Senior Cyclist

Stopping is good, too...

2008-06-28T19:14:00.002+02:00

The weather hasn't been too cycle-friendly in this week of so-called midsummer. So when the sun came out of hiding yesterday afternoon, I hopped on a bike and headed west. After a few miles into a gusty and quite strong headwind, I stopped for a breather at a country road junction. I propped the bike against a fence and then lay down on the grass verge. With the sun on my face, the breeze held at bay by a hedge and with the scent of summer flowers all around, I stayed a while. And then another while. All in all I must have lain in the grass for about half an hour, watching the occasional bird and nodding to the few motorists who stopped at the junction.

Of course I could just as easily have taken my ease in my back garden, but in addition to the pleasant sunbathe I had a change of scene and an hour or so of healthy exercise riding to and from the selected spot. As we sometimes say in these parts, "Ye canna whack it"!

Three cheers for gears!

2008-04-16T18:59:00.003+02:00

Cycled out from Perth to Murthly this afternoon. It's a pretty steadily uphill trip. It's not all that steep, but today it was into a constant headwind, so pedalling was hard going, or at least it would have been on the type of single-speed bike I had as a teenager. Thankfully, my bikes of today have gearing systems which provide me with the opportunity to maintain a more or less constant pedalling rhythm.

With three chainrings on the front and 8 or 9 sprockets at the rear, my bikes have a wide range of gears that I would have killed for twenty years ago when struggling uphill on my 5-speed "racer" (crawler, more like!). And of course we now have the ability to alter the range of gears on our bikes with little more than ten minutes work in the shed. Just replacing a close-ratio sprocket with one with wider spacing gives me the range to tackle even some of the hairiest hills in this lovely part of the world.

So let's have three cheers for gears and ignore the luddites who moan about "all those unnecessary speeds" on modern bikes. The more the merrier say I!

... and the curtain track?

2008-04-04T15:49:00.002+02:00

So, I'm in the fabric shop to collect the new curtains they've made up for us and the ladies seem very unsettled by my proposal to take them home on my bike trailer, especially when they discover it already holds a new kitchen bin of a fair size, plus a load of groceries. There follows the usual conversation in which I try briefly to explain that I don't use a bike for shopping either because I've lost my driving licence or am too poor to afford a car. Carbon emissions, climate change, yadda, yadda...

After carefully explaining to me that cramming the curtains into a trailer might irretrievably crush the fabric and after a sort of dubious acceptance of my clearly crackpot intention to proceed, the ladies hand over the bag of curtain things and then one of them says "And the curtain track?"

Bummer. I find I'm rather less jaunty about riding home with a loaded trailer and about eight linear feet of plastic curtain track. I can only hope I look suitably nonchalant as I carry the thing out to the bike and try to work out a method of transporting it, involving one large rubber band which is the only form of attachment I have with me.

I did make it home, with the curtain track lashed to the top tube and sticking out ahead of me like a lance at a tournament. Interesting journey though..

Time well spent

2008-03-21T20:36:00.002+01:00

The weather this Easter weekend is just appalling here, with very strong winds and quite heavy snow showers. It's also very cold. So the bikes are staying in the shed and I've been spending this downtime getting ready for the annual service on the bikes. Doing my own own servicing is one of the most enjoyable things about cycling. So many of the other things we own and use nowadays either aren't user serviceable or need such special tools and so on, so it's a real pleasure to work on bikes which can be stripped down and rebuilt with cleaned, regreased or replacement parts, with just a few tools and ideally a workstand. Of course, the more often you do these jobs, the more confident and skilful you become.

Perhaps the greatest benefit from home servicing is the confidence you gain in the bicycle you're riding. When I apply the brakes, I know exactly the condition of the brake levers, the cables, the brake shoes and so on. And when I turn the pedals I know that the wheel bearings are in good condition, well greased and properly seated.

So this weekend I've been checking my supplies of cables, grease, brake shoes, chain oil and all the other bits and pieces I'm going to need. As soon as the weather warms up I'll get started in the shed and then I can look forward to the road tests ...

A kindly wind!

2008-03-06T22:18:00.002+01:00

Generally, the cyclist finds the wind to be againsterly. Even a trip which follows a 360 degree circular route will frequently involve a wind that constantly frustrates progress. However, this afternoon's ride was the exception that proves the rule. Cycling west from Perth was like riding with my braces nailed to a tree; it seemed to take constant effort to make any distance at all. I rode out about 12 miles or so before turning off the main road and heading down towards the "back" road. And when I eventually reached that road and turned east for home - wow! All I did was sit up as big as I could and the wind took me more or less all the way back to Perth. I think I only pedalled for about a few hundred yards up one or two little slopes.

For "fitness" purposes I shall claim today's ride as 25 miles. The log won't show that I only pedalled half it. A kindly wind at last!

Group Cycling

2008-02-27T11:28:00.003+01:00

Most of my cycling is done on my own. Partly this is from choice, because I enjoy being able to take all the decisions about how I'll spend my time on the bike, my speed, my route, the stops I take and so on. But partly it's because cycling clubs tend to be based on sports cycling, whether road racing, time trialling and so on. These clubs have training runs which are much too fast and furious for me nowadays.

Social cycling groups are rather harder to find, at least in these parts. I have occasionally ridden with CTC groups, but even they tend to be a bit pacy. I ride about once a month with a group from ByCycle, the Perth-based cycle campaign group. We usually cover about 30 miles or so at a very sedate pace, stopping for all sorts of reasons and none.

