A guide to using the road part 2...

If you are a cyclist, do you remember the first time you told someone – whether a mate, work or family member  - about cycling to work?

I bet you at least one response was: “I had this cyclist…” as if you were responsible for the actions of every other cyclist on the road. It was very weird the first time that happened to me. What has it got to do with me? I first started off getting defensive but nowadays I start replying: “Oh you’re a driver. I once had a driver hit my elbow…I once had a driver…” you get the idea.

So, in that spirit, I present a not-so-serious guide to the driving species.

The school mum

The school mum is tired, stressed out and thinking about everything except what is in front of her. She doesn’t mean to pull out and force you to slam the brakes on or swerve around her – she simply has her mind on other things. Little Ciabatta, who cannot walk or cycle to school cos it’s dangerous and it might be cold/wet/snow/too bright/too hot, will be safe in the spankingly new 4x4. Quite often there is a crossover with the ‘don’t-know-own-car’ driver below.

The 20-something female driver.

She’s a go-ahead girl. Literally. That’s all she’s focused on. Straight ahead at a steady as she goes 40mph no matter what. If you are lucky, you may stray into her peripheral vision but the only way to get on her register is to take up a strong primary so she may, and note I say may, notice you.

The 20-something male driver

Don’t worry about making life-saver looks for him. You will hear him from about a mile away through the revving in a wrong-gear. This over-revving will continue as he follows you through a town. It doesn’t matter that it’s a 20mph-zone, he and his Vauxhall or Citroen will rev up in impatience. He will overtake you at the nearest hint of a gap and if you are lucky, he may even have a friend to lean out of the window to shout or throw something at you.

The White Van Man (WVM)

These are the KING OF THE BEASTS, HEAR ME ROAR. These tuck in behind you, revving engines, hooting horns, flashing lights, shouting abuse at you.

Then, just as you are getting to a pinch-point (any point in the road where the road narrows for example a traffic island or parked cars), it is the signal for the KING OF THE BEASTS to overtake you, leaving you no choice but to take evasive action. Now the usual advice is to take a strong primary but, and I have seen this, the KING OF THE BEASTS will actually go to the other side of the road in the desperation to get ahead of you.

The BMW/Audi man

Now there used to be a simple, undisputed rule – stay out of the way of the BMW man. These drivers thought themselves as the Kings of the road. No rules applied to them, they had the divine right to the road. Shove you into the pavement, No problem. Red lights? Not necessary. Speed limits? Due care and attention? Road sharing? Space? Not their problem. In their important roles as middle-management, their company car was the be-all-and-end-all. Make way for the King of the road. The King was happy to cut into your path when overtaking and will always overtake in an unnecessary and dangerous manner just…

to…

join…

a…

queue…

at…

the...

lights…

ahead.

But recently, there seems to be coup de rue going on as Audi drivers for some reason have taken on the mantle of King of the road. Now, BMW-man still exists but has been joined by his Swedish upstart.

Hybrid/Prius man

Now, there is another type of King of the road – the one with the smug, green credentials. Like the above, rules of the road are apparently voluntary to these hybrid drivers – after all they are saving the planet! It doesn’t matter all those air miles, those strip mining technics and poisonous metals used to build the car. It doesn’t matter that the energy used still has to be generated somehow…they are saving the planet.

So not only do they drive with the scantest of consideration for other road users, they get to be smug about it and be silent when deadly.

Don’t know their own car

These can actually be the most frustrating of all. There you are making good time and distance, then, bang. You have to stop. Why? There is a car siting at a gap that is too afraid to more. That driver is singularly unaware of the width of their car and will not move until there is a gap the size of the Titanic to go through.

It may seem odd to criticise but there is such a thing as being too cautious and inconveniencing other road users. These drivers will also stick behind milk floats and slow bicycle riders blithely unaware of the queues growing behind them.

And to think I haven't even got onto couriers and the like...

