Boneshaker Magazine / Issue #6

issue #6

Bone shak er: R Exce pt th eal C i s isn’t r get y yclin e al, of our h g c a ou nd it

© ali sparror

rse, it s on and s a rea ’s dig mell l ital. T Bone it and here. o s h hide aker, We m i t t in yo o fee ake o espe ur pa l ther g cially nnier reat b bicyc , g o ike st le art out h uff to ere. A print o s . , n Chec d to l your k the et yo mind m ur ea on a r s tak journ e new e y, the podc re’s o ast s ur eries .

It's official. My grandmother is a fan of Boneshaker (she especially liked the bear on the cover of issue 5) and I'm stoked!

Born in 1919, she grew up in North London and bicycles were a big part of her early life. In fact, her parents actually met whilst out on a ride organised by their local bicycle club, which were fantastically widespread back then.

Courting by bike was just how people rolled, albeit on solid rubber tyres and dodging piles of horseshit instead of manhole covers. She speaks fondly of the streets of London in which she grew up - how they were alive with people,

bikes and horses and not dominated by cars as they are today. Imagine that. She speaks of the stables that housed their donkey, which would pull behind it a cart for the children who were still too little to ride a bike, everyone else in the family cycling alongside. The history and legacy of our two-wheeled friends really are quite something, as are the associated memories that pedal along with them; very much worth remembering and indeed, celebrating. Viva La Bici!

Jimmy eLL co-editor

Contents

Get Karta!

My beautiful bike Bicycle Film Festival Oil be damned / Chained melody Cathedral Grove Pimp my Sudanese ride Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia Elad Barouch Trial and error: Memories of learning to ride Glasgow Bike Shed William, the biker who pedals alone The Bicycle Academy Slowcoast soundslide Cycling + religion 'To our companions abandoned' My balls

4 12 14 17 20 22 26 28 30 36 40 42 46 48 52 54

contributors

words.....jimmy ell, helen wetherhead, laura fletcher, brendt barbur, andrew tobert, david houghton, aaron mcq, gregory chauvet, jason moritz, andrew denham, nick hand, jet mcdonald, mike white drawings.....nick souÄ?ek, craig barr, joe waldron, steven jarvis, evgenia barinova, eliza southwood, peter locke, andrew pavitt, reuben whitehouse, carys tait photos.....david emery, drew glaser, david houghton, elad barouch, radek nowacki, nick hand, jesse chan-norris, ali sparror, selim korycki, laura fletcher, peter diantonio, mario torres & salomon anaya (submerged art)

backpats and handclaps

fingerprint distribution, sadie campbell, (iL) Soigneur, Artcrank London, anny mortada, studioade, rebecca cleal, & taylor bros

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. Š2011 Boneshaker. rinted by by Taylor Bros Bristol on FSC certified paper P made from sustainable sources, using vegetable based inks.

13-25 Wilder Street, Bristol BS2 8PY / www.taylorbros.uk.com Conceived by james lucas / Compiled & edited by jimmy ell, mike white and john coe Designed and published by coecreative / www.coecreative.com Cover image by carys tait / www.carys-ink.com Dog riders by craig barr / www.craigjohnbarr.co.uk

GET KARTA!

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He now divides his time between China, where he has his own factory/studio space, and London, where he heads up a whirl of constantly evolving, cycle-inspired enterprises including an urban vehicles agency, a stylish cycle clothing brand, and most recently, a comprehensive bicycle library.

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I met Karta in his TWOnFRO shop in London’s West End; an exciting and inspired fusion of hip, elegant and quirky bikes, city cycling clothing and accessories, where clip-on reflectors sit alongside racks of reversible tuxedo jackets, 1920s-style hats and all sorts of cycle-inspired shoes, head lamps and helmets.

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What is the concept behind the TWOnFRO brand? move onto the bigger issues of waste management. With The principle of the brand is ‘Function over Fashion’. Since TWOnFRO I get to integrate the two concerns, which is I live on my bicycle when in town, as many others do and very rewarding. I believe the merits of what we do for our even more should, I gave myself this challenge of creating host planet should be obvious to everyone, not shouted the most useful and universal items optimised for cycling in from the rooftops – and certainly not just a marketing ploy. the city. From head to toe and wheel to wheel, only those I tone down this rhetoric, but we do use, wherever possible, items worth adorning yourself and your bike with. As a the most appropriate and recycled or upcycled options. designer, I have made those items closest to my needs, via TWOnFRO, and am an avid advocate for cycling in the Anything that’s not going to biodegrade, you might as well 9LDG<I JK@:B<IJ =FI K?< :8I PFL ;FE K FNE city as the viable transportation alternative. keep it and make it useful. There’s no such thing as waste in nature - everything that has served its first purpose has Harnessing the excess human power in cities gives everyone a second one; in design, you can anticipate and harness that win/win grin. I really believe that there should be an that secondary purpose too. There’s recycling, which is ease to getting around town by bicycle, and that includes processing things down and building them up again and easy outfits that work just as well on or off the bike. We then there's upcycling, which is just using it for another mate subtle, clean lines with performance fabrics, both purpose in which even less work is needed to make it useful natural (bamboo, soy, silk, wool) and man-made, and again. I adore the natural coincidence of materials and we also have a strong ethos of recycling (PET bottles) objects that serve a better purpose the second time around. and upcycling (Kevlar sails, tyres/inner tubes and bicycle parts) without any of the green-washing. The performance I read that TWOnFRO is dedicated to your Gran, who taught of what you’re wearing is important; the engine is your you to ride a bike on your 7th birthday – do you have fond body, you have to let it breathe and keep yourself from memories of that time? overheating whilst not getting wet from inside or out.

I was at our family home in Oregon for school holidays, and had a birthday party full of kids raging in my house When did you first open your store in West London? and spent the entire day tirelessly attempting the hill I opened up my first TWOnFRO shop in May 2009 in front of our house. My Gran had the patience and to cater to the upmarket cycling that was inevitable in encouragement I needed. I felt like a very late adopter at London. We have seen a surge in cycling in the last 3 years that age and realised why I took to cycling so late. My and it literally exploded after the 7/7 bombings on public kid's bike with training wheels went untouched, because transport. People suddenly thought, "bugger this, cycling I was holding out for my brother’s red BMX which N?F seems much safer”. And suddenly it was. The tipping point I finally got to ride once he was sent off to boarding EJ ;8 JG@ of enough cyclists demanding their rights gave birth to the school. I went from a ‘BIG WHEEL’ (a plastic trike) to I <J Cycle Superhighways Plan and even bicycle rental systems an ET-style BMX within a week of him leaving. It was across London. the best birthday ever!

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Have you always been interested in designing and making clothing?

I am a maker and have always taken great satisfaction in creating useful things from my own hands. My mother is incredible at sewing and taught me all I know. When I took up snowboarding as a youngster, I realised that there was no style in ski gear, so I started making my own gear. When you make your own things, you realise that our built-up environment can be broken down to its components – you think backwards and deconstruct it. It became a bit of an obsession and I realised pretty quickly that I would rather make and adapt my own stuff than consume other people's.

Throughout your designs, the themes of upcycling and reuse are important. Is this something that has always appealed to you?

Having grown up in India and seen how resourceful everyone is there, it made me aware of the waste in the West. In fact, my two parallel concerns for this world are its transport and its trash. I had always planned on studying design to improve personal transport options and then to 8

Looking around your store, I notice that there is nothing that would traditionally be considered 'cyclewear' – such as Lycra or hi-viz.

Was that a conscious decision on your part?

This notion that we need specialist clothes and to gear-up to cycle is a farce! Open up any closet, and it is full of potential cycling gear! No need for Lycra in town, or day-glo vests. We are all citizens sharing the street and anyone can join cycling, wearing clothes – or not. The annual World Naked Bike Ride attests to the popularity of the birthday cycling suit. I am optimising the ideal wardrobe for cycling in the city; a range of outfits that can take you in and out of every social situation you may find yourself in, with details that optimise the city ride, in safety, comfort and visibility. So whether you're on or off of your bike, the same outfit can serve you twice.

There is also far too much tribalism within the bicycle cult these days. It seems too much like Junior High School, where we pin so much on our personal packaging. We are all adults in the city and we must be able to wear what is comfortable and neutral enough not to have to belong.

In 2009, Vogue Magazine recommended your new collection of cycling gear and you’ve had your clothing collections shown around the world, including Hong Kong, Tokyo, London and Paris. How does it feel to receive mainstream attention like that?

Press is vanity, though it always feels nice to be noticed of course, however mainstream or alternative. As cycling is a universal need, there should be much more room to celebrate bicycles in the mainstream. I have never had a PR or press person of my own – it seems too vain – but I do like telling stories and sharing mine with others (if they’re interested, of course) and I'm always hoping that more press equals more people exposed to cycling and inspired to take it up. It seems that if people see it in print, it gives them permission.

And what about the green credentials of TWOnFRO? How did you become interested in creating eco-friendly products?

I was at St Martins College in London doing my Sustainable Product Design degree. It got me thinking: all of the vehicles in the world that have four wheels don’t fit in the city. And a footprint – what we think of as a small footprint – isn’t just this sort of eco-footprint, it’s more the footprint as you’re moving through traffic, and when you have to park it, how much space does it take? That became my thesis Urban Vehicles. So I started designing and building my own motorbikes, electric bikes and folding bicycles.

Asian climate. I plan to set wheels rolling back towards the humble bicycle. Rebuild the kingdom of bicycles!

Could you tell us a little more about 'A go to B'?

'A Go To B' (A>>B) is my umbrella brand, under which fit all of my endeavours to free up human congestion and pollution in cities and to encourage sustainability. It began in 2000, as a by-product of my St Martin's I.D. degree thesis, which was based on my frustration with getting across London. I knew there were options ranging from the simplest micro wheels to hydrogen fuel cell Smart Cars. Carrying out my research, I soon realised that there were so many viable options and began filming a documentary to fill in all the blanks that the university could not teach, all the new and yet-to-be-realised vehicles included. I became friends with a diverse group of global activists with engineering degrees, who would rather make the change than simply complain. I wanted to represent the full spectrum, and thus was born my Urban Vehicles Agency 'A go to B'. I opened a test track and rental facility for all this new technology I admired and it was at full speed when the congestion charging began in central London, which boosted what I did enormously. Suddenly people understood what an Urban Vehicle was, and immediately asked how I could save them £5 a day. I believe vehicles are a key component of any city's success or failure.

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However, it is not just the products that need consideration when designing, but also the workflow and packaging involved. To make and source almost everything within aC89FLI F= CFM< smaller radius of our factory space is key, whilst using bulk packing methods and biodegradable packaging wherever possible.

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London 1909: Average speed of horse and cart = 7mph

Talking of your factory space, I read that you set that up in China after a motorcycle accident in 2005 which forced you to re-evaluate your career path, is that right?

Indeed it is. I had a big accident that kept me from being too hands-on with vehicle development, so I thought, in the interim, I should design all the soft goods to go with my ideal two wheels for town, which steered me towards slower, greener wheels...

