L. Griffiths. Joseph is a fine artist by training – an Australian who’s currently living and working in Paris thanks to a professional development grant from the Australia Council for the Arts. He’s ridden bikes all his life, and first took an interest in road cycling as a teenager in the late nineties, heading out on long weekend rides with his father and watching heroes like Miguel Indurain in the Tour de France. A few years ago he built up a fixed-gear conversion and then a full NJS Keirin track machine – his everyday ride when back home in Melbourne. Joseph’s interest in the physics of cycling and the implications of pedal-power evolved and dovetailed with his fine art work when he was invited to create an installation in a disused fun-parlour in Melbourne as part of Penthouse Mouse 2009, an annual multidisciplinary art, design and fashion event in conjunction with the L’Oreal Melbourne International Fashion Festival.
“I really wanted to make a participatory installation which enabled the audience to engage in a kind of a “ride” as we would have done as kids visiting the place for holiday entertainment. Naturally this included my deeper interests in the importance of cycling in leading a healthy life, and finding a way to transcribe the inter-relationship of man and machine. ‘Drawing Machine No.1 (To Your Heart’s Content)’ is an interactive art installation that invites the audience to participate directly in the creative cycle. Pedalling a series of beltdriven gears and wheels, audience members contribute to a communal wall drawing, evolving over the course of its exhibition. In a world of increasing digital dependence, the work utilises primitive technologies and collaboration, to encourage a reconnection to the natural and man-made worlds through manual crafts. By avoiding traditional artist/institution/audience relationships, and relying on communal participation to the complete the work, the joy of making becomes as important as the outcome.”
www.josephlgriffiths.com
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Photography Hubert M Van Doorn
Photography Berco Balog, Matej Zoldos, Eva Siva and Denisa Tothova Translation Rado Masaryk
Bratislava The city that only cycled at weekends
Jan Sifra, manager of ModrofUz bike shop in Bratislava, saddles up for a tour of the local cycle scene. 40
Ride a curving trail along the river Danube from Vienna, and after sixty kilometres or so the city of Bratislava will appear in front of you. You can hardly go wrong in choosing Bratislava as a starting point for bike trips along the Danube. The city is located at the point where Slovakia, Austria and Hungary meet - and near various important bicycle routes. It’s also just a stone’s throw away from the beautiful Neusiedler Lake in Austria, with the most elaborate network of bike trails in the region. Or you can head out to one of
the forgotten Hungarian villages, or to the Hungarian city of Mosonmagyarovár. Any self-respecting itinerary would also include a ride to the baroque mansion of Schlosshof, the castle town of Hainburg, the Roman spa of Bad Deutsch Altenburg – or perhaps to the Czech Republic, to see the castles and mansions of the Moravia region. Every weekend, tens of thousands of Bratislavans mount their bikes and head out into in the Danube river basin – but as recently as a year ago, they all seemed to forget about the joys of cycling when Monday came around again. 41
Inside the Bratislava bike scene. Who’s who?
Mundane Mondays
The Winter Meeting
The Critical Mass
The romantic notion of a biker’s paradise gets dashed every Monday morning. Although every fourth Bratislavan uses a bike to relax on weekends, commuting by bike is a great unknown. To get to work, everybody just uses cars.
For the last three years I have been using my bike to commute to work, to do my shopping and for fun. There aren’t many of us, less than one per thousand commuters. Last year, however, something started to stir up. Something big and positive.
On the last Friday in April 2010, approximately two hundred bikers met in Bratislava. We set off for a 12km ride through the city. Two hundred might not sound like a lot, but something important happened; formerly lonely riders discovered they were not alone after all.
“We are afraid to ride our bikes on the road. Those drivers are dangerous. There are no cycle lanes in the city. And we may get sweaty,” they reason, whenever you ask why they put away their bikes every Monday and reach for the car keys.
In the midst of the freezing January of 2010, I noticed a person pushing pedals on a smartlooking black bike. It was my friend Eva Sivá. I did not know she rode her bike to work – and she didn’t know that about me. There was no time to chat in the middle of the traffic. We exchanged surprised greetings and flew by.
You may try to point out that in the neighbouring city of Vienna a bicycle is a common means of transportation. In nearby Budapest, even sixteen-year-old girls ride bikes, in much heavier traffic. The fear of the unknown is too overwhelming and there are more than enough excuses at hand. I was one of those who succumbed to this thinking, and for five years I did not have the courage to use my bike on a workday.
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After several days I received an e-mail from Eva. “I’d like to help Bratislava. To expand the ranks of bike commuters,” she said. She explained her plans: she would like to organize an event called Critical Mass. She would design the website and print out leaflets. She would ride around Bratislava at nights to search for the best route for the ride. She even wrote to traffic authorities to notify them that an unusually large number of cyclists would be moving through the city.
