Department for Transport apologises over usable cycle lane

Funny story from the satirical newspaper Newsbiscuit.com:

The Rt Hon. Ruth Kelly, Secretary of State for Transport, issued a full apology today after it transpired that a cycle lane in Wilmslow, Cheshire, did not contain substantial fragments of broken glass, abandoned vehicles or a telephone box placed right in the middle...

‘This places us in an impossible position’ said one local cyclist. ‘We were already as self-righteous as it was possible to be. This new outrage against our healthy and carbon neutral form of sustainable transport has left us unable to be any more self righteous.’

Read the whole story here.

Cartoon from Climate Cartoons. Click on the panel to read the whole strip.

I Want To Ride My Bicycle

So what happened to the plans for cycling to school?

Ed and I spent many hours this summer running up and down the crescent pushing the kids on their bikes. Sam, the youngest, cracked it first, and now he jumps on his bike as soon as he gets home and tears up and down the street.

The eldest, Tom, took a bit longer, but in the end he managed to ride up and down the street unaided. At that point he declared "I know how to ride a bike", and refused to practice any more.

Eleanor, the middle child and the only girl, has taken the longest and is still very unsteady. She can't get herself started and can only stop by falling off.

So obviously we're not yet ready to cycle 2 miles to school. But I am determined to do it (and Ed is keen to have access to the family car occasionally), so I'm sure we'll get there in the end.

Bicycle Ride

Yesterday I took my first bicycle ride for a genuine errand, rather than just practicing how to stop and start and not fall off. I went to the village and back for a bottle of wine, about a 4 mile round trip.

All was going well until I tried to cycle over a railway bridge. I made it over the bridge (barely) but it took everything I had, and afterwards I had jelly legs. I had to get off and push for the last mile, but even then my legs kept giving out on me.

I'm familiar with this phenomenon from when I used to do distance running. Your legs don't hurt, they just won't hold you up. It happens when you push too hard. I used to get it doing speed work (when you sprint for a while, then jog for a while, then sprint, then jog etc.) So I understood why the railway bridge had done for me. When I got back home I sat down, ate a banana and drank some water and I was right as rain in a few minutes, so don't worry. I didn't do any damage, I just tried to do something my legs aren't strong enough for yet.

More practice required, I think. I'm determined to get the family cycling to school next September. I've just won an auction for a pink girls' bike on eBay for Eleanor, so now we all have bikes. The summer holiday has just begun so daily cycling trips are in order - avoiding bridges.

I've Got a Bike

Isn't Freecycle wonderful? It's the network of local groups where people post adverts offering stuff they don't need anymore and other people come and take it away. It was first described to me as "like eBay, but free". I love it.

At the weekend I collected bikes for me and Tom. Many thanks to Kate from Levenshulme and Mary from Whalley Range (fab house, by the way!) Sam can have Tom's old bike, and I'm still looking out for a bike for Ellie. If I can't find one on Freecycle before the summer holidays I'll have to buy one, but I don't mind. We've done very well to get so many bikes for nothing. Come to think of it, Ed's bike was a Freecycle find as well.