Thus my trail led to China to set up the factory/studio space in 2005 in Shenzhen, South China. I went to see the kingdom of bicycles for myself, (albeit a lot fewer bicycles than I’d hoped) and became so inspired by their work ethic and enthusiasm. I have a team of two young families that I work/live with at my studio. We eat all our meals together and play ping pong every day, the socialist way. The studio is literally bursting with developing ideas, fabric samples, sketches, prototypes and of course bicycles. The turnaround can be crazy – I can sketch an idea up at 4am, and by the time I get in later the next day there’s a prototype ready! The other bonus to being based out there is that almost everything we need can be sourced within 50km of the factory, so the carbon that goes into each product can be assessed and even graphed.

I am committed to spending more time out there so that I can understand better the Chinese market and design for the

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After flogging other people's designs for years and seeing the genre grow, I realised how much of a progress trap it could be. All this top-heavy technology that had yet to be tested fully and that would require enormous investment to sustain it, seemed unnecessary compared to the most cost-efficient, eco-friendly method – the humble bicycle. It dawned on me, all this excess human power in cities needs to be tapped. What better way than to design, source and promote every type of bicycle that could replace the car for even the most practical purpose? Thus was born TWOnFRO City Cycle Gear.

As well as the practical benefits of getting around a big city by bike, do you think that people are also now approaching it from more of a green perspective too?

I think to most people who ride, it seems unanimous these days – the bicycle is the single most obvious and effective way of approaching a green life in the city. At the VELO-CITY conference in Copenhagen last summer, specialists, city planners, manufacturers and designers all agreed on the fact that our work is here to stay. The governments that support cycling do so out of green fever as much as accommodating 11

the growing number of cyclists in their jurisdiction.

The benefits (health care, parking, pollution, productivity gains, etc) to themselves and their citizens far outweigh the risks (safety and theft). Of course this message can be carried further afield and instated more effectively. That is why my work is never done!

Talking of which, what's next for you?

City Cycle Gear is a love child of my global search for all that matters on two wheels in the city. Within this website is a collection of all the brilliant ideas others have had (and have in production) that help evolve the way we ride in cities. My next move is to design the ultimate survival pack for any new or seasoned cyclist in the city – a grab bag of all those essential items you may need, from lights and a lock to a poncho and a pollution mask. This will be aimed at the civic bicycle rental market, which all cities will adopt eventually. What Paris made popular with the Velib will be replicated globally. What are missing are the layers and bits to keep people renting and cycling through the winter.

The other big challenge to my work is the fact that bicycles get stolen, and are being stolen at a quicker rate, now that cycling is booming. We are making bait bikes with the police in London to do 'sting' operations to catch the scoundrels and quell the tide of bike theft hopefully.

Tell us about your most recent enterprise, The Bicycle Library.

I have anticipated the need to not look like a tourist on a rental bike in your own town by having an aspirational range of bicycles to choose from. The Bicycle Library is a 12

halfway home for the most expensive bicycles that have never before had a venue in which to assemble. There is a test track to learn about which bike suits you best, and even a training team, to cycle with you for a couple of days, to give you confidence in urban traffic. We have an actual library on the top floor of the double-decker bus, where you can flick through the reference section, check out certain copies, and buy most of the periodicals/ journals of cycling culture. There is a 'Librarian' from whom you can get advice on finding YOUR ideal bicycle, or having it made, and there is also a sister ship to the Bicycle Library bus, the Bicycle Ambulance.

This is a converted ambulance that houses a 24-hour self service station for cyclists in need. A tube-vending machine alongside a bike mount for repairs that includes a pump and basic tools to get you rolling again.

I recently asked an estate agent in London why he didn't use a bicycle to get around, instead of sitting in traffic for large parts of his day. He told me that it would just look too unprofessional to turn up to an appointment on a bicycle.

What do you think needs to happen to change this sort of attitude towards riding a bike?

People want to be seen as successful, and for some, the bicycle haunts them like a student hangover, something they left behind long ago. A bike and outfit that says: PREMIUM and ASPIRATIONAL would gain a lot of users that can afford any car, but would rather ride in style.

I think bikes will fill that role nicely; you will see all the fashion houses selling bicycles as lifestyle accessories before long. These brand associations give people permission to show up with pride on their ride.

It's sad that for many cycling is still seen in this way; a cheap option for those that can’t afford a car. But there are now people saying, ‘I’m upwardly mobile, but I want a bicycle.’ TWOnFRO is for people who can afford any vehicle, but choose cycling.

You started out by just designing clothing for men. When did you expand your collection to include designs for women too?

I began to hear my sisters' clamouring for a range of gear to suit their needs too, and was inspired to see them outfitted by their brother. It was an enormous challenge to limit the collection, as the aesthetics of a woman allow for so much more creativity. I feel I have done more designing

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for women than myself ever since. My inspiration is very much from the turn of the 19th century, when women right across Western Europe were liberated by the bicycle. Women in London now represent the highest number of new users to cycling and they’re the most curious and enthusiastic shoppers. Men think they know it all, whilst women are more willing to learn and ask the questions.

How do you currently feel about cycling in London?

There is still so much to do to turn London into a two-wheeled commuter haven. It’s a battlefield right now; pot holes, slippery white paint, manhole covers and, worst of all, no secure parking, which results in rampant bike theft. A whole lot to improve upon. The green or light blue painting on the road doesn’t save you or tell drivers to respect you in any way and there are just so many cities that do it better: Tokyo is the most efficient; urbanised and clean with the biggest variety of vehicles.

From SUVs to SOVs (Single Occupancy Vehicles), I think we should kick cars out of the city. They are misfits on our streets; they are least efficient in city stop-and-go traffic, and poison all inhabitants. We must give the streets back to living things that just might need to breathe clean air occasionally.

What people do as everyday commuting is cultural suicide; it’s a progress trap that we’ve got ourselves into. There’s this monoculture in London of diesel and petrol and we've been seduced by the car for too long. Human power is THE alternative for cities. With cycling, you can stop and say hello; you can window shop. It’s part of being in the city. And it’s so much sexier.

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Is it true you have your own minivelo style bikes in the works?

K J?@IK >I8G?@:J Yes indeed it is! They are already in production in fact. 22” rear/ 20” front fixi Mini Velos, in a range of black/white/rust frame colour choices. A trio for bicycle polo.

What are you riding and wearing at the moment?

I ride my bamboo bike (built by myself in China), flip flop* with 32c 700c rims, and everyday I wear at least one item made of bamboo fibre, whether a hat, shirt, socks or trousers; it has such a pleasant feel, wicks sweat, is anti-bacterial, and wears well.

*Flip-flop hubs are rear bicycle hubs threaded on both sides to accept fixed cogs and/or freewheels.

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My Beautiful Bike

by Helen Weatherhead

My beautiful bike is mint green and white, with a big white seat, two white handlebars and a big ol’ bell. It was bought from a catalogue in 1990 for a girl named Charlie Mallard, who would later become my housemate, and in phase one of its life rode to Hoo Farm in Shropshire, England, up and down a big hill next to Charlie’s nan’s house and back and forth to her local school. It was later retired to a mock Tudor-style Wendy House where, I’m told, it took up residency with a pair of gardening boots, three deer antlers and a garden strimmer.

Then, after my nine month long hunt for the perfect bike, it came to me!

Illustration Craig Barr / www.craigjohnbarr.co.uk

I started to ride bikes when my brother sprayed a red one orange in the early nineties, and bribed me (with banana Chomps) to get on and pedal. After this I had my sister’s old pink bike, then my brother’s blue one, and then a second one that my brother had sprayed in a metallic purple. Then there was a period of about ten years where I had no bike at all. In 2007, I moved from my sleepy village of Brynna in Wales, to Liverpool in the North of England. Three years later, I decided that it was about time I stopped forking out for buses that rarely got me to the places I wanted to be on time, and opted for two wheels instead.

At this time, my sister had just started buying old town bicycles from the internet and doing them up. The second one she worked on was transformed into a lovely cream number with red spots with a brown leather saddle and a battered old basket on the front. Unfortunately, it was too tall for me – despite cycling around the garden with my thumbs in the air trying to convince myself otherwise – and so I let it go. Seeing it in action however, made me determined to find one just like it, but more appropriately sized.

Not long after, the perfect bike did in fact arrive (or so I thought at the time). It trundled past my feet whilst I was sipping tea on my doorstep one morning, with its lovely red frame and great big box on the front. To my dismay (and this is why it was not perfect), it also came with a postman sat on the back. I managed to stop myself from pursuing it as it went around the block, but eventually I couldn’t help myself and asked the postman where it was from and if, by any chance, I could perhaps have it. He told me that he also “loved” the bike (despite leaving it unchained and without letters for the third time in the street next to mine) but that Royal Mail would be phasing them out soon and sending them over to children in Africa. He added that if I “had the heart” to deprive them of a set of wheels, I should ask at the sorting office where they could give me a little more information. And so I did just that – in fact I was planning on pleading with them to let me swap the bike for some of my money – but partially out of guilt (and also because I forgot), the letter I drafted in advance was never posted.

And so the search continued...

Then, in early 2011, my old housemate Charlie, who had moved to New Zealand at the end of last summer, got in touch to say that her mum would soon be in the area to pick up some of her belongings for her. A few weeks later she arrived and in the boot of her car she had brought me a gift. As a leaving present from Charlie to me, the door of a certain Wendy House in Telford had been eeked open, and the mint green and white bike inside had been wheeled out! It turns out that her mum had heard all about my

disappointment regarding the Royal Mail bike (or lack thereof ) and so together, they had decided to free it from their back garden, just for me. Charlie said that it had made “a gradual progression to the Wendy House” after she had purchased a scooter. It hadn’t had any bumps so it wouldn’t take much work. I was overjoyed.

First things first, I started my hunt for a good independent bicycle shop. I needed air in my tyres and my friend Sam also needed his front wheel straightening. After a three mile hike in the sun, we came across a small cycle shop on the corner of a leafy road. The chap behind the counter, Dave I seem to recall, then spent the next fifteen minutes fixing up my tyres and one hour (it sure felt like it at the time) talking about how he had been fixing bikes for a full 28 years except for the one year which he spent in jail following, and I quote, “ten years of mint clubbing”.

And then the time had come to take it on its first ride; a beautifully sunny ride from the shop to the promenade, soundtracked by my rather rattly wheels, during which time I also discovered that I had a problem with my saddle. Repairs were very obviously still required and, instead of returning to see Dave, I enlisted some of my reliable pals.

First up was Paul, my neighbour, who lent Sam and I some spanners which we used to put everything right as best we knew how. Then, another of my housemates put an end to my noisy adventures by pouring oil over anything on the bike that might move (bar me). He also provided me with a huge ball of wire wool, which I used to pimp up the handlebars and headbadge. I was addicted and continued to clean the rest of the frame with an old toothbrush and, using a splash of diluted bleach, attempted to whiten the handlebars too. Dedicated indeed. To finish off, another of my housemates bestowed my bike with a brand new bell. It says, ‘I love my bike’. I think in hindsight he was just glad that I had finally got my hands on one without causing our postman any more bother.

