After some discussion with someone (Miguel) I met last Monday, we’ve come to the decision that we’re going to be starting a bike polo group in Leicester as soon as possible, as well as going on group rides and the like.

It’ll be interesting from an organisational standpoint and to see how many people we can rope into it.

I’ll probably look into starting a bike related society at Uni, or at least into what funding and insurance they offer.

I saw something highly amusing yesterday but sadly didn’t have the ability to take a picture of it otherwise all of you would be able to marvel at the stupidity of it.

Someone locked their bike through someone’s frame and to the bike stand, I noticed this as I walked past the confused owner of the imprisoned bike.

Whoever locked their bike to his was stupid enough to only lock their frontwheel, so I’m not sure whether he eventually got their wheel off or not as a few people had suggested to force the wheel through the frame.

Judging from the lack of debris this morning I’m going to assume he was forced to wait for the offending bike to be removed so that he could be on his way.

I knew this would happen but since coming to London I saw a lot more people on single-speed or fixed geared bicycles, its a large city so that’s to be expected.

Sadly a lot of them are the annoying “fakenger” kind who dress like messengers but aren’t…they’re recognisable by how clean they look for example.

I’ve met them before in Nottingham and laughed about how they’d buy a frame for £50 then invest £300 into a wheelset because they obviously needed the Velocity Deep Vs with Phil Wood hubs in order to ride fixed, anything else would have been anathema. Add to that removing handlebar tape from their bars and riding without gloves to get what must be a very comfortable riding experience.

(more…)

I remembered I didn’t report on how my London to Brighton ride went, so I’ll write a brief description of what I found to be the most important points:

• I cycled 72 miles in total, instead of the usual 54. Why? Because I’m special and cycled to Clapham from where I lived then had to find a hotel to stay the night.
• Camelbak hydration packs, are useful but if your fucking valve drops out because it gets caught on your backpack, you get very wet, very fast.
• The south is hilly, much hillier than you think. In fact the gearing I have on my bike is totally inadequate for the hills along the route, whilst I could have done a few more and rode up many you get a lot of asshole weekend cyclists who stop right in front of you without any warning. I like that people are getting more into cycling and do this kind of thing, but if you’re slow stick to the left side of the road and don’t fucking stop without any attempt at warning other cyclists. Not only is it bad ettiquette but will lead to someone running into you when the roads are as congested as they were.
• Riding it on a fixed wheeled bike is not only fun, but also a great way to show the world what a complete masochist you are. Although I spotted one other guy (with more intelligently chosen gearing) riding fixed and a bunch of single-speeders.
• I completed the ride in 4.5 hours, slower than I wanted but with so many unknowns and it taking an hour just to get out of London thanks to bicycle caused traffic jams…it was to be expected.
• Roadie women are ruthless, or at least the really competitive kind which dropped their work team two hours ago and if they’re not going to wait for their workmates they won’t wait for a masochist they buddied up with for a good 10 miles or so.
• Most importantly, the BHF are somewhat retarded and Southern Rail are complete tossers. This doesn’t affect me personally but the BHF told everyone that folding bicycles would be allowed on trains, considering they’re just pieces of luggage once folded. What did Southern do? They hired fucking nazi stormtrooper bouncers, blocked off brighton train station and made it known that not even folding bikes would be allowed on. What did affect me was their decision to ban bikes on all their lines that day not just the London to Brighton line, which again is a massive case of corporate stupidity and probably caused a lot of inconvenience for people served by Southern nowhere near Brighton.

I’ll take part again next year, but this time I’ll use a bicycle with multipe gears and try and get my time closer to 2 hours.

Before I forget, riding downhill at 37mp/h and pedalling at a pace dictated to you by gravity is an interesting experience.

I picked up my finished wheel from the bike shop today!
Which means I now officially have a fixed gear wheel, with which I’m going to convert my bike to fixed gear some time this week.

It was all very exciting today, he only charged me £13 which is much less than I expected, and he spent about 5 minutes trying to find a 3/32 sprocket which had a few more than 12 teeth, I wanted to go with 14 but he didn’t have any and 12 is a little too high a gear for me at the moment.

He eventually found a 15 tooth sprocket which he gave to me as a gift due to lacking a selection of parts…

I recommend Bob’s shop to anyone around Leicester, he really knows what he’s doing and is just brilliant.

As for myself, I can’t wait to get it fitted to the bike and take her for a spin.

My track hubs came on Monday after I ordered them some time last week, hubs since I was unable to buy a rear hub on its own, at least I was unable to find any which were still in stock.

Now I just need to find myself a cheap 700C rim, and I can have the wheel built!

Might cheat and get a freewheel to screw on and attach it to one side of the hub just for when I’m lazy.

After that it’s solely a matter of being able to do London to Brighton on a fixed, which shouldn’t be a problem at all, just a matter of getting proper gearing set up, for the sole destroying and much feared Ditchling Beacon.

Which considering I’m 20 and fairly fit shouldn’t really be a problem anyway, everyone who seems to complain about it is in their 30s or 40s even.

As you may or may not know, I’m planning on taking part in this year’s BHF London to Brighton bike ride, which raises awareness/funds for the British Heart Foundation and has about 27000 people taking part each year!

They recently informed me that they have received my entry form, so hopefully everything will go smoothly and I’ll be entered, this being one of the things I’ve wanted to do for years but I wasn’t really active enough in London to do so!

Now that I’m back into crazy cyclist mode, I’ll not only be able to do it but I’m hoping to be able to do it within a decent time (although I have to stress that it is not a race, and could not be with the volume of people involved).

Obviously being a charity event, they want people to be sponsored, and as soon as I have my entry number I’ll be able to set up an online sponsoring page which accepts all major credit and debit cards (hint), and if I raise over £150 (hint #2) I’ll get priority entry for next year!