Boneshaker Magazine / Issue #7

issue #7

Bicycle, a two-wheeled vehicle.

Its forerunner was the dandy-horse or hobby-horse, invented by a German civil servant, Baron Drais, in Mannheim in 1818; the rider propelled himself forward by pushing one foot and then the other against the ground. Kirkpatrick Macmillan, a young blacksmith from Dumfries, fixed cranks to the axle of the rear wheel of the dandy-horse, and operated them with his feet by means of two long levers; this enabled him to ride without putting his feet on the ground.

A German mechanic fitted pedals to the front wheel of the vehicle, and a Frenchman made the front wheel larger than the rear wheel in order to increase the speed. This was the so-called ‘bone-shaker’, which was developed into the penny-farthing when the front wheel was enormously enlarged.

g Cyclin l a e R o haker: igital. T s d e ’s n it , o B course feel

of to ’t real, haker, s n e is n is o o h B tt a real nnier, g n Excep a o p s r u d in yo o, ur han hide it tuff to get yo d s n e a ik it b eat smell them ther gr it and o e k a Check . m s t e in r W art p here. take bicycle r ears y u ll o y ia c t to le espe our there’s re. And , e y h e t n r u o a jou ind on m series. r u o y dcast o p w ne

Š Liz Seabrook

I generally suffer from winter-denial.

This year is worse than usual. I do not have any full-length trousers, having spent the last few months systematically adapting all of my longs into shorts. As much as I resist, however, London Winter is on its way. When it is raining, windy or just 700 types of grey, it can be tough to leave the house. But it is never as bad as I think once I am on my bike. It often surprises me. But then, cycling does that a lot.

I’ve been lucky to have a job where I get to spend time with lots of people

who ride bikes in the UK. Hearing their stories, challenges, fears and joys is a privilege and an inspiration.

Cycling is different for everyone.

It is one of those incredibly personal experiences, yet at the same time grants instant membership to a worldwide club. The pages of Boneshaker #7 offer a peek into this world. It is the perfect accompaniment to a hot cup of tea (and cake) after a chilly ride home.

Kat Jungnickel www.katjungnickel.com www.cyclingcultures.org.uk

THE REAL RACE IS NOT ON THE HOT, PAVED ROADS, THE TORTUOUS OFF-ROAD COURSE, OR THE SMOOTH-SURFACED VELODROME, IT IS IN THE ELECTROCHEMICAL

PATHWAYS OF YOUR MIND ALEXI GREWAL

Contents

Dennis Gould: Anarchocyclistpoetfolkhero 4 A bit on the side 10 Bike Polo 14 The Red Devil, the Madonna and the Falling leaves 22 My Beautiful Bike 26 Bunting and Bakelite 28 Freestyle cycling in The Gambia 30 For life's inclines 36 Cycle Messenger World Championships 2011 38 Deflated 42 Tassie by Treadly 44 'Moments' 46 Short lapses of silence 48 Bicycling through nomad lands 51

contributors

words..... katrina jungnickel, rich cunningham, jet mcdonald, bruna martini, duncan walker, andrew tobert, andre seidel, josh cohen, liz seabrook, matt mills, jon marshall, erin giuliani, matt mills, ben moss, oliver drake, jimmy ell, mike white, jon day, tore groenne, giles belbin, lilly allen, rick hayward drawings.... tom bingham, mágoz, nick soucek, david broadbent, kerry hyndnam, joe waldron, eliza southwood, lilly allen, matt mills, chris thornley photos..... liz seabrook, bruna martini, duncan walker, steve bodiley, brad bishop, neil hodgins, will melling, adam faraday, selim korycki, tore groenne, rick hayward

backpats and handclaps

lucie boase (proofreading), liz seabrook, jeff cloves, rebecca cleal, rachel coe, rich cunningham, taylor bros & our apologies for forgetting to credit daniel irons for his gorgeous photographs from the Bicycle Academy piece in Issue 6.

copyrights & disclaimers Boneshaker is a quarterly publication. The articles published reflect the opinions of their respective authors and are not necessarily those of the publishers and editorial team. ©2011 Boneshaker. 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 Compiled, edited and brought to life by jimmy ell, mike white, john coe & sadie campbell Designed and published by john coe / www.coecreative.com Cover image by liz seabrook / Cover girl – Erin Giuliani Stair rider by mágoz / magoz.info

TEXT Ben Moss, Oliver Drake & Jimmy ell PHOTOGRAPHY Adam Faraday

THIS ADVENTURE BEGAN WHILST HAVING A WEE AT MY FRIEND OLLIE'S HOUSE ONE EVENING. YOU SEE, ABOVE HIS TOILET HUNG 'HOMAGE', A BEAUTIFUL, BICYCLE-INSPIRED LETTERPRESS PRINT THAT MAKES MY FRIENDS AND I WANT TO JUMP ON OUR BIKES AND PEDAL OFF INTO THE HORIZON EVERY TIME WE SEE IT. I ASKED OLLIE WHERE HE HAD COME ACROSS THE PRINT AND THERE STARTED THE QUEST TO TRACK DOWN CYCLE POET, LETTERPRESS PRINTER, PAMPHLETEER, PUBLISHER AND ANARCHO-CYCLIST DENNIS GOULD...

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F

irst sightings of Dennis had been at festivals in the South-West of England - at the Big Green Gatherings in the Mendips (as were, before the authorities shut them down), and in The Green Fields of Glastonbury Festival. A small man, animatedly chatting behind a formidable collection of posters, postcards, prints and booklets, all rolled out on the ground, invariably battling with the wind. Closer inspection would reveal these self-produced creations as glorious artefacts of productivity and self-expression; unique and beautiful compositions combining poetry and prose, form and fonts, surrealist statements and political dissection, philosophical thought and folk humour, sexuality and sustainability, vegetable-growing and anarchy, bicycles and freedom. These gorgeous pieces of art were produced with a seeming disregard for ego or self-reverentialism; this funny little character was virtually giving them away!

It wasn’t about the money; it seemingly wasn’t even about the awesome creativity of this man, or the inherent beauty of each print - each one hand-printed, different from the next in the same run, with its beautiful imperfections, changing ink colours, location on the page, and the paper it was printed on. He just wanted to get this art out there: to celebrate the message… to celebrate the form… to celebrate the words… to celebrate the medium!

“ Y O U S E E , W E R E A L LY N E E D TO SEE CYCLING AS A ‘ C U LT U R A L H A B I T ’ , A WAY O F T R A N S F O R M I N G O U R WAY O F ENGAGING WITH THE WORLD. I A LWA Y S T E L L P E O P L E ' G I V E YOURSELF TIME, C R E AT E Y O U R O W N PA C E O F L I F E ' A N D Y O U C A N A LWA Y S D O T H AT O N A B I K E . ” And so, seeing as Boneshaker Magazine celebrates all things that merge bicycling, creativity and independence, we thought we should track Dennis down and celebrate him; to understand a little bit more what he’s about and what makes him tick...

It was with a little bit of detective work that we finally made contact with him through a trail of messages at bookshops and postcards sent as communication, and a date was set to cycle out from Bristol to see him. There followed a glorious ride down along the lowlands of the river Severn, and then bounding up in to the heights of the Cotswolds, where we arrived late in the afternoon to find Dennis manning his stall in the small and beautiful market town of Stroud. Stroud has a rich history of arts and crafts, creativity, independent thought and counterculturalism, and this legacy is both exemplified and lauded by Dennis in both his work and the life he leads.

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Before visiting Dennis' workshop, we went for a quick tipple in the pub around the corner from his market stall. Dennis is a charismatic chap, brimming with a youthful enthusiasm that contradicts the fact his mortal frame has given 74 earth years of service, and he was happy to share some of his history and way of being with us.

Hanging out with Dennis began to reveal some of the incredibly rich tapestry that makes him the individual that he is. A multitude of diverse life experiences - customary of a wanderer - mingled with many strands of knowledge and a love of them, simultaneously interweave with the incessant desire to create and express the self. His is the unquenchable thirst of the artist.

We started talking about the thing that obviously connect us cycling. “I really consider myself a Born-Again-Cyclist,” Dennis explains. “I cycled all the time up until my twenties but then forgot about the bicycle until 1985... I was at an anti-nuclear campaign demonstration and bought myself an old 1940s Rudge which had a puncture and cost me ten pounds”. From that day onwards, the bicycle has been vital in Dennis’ sense of self and he has never been without one since - particularly as he is often the recipient of bicycles as gifts from others.

The epiphany-like aspect of rediscovering the bicycle is something that most once-lapsed cyclists will recognise: the freedom that the bicycle gives the body is also a freedom to the soul - to go anywhere, to be dependent only upon one’s self, to travel freely and unencumbered by the constraints of others. This is the renaissance that Dennis wants to share with the world. He is constantly encouraging others to abandon the car and engage with the wonder of the bicycle. “You see, we really need to see cycling as a ‘cultural habit’, a way of transforming our way of engaging with the world. I always tell people 'Give yourself time, create your own pace of life', and you can always do that on a bike.”

The symbolism of the bicycle, with the emancipation it gives the soul, peppers his art- the two are inextricably linked. Imagery of the bicycle populates Dennis’ prints, whilst words emulating the joys of cycling permeate his poetry.

We move on and start talking about Dennis' past and how it has informed what he does now. At the age of sixteen, he left school and embarked on an apprenticeship in hotel management, but after only two years, he gave it up and instead joined the Royal Engineers where he was trained as a mapmaker: “The army had their own printing presses and so I was making new maps of airfields mainly. It was okay - I was very young and naïve and I enjoyed the printing but I hated the discipline and the uniforms and so I left there after only three years.”

It seems these experiences were fundamental in shaping Dennis into the man he is today. A love of printmaking was born. But the counter-cultural, literate pacifist and poet also emerged as a reaction to the conformity and domination that the army inevitably imposed. What followed would help set the scene for much of Dennis' political life. Funded by gardening work, he attended a Quaker college, where he read widely; as his awareness and belief in peace developed, an appetite for poetry, literature and self-expression grew.

“Not long after leaving the college,” Dennis says, “I began working for 'Peace News’ [a pacifist magazine first published in the 1930s to serve the peace movement in the UK] and spent two years travelling”. His travels saw him spending time in voluntary work camps in the early 1960s in the UK, Morocco and Switzerland – where there were conscientious objectors, Quakers and Algerian deserters doing voluntary work instead of going to war. But the travel also enabled self-expression: “I was writing a lot around this time, and had work as a freelance journalist. I read my poetry at colleges, clubs and festivals around the UK, and from there formed the 'RiffRaffPoets' group (along with Jeff Cloves and Ms. Pat West), a collective of like-minded poets.” It was around this time that Dennis became a good friend of Adrian Mitchell, an English political poet and playwright of the 1960s, prolific in his public reading of poetry.

We ask him about the people who inspire him. There is an outpouring of names, including Lawrence Ferlinghetti, (who cofounded the infamous City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco and with whom Dennis has shared a friendship since the 1960s, often communicating through letter and letterpress print); the American poet Kenneth Rexroth; French poet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert; American poet and novelist Kenneth Patchen; the Russian anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin and the Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich.

Both Ivan Illich and Peter Kropotkin were protagonists of the 'Gift Economy', which is central to Dennis’ philosophy of creativity - forsaking material or financial gains for services or goods, for 10

the greater gain of the community or society. This can be seen in the sheer prolificacy in his prints, and his desire to “just get it out there!” both in terms of volume and price (and sometimes lack thereof). This is a man genuinely doing it for the love and not the money.

As the 1960s were drawing to a close, Dennis was involved in setting up a community bookshop in Cornwall (the southernmost county of the UK), which he helped run for five years. “Practically every town and city had a community bookshop at that time,” he tells us, “always run on a shoestring. Sadly, the leases ran out and people ran out of energy and very few exist today, which is a real shame. Running the shop was hard work but utterly self-fulfilling.”