Since then, the community has been meeting every month and magical things have started to happen around Bratislava. Scattered bike activists came together to lobby for cycle lanes in those parts of the city that are not easy to access. Bike builders exchanged their know-how. New friendships were made and by joint effort we started to break down the barrier between the weekend cyclist and the commuter. Bratislava now sees more and more people who are not afraid to get on their bikes on Monday. All that was needed was to create some common space. All it took was one person to start it off.
Matej Zoldos / Bike Builder www.slowatch.sk
Fixie Foxie www.fixiefoxie.com
Matej is one of the handful of bike builders in Slovakia. Although he cannot boast many years of practice, the demand for bicycles from his start-up workshop is great. He got into bike building after a series of unfortunate events. “First I crashed my car so I started to ride a bike. Then the bike got stolen and I didn’t have money to buy a new one – so I searched for a way to make one myself.”
Matej deserves yet another story. He’s also started to manufacture bike frames with friends from Vienna and Budapest. “A friend from Vienna asked me to help him find an old track bike in Slovakia. Track biking used to be big in the country so some old bikes should be around somewhere,” Matej says.
Matej asked his friend, a motorcyclist, to fetch him an old bicycle frame from a second-hand market in Austria. “When I built my first bike it looked nothing like anything else available in Bratislava. People started to ask if I could build one for them too.” Since Matej had access to nice bicycle parts from retailers in Vienna, he stocked himself up and started to build more bikes.
Since the friend was a motorcyclist and the words for bicycle and motorbike are easily confused in German, Matej found him a small track motorbike. “When I brought him the motorbike he laughed that this was not exactly what he had in mind.” The friend explained what a track bicycle was and sent some pictures. Matej was surprised: he’d never seen a fixed-gear bicycle before. He liked it, though – so he started to do some research.
Today Matej is one of the most skilled ‘bicycle cowboys’ in Bratislava. Recently he built a bike for the landlord of the building where he runs his workshop. “He is an older gentleman, so instead of loud colour combinations I tried new technology – artificial rust. I took an ancient frame from the thirties and soaked it in water mixed with vinegar, then put clear coat finish over the beautifully rusted metal.”
This eventually led him to a remote corner of Slovakia, where he found a person who used to weld frames for track cyclists. They designed their own frame together and called it Fixie Foxie. Matej sold the first 15 units. “Both projects have one thing in common – they are handmade in Slovakia. I build bicycles with my own hands, and Fixie Foxie is also welded in a small workshop, not in a factory.”
What does Matej enjoy about bike building? “I used to have an office job, but I never saw the actual results of my work. What I do now produces tangible things that make people happy.”
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Berco Balog / Bike Messenger www.cyklokurier.sk
Marek Parajka / Bike Builder jednokolecko.blogspot.com
Our journey to visit the bikers of Bratislava continues with Berco, a filmmaker and photographer on wheels. “Way back when, we had the ‘Velvet Revolution’ which brought Slovakia political freedom. Over the last year I have been feeling the advent of a Wheelvet Revolution which brings us freedom on wheels.”
Not many bike builders in Bratislava can make their living just making bikes. Marek Parajka has a daytime office job in the city, and spends his spare time building bikes in his hometown of Cífer. “It’s in my blood. My grandfather was a blacksmith. We had a workshop at home, and at least a dozen bikes lying around the yard at all times.”
If there is a perfect person to ask to assess changes in Bratislava, it is this bike messenger. He spends several hours a day on his bike and can see things changing. “There are more bikers around Bratislava; I’m happy about that.” He also welcomes the fact that bike activists are engaged in active dialogue with the City Council. “It seems that the right people are finally moving to the right places. The guy previously responsible for cycle lanes used to deride cycling. He was fond of saying that the path of evolutionary change takes a boy with his bike to a man with his car – which is downright stupid.” Berco started to ride his bike when he was a kid. “We used to live near the airport, on the outskirts of Bratislava. The greatest fun was to ride around the airport on our bikes and see who got caught by security guards.” When he took up playing basketball professionally, he used buses to get to Bratislava. “It took me 45 minutes, and riding a bicycle made the journey quicker by 5 minutes. So I switched to bike.” And how did he manage to become a bike messenger? “I always had this dream to shoot a documentary about bike couriers. The problem was that there were none in Bratislava.” When he visited Budapest and three of them zoomed by in the first few minutes, he asked himself – why not do something like that in Bratislava?