A guide to using the road -part 1

Since commuting to work, I have picked up some of the nuances of surviving on the road. Here for your delectation, are some of the rules of the road as it appears to be attm...

Primary

Primary is a position away from the curb and nearer the middle of the lane if not the middle itself (a strong primary). Primary is designed to make drivers think twice about overtaking as well as giving you space on the left if there is an incident. Primary also keeps you away from the rubbish that collects in secondary.

According to drivers, this is done to maximise inconvenience to them and has nothing to do with ensuring safety.

Secondary

Secondary is where all the rubbish collects. Glass, stones puddles, nails, ice. On the left in the UK, it is puncture central. In addition, you have the joy of many potholes and drains to avoid as you scoot down the gutter.

Needless to say drivers love cyclists being in secondary as they can overtake at any speed and at anytime and if you fall onto the pavement as you have nowhere it go, well…

Of course there is a third positional option but that is only in the fevered mind of certain road users...

Tertiary

The cycle lane

Secondary is where councils mainly place their cycle paths. These pieces of magic paint, be it a whole block colour or a white line, are designed to make drivers happy that you are not part of the road. The magic paint will protect you as juggernauts thunder past you, millimetres from your elbow. In addition, a cycle lane is the perfect place to park if you are a delivery man or just popping down the shops whether there are parking restrictions or a solid white line.

4    The cycle path

A path separated from the road. Again, sometimes marked with the magic paint, these paths can be wholly on their own or cobbled together from pavements or pedestrian paths in so-called shared space.  In reality, these generally mean a hold-up as you navigate around dogs, children, plugged-in joggers, deaf geriatrics and those that will willfully ignore you. If you are polite and don’t bomb pass them, the etiquette for pedestrians when they realise you are there is to jump in fright and move directly into the path you are cycling just to terrify themselves again. The cycle path comes in many useful areas and spaces to allow councils to meet targets.

Image courtesy of Crap cycle lanes of Croydon

Some drivers love the cycle path as it will allow them to gesticulate angrily at a cycle path when they see you on the road, thus providing a useful outlet for the stress of the rush-hour commute.

Part two next....

On the road....

So where to go on my first rides? I am fortunate enough to live in an area where Hampton Court and the towpath are easily available as well as some lovely country lanes after a mile so there was a good amount of safe riding for the returnee bear.

Safe riding…Safe riding can be pretty easy to do, but don’t think that going onto an off-road cycle path equates to safe riding.

No-one tells you about those little rats pretending to be dogs, yapping away, leaping into your path in a misguided belief that because they can bark/yap and have teeth they are as good a killer as a staffie from the worst estates.

Neither does anyone tell you about the kids bounding out in front of you, the elderly walker around the corner, the trendy 20-somethings that are walking along a riverside pub in the glow of an advertisement-led life blocking the entire bleeding path.

And no-one tells you about other cyclists.

Like all humans, cyclists are random, chaotic beasts prone to braking suddenly or veering out in front of you as they cope with hazards ahead of them or just because. 

Some are slow, some are ridiculously quick, some jump lights others have a cup of tea and chat as they wait for the lights to change – OK, I made that one up but some do take an extraordinary length of time to get going. 

Did I say others were slow?

No-one warned me that after 25 years of non-cycling how damn slow I was going to be.

I thought I was going fast until the first of many roadies bombed past me up the Portsmouth Road into Kingston.

Swish, swish, swish as they zoom past, inches from your elbow, leaving you no space at all.

You get your energy on, yahoo, let’s go. You push your pedals, heart picks up the beat, you see them getting nearer and nearer, you can do this. Push, push, push. Look! You’re catching them up, you can do this…

Oh, it’s a red light.

They pose in their expensive lycra, sitting on their 1kg carbon-fibred, racing frames, sipping out of their ergonomically designed bidons (water bottles to you and me), chewing their sports snack, without a care in the world.

Me?

