Tag: Utility cycling

December 22nd – Doing a Christmas shop by bicycle is much easier than you’d think. You need good, spacious panniers and be skilled at packing, but with Waitrose’s great bike facilities, it takes some of the pain away from the process. Certainly, there’s no faffing about parking. The supermarket itself was mad, though; Christmas does bring out the very worst in some folks. Hopefully the exercise of pulling 30 kilos of shopping up Pipe, Summer, Spring and Shire Oak Hills counteracts some of the pork I’ll put on over-indulging…

September 30th – Today, I visited the annual cycle show, this year held at the NEC, Birmingham. There’s a writeup and a Flickr gallery on my main blog, but I’d just like to point out that to outsiders, cycling is a uniform thing. You get on a bike, you ride it. There’s actually a who ecosystem of subcultures going on in the cycling world – from utility cyclists managing family life and crying kids in safety, to the recumbent guys and their fascinating, specialist machines. That’s why I love the cycle show, it opens your eyes to different possibilities. The show is open until Sunday evening.

June 27th – On my way to work, I stopped on the Ring Road by the Leather Museum in Walsall for the pedestrian crossing. On this bright, T-shirt and sandals warm summers day, a breath of Copenhagen sailed gently and confidently over the crossing. A relaxed, normally dressed cycling mum, bag slung casually over her shoulder with a content, happy child in a seat behind her. No silly closthes, no fear, just  casual young woman out on her daily business.

Lovely to see.