The experience shaped his views on ‘employment’ both for himself and others. “We lived at the low level economically, but we were self-employed. When you work for yourself, on the whole, most people don’t get to make a lot of money, but I think that’s not the point. The point of it is to be in control of what you do. It’s a hard thing to do, but I think today more people have got to do that, haven’t they? To find a means of creating their own work - fulfilling work, because it’s fulfilling when you’re working for yourself.

Especially if it’s something that is part of your person, something that you love doing.”

Dennis has never stopped nurturing his love of printmaking. He was producing collage and text on postcards in the 1960s, taking them to a lithographic printer. When he was invited to use the platen press with inking rollers himself, an interest was sparked.

He quickly acquired a very simple flatbed proofing press and

" I L I K E F I N E P R I N T I N G , B U T I D O N ’ T AT T E M P T TO G E T F I N E P R I N T I N G . I L I K E TO J U S T G E T S O M E T H I N G O U T. J U S T P R I N T. ” found himself doing the whole job instead of taking his work to the printers. This fanned the flames of creativity within him, but also enabled an independence and self-reliance that continues to resonate with an artist inspired by the ideals of the Gift Economy.

The letterpress is the perfect medium for Dennis to fulfill his artistic and philosophical desires.

We wander away from the pub and down to Dennis' workshop.

It's a fascinating space: all sorts of handmade paper, prints, trays of letter blocks, and images are crammed into every available space, but it’s also placed systematically, accessibly and thoughtfully. A perilously tall stack of tape cassettes leans against one wall and Bob Dylan rotates in the cassette player. The space is designed to be used by outsiders and not just by Dennis. He sees the letterpress more as a community access resource than his own private possession, and often takes it out onto the streets and invites people to do their own printing and discover some of their innate creativity.

Dennis’ printmaking technique is very much the embodiment of his being. He does everything by eye, with no ruler in sight, playing with space and type as if it were a jigsaw, with no right or wrong way of being put together. Instinct informs his choice

of typography. “I still feel like I'm in a toyshop whenever I'm in my workshop space,” he tells us with a wide grin on his face.

Letterpress printing is like riding a bicycle for Dennis, a form of emancipation – printing and publishing what he wants; and, as with his bike, he can go wherever he wants with it.

One can appreciate that his prints are created quickly and without regard for symmetry or some concept of inked out perfection. This is what gives them their beauty, yet Dennis jokes that fellow printing friends refer to him as a 'butcher'. “I’m a heavy printer - in fact a printmaking friend of mine calls me the worst letterpress printer in the world, because I come to it as a writer, you know? I like fine printing, but I don’t attempt to get fine printing. I like to just get something out. Just print.”

We leave in the failing light, making a bee-line to the train station, feeling blessed and utterly invigorated by spending time with Dennis - people’s poet, anarcho-cyclist, print-maker, gift economist and putter-out-there. Legend.

Dennis has no website but you can contact him directly at: dgletterpress@yahoo.co.uk 11

A BIT ON THE SIDE?

Words Mike White

O

ur story begins in a cloud of dust. Trackside, the crowd are on their feet. The racers bank into a turn, power out and bounce over switchback

bumps. On each bike, not one rider, but two; not two wheels, but three. This isn’t tandem racing, not trike racing - this is sidehack racing. Side what? Sidehack. It’s a BMX with a sidecar. It’s BMX meets Ben Hur. The noble sport of BMX (Bicycle Motor Cross) racing began in the early 1970s and is thought to have evolved from kids riding their bicycles on dirt tracks because they were too young or couldn't afford to ride Motocross. Originally, racers would ride whatever they had to hand - cruiser style Schwinn machines or wheelie bikes like the Raleigh Chopper - but by the mid-70s the sport was sufficiently popular for manufacturers to produce specific BMX bikes.

These purpose-built machines were small, with a heavy steel frame, 20" wheels and no gears. In the early days, BMX followed the lead of motocross, and just as motocross introduced sidecar-cross to its repertoire, so sidecars became a natural extension of BMX riding.

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Photography Brad Bishop / www.bishopspocket.co.uk

Steve’s a handy kind of guy - he learned sidehack-building from scratch, knocking together the first prototype simply as a fun alternative for the school run, meaning he and his son Leon could ride side by side on one machine. Leon, now 4, is a masterful Monkey, leaning into bends like a pro. That first prototype turned heads wherever they went, and soon Steve was being commissioned to make more - the first three going to a community group helping disadvantaged young people learn the value of cooperation. A client in the US even commissioned them to build an ice-cream sidehack cart to mount onto the side of a tandem, with a smoothie blender powered by the rear wheel. Not sure how that would fare on the racetrack though... Anyway, after a series of design improvements - refining handling characteristics and

Like BMX, sidehack has its origins in Southern California, where in 1972 the now legendary Dougie Takahashi and John ‘JP’ Palfreyman (then a pair of wide-eyed young BMX kids) built their first sidehack in a school's metal shop classroom (with some help from John Palfreyman Sr.). Dougie and JP are widely credited with establishing sidehack as a sport and, as coverage spread through magazines and television, manufacturers such as Gary Littlejohn and Barratt Bros. made sidehack frames for BMX riders to bolt onto their bikes.

Sidehack-equipped BMX bikes can't lean when cornering, so to safely negotiate a bend at speed the sidehack’s side rider, known as the ‘monkey’, has a key role to play. Just as with motorcycle sidecars, they must shift their weight to keep the sidehack stable as it corners. In BMX sidehacking, they can also help to propel the vehicle with a running start and add power by scooting when needed. The bike rider - the one who has to pedal, steer and occasionally brake - is known as the ‘pilot’. A real bond is needed between monkey and pilot to get the best from a BMX sidehack.

This is one of the things that sets sidehacking apart from other cycling sports - winning is a joint effort not a tunnel-visioned, man-against-man endeavour. Sure, teamwork’s crucial in road racing and bike polo, but in sidehack there’s a real symbiosis between pilot and monkey - two bodies working as one to get the best from their machine.

By the 1980s, BMX riders were migrating from the racetrack to the skate park, and the latest craze was freestyle BMX, where riders would pull jumps and grinds and develop ever more ambitious tricks. Sidehacks had very little to offer to the world of freestyle riding and by 1983 they had all but gone.

But recently there’s been something of a renaissance in the Stateside ‘hack scene'; there’s a healthy sidehack scene in France, too. In the UK however, sidehacking remains little known though this may be about to change. Steve Bodiley and Nick Hides (known together as SN Designs) are hoping to energise the UK scene with their custom-built Rattlebone sidehack, a stylish assembly of laser-cut plate parts and 16-gauge steel tubing. Boneshaker went to meet them at their workshop - an unassuming single garage in a quiet suburb in Bristol, UK. The gentle parping sound of Steve’s wife giving a trombone lesson indoors made for a surreal soundtrack.

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" S teve’s a handy kind of guy – he learned sidehack-building from scratch, knocking together the first prototype simply as a fun alternative for the school run..." ground clearance, gearing ratios and brake configuration Steve and Nick have now perfected the Rattlebone Mk.III. Each new machine is lovingly MIG-welded to order from hand-bent steel. There’s one taking shape on the workbench before us as we chat, an artful configuration of curves and sheet metal.

The US brand Impakt are the current market leaders sufficiently mainstream Stateside to be stocked by Wal-Mart.

With Impakt's machines, you have to buy bike and sidecar as a single unit; Steve and Nick’s Rattlebone is designed to mount onto any standard BMX frame, bringing several advantages: you can keep your trusted ride of choice, you don’t need different bikes for BMX and sidehack, and they’re a lot easier to get into a car. Steve and Nick are in the process of getting sidehack officially recognised by British Cycling, the governing body of cycle sport in the UK. They’re hoping to line up some demonstration races at the 2012 Olympics, and are looking at a mountain bike-ready sidehack. Exciting times.

As our evening draws to a close, Steve and Nick stand beside their latest creation, warm with a paternal glow. Their eyes are alive with the potential of it, not just as a catalyst for creating a whole new race scene, but as an instrument of purest fun, soon to be launched swerving round a track, the crowd on their feet, monkey and pilot flying past in a cloud of dust.

www.sn-designs.co.uk

Illustration by Chris Thornley www.raid71.com

In a time of budget cuts, health and safety gone mad and an ever-increasing nanny state, bike polo is the perfect antidote.

With a strong, grassroots, DIY ethic at its core, it is a great example of what an inclusive and active community can be, regardless of gender or age.

Over the next eight pages, bike 16

polo players (and one soon-tobe player!) of all persuasions give their side(s) of the story, presenting a portrait of a scene very much in the ascendancy...

It’s a tale of dynamism and derring-do, of skids and scrapes, of guts and glory.

Grab your mallet, saddle up and let battle commence...

A HISTORY OF BIKE POLO

by Josh Cohen

was founded, followed by the Bicycle Polo Association of America in 1994, and in 1996 the first International Championships were organised, held in the USA, at which India were the champions. © Liz Seabrook

Hitting a ball around whilst riding a bike sounds like a fun idea, which is why bicycle polo has been ‘invented’ time and time again.

Probably the first time it was invented was by the Irish cyclist Richard J. McCready, who was looking for an adrenaline-fuelled bike fix having retired from road racing. McCready was editor and owner of ‘The Irish Cyclist’ magazine, and used this platform to spread the word about his new sport, publishing the official ruleset in October 1891. The game, which was played on grass with four players per team, quickly became popular; before the turn of the century, clubs were founded in England, France and the USA and in 1908, bicycle polo featured at the London Olympic Games as a demonstration sport. By this point the game was already in decline, however, and it completely died out with the advent of the first World War. Fast-forward to 1929 and bicycle polo was invented again, this time by an Englishman, Cyril S. Scott, who had never even heard of McCready’s

game. Scott, like McCready, was an ex-road and track cyclist, but also had a background in field hockey. His game, which was strongly influenced by both the field hockey ruleset and the pony polo rules, continued to be played on grass, but this time with eight players per team. In 1930 the Bicycle Polo Association of Great Britain was established (for the second time) and the sport once again took off. By 1938 the Association had 170 teams playing for 100 clubs, with over 1000 players.

During this time a French version of the sport was also evolving, and despite the rules being slightly different, with, amongst other things, five players per team instead of eight, international games were played between the two countries. Unfortunately, at the start of World War II the sport once again died out.

In 1946, following the Second World War, bicycle polo re-appeared in France.

It was based on the French rules from the 1930s and the game continued to grow in popularity and started to spread around the world. In 1966 the Cycle Polo Federation of India

Three years later, in 1999, bicycle polo was brought to Seattle, USA by Jay Grisham, a bicycle courier. Having no access to grass fields they moved the game onto the hard surface of car parks, of which there were no shortage.

When Grisham left Seattle to work as a coastguard, he left behind his mallets with Matt Messinger and Tim Mason, two fellow couriers, who continued playing in the stockroom of the delivery company they worked for, eventually ripping up the carpet and playing on the concrete. It was at this point that the players invented a ‘new’ game, abandoning the large ball from grass polo, and after much experimentation, settling on a roller hockey ball instead.

They also developed new rules - you weren’t allowed to touch the floor with your feet, and the teams were smaller (only three people per side). This was the true start of the game we continue to play today - Hardcourt Bike Polo.

By 2002 ‘hardcourt’ had spread from Seattle to Portland, where the modern mallet was born - consisting of an aluminium ski pole shaft and a head made of plastic tubing, although most players were still playing with wooden croquet-style mallets. After several smaller polo tournaments, which were essentially just players meeting up for casual matches, the first proper Hardcourt tournament was held in 17

" HITTING A BALL AROUND WHILST RIDING A BIKE SOUNDS LIKE A FUN IDEA, WHICH IS WHY BICYCLE POLO HAS BEEN ‘INVENTED’ TIME AND TIME AGAIN."