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“My Grandpa had a Ukrainian bike with an enormous frame. When I was little, I would crawl up between the tubes of the frame and push the pedals from the side.” When Marek was 14 he was given a white Favorit racing bike. “I wanted to have a different bike to everyone else in the city, so I started to tune it up. I put a new lick of paint on my first bike in my Dad’s workshop.” “I tried many frames, but I like steel the best.” This preference may have started in Dublin, where he moved for a while in 2004. “I used to work in a restaurant. One day a car stopped at our front door and some guys with tattoos jumped out. They pulled out bikes from the van and started to put them together right there on the street. Hundreds more like them came to Dublin in the days that followed - there was a gathering of bikemessengers from all over the world. And it just blew my mind.” When he returned to Slovakia he started to rebuild old bikes. He says treasures of unbelievable value could be found in dumps or recycling yards. “These days, people don’t realise the value of older bikes, and they get rid of them. One gentleman once brought me 20 or 30 year-old spare parts for Favorit - mint condition, still in the original packaging. I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
Dano Duris / Cycling Activist cykloguerilla.blogspot.com
Patrik Martin / Cycling Activist www.bicyba.sk
Cycling activist Daniel Duris was one of the people who started to ‘break the ice’ for cycling in Bratislava. “Something had been welling up inside me for some time. In 2007 I was planning to organize a bike ride, but then I left for the USA and my plans remained on paper.”
Patrik came round to cycling while studying architecture. “For me, bikes are a way to improve the life in the city. I see cyclists as the key to a welldesigned city, where it is possible to live.”
In January 2010 Daniel watched a Czech documentary on cyclists called Automat. Titled “In The Morning I Will Wake Up and Change My City,” the movie spoke to Daniel. “Three months later, the news about the first Critical Mass in Bratislava reached me - and that great energy inside me just started to pour out.” Daniel’s first activity was Cycloguerilla. “We started to mark our own cycle lanes in Bratislava.” Several more people joined Daniel, and after the first radical step he continued in a milder manner. “We put together an interactive map of Bratislava. We got together with more biking activists and we started to talk to local politicians.” Over time, Cycloguerilla evolved into Cyclocoalition and now regularly advises the City Council where and how to build cycle lanes in Bratislava, how to modify junctions and how to make one-way streets accessible to bikes. Daniel knows that a change will not come overnight – but he believes it will come eventually. “It takes time for people to pluck up the courage to go into the city on their bikes. And we need more time to get used to the traffic. It took me some time to learn, but I did learn eventually.”
Although focusing more on architecture these days, he spent more than 10 years as a bicycle activist. Only a few years after the fall of communism in Slovakia, he took part in an organized bike ride that stopped at various government authorities around Bratislava. “The ride was organized by BicyBa, which was a part of the only organization focusing on environmental protection in Slovakia at the time.” The nineties were not particularly active. Slovakia had more serious problems than cycling. “It all started to move again around the year 2000. Once again bike rides were being organized; even though organizers were fined a substantial amount of money.” But the original number of two hundred participants slowly dwindled; in 2004 the events were only attended by 15-20 people. Patrik continued his activities. By 2004 he had ridden thousands of kilometres around Bratislava and completed a cycling map of the city. It was published a year later. “I admit, after the years of hard work, I am a bit sceptical these days. This year things started to move again though; I hope it will gain more substantial momentum.” There is no need to be sceptical. The author of this article was one of the people who got on his bike because of Patrik’s map. It helped many Bratislavans to break free from their car dependency.
Look out for JAn Sifra at ModrofUz bike shop, Bratislava (www.modrofuz.sk), and check the pic-packed blog: modrofuz.soup.io
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LEARNING TO LOVE YOUR PUNCTURES A slow puncture is like a stilted sigh. Down on my knees I pumped my exasperation back into the tyre with a rusty pump. Again and again it deflated. Being in the middle of the desert I had no handy buckets of water and had to rely on inflating the inner tube and gobbing on dodgy looking spots to look for bubbles. After the third repair I gave up and spent the next 100km back on my knees every half hour. Later examination in a hotel room revealed three tiny nicks made by the wires that explode from old truck tyres. Puncture maggots. Before I started my adventure cycling from England to India I had been led to believe there were such things as ‘puncture proof’ tyres. “So and so” had ridden to Australia with only one puncture. “So and so” had cycled across Africa without so much as a single patch, I was reliably informed. Bollocks. “So and so” had either been cycling on silk or had been super lucky. No tyre
Words Jet McDonald www.biketales.wordpress.com Repair Kits Adam Faraday Inner Tubes Stine Stensbak
is puncture proof – merely puncture resistant. Tyres, like human beings, wear down. I met a guy at a hostel who’d weathered seventeen punctures in one go when he’d wheeled his bike off road in Turkey. He went on to pull out 72 thorns from his tyres (when you have that many you count them all). The poor guy had been cycling on pencil thin racing tyres but it proves my point that the menace of the puncture persists, and insists. A friend of mine, Steve, took his trusty racer out for a jaunt in the English countryside, got a puncture and then discovered that were no patches left in his repair kit. Walking his bike home for twenty miles he was not happy a man. He then discovered his best friend Susie had borrowed his puncture repair kit, used the last patch and then replaced it in his saddle bag without telling him. Steve and Susie had a blazing row which preceded them becoming lovers, moving in together and finally getting married. All this was caused by
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the minutest intrusion into the feather bed of air that carries us aloft. Bicycles offer the possibility of simple, direct travel. But when a puncture thwarts that promise we end up ranting at the wayward vagaries of fate, the bike and ourselves.