Sunday past we had just such a ride in Glenalmond, on a day that felt very much like spring had sprung. We stopped to watch a group of enthusiasts flying model planes and later in the day stopped to chat with a different group whose thing is model railways. The 30 miles or so took us well over four hours to complete, which I regard as a very satisfactory pace for a retired gent on a Sunday morning!

Where's the camera...

2008-02-15T19:43:00.002+01:00

...when you want it? I went for one of my favourite rides today, from Perth via Caputh to Coupar Angus and then back to Perth via various back roads. It was a fine day, so I took my time. I saw, at reasonable camera distance (reasonable with a 300mm lens on) roe deer, wild swans, a grey heron, buzzards, a kestrel and to top it all a beautiful red squirrel which sat obligingly on a roadside verge watching me for all of half a minute. And where was the camera? In the back bedroom, of course.

I keep telling myself never to leave home without the camera kit. I keep it in a "slingshot" camera bag, which gives me pretty quick access to the camera even when standing over the bike. Ok, I'm not going to get quality photos without a tripod and so on, but at least I'd have been able to have a go at capturing some really nice moments.

Sorry, can't help you!

2008-02-14T16:07:00.002+01:00

Yesterday was a lovely day for a ride. I had only a couple of hours free so I set out from Perth over the craig towards Forteviot and Dunning. As I ground my way up the big hill I realised the world had suddenly become bumpier and glancing down, saw I had a front tyre puncture. I pulled off to the side of the road and set about replacing the tube. (I never repair punctures on a ride, but carry spare tubes instead).

As I worked, I spotted a lady cyclist working her way up the hill towards me. As she passed I smiled and she called out "Sorry, I can't help you." Now that was an odd thing. It's normal practice for cyclists out on country roads to offer to help any rider they see dismounted and working on the bike. The usual reply is "No thanks, I'm fine", or something like that, although occasionally the stranded rider will be glad of some help with a tricky repair.

In this case, I didn't need the lady's help with a straightforward puncture, but it was surprising to be told in advance that no assistance would be forthcoming. I can only assume that she meant the hill was too steep for her to stop, or something like that. I hope this sort of thing doesn't catch on. For me, it's a fine part of the camaraderie of cycling that we all offer to help, even if sometimes we rather hope to be turned down!

Ice warning

2008-02-07T10:41:00.000+01:00

Yesterday when I woke and looked out of the window I saw the first decent weather in what seemed like weeks. The sun was shining low in a bright blue sky and no wind was shaking the trees. Time to get out the road bike and have a good long ride to stretch the legs and the lungs. Before that though, I had to take the dogs out for their morning walk. Two or three steps out on to the pavement and I knew the sunshine was a cruel deception. The pavements and roads were treacherous with black ice.

Ice is just about the only road condition I really fear. I can control the bike in rain, wind and even to some extent in snow, but black ice is an invisible threat too far. The bike can be away from under the rider in an instant, with no warning. Now, taking a tumble from a bike is one thing when you're twenty years old and 65 kg or so. A nasty knock to elbows or knees, perhaps a stinging road rash, or at worst a couple of fractures which should heal fairly quickly. But when you're sixty or more and perhaps nearer 100 kg than you'd like to be, a fall from the bike, at any sort of speed, could be of much greater consequence. Disabling injuries are far from impossible. And that could be the end of the cycling, if not worse.

So the lovely sunny morning was spent spring cleaning the bathroom and the shower.

Goodbye, Sheldon

2008-02-05T10:41:00.000+01:00

I've just learned that Sheldon Brown has died at the age of 63. He was a bicycle mechanic and expert in the USA who came to the attention of many cyclists through newsgroups, forums and above all through his legendary website. There was nary an item of technical or aesthetic interest about bicycles on which Sheldon didn't have an informed and enlightening opinion. He was a true expert and enthusiast, who didn't hesitate to share his insights with anyone who cared to enquire. Always the first thought, when faced with a problem or a tricky choice, was "What does Sheldon say about it?"

In recent years his cycling was curtailed through illness, but his presence on the internet was little diminished. Although he wrote frankly about his troubles with MS, his sudden death from a heart attack comes as a complete shock.

It's a measure of his influence and position that my first thought on reading of his passing was a very selfish one - "Oh no, who am I going to ask now?"

Senior cycling

2008-02-04T21:26:00.000+01:00

So I thought to myself, there are many, many cyclists on the web who have websites, blogs or whatever and some of them are very interesting indeed. However, many of them seem to be young or youngish persons who do things which are strange to me, like cycling very fast or over very long distances. It's easy to feel somewhat elderly in these circumstances, even if in reality I'm only in my late prime. So I'm going to put up some ramblings here from time to time which may be of interest to the slightly more mature cyclist (or may not, of course).

Just to begin, a little tale from the other day which points up the generational thing. Readers from outwith Scotland may struggle a bit with the language.

I'd left my bike propped against a bridge parapet while I scrambled down the bank to photograph the flooded cyclepath. This particular bike is a fairly nondescript hybrid which I use mainly for shopping trips with the trailer, or for winter conditions. Anyway, as I came back up towards the bridge I overheard some teenagers talking about the bike. "It's no a proper bike" said one, "it's only a kid's bike." "Naw it's no!" said a second voice. "Aye it is," said the first, "it's only a kid's yin." "Naw it's no a kid's bike," persisted the second voice, "Ah seen the boay that his it an' he's aboot a hunner!"