© Neil Hodgins

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tournaments of 10-15 minutes. The first Bench Minor tournament was in New York in 2010; other notable tournaments include the Greif Masters in Karlsruhe, Germany 2011, and BMII in Chicago 2011. The Bench Minor format is still in its infancy, and whether it will grow in popularity over the traditional format has yet to be seen.

Since then, hardcourt bike polo has really exploded worldwide. In June 2008 there were around 50 cities playing hardcourt bike polo as we now know it; and today there are over 300 cities with an average of two new cities registering a bike polo scene every week. In 2008 there were 24 tournaments registered with leagueofbikepolo.com; in 2011 there have been 134 tournaments to date.

The 2011 European Championships in Barcelona and World Championships in Seattle both hosted over 70 teams.

© Neil Hodgins

In 2006, Hardcourt Bike Polo was brought to London by a Portland messenger called Ross (his surname seems to have been lost in the fog of time). It wasn’t until Yorgo Tloupas (who had learnt to play in New York) brought the game to East London in 2007 that it really started to take off. As well as the UK, Yorgo also took bike polo to Paris and the sport spread around Europe via the growing European messenger scene.

It was London’s polo scene that expanded faster than anywhere else, thanks to the large fixed gear and single-speed community, which led to London hosting the first European championships in 2009 and founding the London Hardcourt Bike Polo Association, the world’s first recognized

hardcourt association. That year also saw the first North American Championships in Seattle, and the first World Championships in Philadelphia.

Around this time, especially in Europe, a new generation of players joined the bike polo community who were not from the messenger scene, and this saw the beginning of bike polo’s evolution into a more serious sport, with a more inclusive and diverse range of people participating.

© Liz Seabrook

Portland in 2004 - the ‘West Side Polo Invite’ - with a total of fifteen teams.

The game also spread to Philadelphia around 2002 (which would later host the first ‘East Side Invite’ in 2005), and then on to New York and Boston.

At this time in the Midwest USA (notably Milwaukee, Madison and Chicago), there were also polo games being played on a hardcourt, but with the grass polo rules and a larger ball.

These players heard about the new style of play, and importantly the choice of a smaller ball, via tournaments such as the 2nd ‘East Side Invite’ in New York and ‘North Side Invite’ in Ottawa in 2007.

In 2009 in New York, there was a development of an interesting experimental style for the sport, with a format of play more closely influenced by ice hockey, called the ‘Bench Minor’. This version of Hardcourt involves larger teams of 9 players and rolling substitutions; each game consists of two 30 minute halves, instead of the usual game length for

Right now is an extremely exciting time for bike polo playing: the game is advancing and evolving because of improved courts, equipment, team tactics, definition of rules and standards of refereeing. This all contributes to raising the level of play, and tournaments are getting bigger and better all the time. Hardcourt bike polo is gaining support at an ever-increasing rate, from both the public as well as big sporting bodies.

Ultimately though, the future direction of the game remains firmly within the hands of the players themselves. It’s undoubtedly set to have an exciting future, so keep watching!

Josh Cohen has been playing bike polo since August 2008 and was elected Chairman of the London Hardcourt Bike Polo Association in August 2011. www.lhbpa.org www.leagueofbikepolo.com

AN OUTSIDER'S PERSEPCTIVE

by Liz Seabrook

‘Hardcourt bike polo in Hackney?

You’re going to spend the whole day surrounded by hipsters on fixies!’

Before photographing my first hardcourt bike polo tournament, I had little idea what to expect. Hell, I didn’t even know where I was going. Out of the steady hum of a London Saturday came the sounds of people cheering, drumming on wooden walls and the screeching of abused tyres on tarmac, cutting through the monotony and steering me towards my destination.

The London leg of the European Bike Polo Championships is in full swing when I arrive. Teams are playing furiously across three basketball courts in the centre of Hackney Fields under an uncharacteristically hot sun. The turnout is good, with teams from across the UK and Europe all battling to secure places in Sunday’s finals in front of an ever-changing audience of friends, family and passers-by.

And battle they do. Mallets hack at well-protected spokes and shins, the ball speeds across the small court and every so often a rider loses his balance and tumbles off his bike, generally unhurt.

" AT THE RISK OF SOUNDING LIKE A HIPPY, THE LEVEL OF GOOD ENERGY – PARTICULARLY IN A SPORTING CONTEXT – IS UNBELIEVABLE." continental teams. Heavy downpours intersperse glimmers of sunshine and a flash flood leaves the players impatiently huddled under a gazebo.

winners and losers on the back. At the risk of sounding like a hippy, the level of good energy – particularly in a sporting context – is unbelievable.

For someone new to this particular two-wheeled world, what’s immediately attractive about bike polo is that it’s completely inclusive. Compare it to the sport whose courts it re-appropriates.

It’s easy to watch basketball and find reasons not to play: I’m not tall enough, I’m not athletic enough, the rules are too complicated etc. Bike polo on the other hand is much more inviting.

People of all ages and both men and women play to similar standards; the rules can be picked up quickly and everyone’s remarkably friendly.

Off-court, any rivalry falls away and those on the sidelines offer hints, cheer regardless of who scores and pat the

Will I be saddling up and giving bike polo a go in the near future?

You betcha.

© Neil Hodgins

Several months later, I find myself back in my hometown of Bristol at another tournament. Unfortunately, the beautiful weather we enjoyed in London appears to have left with the

© Liz Seabrook

Not so, dear boy, not so.

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PEOPLE POWER

by Jon Marshall

How did you originally get involved with the London Open?

I was asked to take on the 2010 London Open as I drunkenly mentioned to Andy Fernandez (who had the idea for the tournament initially) that I’d be willing to help out if he ever needed a hand. Fast-forward a month and Andy needed a co-organiser as he’d taken on a new job and was becoming a little overwhelmed! Now, the tournament is a great idea on paper: encourage some of the best hardcourt players to compete in our fair city and never turn away any team with a desire to take part. But making it a reality is another story altogether and much of the responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of the London bike polo community - the largest group of mallet-wielding enthusiasts worldwide.

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© Liz Seabrook

Jon Marshall is the organiser of the London Open Bike Polo Tournament.

He is also part of the Polo team ‘Spring Break’ and Vice Chairman of the London Hardcourt Bike Polo Association. As you can imagine, he’s a pretty busy chap, but made time to have a chat with us about what it takes to organise an event like this....

Despite the workload involved I’m really glad I said “no problem” to Andy.

It’s a great way to give back to the polo community each year.

How many teams took part?

In 2010, we hosted 48 teams from 13 countries and managed to build upon our legacy after starting the European Championships in 2009. For 2011 we had over 50 teams register for the Open and we’re hoping to have 70 teams compete for 2012. The idea of the tournament is a good one, although some say we’ve created a monster what happens when over 100 teams want to compete? 150 teams? 1,000?

It’s certainly a good potential problem to have though, and I really want the tournament to grow in size year-on-year showing the growth of hardcourt bike polo worldwide.

From a global perspective, how is bike polo growing?

There are now over 26,000 bike polo players worldwide, predominately playing within North America and Europe, and there’s a huge amount of growth expected during the next couple of years across Asia Pacific and South America. Some of the grass polo clubs are also starting to take notice in Africa and India too, so it’s safe to say that the hardcourt game is definitely growing and is here to stay.

What are the biggest challenges you come up against when organising the London Open?

The hardest part is finding the perfect location each year. For 2012 we will be trying to source a location that can accommodate four courts plus space for stalls and spectators (~3,000 square feet), which is a tall order in central London and becomes even harder when you factor in the requirement for a super-smooth playing surface.

The next biggest challenge is sourcing all the funding for the event (we build the courts from scratch), but luckily the current boom in cycling hasn’t made this too difficult; we were especially lucky to bring Le Coq Sportif on board for 2011. Finally, it’s always tricky to run the event itself and it becomes a larger logistical challenge each year. This is where London’s bike polo community really

comes up trumps as we’re never short of volunteers.

What are you currently up to?

Well we’ve just had the London BFF and Hell’s Belles tournaments and I’ve been in Nigeria teaching grass polo in Kaduna, where a squad of London players were showing the horse polo community how to migrate to a two-wheeled steed! The London League should then keep us busy over the winter and organisation for the London Open 2012 starts in earnest on New Year’s Day. I’d also really like my own team, ‘Spring Break’ to win the Euros and Worlds next year (we will be training hard) and would like to see the LHBPA (London Hardcourt Bike Polo Association) go from strength to strength under the new chairman, Josh Cohen.

And what about the 2012 London Open Tournament?

We’ve out-grown our last two sites and will be moving on again for 2012. I’m currently in talks with Tower Hamlets about a large, smooth site in East London, so fingers crossed they come on board like Southwark and Hackney have in the past. It’s at times like these that being a recognised sport might help grease the wheels a little, but we’re managing to cut through the red tape as needed and would rather do the work ourselves and maintain a degree of control over everything.

Time will tell how the London Open develops in the future but we have a good thing going for now! www.springbreakbikepolo.com www.lhbpa.org

© Will Melling

And the greatest satisfaction?

The best part of playing bike polo for me is definitely the worldwide community that exists around it. As you can imagine, this is magnified when so much of this community descends upon one location for a tournament like this.

I was hooked (and dumbstruck) when I headed to my first tournament back in 2009 and was housed and looked after

by Steffen (of Candy Coloured Clowns fame) in the beautiful city of Karslruhe, Germany. Polo players seem to go out of their way for each other and always ensure that every tournament is a big success. It’s a very refreshing change of pace from the “big society” that exists today and I feel very lucky to be part of such an emerging sport and caring community.

HELL'S BELLES

by Erin Giuliani Two girls, one boy. Or just three girls together. That’s how they roll at Hell’s Belles...

London has the largest bike polo community in the world. Making up two fifths of the city’s most active players are a bunch of girls who organise themselves unofficially (and a little tongue in cheek) as the London Ladies’ Hardcourt Bike Polo Club. The motivation behind it all is to boost the number of female polo players, and everyone’s in favour of that.

Girls in polo isn’t new - across Europe the likes of Los Conos (London), Poloholica (Munich), and Anna Synthese from the hugely successful mixed team Polosynthese (Frankfurt) have set the bar high for newer female players in the sport. North America has the largest contingent of female bike polo players anywhere in the world, spread across their many bike polo playing cities – for the last three years major polo-scene cities have hosted the hugely successful allfemale Ladies’ Army annual tournament, which returns to Lexington, Kentucky for 2012. The World Hardcourt Bike Polo Championship leaderboard lists plenty of girls amongst the world’s best teams - needless to say, girls give as good as boys when it comes to bike polo.

The idea is not to segregate ourselves from the rest of the London Polo Community, which has a real sense of unity and community spirit - we’re just a group of girls who meet for fortnightly all-female throw-in nights. We have recently been preoccupied organising Hell’s Belles, vol.1 - a ‘female-majority’ bike polo tournament epitomised by ‘Belle’, the 7ft tall, polo-zombie girl, who has been plastered over every possible medium for tournament promotion,

and who adorned the main court at the event. (Female majority, in case it needs explaining, means each three person team must be at least two thirds female).

There were plenty of all-girl teams too - mainly from Germany and the UK. Shotgun Sisters - Elena from Geneva, Johanna from Munster and Anna Synthese from Frankfurt - were amazing.

They placed third overall (the highest placed all-girls team); and Elena took home the MVF (Most Valuable Female) prize – Rollapaluza donated the cash for a custom polo frame built by Ryan McCaig, owner of Oak Cycles.