adversity was not an instantaneous process but came gradually through accepting the inevitability of misfortune. “Prosperity unbruised cannot endure a single blow, but a man who has been at constant feud with misfortunes acquires a skin calloused by suffering.”
The simple answer of course is always to carry a new puncture repair kit and stop being such a pansy. Indeed many riders now carry a spare inner tube and some even resort to those ghastly disposable compressed gas cylinders for instant inflation. But need the thorn be so vexatious? Can we learn to love the puncture and cherish those little puncture repair kits? Those kits a consistent reminder in a hundred years of cycling, from boneshaker to carbon forks, of a bygone self sufficiency?
I’m not saying here that all cyclists should go around with nasty welts on the tips of their fingers but that if we start to accept punctures as being an inevitable part of cycling, that if we start to accept them not as problem but as an inevitable part of cycling – like oiling a chain – they cease to be such a disturbance. Consumer society and the service industry seek to sell us the idea that we needn’t have to deal with discomfort, that everything can be planned for, that even the future and fate itself, can be bought for a price.
THE SIMPLE ANSWER OF COURSE IS ALWAYS TO CARRY A NEW PUNCTURE REPAIR KIT AND STOP BEING SUCH A PANSY This I pondered on a long desert road as my bike deflated beneath me. The answer was Stoicism. In modern parlance the word ‘stoic’ has come to mean ‘unemotional’ or indifferent to pain, but the ancient Greek Stoics, a school of philosophy, did not wish to extinguish emotion but rather to transform it through calm reasoning. Seneca, a Roman stoic, and one of its clearest thinkers, puts it thus in his essay ‘On Providence [ i.e. will of the gods] – why any misfortunes befall good men when a providence exists’; “I do not maintain that man is insensible to externals but that he overcomes; unperturbed and serene, he rises to meet every sally.” Easier said than done you might say, particularly when you have a puncture in the middle of nowhere and it’s dark and it’s raining and your cocoa’s going cold back home. But for Seneca this notion of transforming emotion and overcoming 48
Hence puncture proof tyres, puncture proof ‘slime’, CO2 gas canisters. But if you accept from the outset that punctures will happen and that they are not a problem but part of the solution of cycling, they become less burdensome. The more punctures we get, the more we repair, the more we become better at repairing them, the less anxious we are about them, the more self reliance we achieve and more ‘clear reason’ we develop. This ‘self-sufficiency’ is one of the magical things about cycling. The modern car with its interlinked electronic components, demands that you take it to a specialist, who does everything for you and gives you a bill at the end. The car is emblematic of a service industry that makes you relinquish control. But when we are in control we are most self sufficient, most happy. This is a mighty claim to make for the humble puncture repair kit. But that puncture repair kit only represents what we might be able
to do if we embrace the minutiae of discomforts that make up our lives and take control of them, rather than expect someone else to sell us the solutions off the shelf. When I first started cycling long distances I was petrified of punctures. I hated it when twenty minutes before dusk and far from a safe place to camp I felt the jarring bump of metal rim over stone. But now I have repaired so many they feel like a familiar scratch. I jump off the bike, dump the bags, flip the frame over and get on with it and in fifteen minutes, mostly, I’m done. I’m proud of myself, I repaired the puncture, and I get on with cycling. Having accepted that punctures are part of the road, the road itself becomes less threatening. “By regarding future possibilities as certainties, he softens the shock of disasters which cannot disconcert men prepared and waiting,” says Seneca. Mending punctures is in danger of acquiring the aura that darning socks has now attained; a dowdy old throwback to the past and post-war dreariness. If only we could recognise that it is the very self-sufficiency of the fixing our own kit that makes it so attractive. “What is the happy life?” Seneca concludes at the end of his life ; “Self-sufficiency and abiding tranquillity”. Perhaps I am getting too idealistic here. But the concept of selfsufficiency has been a driving force in the cycling movement and its power shouldn’t be underestimated. “I really felt the bicycle could be for the world’s cities what the spinning wheel was for Ghandi” said 1970s cycling activist John Dowlin. Ghandi used the emblem of the spinning wheel to suggest to his fellow countrymen that they could create the fabric of their own lives, that they could be self-sufficient beyond the machine of the Raj. John Dowlin was angling that we can create our own way through the car-clogged cities and reach for a more self-determined future. Bold hopes – and you could argue it is trite to force such ideals onto the simple bike and its humble puncture repair. But if we don’t learn to maintain the transport of our own lives, to own our difficulties, then those tiny problems will start to own us and that will not help us ride into an uncertain future. 49
“WE DON’T NEED MORE CYCLISTS.