I saw another bike just like mine in a spiral stairwell in town about a month ago. Not long after, I saw another unchained Royal Mail bike, deliberately left to tempt me, I am sure of it. Either way, this is clearly some sort of sign, although I am yet to work it out. Perhaps when I am braver, I will follow its twin into the city (and away from the sorting office), and probe further. Until then, I am going to make the most of having a working, shining bike to ride.

It gives me space to clear my head – a place to think that I previously thought could only be found on moving trains – and also means my bike gets a second bout of adventures of the Hoo Farm variety.

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Photography Selim Korycki Photography Peter DiAntonio

16

Photography Laura Fletcher

Bicycle Film Festival Words Laura Fletcher & Jimmy Ell

The Bicycle Film Festival came into being when Brendt Barbur, Founding Festival Director, was hit by a bus while riding his bike in New York City. He insisted on turning his negative experience into a positive one and in 2001, Barbur started the festival as a platform to celebrate the bicycle through music, art and, of course, film.

Originally just volunteering for the BFF, Laura Fletcher now oversees the festival throughout the whole of the UK and Europe. Since 2004, she has been passionate about riding a bike and feels that the festival has inspired people all over the world to start cycling. Whether you’re already a cyclist or not, the festival undoubtedly makes the world of pushing pedals feel a whole lot more accessible, stylish, fun and most importantly, extremely relevant.

Part of the festival's charm is also the fact that it brings together all sorts of riders, “There are so many different groups of cyclists out there that never come together at the same events,” explains Laura, “so the festival really creates that opportunity for all of them to meet and to share experiences.” For the first two years, the festival only ran in New York

" ...it’s simply amazing to see the sheer quantity, and overall outstanding quality of the films being produced by individuals around the globe about cycling." but it has pretty quickly expanded to take in other major cities all around the globe, including Paris, Sydney, Sao Paulo and Tokyo. “Over the years, we have developed a global network of friends and cyclists, who come together to build the festivals in their home cities”, Laura says.

“We get emails almost daily from people who'd like to see the festival hosted in their city!” Despite there being such clear demand for the festival to take place in hundreds more cities around the world, the planned expansion of the festival is more of a 'slowly but surely' approach,

including one or two new cities each year. Films are submitted annually and selected by a panel at the festival's head office in New York. The 'open to all' submissions policy means that the festival programme is not only very inclusive but also extremely diverse – the way cycling should be. “We have hundreds upon hundreds of films submitted every year,” explains Laura, “and it’s simply amazing to see the sheer quantity, and overall outstanding quality of the films being produced by individuals around the globe about cycling. This year for example, we have the world premiere of 'Racing Through Red Hook', showcasing the talents of the underground Red Hook Criterium Race; some sick BMX shorts; and in London we will be collaborating with the acclaimed Barbican Silent Film Club to present vintage cycling films set to a live score. We also have a stunning film 'With My Own Two Wheels', which weaves together stories of five bicycle riders from around the world and shows how, in five very distinct ways, the bicycle has transformed their lives.”

'The Bicycle Film Festival has been a major catalyst for the urban bike movement,' claims the BFF website. I ask Laura if this is a significant part of what the festival manages to achieve.

“Absolutely! The festival really does create a huge cultural content around cycling and a strong platform for media coverage, as it engages not only existing cyclists but also artists, musicians, filmmakers and more. This method of accessing many different groups of people has, over the years, exposed many 'stylemakers' first-hand to cycling, encouraging more to ride. Through the festival, we have showcased cycling as the 'must-do' for urban life worldwide.”

For more information on the Bicycle Film Festival and the cities that are hosting it this year, see www.bicyclefilmfestival.com 17

Laura on Brendt

Brendt on Laura

What's your first memory of meeting Brendt?

What's your first memory of meeting Laura?

The first time I met Brendt was at the BFF in New York City. I remember being amazed at the transformation of streets and places that I had frequented previously into a cycling haven. As the New York festival was in full swing, Brendt was incredibly busy making sure his hometown festival was in absolutely perfect running order.

I first met Laura in 2007 when she was volunteering for the festival. We spent a lot of time on the phone actually, before we ever met. She came to New York for the launch of the 2007 festival season and it was a great year for us. We were having so much fun, and the festival was growing at an incredibly fast rate at that point. The first time we actually spent time together though was at the Duke of York in London, when I had just arrived for the 2007 festival.

The Duke of York was the local courier pub at that point, and I was so happy to share a pint with many old friends I have in the London messenger scene, and with my BFF London staff. London always feels like a second home for me.

If Brendt made a film about cycling, what would it be like?

Well, that's a hard question as Brendt has already made many films about cycling, and works closely with many of the filmmakers each year. I think if he could make one magnum opus though, it would be a film that intertwined the stories of the artistry behind cycling historically, and tied in a modern viewpoint. I think he would want his one master-film to be in a way what the BFF has created: a universal film that shows the passion for cycling as a sport, as a lifestyle and as an art form all in one.

If Laura made a film about cycling, what would it be like?

If Laura were to make a film about cycling, I would love her to make a film highlighting some of the strong female cyclists of the world. She has been a strong advocate for female cycling in the UK and I think she would do a great job of extending her passion for that by using the platform of film to encourage more women to ride bikes on a global scale.

If you could give Brendt one bit of advice that you know he would take, what would it be?

I would tell him to get seven hours of sleep every night!

If you could give Laura one bit of advice that you know she would take, what would it be?

If Brendt were a bicycle, what would he be?

To stop sleeping and go out more and have fun!

I think Brendt would be a classic racer if he could be any bike. I think of him as a bike that doesn't go out of style, but actually increases its panache over the years. Brown gumwall tires for sure, with a Campagnolo groupset. He is half Italian, and I couldn't see him getting on with anything else. Oh and a San Marco saddle as well of course!

If Laura were a bicycle, what would she be?

I think she would be a Brompton, as she is quite flexible and adaptive as a person. She actually used our BFF Brompton in New York for the festival here recently and was getting comments all over the streets for it!

Photography Mario Torres and Salomon Anaya: SUBMERGED ART

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Words Andrew Tobert Illustration Joe Waldron

There are few people who can say they enjoy their commute to work, but I do. Every day, I’m privileged to experience one of the world’s great cities, warts and all.

The never-changing cliques of children on their way to school, the opulence of the rich, the deprivation of the poor, black, white, gay, straight. London is amazingly varied and cycling lets me see it, on my terms and for free (well, almost). The fact that it’s fast, non-polluting and helps ma ligne is all good too. But this article isn’t about how great cycling is.

No, this article is about the side of cycling that we don’t talk about. The seedy, sordid underbelly that we know exists, we’ve all experienced, but that rarely gets written about in campaign literature or magazines like this one.

I’m talking about when bikes break, the long walks home after a puncture, the brand new Armani jeans that are now permanently, irrevocably covered in oil. These are our dirty secrets, the things we sweep under the carpet like a family scandal. But now it’s time to lift the super injunction, to confront the skeletons in our closet.

But before we begin in this new-fangled spirit of openness, let me now get something off my chest. My name is Andrew Tobert and I have never changed a tyre.

Or cleaned my chain, tightened my brakes or adjusted the height of my seat. Ever. Jamais. Not once. I am a bike-maintenance virgin, or a bike shop slut. Either way, I’m sure it’s not healthy.

For those of you that have a healthy relationship with that thing beneath your legs, let me explain my experiences. Firstly, there’s that wincing feeling of inadequacy as you walk into your local bikery, your flat tyre shamefully apparent. There’s that look that’s shared by all the cool kids of the biking world, the mechanics and the couriers, the 'oh god, not you again', familiar to anyone who was ever the last man standing when their class mates were picking football teams. The ridiculous list of excuses that you feel compelled to think up so that they don’t think you’re an idiot. They never work of course. You are an idiot. The simple maths of being ripped off (£4 for a tyre plus 3 minutes labour does not equal £10, unless you’re also offering legal advice).

The experience is disempowering and emasculating. It makes you feel worthless. It makes me feel shit. Despite clocking up 100 miles a week every week, I feel like an impostor, an amateur in the world of urban cycling. A Boris biker who doesn’t indicate. A fair-weather cyclist.

The times though, they are a-changing. My ego can no longer take the exasperated derision that greets me when I walk into my local bike shop. It's time I got over my ineptitude and learnt to do these things for myself. It's time I got my hands dirty, not just my jeans. But as fate would have it, the moment I tell myself this, my bike behaves. There are no punctures, no crashes, no nothing.

But there is still work to be done. Prevention is better than cure and all that...

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For those that don’t know me, I’m not a tidy person. The state of my desk has nearly got me sacked and it’s not unknown for lovers to refuse to sleep in my bedroom (which by the way, I honestly don’t think is that bad). My bike, my beautiful, beloved bike, knows this; it must do. It never gets oiled or cleaned. The rattle of its lone, oil-starved gear gets louder but still, like a parent who smokes, I’m convinced that my child’s wheezing lungs are not my problem, that there is nothing I can do. But today, that stops. Today, I will clean my chain.

I’m sure there are ‘proper’ ways of doing this. Sheldon Brown, the Mr Miyagi of bike maintenance, would have me remove the chain and either leave it in solvent, or shake it up in a coke bottle. He even starts talking about toothbrushes, but that’s just weird.

Sheldon Brown, the Mr Miyagi of bike maintenance, would have me remove the chain and either leave it in solvent, or shake it up in a coke bottle. He even starts talking about toothbrushes, but that’s just weird.

The problem with any of these is they assume just far too much. Who’s to say I’ll be able to take the chain off in the first place? Or put it back on at the end? And touching the chain? Getting my hands dirty? When did I sign up for that?

No, with the greatest of respect to Sheldon Brown, these ways are not my ways. I need something unassumptive, something so dada and infantile that an illiterate child could make it work.

Luckily, such things exist. Enter the humble chain degreaser.

For those that don’t know them, degreasers are purpose built widgets designed solely for the purpose of cleaning chains. My chosen model clearly belongs to the Noddy school of modern design. It’s a fun, boyish blue with inoffensively large working bits, all viewed through a transparent casing. If you wanted to explain how cogs work to a 5 year old, this would certainly be where you’d start. The idea, or so I gather from the manga-esque cartoons (complete with holy-smokes-batman captions), is to split the casting in to its two composite parts, place them around the chain, then move the chain so the cogs can do their thing. Designed as it is for a toddler, I’m feeling confident. Hubris, I believe, is the term.

To first task is to “Release lid” – 6 months spent in its packaging makes this rather hard. But I fiddle. I succeed.

The first step of a long journey, now walked.

“Place chain between main body and lid”. Thankfully, the graphic reassures me they don’t mean my main body, so I have a go on the chain. This is harder than it seems. I fiddle for ten minutes then realise it’s not working because the chain isn’t aligned with the chain-like holes. Given what it’s designed for, I feel this should be more obvious than it is. The scale of my incompetence now becomes clear.