An ‘up and coming’ award was given to ‘Victorious Secret’ – an all-girl team which included Leah Sweeting, a 13 year old player from Bristol. This was Leah’s first tournament outside of her hometown, so we were really happy that she could come to participate (and slay!) in Hell’s Belles. As far as our hopes for the longevity of women’s polo go, we’ve got them invested in Leah.

" FOR ME, THE HIGHLIGHT WAS WATCHING AND PLAYING AGAINST A BUNCH OF BADASS POLO LADIES." For me, the highlight was watching and playing against a bunch of badass polo ladies. The combination of a level playing field, the inspiration provided from some established and super-talented polo blokes, and the unseasonably sunny conditions, meant we saw some phenomenal polo played by female competitors at Hell’s Belles.

Plenty of girls have since told us how totally inspiring it all was, and that they can’t wait to play. We’ve got three new girls starting this week, and hopefully the trend continues. Without the prizes, banners, sponsors, etc, the core aim of the tournament was to get more girls involved in polo, so we’re all stoked to have achieved that aspect. Bring on Hell’s Belles, vol. 2!

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CONFESSIONS OF A BIKE POLO ADDICT

by Andre Seidel

© Liz Seabrook

My experience of hardcourt bicycle polo started like many others. Walking through my local skate park, I noticed a group of people having what looked like the most fun on a bicycle. There were maybe ten of them, ranging in age from seven to fifty. At first I was drawn to the three or four players riding fixies, one bike bright pink and the others converted Raleighs, each unique in their own way. After about ten minutes of watching six people chase a ball around a five-a-side football pitch I plucked up enough courage to ask what on earth they were doing.

They explained to me that hardcourt bicycle polo was a relatively new sport, one that sprung from the messenger cyclists in Seattle and very quickly moved to New York, not long followed

by London and thereafter the rest of the world. The game has been refined to two teams of three people, playing ten-minute games against each other or whichever team scores five goals first.

Players are not allowed to put their feet on the ground and if they do, they must tap out, which usually means touching your mallet at a certain point, sometimes a bell, situated on the half way line of the court. It is like-for-like contact and collisions are inevitable. It’s therefore advisable to wear gloves, knee and elbow pads and a helmet.

I was invited to join in and have a game, and so with much excitement and trepidation I wheeled my custombuilt Raleigh aeronautic-engineered fixie onto the court. Despite having the wrong gear ratio and a brake lever I wouldn’t be able to use (as one hand is always holding the mallet), I managed to score a goal in my first game! That was it… I was hooked.

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I was invited to come back for a proper game the following Tuesday, and given a list of modifications that I could make to my faithful steed to make it more manageable on court. These included lowering the gear ratio, changing to a freewheel, setting up my brake levers on the side of the handlebars that I would actually be holding and, last but not least, making the allimportant mallet (see opposite).

"NOW IF I THOUGHT I WAS HOOKED AFTER THAT FIRST GAME, I CERTAINLY WASN’T PREPARED FOR THE EFFECT THAT THAT TOURNAMENT WOULD HAVE ON ME. TWO DAYS IN A WAREHOUSE, EATING, SLEEPING AND PLAYING POLO WAS LIKE A DREAM COME TRUE." After about three months of regular playing, I had a new polo-specific bicycle with all of the aforementioned modifications to replace my fixie (which by now was looking a little worse for wear). It was at this point that bike polo shifted from being a casual hobby to

something a little more competitive.

The opportunity to form a team and enter into a forthcoming tournament arose, and I jumped at the opportunity!

Now if I thought I was hooked after that first game, I certainly wasn’t prepared for the effect that that tournament would have on me. Two days in a warehouse, eating, sleeping and playing polo was like a dream come true.

Unfortunately, we didn’t feature anywhere on the scoreboard at the tournament and it was evident that if we ever wanted to, it would take a lot of practice and dedication, and possibly a few new bicycles.

Four months on from that first taste of competition, I have a new team and we are playing more and more - even earning a ranking in the national series.

I won’t bore you with details of my new dual pull brake trigger or how I haven’t slept for the last few weeks while trying to arrange a tournament in my hometown, but let’s just say that I am well and truly addicted.

So next time you’re walking through your local park and you see a group of people having what looks to be the most fun you can have on a bicycle, I urge you to stop and ask some questions. Who knows, it might just change your life.

Andre Seidel plays in “Hacked Off” Bristol polo team and runs Campus Skatepark, ‘a community of skateboarders supporting young people’ which is also the new official home of Bristol bike polo. www.campus-skatepark.co.uk Andre@campus-skatepark.co.uk

Words & Illustration Matt Mills

Bicycle polo would not be what it is without the wonderful DIY spirit that exists so boldly at the core of the sport and in the people that play it. With that in mind, here is a 5-step guide to making a polo mallet, Boneshaker-style.

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SOURCE YOUR MATERIALS

Your mallet needs to be hard-wearing and durable but not too heavy. The most common material used for the shaft of the mallet is a ski pole. These can be sourced from charity shops or eBay - just make sure it is at least 110cm and reasonably straight. A plastic gas pipe (ideally 5cm in diameter) is commonly used to make the mallet head. This can be found in skips

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near road works (if you're lucky), or alternatively just ask one of your fellow polo companions - if they don’t have any, they should at least be able to point you in the direction of somebody who does. In addition to this, you will need an 8mm bolt that can span the diameter of the mallet head, as well as some grip tape to finish off the handle section of the shaft.

CUT IT DOWN TO SIZE

Only ever cut the tapered end of the ski pole. You need to cut it down to a size that is suitable for you – as a rule of thumb, it should come up to approximately waist height. A hacksaw is a great tool for cutting

3

DRILL

THE

HEAD

Firstly, mark on the mallet head where the ski pole will enter. This is usually in the middle of the head, perpendicular to the top of the cylindrical surface.

Now measure the diameter of the tapered end of the ski pole and find a spade drill bit that is of a slightly smaller size than that measurement. This means that when you go ahead and drill the hole in the mallet head, the ski pole will have a really

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snug fit with no wobble. Just remember to drill a smaller pilot hole before you bore out the hole for the ski pole. In order to create a super- stable mallet head, it is recommended that a small pit is drilled into the inner surface of the head, opposite the hole that the ski pole initially enters. This will allow the end of the shaft to sit tight in the mallet head, further reducing wobble.

DRILL IT SOME MORE

Use traditional drill bits and, if you have access to one, a hole saw to bore out any unnecessary bits of plastic on the mallet

5

BOLT

IT

IN

PLACE

There are several ways to do this. The most simple and arguably most reliable method is to drill using an 8mm bit straight through the first surface of the head, then through both sides of the ski pole and the second surface of the head. Put the 8mm bolt all the way through so it spans the diameter of the mallet head (as in diagram, top right) and tighten the nut on the other side, being sure to saw off any excess material on the bolt. Wrap a tape of choice

through aluminium, as well as the hardened plastic that is used for the gas pipe. This pipe, which is used to make the mallet head, should be cut down to around 6” long, but again this is subject to personal preference.

head. This serves to make the head much lighter, and also to create cups in the sides of the mallet which can aid ball control.

around the shaft to serve as grip and plug the exposed end of the shaft (taping a coin over the end will do). Be sure to file down any sharps.

Now there’s only one thing left to do......

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Words Giles Belbin www.gilesbelbin.moonfruit.com Illustration Eliza Southwood ww.elizasouthwood.com

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It’s 12th November 1905 and a monument is in the making. Fifty kilometres from Milan, the peloton is speeding towards the Crema junction in the inaugural Milano-Milano cycle race in Italy. One man, Giovanni Gerbi, is about to make history. He smiles to himself, his confidence unabashed, for he is the only one in the bunch who knows that they are about to reach the pivotal part of the race.

Giovanni slowly begins to get his form back and sets his eyes on new sights. The inaugural Milano – Milano, a 230.5km race that takes the riders into the Lombardy countryside surrounding Milan, is on the horizon. He studies the route carefully, looking for the tricky sections of the race, keen to identify where it could be won and where it might be lost.

Giovanni sizes up every opportunity to gain an advantage.

Giovanni Gerbi was born on 4th June 1885 in the Piedmont city of Asti in northern Italy. Sent out to work by his father from an early age, he finds himself working in a bicycle repair shop. His interest in cycling grows and he starts to ride bikes lent to him by his employer. During a visit to Turin he falls into conversation with a group of cyclists preparing for the Rivoli-Torino race and at the last minute decides to join them.

He finishes sixth.

He comes across the Crema junction and notes with interest that the riders must cross a railway track. With heavy bikes and nearly 200km of racing already in the legs, Giovanni realises that everyone will have to dismount in order to get across the tracks. Unless, that is, you happen to know a place where you may cross safely...

The 15 year-old Giovanni has been bitten by the bike-racing bug and begins to train furiously, claiming his first win in the Asti regional championships and becoming a regular and renowned rider on the racing scene around Milan and Lombardy. He accumulates an impressive set of results as an amateur, including victories in the prestigious Coppa del Re (King’s Cup) two years in a row. He wins the semi-classic Milano-Torino by over 30 minutes in skin-soaking rain, recording a time so quick it catches the race organisers off guard. They have not even raised the “Arrivo” banner!

Gerbi has prepared well for this race. He has spent days doing his homework, studiously researching the route of the new event in intricate detail. He has spent time thoroughly analysing the road conditions, evaluating the most difficult and strategic sections of the race until he knows them like the back of his hand. And he has realised that the Crema junction, upon which they are now bearing down, affords him a devilish opportunity.

Giovanni turns professional. Nicknamed the ‘Red Devil’ by a priest after he rides into the middle of a religious ceremony whilst wearing his signature red cycling jersey, he feels the call from across the border and starts the 1904 edition of the Tour de France. It’s an adventure that ends in tears and recriminations for the Italian. On just the second stage he is among a group of riders attacked by partisan French fans eager to see home favourite Antoine Fauré, who is up the road in an escape, triumph. Giovanni picks himself up after the scandalous attack and tries to continue, but he is unable to stand the pain and is forced to retire. The rest of the season fares little better for him and ultimately ends with a nasty fall on the track during the World Championships at London’s Crystal Palace. His condition is critical and he is taken to hospital where he stays in a coma that will last for five days.

The calendar clicks round to 1905 and Giovanni returns to the road, keen to make amends for the dispiriting season that has just passed. But he is still affected by the crash in London and poor results follow. But Giovanni is nothing if not a determined and tenacious fellow. He trains hard, timing himself again and again on the same stretch of Italian road, looking to quantify his improving form. He heads into the hills, sprinting up short sections of climbs.

As the peloton heads toward the junction, the wily Gerbi makes his way to the front of the bunch at speed. He is now leading the race, guide and guardian of the peloton. They are following his every move, blindly going where he is going, riding in his very tyre tracks. Gerbi is ready to put his plan into action.

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With everyone hot on his wheels Gerbi leads the peloton into the rail tracks. Everyone is now riding at full speed in between the two rails.

Then, just as the riders are about to approach the point where they need to dismount and turn off, the Italian unexpectedly veers to one side and rapidly exits the tracks, riding up and over a ramp of dried mud he had carefully built two days earlier. As Gerbi stomps on the pedals and speeds away the rest of the peloton, now unable to follow, crash and collapse in a heap. Gerbi motors on alone, onwards to Milan. Head down. Legs pumping. No looking back. No-one is able to catch him.

The first ever Milano – Milano is won by the Red Devil by over 40 minutes.

The manner of Gerbi’s win in that first Milano-Milano meant that after just one edition, the race, renamed the Giro di Lombardia two years later, was already assured of its place in the rich annals of cycling. This was the early dawn of professional cycle racing in Europe, when the sport’s biggest races were still in their infancy. One-day races like ParisRoubaix were slowly becoming established as annual fixtures; the Tour de France was only two years old and the first Giro d’Italia still four years away.