DA ILL LE US ED TR W AT IN IO MU N RR AY
WHAT WE NEED ARE MORE PEOPLE THAT RIDE BIKES.” Michael Bauch, Director, from the film ‘Riding Bikes with the Dutch’
Imagine if a car driver acted like most bike riders. Imagine if before they got in their car they bought special driving shoes, stretchy pants, or sweat-wicking shirts. Imagine if the days of driving gloves and caps were still with us. Imagine if a driver worried about his seat belt wrinkling their shirt or how spending thirty minutes in the car might affect their appearance when they arrive at work. What if they had to wolf down an energy bar and follow it with an electrolyte-filled sports drink to fuel themselves through their journey? Of course, that’s not how the typical car driver acts. Apart from the time spent pricing out different models or comparing features, once they have their car they just drive. Who would want to drive if getting prepared to get in the car took longer than the actual trip? And so in this respect, we need to treat biking more like driving. If you don’t have a bike, by all means spend some time thinking about what model works best for you and what features you’d like. You can even obsess over the color – some car owners spend more time counting cup holders than horsepower, and I see no reason why bike riders can’t be as frivolous! But once you have a bike, just get on it and go. Sure, you might need a more comfortable pair of underwear if you’re going out for a while, but that’s about it. Of course you can obsess over which lights, jackets, lycra shorts, bells, helmets, messenger bags, baskets and more, but every minute you do is a minute you’re not on your bike. On top
of that, you’ll wind up spending a lot of money on stuff you don’t need. There certainly are helpful pieces of clothing and gear that anyone who commutes by bike may want, but remember: put the word “biking” before the words “shirt,” “pants,” “gloves” and those same items will cost about 25% more than they would without it. Tell yourself you need a pair of comfortable socks rather than a pair of cycling socks and you probably already have something in your dresser drawer that does the job. The more I’ve moved away from ‘biking like Lance’ to just getting around by bike, the less gear I’ve needed, and the less gear I’ve needed to bike, the more of New York I’ve experienced while out pedalling! I have the time and ability to make impulse stops along my ride, the kind that simply aren’t possible in a car or even on the subway or bus, and if something catches my eye – a new bookstore, restaurant, or just a street scene worth watching – I hop off my bike and check it out. Plus, not being a gear-head means never having to worry about being the only guy at the coffee shop in spandex shorts. There’s something else that happens when you shift your focus away from buying stuff and move it towards just riding. Instead of being a cyclist, and taking on all of the loaded cultural and political associations the label carries, you become something very simple indeed: a person who happens to get around using a bicycle. Few drivers think that their mode of transportation is a political statement, and fewer still would identify themselves as a
“driver.” They use a car because, to them, it’s convenient to do so, which is exactly the reason you ride a bicycle. You ride because it’s the best choice you can make given your own personal circumstances, not because you’re looking for membership in a club that requires you to adopt a certain ideology or wear a specialized uniform. The irony, of course, is that by adopting this nonchalant attitude towards your own mode of transportation you’ll be contributing towards a huge cultural shift in cycling, making it a viable transportation option for more and more people. When people see a rider speed down the street on a racing bike, dressed as if he’s prepared not for a business meeting but for battle, there’s little that makes the average person think, “Maybe I could try that, too.” But when they see someone riding in a suit or the kind of casual clothes in which one spends a casual afternoon in the city, suddenly cycling becomes a real alternative to driving, taking the bus, or even walking, something that works for a person who just needs to get from point A to point B. And the best part of all is that you’ll have made this cultural contribution by making no effort whatsoever. You were just riding to get where you needed to go. If you do all of this, if you adopt that attitude which seems to come so easily to most car drivers and just get out there on your bike, you’ll find the true benefits of cycling without feeling like a cyclist. Just ride.