What follows was so shameful I'd better not describe it fully, but if you’ve ever watched an unruly child refuse discipline from an incompetent parent, you probably get the idea. The bike, as though auditioning for a role in slapstick, falls over repeatedly, and the citrus degreaser that was supposed to go into this magic contraption spills everywhere. And it doesn’t even taste nice. Nothing is working as it should so I give up, have a coffee, and start again.

This time, both wonderfully and perhaps arbitrarily, it works.

Kind of (a few stops and starts but I’m past caring). The chain is now whirring peacefully through the contraption as a feeling of pride wells up inside me. I feel empowered. I’m in heaven.

Until it stops; then I’m in hell. Devoid of any sense of usefulness (read manliness), I check the instructions. These (oddly) help (why didn’t I think of this before?) and it’s not long before it works. My chain actually looks cleaner! All that’s left now is to oil it and clean “with a rag”. Er, a what?

Dickensian children don’t really feature in this part of London, so I’m not sure where I might get rags from. Can you buy them or are you supposed to just have them? Do they just ‘be’? I consider faking it, cutting up a pair of jeans and pretending they’ve been there all along but this seems unfair, and not what Giorgio would have wanted. The decidedly pedestrian solution of kitchen roll enters my head, and seems so wonderfully simple that it ends up staying there.

Kitchen roll? Why didn’t they just say that in the first place?

Surely it has all the cleaning properties of “rags” whilst also being more widely available? What even are rags?

What started out as bike maintenance is now an existential crisis. I should probably stop.

My bike's chain has now been cleaned. The deafening rattle is now a barely audible whisper and for the first time in my life I have achieved something useful, something that matters.

It hasn’t got me letters after my name and I’ve not been able to do a PowerPoint presentation describing how I’ve “exceeded expectations” by “giving it 110%”, but I’ve tended to something. I made something better that once was worse.

This makes me smile and I wonder why, in almost 27 years, this is the first time I’ve felt this.

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CATHEDRAL GROVE VANCOUVER ISLAND, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA

"CRUISING THROUGH THE GROVE, PEDALING AMONGST THE TOWERING TREES MAKES YOU FEEL QUITE INSIGNIFICANT" DREW GLASER, PHOTOGRAPHER

Pimp My Sudanese Ride Words & photography David Houghton

The word ‘Sudan’ always seems to be preceded by the adjective ‘war-torn’. Yet this unfamiliar and largely unexplored country has a secret love: bicycles.

In camel coloured towns like Ferka and Dongola, hard working Chinese bikes are dressed up with brightly coloured paint, flowers, stickers, mirrors and all manner of decoration. It’s Quadrophenia’s Mods meets LA’s Pimp My Ride – in the Sahara Desert.

I crossed Sudan, from top to bottom, during a ride through Africa in 2005. Arriving in Sudan from Egypt, the contrast was extreme. Smooth paved roads were suddenly replaced by hard-packed sand. Buildings, houses, farms and everything else were suddenly replaced by nothing at all. Africa’s largest and least populated country, Sudan, offers nearly a million square miles of blistering sand and incandescent skies.

Maps of the country show huge blank expanses of brown, without roads or towns. In terms of sheer size, the UK could fit into Sudan ten times and there would still be plenty of room to spare.

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For fifty years, Sudan has been embroiled in Africa’s longest running civil war. The conflict is three dimensional: it is simultaneously a religious dispute, an Arab-African dispute, and a landowner-nomad dispute. Two million Sudanese have died and another four million have been displaced by a conflict the United Nations has called ‘the world’s worst humanitarian crisis’. In 2003, a second civil war erupted in the southern region of Darfur.

Janjaweed, government-sponsored Arab militia, have carried out systematic killings of men, women, children, entire villages, in a relentless siege condemned by former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell as ‘genocide’.

I rode through northern Sudan, past squat mud‑brick huts and the occasional spindly silhouette of an Acacia tree. I saw few people, but those I did see were unfailingly welcoming and curious, not oppressed and downcast as I had expected them to be. Although we had few words in common, they took a keen interest in a Westerner in bright Spandex. In fact, I found a welcome far greater than I would have experienced in my own country. This was not the Sudan depicted on CNN: armed militia, riflemen on horseback, villages looted and burned. There was another side of Sudan that never made the evening news.

Although the people of Sudan were welcoming, the roads were not. In fact, to call them roads is a disservice to roads everywhere. I followed an endless ribbon of mind-numbing corrugated dirt and sand that brutalized me on several fronts.

First, there was the sand, so deep my rims often disappeared and my bike was dragged to a sudden stop. Then there were the rocks. Not nice, rounded river rocks but hostile, pointed rocks that had been waiting for a bicycle tire to come along so they could shred it. Then there was the washboard. The surface had eroded to an endless series of bumps that rattled my bike, rattled my bones, rattled my brain. Then there was the heat.

During the daytime, the open desert hovered between 40 and 50 degrees. Any one of these elements on their own could have been bearable. Compounding all of them, for a full day of riding, was a test of resolve.

“ Bright plastic flowers blossomed from tall green stems taped to the front forks” I laboured on, digging my bike out of desert sand and inching my way south. That’s when I started seeing flowers sprouting from a most unlikely source: bicycles. Riding through a village of no more than a dozen mud-brick homes, I saw a man in white galabeya and sandals, standing with his bicycle. Bright plastic flowers blossomed from tall green stems taped to the front forks. I came to a stop and took a picture as he proudly stood beside his steed. He was as perplexed to see me riding through such a little-visited part of the world as I was to see his floral bike. I used one of the few words of Arabic I knew: agala. Bicycle. He smiled and nodded.

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The following day, I met four young men at a village store, their bikes leaned against a wall scratched with Arabic graffiti.

These were their everyday working bikes, used for the most mundane tasks – yet the frames had been decorated with gold and silver giftwrap, stuck together with shiny black electrical tape. Purple, red and pink flowers sprouted from metal springs on the handlebars and forks. As I checked out their bikes, they scrutinized the Fox Float shock and Shimano derailleurs on mine. I had a leg up on them in terms of technology, but my bike, a dark blue Specialized Stumpjumper, looked drab and uninspired next to theirs.

“Agala,” I said, pointing at their bicycles and smiling.

“Khartoum?” they asked, assuming my destination was

Sudan’s capital city, 200 miles south.

“Cape Town,” I replied. Thirty-five hundred miles beyond.

They stopped and looked at me for a moment.

“Cape Town?” one of them repeated.

“Cape Town – agala,” I assured them.

They burst into laughter.

Two days later, I arrived in Dongola, a town of 16,000 set amid tall palm trees. Donkey carts ambled past vegetable stands and improvised barber shops. I wandered down an alley parallel to the main street, unaware that my route had led me to the very heart of Pimp My Sudanese Ride. There, in front of me, a bike shop was churning out customized rides – there were dozens lined up outside the shop, a mass of colour and nodding flowers. The bikes were adorned with plastic flowers, reflective paper, multicoloured fenders and reams of electrical tape. Mudguards, recycled from Toyota Hilux pickups, were studded with reflectors, stickers and bottlecaps. Handlebars were a mass of mirrors, bells and bulb horns. One bike had fourteen – yes, I counted them – fourteen mirrors attached to the handlebars and frame. Tiny generators powered headlamps, tail lamps, radios. Spokes had baubles, seats were wrapped with fringed fabric, wheels had bright plastic platters attached. Rear racks were hand-painted with miniature desert landscapes. There wasn’t a square inch that wasn’t decorated.

Why did the Sudanese love their bicycles so? There were probably many reasons. They earned an average of two hundred pounds a year, so having a car to customize was out of the question. From what I’d seen, irritable Sudanese camels wouldn’t take kindly to being decorated. Maybe it was because the Chinese Phoenix bikes always arrived painted black, like Henry Ford’s Model T. They were just begging to be personalized.

Whatever the reason, the Sudanese had gravitated to the bicycle as an expression of a joy that couldn’t be repressed.

A simple, practical demonstration of the tenacity of the human spirit. Decades of poverty had honed their resourcefulness and ingenuity: they didn’t have carbon fibre or Campagnolo, but they had glittery wrapping paper, and they made the most of it. As I stood admiring the two-wheeled art in this small Sudanese town, a young boy who worked at the shop hopped on one of the bikes and proudly rode it up and down the street in the blazing light of midday. It rolled over the monochromatic desert sand like a rebuttal, in technicolour.

WWW.STEVENJARVISDESIGN.COM

Bi-Cycle SeeSaw

ELAD BAROUCH IMAGINATION AND REALITY MEET IN ELAD BAROUCH’S THOUGHT-PROVOKING DESIGNS. A TWO-WAY TANDEM BECOMES AN UNLIKELY METAPHOR FOR THE STRUGGLE OF ISRAEL AND PALESTINE; A PIVOTING SEE-SAW BIKE EXPLORES THE SPACE BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE WITH A PLAYFUL LOOK AT IMBALANCES OF POWER.

The Bi-Cycle is a tandem made of two fixed-pedal wheels facing in opposite directions, with handlebars for steering. One person has to pedal backwards, the other forwards, and both must steer in concert in order to make progress. “I created the Bi-Cycle out of personal interest. While wanting to design a bicycle, I knew that because the bicycle is such an icon, any small change to it would be extremely noticeable. So I decided to create a new icon, that would be similar to the original at first glance, but very different once you actually observe it. Also, coming from Israel, a country full of conflict, I had an idea to do a project that dealt with resolving disputes between people, and I decided it would be best implemented using this new bicycle design.The way to resolve disputes, especially between different cultures, is first to establish trust, then learn to communicate.

“Only then can we start moving forward. The key is to understand which way we each want to go and how we can get there together, by helping each other. Once we are on the right track, we can master our communication skills and than all that is left is pure fun. While riding my Bi-Cycle, both riders have complete control of the steering and the pedaling. This gives them equal power when riding, thus creating the need to fully communicate and trust each other. Without communication and cooperation, they won’t get anywhere.

“I implemented my experience from the Bi-Cycle Project in the SeeSaw Bike, creating an object that stands on that thin line between reality and imagination. The lightness and elegance make you feel that when you turn the middle wheel around, the balance will shift from one end to the other, creating a seesaw effect. That is why, in the design process, I built it as real as a manufactured bike, despite knowing that riding it is almost impossible. One person will always stay on the bottom while the other person will be in the air. But I wanted to create a sense of doubt and the illusion that it might actually work; that maybe, just maybe, if you find the right partner you will be able to do it. All of these variables together allowed me to reach my goal as a designer, of catching the observers with a baffled look, not quite able to believe their eyes.”

Elad Barouch is a 34 year-old designer, born and raised in Israel. He graduated at the top of his class in his Bachelors in Industrial Design at Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Israel, and his Associates in Accessory Design from the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York. His design projects to date have included bicycles, toys, bags, shoes and costume jewellery. He lives and works in NYC. www.myatomicmass.com 31

Introduction by Aaron McQ Tell me about your very first learning-to-bike memory. What do you remember? Since I am a biking curiosity, inherently curious and inquisitive too, no one seemed surprised by my asking – and in any case, the contributors here share similar attributes of the former, relishing a chance to share. In spite of sounding like therapy, psychoanalysis was not the intention – 'twas merely an act of sociable voyeurism to share with Boneshaker readers around the globe.