This was an age where cyclists were truly revered. Cycle racing brought a welcome diversion from the genuine hardships of everyday life in pre-war Europe. New races were springing up all over the continent; media barons eager to profit from the new appetite for bike racing. The heroes that pedalled their way across nations were men from the rural backwaters of Europe. Like Gerbi, these were men from hamlets and villages who would otherwise have been farmers, bakers and blacksmiths. Men who in bike racing sought a better life. They were celebrated because of their bravery, their tenacity and their sheer brute strength. They had to be made of hard stuff to race the distances they did on the “roads” of Europe, then often no more than dirt tracks, perched atop unwieldy and hefty machines. They were men hewn from granite that defied the laws of nature. And they created history.

Today the Giro di Lombardia is one of cycling’s most celebrated races. Along with Paris-Roubaix, Milan-San Remo, Liège–Bastogne–Liège and the Tour of Flanders, it is one of the sport’s five “monuments”, making it one of the most important and prestigious races on the annual calendar. But it is much more than just a bike race. It is an institution.

The race traditionally brings the curtain down on the cycling season, taking place in autumn as the trees around Lombardy blaze a golden trail. This glorious canvas, upon which some of cycling’s greatest stories are painted, gives the race the most romantic of nicknames - la classica delle foglie morte; ‘the race of the falling leaves’.

In 1961, the race directors moved the finish from Milan to the shores of Lake Como and in one bold move the character of the race changed. The long and flat ride to the finish was replaced with a stunning lakeside climax, just a few kilometres from the final climb. Although the finish has on occasion returned to Milan, the character of the race has remained; a character determined by short but testing climbs, nestled among the beautiful hills of the Lombardy countryside. And there is one climb in particular that gives this race special poignancy - the climb to the Santuario della Madonna del Ghisallo, the Chapel of the Madonna del Ghisallo.

The chapel dates from 1632 and the climb to it starts at Bellagio, on the shore of Lake Como. It is tough at just over 10km long with a 5.2% average gradient. But this climb isn’t iconic because of the numbers. This climb is iconic because it leads the riders to a place of real significance for all cyclists.

Legend has it that in medieval times the Count of Ghisallo was travelling close to the chapel when he was set upon by bandits seeking to rob him. His salvation came when he saw a vision of the Virgin Mary at the chapel. He struggled free from the attackers and ran towards the vision, prayed to the Virgin for his refuge and was saved from the outlaws. The tale of the vision spread and the Madonna del Ghisallo, saviour of the Count, became recognised locally as the patroness of travellers.

Then, in the late 1940s, a priest named Father Ermelindo Vigano suggested that the Madonna del Ghisallo be declared the patroness of a particular form of traveller: the cyclist. Pope Pius XII concurred, and on October 13th 1949, the Madonna del Ghisallo so became the patroness of cyclists.

"In the late 1940s, a priest named Father Ermelindo Vigano suggested that the Madonna del Ghisallo be declared the patroness of a particular form of traveller: the cyclist. Pope Pius XII concurred, and on October 13th 1949, the Madonna del Ghisallo so became the patroness of cyclists."

Today the chapel is a shrine to cycling, accommodating exhibits and memorabilia from legendary riders. The entrance is flanked by statues of Italy’s two most iconic riders, Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali. Displays include Bartali’s bike from his victorious ride in the 1948 Tour de France, which arguably saved Italy from civil war (but that’s another story). A flame, lit and blessed by Pope Pius XII, burns eternally, a memorial to cyclists whose lives have been lost. Every Feast of All Souls and Christmas Eve, special services are held in their remembrance. Cyclists come to pay their respects and to pray for the Madonna’s guardianship.

And every year on race day, the roadside packed with Tifosi primed to roar themselves hoarse in celebration of their heroes, the peloton ride past this chapel dedicated to the triumph and tragedy of their sport. As they do so, the bells ring out, greeting the very riders the Madonna del Ghisallo protects. And as they ring, and as the crowds cheer, the next instalment in the rich history of this race of fallen leaves is crafted, the first chapter of which was written by Giovanni Gerbi and his devilish deed more than a century ago.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Giovanni Gerbi died on the 7th May 1954. He was 68 years old.

The 105th edition of the Giro di Lombardia took place on October 15th 2011. It was won by the Swiss racer Oliver Zaugg.

Giles Belbin lives, writes and cycles in the south-west of England.

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MY BEAUTIFUL BIKE B Y K AT J U N G N I C K E L

Photography by Liz Seabrook / lizseabrook.tumblr.com

My beautiful bike is a black 52 inch Ordinary, hand-built by Mike Sullivan in Tasmania. It is a replica of a Victorian racing machine; steel forks and tapering spine, moustache handlebars, hammock saddle, short cranks, 64/32 spokes and solid rubber tyres. The rims are a modern concession (Velocity Deep V) and it weighs in at around 15 kilos. I have been riding Ordinaries, or ‘Penny Farthings’ as they are colloquially known, for about five years and racing them for two. I would like an original Victorian one too, but not for racing. The full crash history of a 130-year-old bicycle is difficult to source and given the force needed to corner a penny at speed, I like to know what I’m racing. Mike recently told me that my front forks are cut from an FJ Holden tail shaft and my headset started life as an EH Holden gearbox yoke. I like that.

of space to practice. So, yes, that penny rider hurtling through London Fields with both hands in the air was quite possibly me.

This penny thing started for me in Adelaide, South Australia when I briefly rode a friend’s machine. One minute I had my foot on the step contemplating the hassle of owning such a massive bike and the next I heard myself asking where I could get one. A machine in my size popped up in Tasmania and I brought it back to London. There is nothing quite like riding a penny. When people ask, I can only tell them it is as close as you can get to flying. The height, together with the simplicity of the fixed wheel, lack of chain and brake, tall elegant stature, wide bars and broad suspended saddle which ensures you sit bolt upright (unless you’re racing) make for an unparalleled experience. Riding a penny makes me smile until my face hurts and also, curiously, it makes London smile back.

There are only a few things that tend to bother me when I am cycling the penny: tooting drivers and random airborne missiles. Given the smiling faces and waving hands from car windows, the former are mostly friendly honks; however, a friendly honk or an unfriendly honk is a honk nonetheless. And when you are a cyclist, horns are rarely friendly sounds. They warn of danger. Once or twice would be fine but a relaxing cycle around the city can change with a cacophony of horns.

And of course, there’s the pesky problem of objects occasionally thrown at me. So far, I have accrued eggs and cans. Around November, fireworks add extra zing. As a member of several cycling forums, I know this is not an uncommon problem.

I just happen to be an especially large target. Strategies include new nifty stunt riding skills and useful back street routes. These also help with the squirrel problem.

Riding a penny changes the city in other ways. My mundane cycle routes are transformed from the perspective of the big wheel. Overhanging branches, signage and truck mirrors are at head height. Fellow cyclists’ heads and car roofs are at foot level. Dogs and squirrels are unpredictable missiles. Previously indiscernible gradients become hills to climb up and fly down. Similarly, the road surface, with its potholes, gutters and rubbish, presents a new palette of peril. But the view is incredible. Atop a 52inch wheel you can peer into buildings, buses and over fences. I have always been fond of cycling over London Bridge - how the dense city suddenly relinquishes its hold and thrusts you out into a wide expanse of the Thames before being enfolded back into the concrete landscape. It is one of my favourite parts of the city, made even more special from the vantage point of a penny. The real possibility of hitting a pothole and being propelled over the railings and into the swirling tides only adds to the thrill.

This newly-transformed urban landscape has catalysed a repertoire of new skills. I quickly learned to ride single- and no-handed. This was not for tricksy reasons but rather essential to signal, adjust glasses or catch a cap brushed by low-hanging branches. I could easily do this on a conventional bike but it was much harder on a penny. Seated over the fixed wheel means your feet power and control the direction of the bike.

Together with your hands, this is how you steer. Yet lifting your hands from the bars requires even more commitment than on a conventional bike due to the height and potential of… well… death. My difficulty in learning was compounded by the absence

I have learned other penny tricks the hard way. Although it is possible to trackstand a penny, I’ve yet to master this feat. To get on and off I use a small step on the spine. With the plethora of traffic lights in central London, I often have to dismount every few minutes. In Adelaide, where I first learnt to ride, my penny friends used traffic lights or signs to balance. I tried this in London and discovered a stark difference in urban planning – here street furniture is located deeper in the sidewalk. I found myself stuck on an unrecoverable angle between bike and pole. The only way down was to ignominiously shimmy down the pole while holding the penny at an angle. It sounds bad. It looked worse.

Squirrels display a hypnotic attraction to large spinning wheels.

Cycling though a park is far from the day-dreamy experience it should be when you are beleaguered by visions of furry spokey-dokeys__________________ ____________

People often ask about accidents, and I have experienced the classic high wheel method for stopping: the penny header, also known as the ‘imperial crowner’. This is when the front wheel stops, trapping your knees under the bars, causing you to fly over the handlebars and brake with your face. It is best avoided.

As is the case with most of my cycle accidents, my penny header was self-induced. A jumper around my waist made its way into the wheel and over I went. I scored colourful moustache (handlebar) shaped bruising and my wrists came close to snapping. I was lucky. I still have all my own teeth. I have been in races where riders have come a cropper and taken off more than a bit of bark. And if one penny goes down… well you get the picture. Penny racing is an experience that is anything but ordinary. But that’s another story…

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Kat Jungnickel currently researches the many cultures of cycling at www.cyclingcultures.org.uk 29

Bunting and Bakelite

T

he story of these images lies in objects (and the love of cycling). The blue Hobbs bike part, now red and rusting, resides in a shed in the garden. Along with its other parts it once held aloft Bernard Allen: apiarist, chicken keeper, gardener, poet, philanderer, cyclist – and my grandfather.

The letters are key to the knowledge I have of my grandfather.

He died when I was 1, back in 1990. The letters are a correspondence I have been keeping with my uncle (also an avid cyclist) during this, my last year at University. They have not only enlightened me about my paternal grandfather but also supported the imagery for my book about him and my grandmother, ‘Bunting and Bakelite’.

I learnt that much of his life was spent travelling the roads of the UK on his various bicycles. This would have been mainly in the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s – an enviable time for cyclists now, without the traffic and speed of today.

In my grandfather’s words...

" It was to me akin to the excitement a modern person might have at the delivery of a new Jaguar; a person, that is, who had never had the opportunity of knowing and experiencing the joy of riding a superlative all-British bicycle either at speed or cruising along the gently undulating byways of England of those days."

Apparently he was also quite the pro at packing light for his journeys: a small A-frame tent, cooker, food and everything bar the kitchen sink was taken along, but with the ingenuity of an experienced traveller it was never a huge load. My father, my uncle and the rest of the family accompanied him occasionally and I imagine seeing a man totally at peace, doing his favourite thing in the world. It is said that my father was conceived on one of these journeys with my grandmother; an appropriate beginning, for he has also inherited the passion for cycling and now I too take great enjoyment in powering my way around on a bicycle. Perhaps one day, once the Hobbs is restored to full glory, I will carry on its history.

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lillyallenillustration.tumblr.com

by Lilly Allen

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E FREESTYL CYCLING

y by Photograph Words and n Walker ca un D d i an Bruna Martin

IA B M A G E H IN T

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IN MUCH OF AFRICA, BICYCLES ARE BEING FORGOTTEN IN THE RUSH TO FILL UP CARS WITH SUBSIDISED OIL. NOT IN MAMADOU ‘WURI’ BAH’S REPAIR WORKSHOP IN THE GAMBIA. Surrounded by Senegal and lapped by the Atlantic Ocean, The Gambia is the smallest country in the Black Continent, a former British colony whose economy is based on farming, fishing and tourism. It is one of the poorest countries in the world; a third of the population lives on less than a dollar a day. With a budget that limited, BMX isn’t quite at the top of everyone’s priority list. But then the way you escape poverty is by getting out and starting things – building something that wasn’t there before.