Doug Gordon is a writer and TV producer living in Brooklyn, New York. You can find more of his bicycle-related thoughts at www.brooklynspoke.wordpress.com. 51
Words Vicky Richardson Photography Jonathan Atkinson
Photography The Spokes
We all look back and realise there were times in our life that were significant; for me they include first kisses, moving to Manchester and riding without stabilisers. Then about three weeks ago I went into a tattoo shop and asked them to inscribe Maggie May on my wrist, which soon turned into a full pin-up beauty on a bike. How did it come to this? I hear you ask. I realised with a grin on my face that The Spokes were to blame. If bike love is a virus that we’ve all succumbed to, then it would be fair to say that I started showing the first symptoms around two years ago when a friend idly directed me to the fresh slice of heaven that is the Pashley website. As her non-cycling buddy, it was a cunning ploy as I’d spent many months yawning whenever bikes came up... and then I saw Maggie May and the rest really is history. I hate to admit it, but at 32 years old my most significant, ongoing relationship is with a 17kg powder blue hand-built lovely called Maggie May, best described as ‘solid’. I know my parents despair because they keep dropping hints about internet dating; unfortunately I’m so smitten with her that GSOH reads as ‘Great Set of Hubs’ rather than ‘Good Sense of Humour’. The other thing you should know is that I’m a reformed rollerskater, having lived by the mantra ‘eight wheels good, two wheels bad’ for the past fifteen years. My teenage years were spent hanging out on street corners, generally not skating much but thinking I was pretty cool all the same. So when and where did I lose the bike love exactly? It all started off so well in the heady days, learning to ride on a blue Raleigh with a little white pannier box and matching handlebar grips, before moving on to my next faithful companion - a golden, folding Raleigh Stowaway (which would be so hot right now) and lasted me as far as University. I guess if I’m honest, it was arriving hot and bothered for my first seminar at university that was the final anti-cycling nail in the tyre... if I couldn’t look chic and cycle then the bike had to go. This seems to mirror the experience of most young girls in the UK; it seems that we cycle as kids before our bikes are consigned to the shed in favour of ‘girly’ pursuits, depressingly identified as shopping and ‘hanging out’. The UK documentary, ‘Beauty and the Bike’, filmed in 2008, explores this phenomenon. In it, a group of English teenage girls from Darlington are given the opportunity to swap places for a week with a group of German teenage girls from Bremen. When the exchange visit takes place, the English girls are bowled over by a bevy of gorgeous sit-up-and-beg Dutch bikes and the relaxed vibe that can only develop in a city where cycle lanes are wide and drivers courteously slow down in shared streets. On the return leg, the German girls are shocked by the lack of bike-friendly
infrastructure and aggressive behaviour of motorists towards them. The reason given in the film for most teenage girls in Britain abandoning their bikes is that cycling just isn’t cool (shock horror!). Friends didn’t do it and it was regarded as dangerous, dirty, and lamely lycra-clad. I spoke with the filmmakers Beatrix Wupperman and Richard Grassick and they explained, “It is really dangerous infrastructure that holds teenagers back from cycling. They state publicly their reason for not cycling as not being cool, but peer pressure against uncool behaviour covers a multitude of sins, and a key one is a fear of cycling on busy roads. With teenagers so dependent on the opinions of their friends, they do not cycle. In Bremen, for many teenage girls, you are a hassle if you do not cycle. In Darlington it is just the other way round!” My home town of Manchester has a woeful cycling infrastructure which pokes a stick in your spokes and has some of the most dangerous roads in the country, so what made me rediscover my love for two wheels? Again the blame lies firmly at the feet of The Spokes. Now as Iuck would have it, and without my knowing it, I landed myself a flat above Spokes HQ – a top secret basement full of mini bikes, hula hoops and pom-poms. Every Sunday, a black and green hurricane of girls would whirl up outside my flat to collect their mini bikes, collaborate and practice tricks. I was intrigued, often amused, and they made cycling look like so much fun that I just had to take the risk of being knocked down by the 86 bus. The time came and I was finally convinced to put on their trademark green top. It wasn’t long before I realised that Spokes are utterly nuts about bikes; they dance with bikes, do tricks on them, ride them in synchronisation, challenge the council about our inadequate infrastructure, and more! Founded in 2007, their wider aim is to encourage everyone to see how bikes are a safer, sociable, and more rewarding form of transport. We all share this vision by performing at comedy festivals, schools and community events as well as dancing at the converted for Critical Mass and bike festivals. So what is Bike Dance? Well there’s no definition of bike dance itself and even when an entry for it appeared briefly on Wikipedia recently, it was taken down when readers reported it as a joke! It seems that the origins of modern bike dance go back to 1996 when the San Francisco Bike Ballet organised a performance for hundreds of bicycles to be viewed from above, after which, a group of girls rode out together and, according to Agent Chaos from US-based bike dance group The Derailleurs, “realised they were fed up with the male dominated bike scene”. This frustration led to a performance group which finally became known as The Sprockettes, the first internationally recognised bike dance group. I spoke with one of their members, Agent Sweetpea, who explained, “Our aim was always that of injecting a little bit of femininity into the bicycle scene. Dancing with bikes in our minds was a perfect medium through which we could express ourselves in an entertaining way whilst also delivering messages of positivity, encouraging pro-physical lifestyles and advocating bicycle riding”. From this small beginning, the latest stats suggest that bike dance groups now number around twenty, and are spread across America, Canada, UK and Japan.