On reflection, however, some may find that contemplating old memories proves insightful, or downright therapeutic, replete with symbolically meaningful interpretations. If your children are about to reach for the handlebars, the consideration of such things is more than mere self-indulgence.

In fact, establishing a suitable approach toward supporting fledgling endeavours can have appreciable gravity. As novelist Sloan Wilson explains, “The hardest part of raising a child is teaching them to ride bicycles. A shaky child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom. The realization that this is what the child will always need can hit hard.”

While surveying bumps in the road on the way toward your own riding proficiency, consider that sometimes pride comes after the fall – depending on the intensity of joy perceived in the preceding distance and duration travelled, not to mention the margin of parental protection. Of those who stayed the course, through wayward phases of skidding and falling with frightening scrapes, some recall the defining phenomenon of mastering the ups and downs of biking in myriad minutiae.

There are others for whom few memories stand out, yet a pushbike is no less of a significant part of their lives.

In either case, each of you readers has experienced the momentous shift that occurs after the first wobbling spins, when a concurrent revolution transpires, and what was initially considered a toy is transformed into equal parts plaything and tool of transport. But unbeknownst to us then, the prerequisite first lessons do not mark the end of learning to cycle. There is plenty more to come and conquering each

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level brings a giddy bit of revelry. There are unusual situations to master, like carrying a beach towel without catching it in the chain, balancing friends on handlebars or avoiding the dreaded snag of grocery bags in spokes.

This knowledge may be acquired over many seasons or learnt on the fly. The discernment of employable tactics in the avoidance of a neighbour’s unleashed, unruly dog, while partly instinctual, is always situational, and a know-how to be learned without fail. (When stealth mode is not an option there are choices to make – I opt for all out sprint racing, whereas my friend makes a good case for a shrieking standoff.) Tutors run scarce for this sort of learning, so success is a thrill all your own.

Getting back to the initial inquiry – as an icebreaking technique during research in the U.S., I posed this same question to both cyclists and bike eschewers. Surprisingly enough, even lacklustre participants lit up and expressed joy in telling their tales. “I was free!” was my favourite response.

And much like this issue’s contributors, most offered up variations on thee event. You know the one – the precise moment when an uncertain but unassisted revolution of feet and pedals provides a shock of liberating mobility, however brief. Some pedal onward and upward while others do not.

Like my grandmother who, on her first attempt at a healthy age of 74, drifted down the driveway quite competently only to fumble the brakes at the bottom, where she promptly and ungracefully toppled over. Her badly broken ankle squelched any brief joy she may have felt at the onset, yet she laughed good and heartily re-telling the story at 91.

By now you are likely mulling over a place in time when your childishly feeble quads failed to provide the coordination and strength to fuel more than a meandering downhill path.

Or you are wondering how gleefully familiar any familial recollections you are about to read will be. Clearly, as with Grandma Milly, not all learning-to-ride memories are fond ones, nor are they necessarily from long ago childhoods. For some there will never be more than one memory, but each is worth reading for their enthusiastic telling and potential for hidden meanings. Enjoy.

Illustration Evgenia Barinova

As novelist Sloan Wilson explains,

â&#x20AC;&#x153; The hardest part of raising a child is teaching them to ride bicycles.

A shaky child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom. The realization that this is what the child will always need can hit hard.â&#x20AC;?

33

“Serendipitously, cycling came to me with a French accent. I learned to ride my first bike in our back garden in Brighton. Like most of the town, our garden sloped down towards the Channel, even though the seafront was a couple of miles away. We had a foreign student staying with us at the time, summer 1972. Though physically adept, I was shy and not especially adventurous, and neither of my parents even had a bike; so I was a late developer, bike-wise. Martine, from Paris, certainly thought it absurd that a boy of seven did not yet know how to

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ride a bicycle. There was a slightly goading quality to her encouragement as she set me rolling down the grass: “Allez, Mathieu!” I was scared, but stung enough to overcome my fear.

After a couple of diversions into the flower bed and through a shrub, I soon got it. I'm not sure who was more pleased with themself, Martine or me”.

“I'm a product of the suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area. Learning to ride a bike in said confines, I'm sure, is not too different than it was for any other kid from an apple-pieeating, Leave It To Beaver 'hood. The memorable part of the experience for me though, was having my Grandfather be the one who finally succeeded at running along with me, pushing me, letting me go... and me staying the course. He was one of my greatest heroes then, and remains one of my greatest heroes to this day.

On that particular day, on Nisqually Drive in Sunnyvale, my confidence of keeping it straight without training wheels wasn't particularly high. I had waited considerably longer than some of my friends to try and give it a go - come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I was standing and pushing on a skateboard before I was riding a bike. I was just over five years old. I swung one leg over my candy-apple red Mongoose and gave it a go. I ate shit a few times. Twice to the left onto the soft landing of a neighbor's lawn, once to the right onto the concrete. I wanted to give up out of frustration, but knew that my Grandfather wouldn't accept it. So away we went.

All the way down the block and around the first bend; I couldn't keep it stable for more than a few feet. But after the second bend, there was a bit of an uphill and my Grandfather gave me a solid push. Not wanting to crash again, I pedaled hard and kept it straight. It clicked. I felt it. Staying on was way better than falling off. The addiction was born.”

MATT SEATON is a web editor

MATT SHARKEY

for the Guardian, currently based in New York City. He is the author of The Escape Artist (2003) and a collection of his cycling journalism, Two Wheels (2007)

is the Director of Marketing for Chrome Industries and strongly distrusts people who ride folding bikes, but never fold them. www.chromeindustries.com

"I think it was purple. I know it took off like a rocket, a two-miles-per-hour rocket, with a rush of speed. It was our street-drug. It was dangerous, addictive, necessary. Most of all, it was a direct demonstration of the truth of our belief: children can fly."

JAY GRIFFITHS is the author of 'Wild: An Elemental Journey', ' Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time', 'Anarchipelago' and 'A Love Letter from a Stray Moon'. She spent fifteen years cycling in London without being killed, much to her surprise, and without killing a car driver, much to her further surprise. www.jaygriffiths.com

“My very first experience of self propulsion was a three-wheeled tractor at the age of four. I loved my tractor.

When I was five, I graduated to a proper bike with stabilisers. It was a Raleigh. On my first 'outing' I fell off, remounted and haven't looked back since. Life without a bike is unimaginable.”

MALCOLM SHEPHERD is the Chief Executive of Sustrans, the UK charity that enables people to travel on bike, foot and public transport for more of their everyday journeys. www.sustrans.org.uk

“I can’t remember the first time I properly rode a bike. I wish I could.

I wish I could recall immaculately the moment of epiphany when the stabilisers were removed; when Dad’s hand pulled away and I wobbled down an incline in the local park; the moment when I unconsciously steered, albeit unsteadily, the support points of the bicycle under the centre of mass and first grasped this mystic principle – balance.

But no, I can’t remember it and the Polaroids were binned. My first bike, though, was a purple Raleigh Tomahawk.

If you want to talk about that…”

ROB PENN is the author of 'It’s All About the Bike: the Pursuit of Happiness on Two Wheels’ published

by Penguin. www.robpenn.net

“I learned to ride a bicycle in Richmond Park. My parents had bought me a Budgie, which I think was blue. It was a smaller relation of the Tomahawk and the legendary Chopper. I must have been four or five years old. I remember quite vividly the thrill and magic of first moving in a straight line without stabilisers, and then... thrill of thrills... turning a corner!”

TOM HODGKINSON is the co-founder and editor of The Idler, an annual periodical that campaigns against the work ethic and promotes liberty, autonomy and responsibility.

Visit the recently-opened 'The Idler Academy of Philosophy, Husbandry and Merriment', a bookshop and café in West London. www.idler.co.uk I remember my Dad running next to me, faster and faster, balancing me on my older sister's bike (the one with streamers and banana seat). Quickly I realized he was only running beside and cheering me on. He had let go and I was free."

BREGAN FAIKA Brooks England, www.brooksengland.com

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“My dad taught me and my brother and sister to ride a bike with the same method on the very same bike – supposedly when we were all two on a red Motobecane (I just asked my mum). He fixed a broom handle to the back and ran along behind us on the grass.

"Are you still holding on?"

"Yes." "Are you still holding on?"

"Yes." This happened over and over until suddenly the 'yes' sounded far away and I'd turn around to see where he was and fall off. It must have worked out after a bit.

ROZI PLAIN is a musician, currently living in London. She's just put a new tyre on her bike and it's made the sweet world of difference. She's also just started getting involved making wallets and belts out of old bike tyres and inner tubes: www.velo-re.com www.roziplain.co.uk

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“I've been riding for a half century, so remembering what it was like the first time is a bit of a reach into the foggy recesses of my brain. I remember it was on grass, probably Chicago's Midway (originally designed for the 1893 Columbian Exposition), and the technique was my dad running alongside holding the seat while I started pedaling, and suddenly he wasn't there anymore! I was riding by myself. I don't recall if I fell over then... probably.

I have a distinct memory of the freedom of mobility early riding gave me and my pals when I was about six or seven. I lived in Hyde Park, an integrated neighborhood near the University of Chicago, but not far from the feared 47th Street line, past which no one ever went. One time I was riding on a bike in tandem with a friend (he was pedaling and I was on the seat) and we went a bit too far, crossing the forbidden line. Some other boys took offense that we'd entered their territory, and started

chasing us. One of them threw a hammer at us, and it spun over and over and over as it soared towards us.

We ducked and it went through the space our heads had just occupied!

A near miss...”

CHRIS CARLSSON is a writer, publisher, editor and community organizer, and is executive director of the multimedia history project 'Shaping San Francisco'. He was one of the founders, editors and frequent contributors to the ground-breaking San Francisco magazine 'Processed World' and also helped launch the monthly bike-ins known as 'Critical Mass' that have spread to five continents and over 300 cities. www.nowtopians.com

“Ah, learning to ride a bike; the wonderful moment that everyone hypes up into some kind of dreamy family bonding experience that we all cherish forever and ever. In other words, it's a load of crap. It's a whole game of trusting someone with your LIFE when in fact they have no idea if you'll make it or not. My case is the perfect example.

My mother got me my first bike when I was seven and after what she felt was 'enough' of the training wheels (which would still be on today if it were my choice), we rode to the top of a low grade downhill on a wide sidewalk in Brooklyn, New York.

Ignoring the two lanes of traffic and parked cars on my left, the beautifully manicured golf course lined the extra long block on my right. Visually pretty minus the intimidating 10ft tall chainlink fence between us. So, great. It's just me and the sidewalk. I can do this...