I met Wuri when I realised that the bike I use back in the UK probably wasn’t the most suitable for West Africa and I needed some help finding a decent bike in The Gambia, where I'd moved for a year as a volunteer. Everyone I spoke to told me “just go to the traffic light in the capital and ask for Wuri, he’ll sort you out”. Business interactions are not as swift and impersonal here as they are in Europe and sometimes you have to be ready for the long-haul. We sat down and had an Attayah (local tea so sweet it makes your eyes sting) and bonded over our mutual awe for the latest Danny MacAskill video before he casually mentioned “Oh yeah, I started The Gambia’s first freestyle team”.

Wuri is a tall 26 year-old with piercing eyes and a great gift of the gab. During our first encounter, he explained he loves bicycles because of their simplicity, and the freedom they give. Wuri works every day of the week at the main junction in the Gambia’s busy capital, making sure Gambians’ bikes can get them to work or school.

Across West Africa, the burgeoning middle-class suburbs are being designed following the sprawling American model where it’s almost impossible to get about without a car. With increasing wealth, the first thought on most people’s mind is a car and the status that goes with it. Wuri says he’s noticed a gradual fall in the number of people coming to his workshop in the last few years as the main roads get faster and bikes lose their previously unchallenged dominance. For a clue to where it might lead look to Dakar, the capital of Senegal, where a tangle of inner-city motorways and flyovers have made getting around by bike shift from brave to plain suicidal.

It doesn’t have to be that way. The Gambia is as flat as the average Pacific island (the fourth flattest country in the world, apparently) so low-maintenance “fixies” are every bit as popular as they are in East London or the South of Manchester. There’s a dry, mild climate on the coast, where most of the population live, high bike usage in the rural 33

areas and no local car manufacturing. Perfect conditions to build mainstream urban bicycle culture – but only if the opportunity is realised before Banjul goes the way of London, pushing urban motorways, like Blackfriars Bridge, through the heart of the city.

Wuri left school early and started helping out at his uncle’s bike repair stall, 'Topcycles'. He soon discovered that, although he didn’t really like algebra, he loved studying how to reassemble a crank set. He spent the next five years learning how to do everything short of frame-building and eventually took over the day-to-day running of the workshop. Wuri started to train other young people – literally anyone who turned up that morning - in bike maintenance and business skills until, eventually, two of them were able to set up their own repair workshops.

“I love bicycles,” he told me when I brought my bike to his workshop. “I’ve loved riding cycles since I was 6 years old, since I was able to ride. My parents weren’t rich enough to buy a bicycle for me. In my street there was only one BMX 34

bike, it was the son of a rich family who owned it. With the other children of the compound, I spent hours looking at that bike. So shiny, colourful and new. We queued all day long begging for a ride, looking forward to those 10 minutes when we could finally cycle around. I desired a BMX bike so much that eventually my brother bought me one, and I have been using it ever since.” In The Gambia, a brother is not necessarily a relative. Most of the time it’s a family friend, or a neighbour, or even a stranger who only visited you once in your compound. That’s how Wuri got his first bike: through the help of a sympathetic ‘brother’.

So what do you do after running your own bike repair shop and helping several other people start their own? To Wuri, the answer was obvious – start a freestyle stunt team.

“We are the only ones doing this in The Gambia,” he states proudly. If you take your bike in for Wuri to fix he’ll do a better job than anyone in The Gambia and it will come back spinning without a noise. But you have to accept that he has probably spent the afternoon trying out new freestyle

I LOVE FREE STYLE MORE THAN

ANYTHING,

EVEN FOOT BALL.. .

tricks on it. “We don’t have the money to buy proper BMX bikes,” he admits, “so we just use the ones brought in by the customers. But we are very careful and always make sure they don’t get damaged.”

Wuri and the rest of the Topcycles guys became local celebrities after drawing huge crowds to watch them practice in the car park of the local football stadium. They’ve even made their own promotional video (http://vimeo. com/28096512) to try to get equipment for the team and the workshop. “I love freestyle more than anything, even football”, says Wuri. “Because when you play football, it takes an extremely long time before the ball approaches the goal, before something interesting happens. However, when you do freestyle, you are constantly planning some new tricks, you jump and speed up, and you and your audience are always having a great time.” Wuri’s freestyle team is all about fun. They don’t ride the right bikes; they don’t have protective gear or ramps for their tricks. As they loop across the concrete - bunny-hopping, balancing on the crossbar,

dancing around on unicycles in the dust - most wear socks and flip-flops, not body armour and crash helmets. But, as Wuri likes to say, “When I am doing it, I feel so proud, I do enjoy it. There is something in the human body called adrenaline – you know about that? It’s like a drug that keeps you passionate about things. Freestyle gives me adrenaline and enthusiasm. That’s why I like it.” Doesn’t he get worried about performing without protective gear? Apparently not: “When I get wounded, I don’t even notice it unless someone tells me that there is blood on my skin. But I really don’t care; all I want is doing crazy things in front of my audience.

It is offering them a good show. For me, it is pure joy.

Because, you know, you can’t do this without joy.”

The bicycle already provides access to education in areas where cars are expensive or not able to cope with dirt roads.

As with many African countries, the government has a policy that no child should have to travel more than 3km to school, but that hasn’t quite been achieved yet so in the meantime bicycles help take off some of the pressure 35

TCHED, BUT UND FAR-FE O S T H IG M IT START MBITION TO A N A S A H I WUR GAMBIA DING IN THE FRAME-BUIL

this puts on children and their families. In the upcountry towns you will often see hordes children making the most of the available transport to get to school – one kid riding a bike with a second, third or sometimes even brave fourth hanging on to the back. This is a quick and inexpensive way to extend access to education but it is only possible as long as there are the skills and materials to maintain bikes.

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Topcycles have performed for the Gambian president at the recent Independence Day celebrations and they’ve been featured on the local TV station. But what next? Wuri says he’s heard there are some freestyle teams in nearby Senegal and we’ve even heard about the possibility of a BMX track. He also

wants to train more young Gambians in cycle maintenance and has an ambition to start frame-building in the Gambia.

It might sound far-fetched in a country that has almost no manufacturing, but it’s a good place to start and it’s hard to find a Gambian who would bet against Wuri.

“We really need support from advertisers, sponsors, and donors. We need money, bikes and training to get better and be able to perform internationally” says Wuri. “My aim is to improve the Topcycles freestyle team and encourage more Gambian people to come and join the workshop. I am convinced that Topcycles has potential to become something big, something that could improve the quality of life of many Gambians.”

There are a number of charities working in the Gambia providing bikes to children to help them get to school. These include Jole Rider (jolerider.org) and Re-cycle (re-cycle.org) both of which accept donations of cash or unwanted bikes in the UK. If you’d like to help Wuri and his workshop, please send a message to bruna@martinib.eu.

For Life’s Inclines

Illustration by David Broadbent www.davidbroadbent.co.uk

by Rich Cunningham

This is the account of a cycle-race gone catastrophically wrong in 1950s Lancashire, UK. It was recorded some forty-years later, in the 1990s by Noel Capstick, my great-grandfather, when retelling the significant events of his life. This tape, amongst others, was originally found by my uncle and played to my family and I on a winter’s night around the fire. We switched off the television and as Noel began to speak, the room fell into silence, his words consuming us like the flames consumed the logs in the stove. It was a strange experience for us all; some were hearing a voice that was once familiar to them; others, myself included, were hearing his voice for the first time. The tapes Noel left are brimming with stories on every element of his life, but for my uncle, my dad and me it is the cycling stories that excite our imaginations most, given that we all share Noel’s love for cycling. Because we share a passion with him there is a stronger feeling of connection; understanding his dilemmas and celebrating his victories helps us to bridge the gap that is made by time, whilst also keeping this extraordinary man in our memories. Noel lives on in these tapes and I suppose that is what makes them so valuable to my family and me.

Noel, at the time of the race, was a young man in an age when the car was at the disposal of the privileged few; an age when the bicycle was king and the true liberator of the common man. This young man’s love affair with the bike began whilst working as a delivery boy for a co-operative, requiring him to cycle up hill and down dale on his uncomfortably heavy shop cycle. This primed him for racing on bikes that must have felt as light as feathers in comparison. Soon, all Noel’s time revolved around two wheels and his working relationship with the bike seemed to encapsulate the spirit of a true cyclist- whether he was working or socialising, there would be a bicycle by his side.

On this particular race day, Noel had prepared for a 150-mile round trip, riding 25 miles to the start of the race, competing in a 100-mile time trial and then riding the 25 miles back to his home in Burnley. What he hadn’t prepared for, however, was being stranded miles from home in excruciating pain with a bike hardly fit to ride...

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I’d had numerous fracases over the years where I’d been headover-wheels and I had one at the race in Chorley amongst scores of wheels. It was a wholesale crash with 30 cyclists down and me at the bottom, left on the ground. I had a broken collarbone that was causing me extreme pain but the race went on and by the roadside they left me. I was only able to use my right arm; I was full of cuts and bruises as well as having a broken left collarbone.

I was 25 miles from home and my bike was a mess; crankshaft, gear wheel and the front wheel were all twisted with the stress of the accident.

I sought help from a garage and he hammered my wheels straight, well not quite, as I could only just free-wheel. I was in dire straits – I could only half-pedal forwards, as my chain came off if I made a full revolution – backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, all the way home. A hundred times I had to get on and off, half forward, half back for 25 miles. The pain from my broken bone was so extreme that I looped my left arm’s first finger and thumb over the handlebars for a crumb of comfort as I rode. I was sickened by the jolts in the road and the resultant searing pain. Slowly but surely, mile after mile, I gained distance. I had achieved half way and still I had no thought of seeking help – we were brought up independent in those days and I was taught to manage myself.

Soon I found an open gate to a field and a corner by a hedge.

I lay there for three hours, for I’d reached the thin edge of my pain threshold. I eventually made it. It had taken seven hours to cycle 25 miles and it was a long soul-searching journey all alone.

That bony collar ached for over 20 years after that incident.

One can be sure, though quite unknown at the time, that such trials of spirit help us to tackle life’s inclines. These kinds of minor survival specials build up what’s inside - come triumph or disaster, it gives you the mental ability to ride.

WORDS / JON DAY PHOTOGRAPHY / SELIM KORYCKI WWW.SELIMKORYCKI.COM

CMWC

THE CYCLE MESSENGER WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

WARSAW/2011 SINCE 1992, THE CYCLE MESSENGER WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS HAVE TESTED THE LOGISTICAL NOUS AND PEDALLING STAMINA OF THE WORLD’S BEST BICYCLE MESSENGERS. IN THE PAST, THE CMWCS H A V E V I S I T E D T O K Y O , N E W Y O R K , L O N D O N A N D G U A T E M A L A C I T Y. THIS YEAR THE COMPETITION TOOK PLACE ON A MOSQUITO-INFESTED P E N I N S U L A I N W A R S A W , D U R I N G T H E L A S T W E E K E N D O F J U LY. The main race at the CMWCs is unique amongst cycling events, replicating as closely as possible a messenger’s working day. Competitors must navigate a closed course of roads and check-points, delivering fake parcels using the most efficient route in order to win the coveted title of ‘World’s Fastest Messenger’. In this year’s race you could also qualify by becoming a ‘MesserGuerilla’; robbing your fellow racers or dealing wraps of ‘grass’ to accumulate as many ‘Bandito$’, an invented local currency, as you could.

The course was designed by Stefan ‘Fish’ Vis, a cycle messenger from Amsterdam, using a fiendishly complicated computer program he has developed especially. “It’s actually just a scoring system”, Fish told me, “The race can be made in a large variety of formats, so it’s never the same. It can make a race as extreme as 32 checkpoints, with 6 destinations and deliveries at every one of them, or 30 to 40 short manifests with a total of 9 to 120 deliveries, to be done in a timespan of 5 hours. The main idea is to make a race only a messenger understands

and wins, and to try to beat the last champion by reinventing the race all the time, but based on the same principals.