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Emily (aka Archi-chick) By day an architecture student helping to shape communities into better places, but by night (and when she dons her Spokes leggings) an Evel Knievel style impresario, complete with cape and megaphone (very useful for marshalling us and organising super-fly alley cats). Following a recent and traumatic crash, she recycled elements of her ride with a new eighties frame to form Red-Blue Bike which she uses for commuting and spreading Spoke love. Emily’s enthusiasm is infectious and she gives great “Thriller” during any dance off. Jen (aka Sexual Healing Spoke) Jen works in a Sexual Health clinic and does much good in promoting safer sex and positive biking, both things the Spokes are equally proud of. She heads up a fleet of Pashley-wheeling nurses, so really should be getting commission from the company. By day her sunny disposition is reflected in her choice of Nemo, a sexy 5 speed Tube Rider but she’s also been known to ride a bike called Goldie Horn...make of that what you will. Becca (aka B-Spoke) Becca is a legend; outside of The Spokes she organises the Manchester leg of the World Naked Bike ride which highlights the vulnerability of cyclists and the madness of our addiction to car culture. She took her sexy Boston folding bike on a 5000km trip around Europe this September, exploring sustainable energy solutions. Nobody knows what her bike is called - it’s a secret just between them. Claire (aka Chemistry Clare) This girl rides a BSA racer which she converted to a fixie. I’ve not seen her face in the last six months - that’s just how fast she is. She was recruited to The Spokes by way of a note stapled to her bike and her favourite type of cycling is done during holidays, including coastal jaunts when she can feel the wind and waves in her long red hair. Zaneta (aka Science Girl) Zaneta is our iron lady who swore off The Spokes after breaking her arm in two places and dislocating her elbow, only to return and be absolutely fabulous. She is a hardcore mountain biker with a cheeky, addictive grin - something that came in useful when she convinced eight of her friends to help her move house without the use of a vehicle. Caroline (aka Dr Caz Tops) Caz is seriously cool and so I wasn’t surprised to hear that her first ride was a spangly pink and yellow mountain bike. She’s still rocking a couple of hardcore cycles, including a Cotic Roadrat for commuting which laughs in the face of potholes. She’s both elegant, having taken part in a bike ballet last year, and hard as nails and as she puts it, “We’ve humiliated ourselves so often together that we’re now afraid of nothing”. Kat (aka Counting Kat) Kat is half way to owning a bike museum, including a gorgeous custom-build called Anarchy April which she uses to overtake boys in lycra (nice). She’s cycled across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, invaded the Champs-Elysees with thousands of cyclists as part of Velorution Universelle in Paris and been featured on uber-cool blog Copenhagen Cycle Chic. She manages to make being eco and vegan look effortless and is often recognised at green gatherings and grocery stores – she may be our first celebrity Spoke!
Photography Phil Dixon (Beauty and The Bike)
The Spokes live by few rules but getting everyone to appreciate their own beauty and be body positive is up there with the best; as Em from the group puts it, “being so silly that you get some perspective and realise that everyday life doesn’t have to be so serious”. Claire sums up the power of the bike for me well when she flatly says “when I ride my bike I can eat more chocolate” in-between wolfing down some Dairy Milk (hell, a bike dancer’s got to find the energy somewhere). Like many of our sister bike dance groups, The Spokes came about because of a shared joy, born from cycling and a desire to show that cycling ain’t just about being fast/macho/expensive (delete as appropriate). So now to the nitty gritty. Pay attention. Classic bike dance moves range from the impressive – the spin cycle where riders on multiple bikes move around a pivot point - to the ridiculous; anyone for synchronised moshing? The UK’s very own disco vixens, Les Velobici from Bristol, have taken this to a whole new level with glow-in-the-dark props and a sexy, nonchalant, European attitude. Since writing this piece, I’ve found out that they include a fashion designer and three circus performers within their ranks, so they are clearly set to storm the scene. Our “fans” including our principle sponsors, Bike Boutique in Manchester, often urge us to practice more and stop horsing around so much, but it just wouldn’t be bike fabulous if we did. Perhaps they don’t realise the strength of will and abs required for the acro balance that underpins some of the most impressive elements of our routines. Led by the ever lovely Owen from Circus Disaspora we’ve developed a range of impressive tricks including “Shoulder Dislocator”, “Supergirl” (aka Iron Fanny), “The Frog”, “The Splat” and “The Lady”. I can but hope that 2011 is the year that I’ll be riding high, lifted aloft on shoulders whilst someone else pedals or I find myself at the top of a human cycling pyramid, but regardless of all that, I’m simply excited that bike dance continues to evolve and the worldwide bike dance community continues to challenge itself to improve. Our Spokey aspirations for 2011 include setting up the first world bike dance camp (to convert young girls everywhere to our cause) and getting onto TV without being on a reality TV show (thanks but no thanks Britain’s Got Talent, we’re still not interested).