Right, Mom? She told me to start pedaling and to trust that she'll be right behind me holding the seat all the way until I was ready to be let go. She must have underestimated the effort needed to keep up. I started freaking out when I couldn't stop accelerating and growing closer to the fence. I yelled and hollered in a panic, wondering why she wasn't pulling me back left, but I was met only with a faint echo of "GO LEFT, GO LEFT!". At that instant I realized she had abandoned me! My bike and I were coming closer to our brawl with the fence and I had absolutely no say in it. The fence whizzed by faster and faster while I kept getting closer and closer when finally the handlebar caught and I tumbled head first over the bars into a 'Family Guy' style crash. Sitting up in a daze, I saw my big-boned mother waddling over to me. She asked,

"What happened?!"... and all I could think was, "You bitch." Ok, so maybe not those exact words but it's how I translate the feeling nowadays. As long as I keep telling myself she let go because she 'believed in me', then we're all good, right?

I guess I shouldn't complain that much, I mean look at me now! I ride a 4-frame tall-bike and it's totally her fault! So with that in mind, for the first time in 19 years I want to thank you for teaching me to ride a bike.

Thanks, Mom, I love you and will cherish that memory forever. Heh, I guess I just contradicted the whole opening statement. Well if you got a problem with it, tell me about it at the next Los Angelopes Anniversary.”

RICHIE THOMASSEN is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles, responsible for two beautiful bikeinspired shorts, ‘Mini Bike Winter’ and ‘Los Angelopes’. He is also a co-founder of ‘Crimanimalz’ a collective of bicycle advocates who occasionally take to the L.A. freeways on their bikes during rush hour to raise awareness of the city’s diabolical car-centric culture. www.richiet.com

“Essex, 1984. My memory is vague and faded but I recall wearing very tight red dungarees. So tight, they would rasp as my thighs rubbed together. It was my sister's purple bike. Up and down “the alley” using the walls to balance. I ripped those cords right open!”

STEVIE GEE

is an illustrator and designer who lives and works in London. He rides his bike almost every day in tight red dungarees. steviegee.tumblr.com

Would running over that random rock with my too-big banana seat bike catapult me into coolness for Tina? Catapult indeed. After lips met gravel-covered pavement and my uncharacteristically empathetic mother cringingly plucked the stones from my face, I was sent outside with a popsicle for the swelling.

The gamble was worth the attention garnered and flaunting my wounds to a larger audience necessitated once again reaching for the pedals. Only my bike fit has changed – I continue to crave parental concern, take silly risks, and milk resulting scars accordingly.

And I’ve yet to become cool."

AARON MCQ is a traveller, PhD student and researcher aiming to promote pedestrian and cycling accessibility for all. He currently resides in London. www.bikepolitic.com

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photography Radek Nowacki / www.pressandphoto.com

â&#x20AC;&#x153; 38

Bon

Glasgow Bike Shed

jour!

My name is Gregory Chauvet, I’m thirty-three years old and I learned to ride a bike just three years ago...

When I was little, my dad fitted stabilizers to my bike.

One day he took them off and pushed me onto a road which resulted in me falling into a ditch. I hurt my knee badly and from that day on I was too afraid to get back on... and so I developed a phobia of bikes. A few decades later I moved to Scotland, finished my studies gaining a BA degree and Masters, and got myself a good but very boring CV. I worked in offices, big and small, hot and cold – stuffy, sticky air conditioning filled my new Monday to Friday lungs and weekends soon represented quick, short escapes for me. “Métro, Boulot, Dodo” we say in France, which means literally, “subway, work, sleep.” This was my life.

And then I met someone who liked bikes so much that she built me one hoping that I would learn to cycle. I was resistent to the idea from the outset and sadly the bike simply gathered dust in my house. But after a few months, I began to laugh at the idea that I had a bike in my house that I was not able to ride; and so I did something about it. I lived in Edinburgh at the time and I had heard about a really famous bicycle recycling project called “The Bike Station”, and that they taught people how to cycle. So decided to book myself in. The classes were amazing, but I was so ashamed of being unable to ride at my age, that I only went out to practice in the evenings so that no one would see me. If I did come across someone, I would jump off and pretend I was pushing the bike because it was broken. Until one day that is, when it came together and I put my feet on the pedals and I cycled!

”

The following Monday I decided to cycle to work. It took me an hour and a heavy sweat ensued, but three months later I was cycling to work in only 20 minutes and it was a pleasant ride. Suddenly, I could see life more clearly and could smell the trees and fresh bakeries. Feeling the morning sun on my skin, as well as the rain and the wind (of which there is plenty up here), I developed my senses and quickly sought a new meaning to my life. I very quickly fell completely in love with cycling and three months later I owned three bikes and was cycling from Glasgow to Edinburgh with the charity ‘Pedal for Scotland’.

But just pedalling wasn’t enough; I now wanted to learn how to fix my bike so I could be more independent. I would visit many of the bike shops which had been so off-putting at the best of times – the chaps behind the desk always speaking to me using very technical language, simply assuming that I would know as much as them, but I really had no clue.

This made me feel like I didn’t fit in and made me feel uncomfortable, especially when I took in my bike (which had given me a new life!) and they told me that “it’s not worth fixing.” And so instead, I would visit the ‘Fix Your Own Bike’ workshops at The Bike Station, which were, by contrast, so friendly and welcoming and always encouraged everyone to help each other out, regardless of one’s ability.

39

“

The time eventually came where the ‘work hard play hard’ routine had taken its toll and so I decided to quit my job. This was the best decision of my life. After a degree in marketing management, a masters in IT and six years of work experience in the UK as technical support, website developer, and financial analyst and team leader I decided to give up my entire career and instead to give back to Scotland what I had felt it had given me – a new perspective on life. I realised I had hated working to simply make money and I now wanted to work within and for the community. I decided to move to Glasgow, which with very few cycle lanes, its strong car culture and drivers shouting at you to get off the road, was hell to cycle around compared to Edinburgh. I met many people here who were just not willing to cycle because it was too dangerous, especially at night. And so I decided to do something about it. I got together a group of friends and six months later we opened Glasgow Bike Shed in Scotland’s most famous (and Glasgow’s oldest) market, The Barras. Working for the love of getting people back on their bikes, Glasgow Bike Shed is a not-for-profit social enterprise run by a mixture of volunteers, ten of whom are regular, and four members of paid staff.

Our reputation has gone from strength to strength since we started out. Only six months later, The Bike Station in Edinburgh, where I first learnt to ride, had heard about us and we collectively decided to join forces; we have renamed ourselves Glasgow Bike Station and though we continue to run independently, it’s great to be linked together as part of a larger bicycle network and to exchange ideas, experience and knowledge with them.

The time eventually came where the ‘work hard, play hard’ routine had taken its toll We are open seven days a week, running different projects within the organisation. First and foremost, we recondition unwanted bicycles and sell them at affordable prices to the public as well as running ‘Fix Your Own Bike’ sessions, bike maintenance classes and repairs and servicing whileyou-wait. Our most recent project is called ‘Dr Bike Plus’ and is funded by the Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge Fund, administered by Keep Scotland Beautiful.

The project aims to reduce people’s carbon footprint by providing free cycle training and free bike servicing for company employees in Glasgow, which will help increase the number of people commuting to work by bicycle.

We are currently looking for bigger premises in Glasgow so that we can expand our current projects, continue to train more volunteers to become bike mechanics and create Glasgow’s first cycling hub, where locals can come and not only help out, but also create and share ideas about how best to develop cycling here in the community.

I used to work for money and weekend escapes. Now I work to make people happy and, hopefully, to help change the world, little by little, one bike at a time. And after years of friends and family trying to force me onto two wheels (and finally succeeding!), I now do the same, and everyday I encourage other people who are yet to try cycling to simply give it a go!

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Links www.glasgowbikeshed.org www.thebikestation.org.uk/Glasgow www.vimeo.com/17331891 www.pedalforscotland.org www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org

and so I decided to quit my job.

â&#x20AC;?

41

words

jason moritz

illustration eliza southwood

www.elizasouthwood.com

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Not many people commute between two states each day. And not many of them do it on a bicycle. But my best friend William does. Two states. One bike. Every. Single. Day. Davenport, Iowa, to Rock Island, Illinois, and back to Davenport, Iowa. Even when it rains. Even in the dead cold of an icy, snowy Midwestern winter.

Four miles one way, eight miles round trip.

Every. Single. Day. And did I mention a good chunk of it is over the Mississippi River on the Centennial Bridge?

Yeah. And did I mention what he does once he gets to work? He gets into an 18-wheeled semitruck to drive that all day. A lot of miles right there. Why? The biking to work, that is (the truck-driving he does to pay the bills, I wager).

If you asked William, you wouldn’t get a straight answer. Guaranteed. If I asked him I wouldn’t, and I’ve known him since Mrs. Flanigan’s kindergarten class. And that was going on four decades ago now. A long, long time. Sometimes too long – thick and thin, him and me. Anyway, William is, you see, a lone wolf, an original who marches to his own drumbeat, the gods threw away the mold when they made him, etc. etc. – you know the type. And he doesn’t like to answer questions. At least not with straight answers. If one of us did ask, chances are he’d respond with that crazy little laugh of his and ask us whether or not any of us got that new Morrissey album (another of his obsessions is records, and maybe Morrissey, and yes we still call them “records” and/or “albums”).

But I digress… My 'best buddy' guess? William’s reasoning for riding his bike to and from work?

Every? Single? Day? Eight miles! Two states!

One river! I suppose part of him does it to stay in shape (in addition to bike competitions, he also runs half-marathons). Gas now well over $4 dollars a gallon (and no signs of coming down) can only reinforce his decision—more money for Morrissey record albums that way too, you see.

But for me (and for him, I think), most of him does it so that all us people who drive in their cars to work each day (myself included, three states away in Michigan) ask themselves as they drive by him on his bike in the snow, “What the fuck?” Yeah, he’s a WTF kind of a guy. Always has been. Always will be. And what’s wrong with that? William, the biker who pedals alone, won’t answer that question.

43

The The Bicycle Bicycle Academy Academy A bicycle is not a bicycle without its frame â&#x20AC;&#x201C; that wondrous union of strength, durability and aesthetics. If you hand-build a bicycle frame, it becomes even more than that; you give it character, you give it a soul.

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words by jimmy ell & andrew denham

Frame building’s a complex art, requiring specialist equipment and experience. With most frame-building courses in the UK priced from £800-£1000 (not including cost of the tube-set), building your own is, for many people, a once-in-a-lifetime affair. You need to be lucky enough to have not only the cash, but also the conviction to commit to a particular frame type.

But even if you are fortunate to have both of these, you still have two other issues to consider. You normally have only a single week to learn the frame-building process, and you learn it by building your own frame.

If you want to build another frame, you either have to attend another course or buy your own frame-building equipment – which doesn’t come cheap.

Hope is at hand, however. Deep in south west England, plans are afoot to establish a new kind of frame-building

school, The Bicycle Academy. Boneshaker caught up with Andrew Denham, the mastermind behind the project.