Some people think ‘I could never beat the spandex messenger’, or that the race will never be both fun and serious, but I think my race is well on its way to combining it all.”

The international messenger community is incredibly strong, and the competition attracted riders from around the world to Warsaw. Some had come to compete, others to drink and to catch up with old friends. The whole event had the air of a carnival about it. As well as the main race, there was a cargo-bike race, a bicycle polo competition, a sprints race (go as fast as possible in a straight line), a skid competition (go as slowly as possible in a straight line) goldsprints (go as fast as possible whilst stationary), and a wing mirror-smashing competition. This last involved competitors approaching a battered car at speed and knocking off its wing-mirrors, with points awarded for distance and style. It quickly degenerated into a near-riot.

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THE WEATHER WAS GENERALLY THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE FOR COMPETITORS: OVERCAST AND DRIZZLING DURING THE QUALIFIERS, WITH TORRENTIAL RAIN AND HOWLING WINDS MAKING THE FINALISTS’ LIVES MISERABLE. Nevertheless, 122 cyclists managed to complete the race, battling around the wind-swept course while trying to avoid the worst of the mud, and keeping themselves going with the odd nip of vodka from sympathetic officials.

After much correction and clarification over the following days, Michael Brinkmann from Bremen was crowned King of the Messengers, while Astrid Azkic was the most successfully devious guerrilla racer. We all left looking forward to next year’s competition, due to take place in Chicago, USA.

C O U R S E D E S I G N E R : S T E FA N ‘ F I S H ’ V I S

Words by Andrew Tobert

Looking after a bike is, I imagine, a lot like looking after a child.

It changes you. Not perhaps on a deep, fundamental level, but in the little ways. The way you interact with people, the way you view the world, the way you view yourself. This was certainly how I felt after my first ever foray into chain-cleaning, and the feeling has most definitely stayed with me. Even a trip to the hairdressers (even with hair that’s this good, a non-event at the best of times), becomes a little insight into another world. A world, seemingly, I’m no longer part of.

Small-talk in salons is of course famously painful (why can’t we just sit in silence?) So when the hair-washer asked me if I worked around here, I thought I’d be doing us all a favour by giving a slightly fun answer: “Well kinda, I work in Barbican” (a couple of miles away across London).

Not exactly an earth-shattering response I agree, but perhaps undeserving of the hostile stare that it got. What was I doing coming THIS far? Was I really that desperate for a decent haircut?

Yes actually, but the thing I realised is that for cyclists, travelling 2 miles is nothing. But sans bike, it’s a 30 minute wait on a bus or an endurance test on the tube. Bikeless, travelling through London becomes something you have to do, not something that’s actually quite fun.

Illustration by Joe Waldron / joewaldron.blogspot.com

annoying because you have to try and find the actual hole and nobody wants to do that. Besides, for slow punctures (which this decidedly was), you’re allowed to cop-out and just replace the inner tube (I have this on the authority of Sheldon Brown. So there.) At least that was the plan.

To start with, I thought I’d mess with the brakes but I’m not sure why. I guess I thought this would make taking off the back wheel easier. It didn’t. The back wheel is attached by nuts and bolts. Not brakes. I should have started with that.

The wheel eventually came off, so too did the punctured tyre and, as if controlled by someone who knew what they were doing, the new inner tube was on, snug as a bug. The wheel went back on, as did the chain suspiciously easily. All that was left, if you’ll excuse the unavoidable verbs, was to screw and pump away before bedtime.

Alas, I have a Presta valve (do I? the thin ones, are they called Presta? Who decides these things? Can’t we just call them ‘thin’ and ‘fat’?) so pumping up the tyre meant mashing the valve so that it’s now permanently bent (but I’m reliably informed that this is quite common so I feel (marginally) better about myself). The brakes I managed to repair a little bit (the pads can at least touch the wheel so that’s got to count for something, right?). All is well and ready for a ride to work tomorrow. Hooray for me.

AT THAT MOMENT I SHOULD HAVE CHANGED MY TYRE. I SHOULD HAVE GOT OFF MY CHAIR AND JUST DONE IT. INSTEAD I WATCHED TV. SHIT TV AT THAT. This alternate way of life was recently made apparent to me, and it’s not one I’d recommend. For the past few days, my back tyre has been slowly deflating. As the bumps in the road became increasingly present in the saddle, I told myself that a quick pump-up was all that was needed. But I was delaying the inevitable. After a decidedly uncomfortable journey in to work, it was time to face the facts. I had a flat tyre.

It’s at this point that suddenly the life of the non-cyclist comes and smacks you in the face. Cycling from my home to my work takes 25 minutes on a slow day. To walk it takes almost 2 hours.

(I could have put my bike on a bus, in line with Transport for London guidelines, but they sadly haven’t filtered their way down to London’s bus drivers. A bike is as likely to get on an empty bus as a pregnant woman is to get a seat on a full one.)

At that moment I should have changed my tyre. I should have got off my chair and just done it. Instead I watched TV. Shit TV at that.

The Tube the following morning was a disaster. I got shouted at because I forgot to stand on the right going down the escalator; my Oyster card didn’t touch-out properly so I was fined. I arrived late, but left work even later, so took a taxi home. This was the most expensive puncture I’d ever had. Enough.

There are a couple of ways to change a tyre. You can lovingly find the hole, put a sticker on it, then put it back. It’s cheaper, it’s more sustainable, it’s what’s your supposed to do. It’s also

The ride to work was interesting. Almost immediately, I could see the chain lag, like it had gotten fat between going to bed and waking up (I’m not judging, we’ve all been there). But it wasn’t fat, it was ill. Cycling to the end of my road, and onto the big scaries, it cut out and spluttered like on those old-school motorised bikes that grannies use on the Continent. At the first junction my chain came off. Then again when I was crossing it.

Then again at 20 metre intervals for the rest of my journey. This was not a good start to the day.

But it got better, both actually and karmically. I realised that the chain wasn’t working because I’d put the back wheel on too far forward. Empowered by this knowledge, when I passed a bike shop the following words came from my mouth: “Can I have a spanner please?”

I didn’t ask them to fix it for me, I didn’t ask even ask effetely for “a spanner, or do I mean wrench? You know, the things that gets those things off”. Strongly, proudly, I asked for what I wanted. I knew what I wanted. And I reattached my wheel, in public. There were no feelings of childhood insecurity, no whimpering until the nice man in the shop did it for me. I joined the throng of Old Street cyclists with an earned smile. A rare moment indeed.

That was last week. My wheel hasn’t fallen off, my tyre hasn’t deflated, nor have I crashed into the back of a lorry. Yet. In short, I fixed my bike and one week later I’m still alive to tell the tale.

Maybe this bike maintenance lark isn’t so hard after all?

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WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY - RICK HAYWARD / WWW.FRANKCREATES.COM

SIX MONTHS ON from embarking upon

an entirely new bicycle experience for six of my friends and I, the sensation of freedom and the burn in our thighs is as fresh as the first climb. Tassie by Treadly could be considered our rite of passage into the world of big bikes from a collective BMX heritage, and although we were only two weeks on the road, Tasmania’s west coast was indeed a mountainous challenge. Fortunately we were blessed by the great Mother Bicycle with only minor mechanical setbacks, one partially crushed testicle incident, and a single merciless day of negotiating

steep and slippery four-wheel drive tracks with only a reckoning of our direction.

For the most part, our complement of mildly organised soul-searchers were rewarded daily with nothing to worry about apart from which unknown location to camp, what river to swim in, and who had fresh fruit left to liven up breakfast. And as we begin to plan the next tour, my legs tingle in anticipation of the simple life of bicycle touring, and my heart smiles for the moments we may share.

TASSIE BY TREADLY COULD BE CONSIDERED OUR RITE OF PASSAGE INTO THE WORLD OF BIG BIKES

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Illustration by Kerry Hyndman www.kerryhyndman.co.uk

www.jetmcdonald.com

I went into town to get 'A Short Introduction to Buddhism' only to discover I'd forgotten my bike lock.

So I did what this guy at the chip shop once told me.

Flip the bike upside down and keep an eye on it through the window. But the bookshop I'd chosen was enormous and the window was blacked out so I had to get the shop assistant to go on the hunt while I rocked backwards and forwards on the doormat trying to keep an eye on my cherished Raleigh. “ Buddhism for Beginners...?” he said, slipping out a tome.

“Too big.” Rock back on heels to check bike.

“The Modern Buddhist...? That's quite slim.”

Rock forward, neck becomes tense. “I'm looking for more of an introduction...”

“The Dalai Lama and you...,” he says.

“No, no, An Introduction...,” I say.

“Here we go...” He finds a tome that makes a 'flump' sound as he slips it out of the shelves.

“No, no, a Short Introduction to Buddhism...” I rock backwards. A man with bad teeth is reaching towards my bike.

“Ummm.... Ummm.”

I knock on the doorpane and the man retreats.

“Here we go,” says the bookseller, “A Very Short Introduction to Buddhism...”

“Yeh, yeh, yeh give me that one.” I wave my credit card at him and leave with a book, which is the same size and colour as a bar of chocolate. The man with the bad teeth has gone but the back wheel of my upside down bike is going round and round and round like he's given it a twirl.

The freewheel clicks. I wonder if Buddha would have liked cycling? He was always sitting cross-legged though and well, that dhoti and the chain ring...

The wheel keeps on spinning. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick....

I think back to a weekend visit to my parents. In my old room, long since converted into office space, there is a bookshelf of adolescent reads and some non-fiction my Mum has bought me over the years. In amongst the angry young man books I find 'Meditation in a Week' and further along 'Meditation in a Day' and finally, hidden by Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World', the stocking filler 'Instant Meditation.' At some point my mother would be buying me 'Meditation in No Time At All', a form of meditation so immediate it happens even before it's contemplated, the single sheet of instructions lost forever amidst the poetry anthologies and dystopias.

In 'The Bicycle Book', writer Bella Bathurst interviews Patrick Field of the London School of Cycling, who teaches city riding skills. “How you treat a red light,” he says, “depends on how you feel about yourself and society....The ones who make me laugh are...you know, I'm waiting at a red light, and these kids go past, desperate to move, as if their bike will explode if they stop...” He goes on; “The people who can't stop

at red lights aren't happy – they don't have the psychological resources to be themselves, so they're infected with this anxiety, this “I've got to get going.”

I had friend who cycled everywhere plugged into her iPod. To the shops, to the next town, to the mountains, her playlist on an infinite shuffle. And then she realised this was because she couldn't bear her own company. She told me this outside a house party and the mobile she was holding dropped to the pavement, the back fell off and she broke into tears.

All very dramatic, but I knew what she meant. For a long time cycling wasn't enough for me. I had to be plugged in.

I had to be receiving stimulus. And then someone wagged a finger.

“Earphones and cycling are unsafe,” they said, “you're a risk to yourself and other road users.”

“OK”, I thought, “I'll get some ‘safe’ ones.”

So I bought ‘in line’ headphones, backward-facing devices that could ‘slingshot’ music across a gap between the speakers and my lugholes, a space into which, so the blurb persuaded me, the external world could safely permeate.

Thus I would ride, thus I would glide through the traffic, like a bit part in one of those sold-out folk music phone adverts.

But at the end of one of these trips I felt like I'd been gunned down. A drive-by shooting in a gold fish bowl.

‘Shooting’ noise into my brain wasn't a good idea. It wasn't doing the music or the cycling any favours. Modern life is geared up to selling stuff to help us cope with modern life.