Photography Paul Green
Photography Jonathan Maus
But the main reason I love bike dance is that it’s at the chic end of the cycling spectrum. There is an unwritten rule in girls’ bike dance that each troupe adopts its own colour, which is often teamed with black, all the while shaking a sharpened spoke at the idea that you need to be a paid-up member of the hi-vis lycra army in order to cycle. In Manchester this has led to the adoption of the term “Spokes Green” to describe the bright shade often chosen by the team, whilst American bike dance groups including The Sprockettes and Derailleurs have a sexy and alternative approach, donning trashed fishnets and short skirts. Les Velobici out-chic us all in snowy white outfits that pay homage to the flowing sleeves and tight trousers adopted by our cycling sisters from the early nineteenth century. Core member of Les Velobici, Sylvie Zidek, tells me that the idea for their wigs came from ‘The Trucks’ lyric, “my two favourite things in life are big afros and riding bikes”. She goes on to explain, “Bike dance gives you back that daringness (sic) that you lost when you turned seventeen. When you stop being a kid you can become fearful, but with bike dance I’m constantly falling off, banging every bit of my body on cold metal and you realise it just doesn’t matter”. Fun is the key factor for all bike dancers, as we stake a claim in a scene that can be too easily dominated by fixie fixation and hipster chic... What I remember most about my first year as a bike dancer is the amount of time I’ve spent laughing, working collaboratively to choreograph performances and learning how to look after my ride (hell, I still don’t know how to change my own brake cables but I’m glad to know at least half a dozen women who do). As Becca from our group puts it, “I spend so much time laughing with The Spokes. We don’t call it training but bike play because that’s exactly what it is – playing. It’s sort of like being in a bike gang as a kid!” Highlights thus far have included 2010’s Bristol Cycle Festival‘s dance off against Les Velobici and organising a second showdown with them at Chorlton’s Big Green Festival in April 2011. These memories more than offset our few lows
such being knackered after organising a bunch of free spirits and the permanently bruised shins that come from riding a bike designed for a child. Our most difficult moments also include “traingate” where one spoke got dangerously tangled in a mini bike and the others had to free her at the same time as concealing that we’d smuggled too many bikes onto the train. Fortunately no Spokes have been permanently harmed in the making of this mini adventure so far and at least we have a trained health professional amongst our ranks. In a year that’s seen me go from armchair cyclist to shaking a Raleigh Mustang in front of 300 people, I’ve recaptured the joy I first felt when I knocked off those stabilizers back in the day. As Claire Spoke puts it “bikes are the solution to many problems. Want to save money on transport? Get a bike. Want to do your bit for the environment? Ride a bike. Want to get fit? Ride a bike. Want to lose weight? Ride a bike. I could go on but you get the message.” All I can add is if you want to do this in style with a group of inspirational and creative people, and encourage other women to get back on a bike, start yourself a bike dance group. Trust me, I’ve been there, done it, read the book and got the tattoo to prove it. ................................................................................................ p.s. All potential bike dances group out there - when you’re up and running get in touch, we’d love a dance off! ................................................................................................ Links www.thespokes.wordpress.com / www.lesvelobici.blogspot.com www.sprockettes.org / www.derailleurs.wordpress.com www.bikebeauty.org / www.bicycleboutiquemcr.co.uk www.circusdiaspora.co.uk / www.ibikemcr.org.uk www.myspace.com/thesearethebrakes www.myspace.com/thetrucks 55
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miscomp.wordpress.com
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Car Racing at Rush Hour by Esther Perry
On my way home from work, the last two miles of road, starting at Chicago and 31st Street – you’d know the light if you biked here – I began tailing her. I took the center of the lane on my Specialized Allez, behind a black woman driving a Ford Escort. Thirteen blocks, I stuck to her bumper, running-bra soaked, mouth parched, my nose – invaded by fumes. At the red light, 1st Av. and 31st, about to turn, she opened the door and yelled, “You go, Girl!” with a grin. A woman – not threatening me or hollering “Get on the sidewalk!”, “Move your ass over!”. Thrilled to be tailed for 13 blocks by a shirtless and sweaty chick on a bike. This is how I move, how I breathe.
Illustration Emilio Santoyo / www.emiliospocket.com 58
Submissions If you wish to make your mark in the next issue of Boneshaker or simply want to recommend people or projects that you think we should feature, then please do get in touch. We look forward to hearing from you.
www.boneshakermag.com boneshakermag@gmail.com @boneshakermag
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All things bike and beautiful... all cranksets great and small. ADAM FARADAY