Heart a-pumping, more sweat than the London Marathon, slumped over the handlebars, looking straight ahead in the hope that I am not noticed…

To be honest, some still do bomb past me, but I am a bear on a bicycle going at around 14mph on a gravel bike, and that will suit me.

It is quite weird having someone swishing past you at first and you quickly learn to carry out life-savers – that look around behind you to see what’s going on – for other cyclists as well as cars after all, there’s only so much swearing you can put up with.

There seems to be one particular type that comes out at the weekend. I think you can tell the difference between them and those that cycle every day. It's like what an old ex-army friend of mine used to reckon. He reckoned he could tell the difference between the weekend warrior and regular soldier just by looking at them – it’s an attitude.

They sit on their expensive machines, in their club or Sky tops, and they grimace around Surrey. I swear, they are not using their legs, it’s pure pain and rage. They throw empty bottles onto the road, leave empty gas canister and inner tubes in the road, they are angry. They should be at the top. They should be in the Tour de France. They should be a contender.

Either that or they should really be in therapy.

One other thing that people don’t warn you about is when you are behind one of these wannabes, one of these weekend wheelie warriors…

Spit.

There you are, minding your own business, happy with the pace you are going when a huge globule of phlegm comes flying its way towards your face…not nice.

And do you want to know how to freak out some of those grimacing their way around North Surrey or the Yorkshire dales, etc? Smile out them. Wave. Look like you are really enjoying your ride, even if, as an unfit bear, you are ten to twenty miles in, your legs feeling like jelly and you just wished you had stayed in bed that morning. Just smile. Say hello, wave. Freak them out by reminding them that cycling can be a happy thing as well.  

And for good measure, go on one of the forums and complain how no one smiles back or says hello. Everyone loves reading about that sort of thing... (actually don’t, that was a joke).

Boy, you're gonna carry that weight

So I have the bike, I have some gear – let’s get going…

But what do I take with me? To the interweb we go!!

So, as far as I could work out I needed some water and some substance like jelly beans to keep me going.

Stopping off at the local shop, I picked up a bottle of water that was big enough for the bottle carrier that came with the bike, and some jelly beans.

Then I packed my rucksack with the waterproof, puncture repair kit, two locks, two inner tubes, a pump, my phone, my wallet, the kitchen sink…

As I said, I had never done this. The fact that I was not going to be stopping (in theory) and it was a round trip did not stop me from lunking around a D-lock and cable lock, no siree.

As yes locks…

What do you do with your bike?

In my village, the trust had reached a point that the local police had had to write in the local magazine pleading with cyclists to actually lock their bikes up when popping into the local shop. I liked that about the village. It was the village that I grew up and then returned as a father and it had retained that part of the charm of growing up that alas was slowly disappearing even  here as the police had more and more bike thefts to deal with.

One of the things that people fail to realise is that the two most effective forms of theft prevention for bikes are 1) make it a pain for a thief to nick your bike which as a result b) makes your bike less attractive than another.

Bike thieves are, in the main, opportunists and do not like inconvenience so D-locks and another lock or two are very preventative.  You have a choice of being a pain in the butt to thieves or get Batman to patrol your area.

So, rucksack bungeed onto the rack and water forced into holder I was set to go.

After half a mile or so, I was beginning to realise something – I was cycling five miles. The last time I cycled five miles it killed me. Would I have enough fluid and fuel? Could I do this? Would I be found collapsed in a sweaty pile by the roadside, melting away in a puddle of unfitness?

I pushed on…

About another half mile after that I realized something else – why the hell have I brought all this stuff with me? Why take a puncture repair kit for five miles? Just either pump the wheel and limp home or if I couldn’t, put a new tube in and repair at home. Why take both?

And the locks. What on earth was I doing lugging these locks around when I wasn’t planning to stop anywhere?

I had a revelation...no matter how useful that kit maybe, just maybe, all that extra weight…only…slows…you…down.

Especially the kitchen sink!