We Love Bikes
A nude cyclist (not the one pictured) may face prosecution for outraging public decency after being caught riding through a speed trap.
The bare cheeked cyclist who pedalled faster when confronted, shocked a Neighbourhood Watch team in the Suffolk village of Acton who were carrying out speed checks in the area.
Pictured is Gareth Williams, the suggested MI6 worker whose body has been found inside a holdall in a London flat. Mr Williams is pictured competing in a cycle time trial race (an against-the-clock race) and the RTTC lettering under his number 78 stands for the Roads Time Trial Council (official site).
For more news on the death of Mr Williams, visit the BBC News site.
Nice as in Nice, South of France. We’re not long back from a holiday in Nice and I’d thought I’d mention the Velo Bleu bikes again.
I saw quite a few of these hire cycles being ridden around, by tourists or Nice locals I’m not quite sure. The bikes still look in good, clean condition and I didn’t see any trashed ones anywhere. One thought I have …who pumps up the tyres? This must be a maintenance issue for any cycle hire scheme, including the new London hire scheme of course. If you know how they keep tyre pressures up do leave a comment.
The Velo Bleu bikes have a handlebar mounted pannier which is evidently used by some locals as a means of transporting a small dog around town! Or in one case, it can be used to transport a teenage girl around the streets of Nice!
The London Bicycle Hire scheme launched last Friday and there are reports that there were more than few Boris Bike blips. In fact Transport for London is to make refunds to people who used the bikes last week.
It’s estimated that about 6,000 rides were made on Friday but many cyclists struggled to lock or unlock the bikes at the docking stations. As the docking stations are used to record the hire time many journey times have been incorrectly recorded. One user who didn’t actually ride a bike because he couldn’t get the bike out of the docking station said the system reckoned he’d had the bike for 11 hours.
Due to the difficulties TfL says it will waive journey fares for everyone who used the blue bicycles on the launch day. Most of the journeys were under 30 minutes and are therefore free anyway.
There are 400 central London docking stations offering a total Boris Bike count of 6,000. Made in Canada at a cost of around £850 it was presumed that the bikes would be targeted by thieves but none of the bikes have yet to be reported as stolen.
There have been a couple of magazine supplements in our newspaper called The Red Bulletin, sponsored by Red Bull. I’ve just been speed reading an edition and come across an article about the legendary mountain biking pioneer Gary Fisher. Fisher is widely regarded as the daddy of mountain biking, pioneering the use of off-road bikes back in the 70′s in California.
Fisher and his biking pals salvaged old single speed Schwinn paper boy bikes for a small fistful of dollars and rode these klunkers downhill. The old bikes were really heavy, some weighing in at over 40lbs so the boys raced them downhill on gravel fire roads in the Cascade Canyon. It was a decent descent, dropping some 420 odd metres in just 3km …pretty precarious on a bike that only has a pedal-back brake. Fisher, who was an able tweaker of bikes was the first rider to add derailleur gears to his ride, along with drum brakes to make stopping a bit easier.
After a period of downhill racing, tinkering and experimenting Fisher hooked up with Tom Ritchey (another well known biking brand) and that meeting set Fisher off with a business idea. His new company was formed in 1979 – it was simply called MountainBikes (all one word). Talk about branding!
The first bike cost $1320 which I guess back in 1979 was a lot for bike. There were sales of 160 in the first year of trading. In year two, MoutainBikes sold nearly 1,000 bikes. After a few bumps, over steers and a pretty good fall the original company buckled in 1983 and was replaced by Gary Fisher Bicycles. By then, Specialized were producing the iconic StumpJumper on a large scale. Fisher Bikes was sold in 1991 to a Taiwan company called Anlen and Gary Fisher was an unhappy company president. But Trek came to his rescue in 1993, buying the company and giving Fisher free reign to innovate and design mountain bikes to his heart’s content.
So the hippy cyclist, hitting 60 years old and still riding strong and fast and still firmly believing in the pure biketastic-ness of the bicycle.
This is what happens when a bike needs repairing in Super Hero suburbia. It’s by Monty Python so it’s completely daft of course!
Saddle cover advertising is becoming increasingly popular in bike loving European cities such as Amsterdam.
The saddle covers, often made from recycled plastic have ads printed on them. The seat covers are then placed on saddles of bikes that are parked up and manage to keep saddles dry when the weather is wet. Deployment teams can target specific ads at various groups of people eg bikes at universities and colleges will be owned by students or bikes at a local train station are likely to be ridden by office-working commuters.
I guess the promoters presume that as the saddle cover is useful, the bike owner won’t mind one being stuck on their bike and if they continue to use them the ads get eyeballed more.
What do you think? Annoying or a fair trade-off ?
Seen in springwise.
The first cycle superhighways in London have been officially opened this morning reports the BBC.
The blue painted routes (highways) have been created to make it safer by, among other initiatives, widening the lanes and using large Trixi mirrors to give drivers better views of cyclists. Trixi mirrors are typically fixed to traffic sign poles and allow HGV drivers to see down the side of their lorry. See also: fresnel lens for a similar idea.
The pilot cycling superhighway lanes run from Merton, south London, to the City and from Barking in the east to Tower Gateway. The scheme is sponsored by Barclays bank, who are also main sponsors of the London cycle hire scheme that launches next week.
London Mayor, Boris Johnson aims to increase cycling in the capital from 2% of all journeys made up to 5%. Johnson is of course one of the better known London cyclists, along with current Prime Minister David Cameron.
The Channel 4 newsreader Jon Snow is offering a reward of £1000 for the safe return of his beloved Condor bicycle. The hand-built, titanium framed bike was stolen from outside the ITN building and Snow is desperate to be reunited with his “old friend”. He had another bike stolen from his home last year.
I do hope the highly regarded newsreader has been securing his precious cycles with either a d lock or a chain lock!
I guess you can contact C4 or the local police if you have any information regarding the stolen bicycle.