“The idea for The Bicycle Academy was born less than a year ago, out of a clash of philanthropic and selfish motives”, he explains. “I organise a local cycling event called The Cobble Wobble, a little race up a steep cobbled hill in my home town. Whilst daydreaming about the event one day, I thought it would be funny to build a bicycle with a tiny front wheel and a large rear wheel so that when ascending the hill the bike would be level. Silly really, but I thought it'd make people laugh”.

“I've often thought about learning to build bicycle frames but have found that existing frame-building courses not only require a significant financial outlay, they raise an almost impossible question: 'If you could build just one bike, what would it be?'"

45

" We’ll provide a unique service, we’ll pass on our skills and we’ll help people who are in need, and if we do a good job, then we get to make a living."

When talking to friends of his, Andrew found that the time constraint and one-off nature of most frame-building courses were what put people off. The one-week format seemed to create a certain amount of pressure, and at over £1000 it's not something that many people could afford to repeat in the event of it not going as they wished. “Worse still - what if they actually turned out to be a dab hand at it? Surely that would be more tortuous? Where would they go to continue, to get their next frame-building fix?”

It wasn't long before Andrew started to imagine the sort of frame-building course that he’d like to attend. "What if you didn't have to have a lot of money to learn how to build bicycle frames? What if you could take regular evening classes, rather than condense the learning process into a single week? What if you could learn by building your first frame with less pressure, and then carry on learning and practising before building your own frame? What if you could go back to the place where you learnt to build bicycle frames to use their equipment once you had the skills?”

This is where the philanthropy comes in. “I’ve supported a number of bicycle charities in the past and for a long time I’ve wanted to make a more meaningful contribution. It just hit me; what if the first frame you made wasn't for you, but was for someone else, someone who needed a bike but who wasn’t concerned about how pretty it was, so long as it worked?" As with any learning process, it is inevitable that there will be small mistakes and that some of the detail on the first-attempt frames may not end up as desired, but the frames will be structurally sound and so will be passed on to provide someone in need with a reliable mode of transport.

It was this final point that led to the concept of The Bicycle Academy, a frame-building school that would not only make frame-building more accessible but would generate bicycles for people in need as part of the learning process.

However, despite having the concept and the motivation to make his idea a reality, Andrew still didn't have a frame-builder to lead the courses. “I wrote a blog post about what I was proposing, to share my idea and to see if anything would come of it. As luck would have it, a friend of mine read the post who just happened to know Brian Curtis, a legendary frame-builder of motocross and BMX frames”. Things moved quickly, and before he knew it, Andrew was having brazing lessons with Brian in his workshop, hatching plans over mugs of milky tea.

46

Whilst he’s renowned for his unique style of fillet brazing, Brian is now seventy years old and has reached a point in his life where he really wants more than anything to pass on his skills, to help others benefit from his huge experience. “It’s pleasing seeing the person you're teaching progress and if they're happy then it makes me happy too”, he says. “Of course deep down I hope that someone I teach will be particularly good, but that's not really important. It's about helping people to learn the basics and then to develop their own skills. I get a real buzz from it. Also, the idea of helping people in need appealed to me.

I think that's what really sealed the deal”.

So, what is brazing? Put simply, it’s joining metal to metal by filling the joint with a different, melted metal at temperatures over 450°C (842°F). The frame pieces are held in place with a jig, and the builder heats the joints one at a time with a handheld oxyacetylene torch. Fillet brazing can often require more skill and practice than other methods of frame-building but, once mastered, can be far more versatile, making it a very desirable skill for any frame builder to have.

“We're hoping to encourage hobbyist frame builders, whether they do it in the workshop with us or work in their own garages. For people who live too far away to be able to book time in the workshop, we'll offer affordable jig building courses, a library with every frame-building book you can think of, and we'll sell materials and consumables in small quantities to order”, explains Andrew. “We really want to make frame-building as accessible as possible”.

Having previously been involved with a bike recycling charity that sends out container-loads of bikes to The Gambia, Andrew realised that, although given with the best of intentions, many of the bicycles were not actually fit for purpose and would be difficult for their new owners to maintain. However, if the bicycles were actually designed with their recipients’ needs mind, had standard components and were very cheap or free to build, that would help enormously. So Andrew and Brian have been designing a very simple workhorse of a bike, in collaboration with Re~Cycle, a UK-based charity which sends bicycles to developing countries such as Ghana and South Africa.

Simplicity and functionality are the order of the day – one gear and lots of load carrying capabilities. ”The idea of giving away the first bike frame that you build is central to the concept of The Bicycle Academy”,

The Bicycle Academy says Andrew, “aside from the benevolence, it also removes a lot of the potential stress associated with other frame-building course formats, where you need to get it right the first time.

Instead of putting all of your energy and first-time anxiety into one frame, you can build it knowing that it will be the first of many and give it away knowing that it will help to change someone's life. This format will also enable people to take time to build their own frame at their own pace, and to build more as and when they want to. That's where the open workshop format becomes so important – most people don't have access to a workshop filled with frame-building tools, so we're going to share ours.”

The Bicycle Academy has been set up not as a charity, but as a company with a social conscience and giving at its core. Rather than relying on grants for financial support, Andrew hopes that its proposed structure will enable it to be sustainable and effective from the outset. As he puts it, “We’ll provide a unique service, we’ll pass on our skills and we’ll help people who are in need, and if we do a good job, then we get to make a living”.

Andrew is currently in the process of raising the funds to get The Bicycle Academy off the ground. Rather than taking out an expensive loan, he has decided to try and crowd-fund the cost of the workshop equipment. Crowd-funding works by getting a large number of people to pledge a small sum of money towards a project. If the project’s funding target is met, everyone benefits – if not, no-one’s lost anything. The Bicycle Academy hopes to attract pledges by pre-selling course places and Academy-branded merchandise. The campaign will launch in October 2011 and, if successful, The Bicycle Academy will be operational early in 2012. “We'll be using an 'all or nothing' funding method, meaning that if we reach our target in time, every backer will get their pledge reward, not to mention the satisfaction of knowing that they were instrumental in getting The Bicycle Academy off the ground.

If we don't reach our target, then nobody's money is taken and we have to try and raise the money another way.”

At the heart of The Bicycle Academy is an important balance of give and take. A constructive, healthy fusion of philanthropic and selfish motives. You keep the skills, your first bike goes to someone who really needs it, and in your own time and at your own pace you build yourself a frame to love and to cherish. It really is a win-win scenario. The framework’s ready – now we just need to get it built. www.thebicycleacademy.org

Revolution cycle Fearghal O’Nualláin

48

In May 2010, Fearghal O’Nualláin and Simon Evans became the first Irishmen to cycle around the world. The photos shown here are mostly from their journey and you can find out more about their adventure at revolutioncycle.ie I met Ferg at his home in Wicklow as part of the Slowcoast project, recording the inspirational people who live on the coast during a bicycle ride around the islands of Britain and Ireland.

Conversations on the Coast, a collection of stories from the Slowcoast project, will be published in in August 2011.

Nick Hand, slowcoast.co.uk

My name’s Fearghal O’Nualláin and I’ve just come back from cycling around the world.

I’d like to focus on the people that I stayed with and what’s now described as ‘the kindness of strangers’.

When you’re on the road you rely on the people that you haven’t yet met to look after you and provide you with shelter and sometimes to feed you. It’s quite an amazing thing that they never let you down, with the occasional exception.

But you’re just passing through. You’re meeting people and passing through their lives as well as passing through landscapes. And that’s what you’re doing when you’re on the road. You get to drill down to the core very fast and you’re seeing people living happy lives and sometimes you see the sadness as well.

There was one day in China I was cycling along.

Incidentally, anyone’s stories about cycle touring usually begin with ‘I was just cycling along...’ I was riding through the desert and there was nothing. At times there was 100km between petrol stations. And so I’m riding along this deserted road and I stopped to take a photo. From beneath the storm drain a whole load of people popped out, and beckoned for me to come down. So I was in the middle of nowhere and these Chinese people pop out and get all enthusiastic, and it turned out they were road workers working on this deserted highway that had just been built. They were living in this storm drain, and they invited me in for lunch.

And I don’t know, that kind of says it all. I signed the concrete wall of their storm drain, and off I went again.

That encapsulates everything – random chance encounters. You’d never find yourself in a storm drain eating lunch with 20 Chinese migrant workers if you weren’t cycling through a desert by yourself. Aside from just the pure hospitality side of things, it’s also fascinating. You get a little snapshot and a sliver of life in the places that you go through.

49

Words Mike White Illustration Peter Locke Photography Jesse Chan-Norris

‘ Yes, it’s a religion. We live it, breathe it, believe it. It’s part of our life, make it yours!’ his is not a quote from some gaudy gospelquoting leaflet pushed through a letterbox. It’s not from a peeling poster outside some dubious ‘dynamic ministry’ church. It’s on the ‘about us’ page of a popular bike retailer* – and maybe they’re onto something.

Cycling shares much with religion, for all the good and bad that implies. It’s a broad church. It has its many and varied sects, its petty rivalries, its rituals and customs. It has a history and a mythology. There are codes of dress to be adhered to or flouted. There has been persecution; for some, this continues today. There is a shared sense of righteousness, the glow of asceticism, the hard path chosen and sacrifices made. There’s also the motorist-enraging self-exaltation that comes from knowing you live a life that’s enriched in a way that many are not, which in turn leads to evangelism – from the fiery zeal of the cycle activist to the friendly eulogising of the fresh convert.

But whilst early missionaries often brought disease and confusion, cycling brings health and immediate social benefits.

Whilst most faiths have left a trail of division and suffering in their wake, cycling remains pure of heart.

Imagine, then, if you could take the best bits of organised religion - the useful, non-dogmatic stuff like caring for others, social service and community involvement - and combine them with the good things that bicycles bring to life. This is precisely what the fine people behind The Bike Temple are doing. In their own words, they’re a “non-profit, pan-faith movement that seeks to heal the world by having fun and deepening people's relationship with their venerated transportation form.”

Their activities are designed “to introduce religion and cycling in hopes that they play nicely together.” The fourth Sunday of each month is observed with the closure of an 8-mile loop of streets for “sacred travel by bicycle skateboard, foot, and other modes of transportation.” One such Sunday saw them riding out through downtown Portland, deliberately targeting the ‘Big Name’ streets: “streets best known for gridlock, smog, big boxes of steel, unhappy humans stuffed in the cars or squoozen between them.”

The Bike Temple faithful an open-minded bunch, with a cheerfully irreverent take on most of the religions they encounter. A ride out to a Kingdom Hall to meet some Jehovah’s Witnesses included “informal arrangements as to when we'll leave – secret waves of the hand like 'it's 10:30 52

and this is going on for-EV-er – I'm ready to go to the bar' or 'Hey I'm really digging this, let's stay until it's all oooover'”.