The world spins on its kaleidoscopic axis faster and faster and faster. So how do I fit it all in? Do I change my life?

No, I buy something that changes me. Crowbar in another 10 minutes of Led Zeppelin. Bam.

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Click to another playlist.

I'm going to sound like a pipe-smoking beardy here, but I do remember vinyl with a painful ache. After one side finished, those delicious thirty seconds as the album is flipped over and the needle replaced. A short lapse of silence.

There are the doers and there are the done-to. And I've always liked to think I'm a doer and cycling has been part of that philosophy. I am the agent of my own locomotion. I will go where I chose and when I chose, at my own will. But it took many thousands of kilometres of riding to realise that what I liked most about cycling was not doing anything.

Somewhere on a plateau amongst the Turkish mountains after all that pummelling and grunting, all those roaring, guffing trucks, what I needed, what I found, was a coasting horizontal, lost in an infinite moment of going and not going. The hills so far away across the plains it seemed like I, and they, were never going to move and all the wreckage of the modern world holding its breath, lost in the moment. It took me twenty years of cycling to realise that the best part of it was being still. The freewheel going tick, tick, tick, tick. Marking out the fragments of silence.

into a bicycle ride. But I think Buddha would have enjoyed our two-wheeled friend. And he would have been the first to point out that the ‘out of kilter wheel’ is in the rider and not the bike. With all the restless having-to-get-a-move-on that modern life demands, we are in danger of forgetting that one of cycling's great pleasures is not that it gets us places but that it puts us in a place; it gives us a tangible sense of presence in the world, a sense of hereness that forgets the suffered anguish of desire, the consumer mosh pit and the white chocolate mp3 player.

So yes, let it be said, I am a fan of the freewheel hub, the ratcheting mechanism in the rear mech that lets your bike coast ever-onwards without having to pedal. I've never ridden a fixed wheel (with no ‘freewheel’) but I don't think I'd like it. I watch those ‘fixies’ balancing on their pedals at traffic lights and it all looks a bit too, well, precarious.

Of course you can't judge a bike you haven't had a go on.

That's like a politician ranting about the moral decency of a film he hasn't seen.

“Hey daddio, get on the saddle,” those messenger boys would say, “you might enjoy it.” I'm sure I would, but for now I'm quite happy freewheeling through the park. And now I've zoned in on the freewheel I see it everywhere. I see it in

" I'm going to sound like a pipe-smoking beardy here, but I do remember vinyl with a painful ache. After one side finished, those delicious thirty seconds as the album is flipped over and the needle replaced. A short lapse of silence."

Steve Hagan, a self-styled priest of Zen Buddhism, says this: “Generally we think of a journey as involving movement and direction, either going somewhere into the world or else leading inward, into the self. But in Buddhism our journey must go nowhere - neither in nor out. Rather, ours is a journey into nearness, into immediacy.......To be fully alive we must be fully present.”

And shooting John Coltrane into my head is not going to help. I'm not going to pretend that I don't still listen to music and ride, because I do. But I have a lot more time for silence. And when I say silence, I mean air marked out by lucid punctuations, birdsong, leaves rubbing their hands together, the tyre pressing into the earth in the park, the freewheel going tick, tick, tick... I used to ride to work straight down the cycle track, headphones in and bam! I'd be there. Now I go through the park; it takes twice as long but I and the world get to hang out a bit more.

The first of the four truths of the Buddha is ‘Dukkha’, coming from a Sanskrit word that refers to a wheel out of kilter. ‘Dukkha’ is also defined as ‘suffering’.

“In the Buddha's time the accompanying image may have been a cart with an out-of-true wheel being pulled along,” says Steve Hagan. It would be trite for me to try and explain Buddhism in a short essay or to extrapolate a thousand years of thinking 52

old men sat on park benches talking about this and that as the sun goes down, nowhere to go and everywhere to be.

And then I see it in young lovers on that bit of concrete that was going to be used as part of the boating lake but never got used as part of the boating lake, so tied up in the dance around each other, they only exist in the moment, as the sun goes revolving around them. And I see it in me when I go running down the hill, so steep I just have to keep on going. If I put my arms out wide and pretend I'm an aeroplane and make a “wooo” sound, I forget my legs and get caught in the endless moment of gravity’s pull.

And that “wooo” noise is a kind of silence. And cycling is a way of being still. And there is no Very Short Introduction to Buddhism only a Buddhist approach to Very Short Introductions.

“Tick, tick, tick, tick......”

I once biked to a sandy desert. OK, I cycled to a big Iranian city then I took a bus and a taxi. But the place was amazing - one of those ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ sandpits - and the thing that struck me, apart from the sensuousness of the dunes, was the quality of the silence. It was so absolute you could hear your own mind, a low level hum that wasn't tinnitus but could only be the mind, the ratchets of the ear ticking over. In the search for peace and stillness and silence ‘out there’, ultimately we return to ourselves.

Words and Photography by Tore Groenne

BICYCLING

NOMAD

THROUGH

LANDS

WHEN OUR TENT IS STOLEN ON A RIDE THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS OF CENTRAL ASIA, WE ARE FORCED TO RELY ON THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS. BUT MAYBE THAT ISN’T SUCH A BAD THING AFTER ALL...

”Our tent is gone.”

“What?”

“The bag with the tent, the tools and the stove is gone.

Somebody stole it,” I tell Cassie, standing in the doorway of our Jalalabad hotel room, thoughts running through my mind of the 600 km of cycling through the mountains of Kyrgyzstan ahead.

After a long, hot day in the saddle and the sun we arrived yesterday, storing our bikes under a staircase behind the hotel reception. I’d left the duffel bag with tent, stove and tools in it strapped over my rear rack. By morning, the bag’s vanished. There’s not a trace of sympathy from the stony-faced women working the hotel, and I know it’s my own fault. What to do now?

We’ve been on the road for a month and a half. In Tajikistan we cycled the Pamir Highway, went through beautiful, scorching gorges, over remote, icy mountain passes and carefully kept to the road through the minefields on the Afghani border. The hospitality we enjoyed was wonderful - people invited us into their houses, offered us beds for the night and fed us as handsomely as they could (I’ll never eat goat again though!).

Since we crossed on a red dirt road into Kyrgyzstan, over 54

the 4300m high Kizil Art pass in the heart of the Pamir Mountains, things have been a bit rockier. On the road, we were welcomed by camouflaged soldiers barking orders, cigarettes dangling from their lips, demanding to see our passports and threatening to smash our cameras if we took any pictures. In the days that followed we had a good ride, climbed one windy pass and one super steep pass, gorged on fresh salads and kebabs in Osh and spent a night sleeping outside amid the birdsong. We had just drifted off to sleep when a young woman came over.

“My father just opened a bottle of vodka. He wants to share it with you,” she said shyly.

I politely turned down the offer, knowing that it wouldn’t go very well with the tough day in the saddle to come. It goes pretty well with driving, we discovered, when eating grubby food in a roadside truck stop where a truck driver and his accomplice drank half a litre of vodka in 30 minutes, and then got behind the wheel of a giant machine that could eat me and my bicycle like a piece of cake. These big trucks had become increasingly regular on the road as we approached the more populated Fergana Valley and I briefly wondered how many of the drivers were hammered behind the wheel. I know it’s only too common in these corners of the old Soviet Empire.

“ MY FATHER JUST OPENED A BOTTLE OF VODKA. HE WANTS TO SHARE IT WITH YOU,” SHE SAID SHYLY

RELYING ON STRANGERS Now tentless, we are beginning the final part of the trip, a week of cycling to Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital. And on only our first day out of Jalalabad we end up in the darkness. Tired after 130km, we are riding through a narrow gorge on a road cut into the cliff; nowhere to just roll out the mattresses on the ground and no houses to be seen. We reach a series of tunnels, slowly press on through the obscurity of the mountain, and try not to think too much about those vodka-slamming truck drivers. Another tunnel, another climb in the night, and finally there’s a house in the roadside. It’s a garage, and over it there’s some sort of cafeteria. A nice couple we unfortunately share no language with lets us sleep on the floor. But not until they have fed us a solid meal. Even though we ended up in the darkness, alone, miles from anywhere, we are let in to the first house where we knocked on the door. A good sign.

The following day we roll along a turquoise river cutting its way through desolate, arid mountains and spend a night under a tree, falling asleep to the gentle sound of leaves rattling in the cool night breeze. It’s perfect.

Maybe it will be fine cycling without a tent? It’s so easy to retreat to a dingy hotel room or hide out in the tent after long days of cycling, being tired and just wanting to rest. This is forcing us to experience the new - to use the sky for a roof, to knock on doors and meet more people.

A couple of days later comes the last real challenge of the trip – the ride over the Ala Bel, a 3183m pass.

Under white peaks and green meadows, gushing streams flow down from the snow above, and in the late afternoon we climb above the tree line. The villages are now far below us, cows graze like little dots on the naked slopes in an immense landscape, and we start wondering if we will make it to the other side of the pass as we had planned. Our map is wrong; it’s longer over the pass than we expected, and the last section of the pass is brutally steep with a few huffing trucks struggling at 10 km/h to pass us. When we finally roll onto the open, flat, green pass after 70km uphill, it’s almost dark. Water holes are frozen over and there’s no cover from the chill wind. But there are a couple of nomad tents.

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WITH THE NOMADS A nomad family immediately invites us in. The mother almost spins around herself to make us comfortable, chatting away without us understanding a thing. Three shy little kids with chapped cheeks stare curiously while the young father and the eldest son drive the family’s herd of sheep into the fold. Soon, we’re all crammed in together on soft blankets around a low wooden table. The father takes out chunks of sheep meat from under a cloth hidden in a corner and starts frying them over an open fire in the tent. He offers us the pieces with the largest chunks of yellowish fat and we know he means well, so we eat. He keeps pouring us kumys, fermented mare's milk, which is a considerable challenge to get down too.

Even though we can’t understand each other, it’s cosy and we are enjoying this glimpse into their lives. They definitely seem as excited having us there as we are happy being there. As the mountains outside are obscured by the dark night, we remove the table in the middle of the tent and roll out thick, woollen blankets where we all sleep side by side. I wonder if they would have invited us in if we were in a car and not on bikes. Probably. Still, I think they appreciate that we are not racing through their mountains, sheltered behind a window, but travelling simply and slow.

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The sky is clear, the air is fresh, and the snow glitters on the peaks next morning. Cassie gets out the Polaroid camera.

The whole family line up; she takes a picture and gives it to them. As I walk into the tent to get my bags, the eldest son is holding the family portrait with both hands. He gazes at it for a few long moments before carefully tucking it in between two blankets. It seems like it’s the only family portrait they have.

We ride on through a wide, alpine valley and talk about how amazing it is that you can just roll into the unknown and people open their homes to you. In a decade of touring it’s happened to me over and over, wherever I went - Iran, the U.S., Guatemala, Pakistan, Germany, Bolivia, Chile... and every time it makes me so happy, so humbled. Is it really the bike that opens these doors? Or is it just because we trust strangers and show up with a smile that they welcome us? Maybe I should deliberately start touring without a tent in the future, I think as we cross the last pass before Bishkek and are invited to sleep in a café run by some young girls. It would be worth trying out. This time around without one, even though it was unintentional, I have been reminded once again of the most valuable, yet very simple, lesson I’ve learned in ten years and over 45,000 kilometers of touring the world; that people are good wherever you go.

"AS THE MOUNTAINS OUTSIDE ARE OBSCURED

BY THE DARK NIGHT WE REMOVE THE WOODEN TABLE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TENT AND ROLL OUT THICK, WOOLLEN BLANKETS WHERE WE ALL SLEEP SIDE BY SIDE"

Tore Groenne is a journalist, writer and bicyclist from Denmark.

You can read more about him and see pictures on www.toregroenne.com

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GRANT PETERSEN