Organiser Pasture (sic) Ted added a pre-event observation to the BT blog: “I've talked to the JW missionaries once, a couple years ago. I tried to get them to realize that the Old Testament (first half of the Bible) is basically a history of deitymandated genocide. I probed at them for a while to determine if they would personally commit genocide if the deity in whom they believed required it of them. After they both eventually said they would, I told them that I wasn't really interested in knowing much more from them.” But the BT-posse went along to the Kingdom Hall regardless, to find out for themselves and they had a pleasant ride into the bargain. Laudable stuff.

It is perhaps fitting that it was in New York City, whose diverse population includes pretty much every religious persuasion – and plenty of cyclists – that the annual Blessing of the Bikes event first emerged. In the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine, a disparate throng of two-wheelers congregates. They wheel their bikes in and stand reverentially along the nave as the Reverend Canon Thomas P. Miller ('Rev Thom') says a few kind words and sprinkles them with holy water. The cyclists are of all religions and none – for this is not a Christian rite per se, nor a Jewish one, or indeed one of any specific godly bent – it’s just a shared moment amongst those who ride the Big Apple’s streets.

“Some people take it very seriously, some people are deeply offended and some people think it’s all a big joke,” says organiser Glen Goldstein. “All of those are fine.” Clearly Glen himself doesn’t take it too seriously. He’s not a religious man, it turns out. So why instigate such an event? “Well, I like trouble.

I was born and raised Jewish – I don’t particularly practice but that’s how I was raised. I’m not sure if this is the same in other cultures, but when you have a Jewish mother, they love to send you articles from the newspaper all the time. I’d always open the mail and there would be a clip about something ridiculous.

One time she sent me a clip about a motorcycle club who did a ride every year out to a shrine of some kind, for a blessing of the motorcycles. I read it, I thought ‘thanks mom, that’s interesting’ and I threw it away. Years later, I remembered it and thought actually, that could be kinda cool – I wonder if we could get away with bringing bikes inside a church.” Given the Jewish roots, why a church and not a synagogue? “Because quite frankly, churches are a lot prettier. Synagogues can be pretty boring. But New York’s got lots of giant old churches

* Google ‘bike+religion’, you’ll find which one.

with stained glass and the whole thing. We have this one church in New York which is famously liberal. And I thought if anyone’s going to do this, it’ll be them. I approached them, and they said ‘yes’, which surprised me. I knew nothing about Christianity, so when I went to meet them and they said ‘So what exactly do you want us to do?’ I was like ‘Oh, er, ummm...’ desperately thinking, ‘what can I say that won’t insult these people terribly?’ But then the Reverend said, ‘Do you want us to sprinkle the bikes with holy water?’ and I said ‘Yeah! That is what I want!’ And it all went from there.

This year saw the Blessing celebrate its 13th year, and it keeps getting bigger. “It’s a very large church, and even so we’re running out of space. People are standing three or four deep along the aisle. It’s also one of the few cycling activities where you see what I would call the entire family – the bike messengers, the racers, the casual riders, the serious riders, the daily commuters, the moms and kids. It gets them all in the same place at the same time. Usually they’re all in different worlds, passing, never meeting – but here, if only for fifteen precious minutes, they’re all there in the same spot, together.”

Whatever your view of religion, that’s got to be a good thing.

“ The first year we did it, a cyclist was asked afterwards if they felt protected by the Blessing. The answer was ‘No. But I feel cared for’. I like that.”

Some use it as a moment to remember the fallen, others as a chance to reflect on their luck so far in the daily whirl of risk that an NYC commute can be. Then hundreds of bike bells ring out a final celebratory chorus and everyone rolls off again, away into their separate worlds, their own routes home, their own little rituals of faith and hope. Long may they ride.

As well as making the annual Blessing of the Bikes happen, Glen Goldstein runs Bicycle Shows US, organising a series of rides across the States each year. www.bicycleshows.us The Bike Temple organise regular religion-nudging bike events in and around Portland, Oregon. Check www.biketemple.org to find out more.

words Jet McDonald / jetmcdonald@hotmail.co.uk

illustration Andrew Pavitt / www.andrewpavitt.com

MY BALLS

It would be a mistake to say that my leather saddle fits me like a glove. Gloves are for hands and saddles are for backsides.

But on some days, with a good tailwind and a smooth highway, there is a sense of being borne aloft like a couple of free range eggs on a silk mitten.

When my 'B67' saddle arrived in the post it looked more like a pain in the arse. The 'B67' sounds like a tactical bomber and resembles a thug on bedsprings. Relatives would rap the seat with their knuckles, bite their bottom lip and give me that 'look of doom', the kind of look older men reserve for younger ones going into battle.

Having cycled over 10,000 km to India in the past twelve months, I can honestly say I survived without mortal canker.

I never got used to the 'B67' but it, with the slowness of a craftsman, with the sympathy of time, got used to me. If I gaze at the 'B67' long enough I see, not the face of God, but the careful scoop of my own testicles, the right slightly higher than the left, darkening its brown leather hide like thumb indents in iron clay. But saddles aren’t porcelain made by potters. They’re cushions made by masochists. Day after day. Mile after mile.

Hill after hill. 'Breaking it in,' they call it. But who are they, and who, breaks who?

My journey began eighteen months ago, long before my trip, with a visit to the doctor.

“Balls,” I said, pointing down, in case he’d forgotten which half of the body they were in. “Pain,” I added, “cycling.”

“How far in a week?”

“About fifty miles.” I was pretty pleased with myself.

This would surely get me a medal or at least a low blood pressure reading.

“Saddle?” he continued.

“Leather,” I said, “the B67.” “ Pretty good saddle,” the doctor said, “after you’ve broken it in.”

What? How would he know? He was a doctor and I, I was a cyclist.

“Got one on my Brompton,” the Doctor said.

What did he want? A medal.

The real subtext to this consultation was the book I’d been reading, 'It’s Not About The Bike,' by Lance Armstrong.

For those who don’t know, Mr Armstrong is seven times winner of the Tour de France and a god to pumped up

racing cyclists everywhere. Prior to this I’d read 'Full Tilt'

by Dervla Murphy, about an Irish woman who’d cycled to India with a revolver strapped to her leg. I’d figured that Dervla was a woman with balls and if Dervla was a woman with balls then Lance Armstrong had to be ballsier, a cyclist with balls and balls. If anything would inspire me to cycle to India it would be this book.

But Lance Armstrong’s narrative launched straight into his battle with testicular cancer. By the time I’d got to chapter three I’d put it back on the shelf. It wasn’t that he wasn’t heroic. It was that I wasn’t.

No matter how nonchalant I was pretending to be to myself, to my friends, to my girlfriend, the prospect of cycling to India was terrifying. And this introspection, this thinking, took seat in that part of me most closely allied to the bike and to my sense of masculine, competitive, pride.

What, I began to worry, if this pain was something more serious? What if, like Lance Armstrong, it would end up with x-rays and scans and bikes gathering dust in the yard?

One doctor’s appointment and an ultrasound scan later, I left reassured but still with my nagging ache. Looking back now I realise this pain was an admixture of worry and the minor wounds of urban riding. Pot holes, kerbs, cobblestones, roadworks, emergency stops, the stuttering patter of city life holding me back from the big adventure.

Eventually it rained on my leather saddle and this softened it up enough for the first thousand miles. After that it was bliss.

When songwriter Paul Simon penned the tune 'Slip Sliding Away' he was actually referring to the legendary smoothness of a well turned saddle. The ischial tuberosities of the hip bone roll into the indentations of leather like snooker balls in sockets. The weight is borne by the tuberosities and not by the flabby bits of bum that sit with them. They are so loosely borne that they roll in and out of the sockets leaving the bum to slide happily over shiny leather. “The nearer your destination the more you’re slip sliding away,” Mr Simon says. The groin, heaven praise, is spared.

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“Ought to be careful...”, “Why?” “Terrible problems when I was lad” Much like some actors never mention Macbeth without spitting over their shoulder, there are some long distance cyclists who are afraid to mention the word 'groin' or more specifically 'EDS', “erectile dysfunction syndrome”. There are a parade of sporty saddles that pander to this angst, replete with midline cutaways sparing the sensitive soul. I have yet to meet a cyclist who has admitted to EDS, on or off a leather saddle, but maybe that’s the point. No one’s ever going to tell you apart from old men too unabashed to care. Before I cycled to India a bike shop owner in his eighties cast his eye over my saddle.

“Ought to be careful...”

“Why?” “Terrible problems when I was lad” He offered me the look of doom. It turned out he had only ridden razor-seated racers, in chamois leather shorts. At the end of our ride to India I met a guy called Patrick on a beach. We were trying to impress him with the scale of our adventures when he let slip he’d been cycling around the globe for 15 years.

His secret? He leaned toward me, slightly away from my girlfriend, as if she might be tainted by so mentioning it.

“Point your saddle down…” he said and tapped his nose.

I personally think all this talk of EDS is a bit apocryphal.

The brilliant cardiovascular work of cycling has to balance out any losses from sitting in the saddle. The naysayers from their couches are missing the point. A diet of TV meals is inevitably going to end up more problematic than a jaunt across the subcontinent on two wheels.

And the real crux of the issue here is the balls themselves.

A vocal sensitivity about potency belies the need to prove it, and like all outdoor endeavours, cycling has its share of testosterone nutters. Head down, bullet-like creatures with no bells. France is full of them. It’s the most amazing country for cycling. Less people, less cars, more tiny roads.

But it is very ballsy. We did meet a boy/girl French couple on our travels, on a tandem made from two bikes welded together. The bike would break in half and they’d happily weld it back together and return to the road. But they were

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the exception, not the rule. French cycling culture is all about racing, not simply getting from A to B. And with the world’s biggest cycling event beamed across the planet it’s easy to see why. If Lance Armstrong can do it seven times over then why can’t I, think a million Frenchmen aged between fifteen and seventy five, with varying degrees of Lycra-wrapped flab. But where are the women? Not on the backroads of France, that’s for sure.

If Lycra-clad testosterone cycling goes far enough it actually circles back on itself and becomes gay. In the Champagne region of Northern France we came across a racing cyclist in red hot-pants and what appeared to be a see-through lacy blouse. He was out of the saddle waving his derrière from left to right as he cycled very slowly along flat ground.

He was the campest rider we’d ever seen. He was being followed by two giggling women as he went round and round the village ring road. But the point here is the that girls were in a Citroen 2CV and not on bikes.

The UK has its faults but there is an increasingly diverse mix of cyclists and it was a pleasant surprise to come back from riding through the Middle East and Asia (where there is an absolute paucity of women on wheels) to find all genders and ages out for a spin, hot-pant racers just part of the mix.

Back home after my long trip I ironically find myself eyeing up those superlight racing bikes I had once been so dismissive of, the net result of plodding for thousands of miles on a fully laden touring bike.

I begin to have flights of fancy. “I could hop on that razor thin saddle and get to Manchester in the time it takes to make a mochaccino.” My girlfriend catches me with the shiny bike catalogues in the garden, hiding them like porn in the long grass. “It’s lighter than air” I say, flicking my finger against a sliver of saddle that looks like it’s made of fibreglass.

“Balls”, she says.

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