Coffee and cycling? Bikes and baristas in Adelaide to kick off Velo-city 2014

Posted on May 24, 2014 by kevinmayne

My kind of place.

Off to the distinctly hip East End of Adelaide for a coffee at the “Bikes and baristas” Saturday event as part of Velo-fringe.

And joy – a bike jumble. Old bike bits, renovations, upgrades, fixies and lots of steel bikes.

Sadly luggage limitations stop me cashing in. (And the watchful eye of my travelling companion). Indeed I might have made a killing with my personal collection of 1960s and 1970s European cycling rubbish had I but known.

But a very cool start to the week if you like that kind of thing. .And great coffee!

The “Utrecht scale” – a new standard for cycle parking

Posted on May 23, 2014 by kevinmayne

I have a new proposal for how to measure quantities of bikes. It is called the “Utrecht scale” and it is based on the “ocean of bicycles” I described several weeks ago.

I had some hopes of my own. I suggested then that we needed a new measurement for cycle parking. The “Mayne scale” would be based on how long it took to walk the length of the bike park. In the case of Utrecht, it would be top of the scale with over 8 minutes from end to end. When cyclists rule the world we will need a new vocabulary, just like eskimos were supposed to have 40 words for snow and maybe my scale could have become as established as Richter, Geiger or Beaufort. But the Mayne scale is not to be.

No. For for the international comparison of bicycle numbers only the “Utrecht scale” will do now. A scale based on oceans, seas, lakes and puddles will tell us all we need to know about numbers of parked bikes.

It was a simple phrase that started it. I wrote “In Utrecht I saw a sea of bikes. In fact no I didn’t, I saw an ocean of bikes.” And then I linked it to this picture and sent it off on social media.

The rest, as they say, is history.

By the following weekend it had made two local papers and the traffic on this blog had reached heights I could hardly have imagined even a week earlier.

We even made a news story about cycle parking making the news on the ECF web site.

But it was not only Utrecht. Since then people keep sending me their cycle parking pictures from around the world and using the phrase “sea of bicycles” whenever they meet a big quantity of bikes.

The first phase of the huge new underground cycle park in Utrecht opened this week, taking the first 2000 bikes off the streets. So as a legacy of those amazing displays of bikes that may soon be no more, and for the proud people of Utrecht who love their cycle parking here is my first attempt at the “Utrecht scale” for cycle parking.

Ocean of bicycles

Bikes as far as the eye can see. Over 20,000 bikes. Take some emergency rations before you go and look for your bike, this may take some time. Example? Utrecht!

Sea of bicycles

A concentrated mass of bikes. More than 5000 in one place. You may need a guide and some time to get in and out of here. Example? It seems to be almost any Dutch station, but increasingly Flanders including Bruges and Ghent.

Lake

Now the minimum standard for any decent cycling town is to have 1000 bikes at main hubs like universities and railway stations. An honourable mention now to Bologna, Italy which has the biggest lake of rusty old student bikes round their railway station that I have ever seen.

Pond

Every village should have a pond. Ducks on the water, somewhere for children to paddle and for animals to drink. So every small area of shops, every park, every street corner should have at least a pond of bike parking to cater for local needs. Examples? Hopefully everywhere, but Copenhagen is a perfect example of putting the parking on every corner, including cargo bikes.

Canal

A level especially created for Amsterdam. Or any other city where the bikes are not parked together in a massive body but instead flow through the streets like the waterways that run through the city.

Puddle

Well you couldn’t get very wet in that could you? Just one or two bikes? Berlin – could do better!

Muddy puddle

As above, but with mountain bikes! From Whistler, where else!

Frozen puddle – Memmingen, Germany, at minus 14 degrees centigrade.

To complement the Utrecht scale I did think of some other useful phrases with a watery flavour

Tsunami of bicycles – what happens when everybody in Utrecht tries to get on their bikes at the same time.

Desert – Trying to find any evidence of bicycle life here is pretty hard.

Splash – several bikes thrown together informally, the basis for much of the cycle parking in Salzberg, Austria.

Dried up river bed – speaks for itself.

Reservoir – 700 Bixi bikes waiting for Velo-city 2012 delegates to arrive – Vancouver.

So now then readers – does this work for you? And what would your watery terms for cycling be?

To finish – my favourite watery cycling photo. I look forward to your comments!

Now our bikes have got an obesity problem. Fat bikes the trend at Taipei Cycle Show 2014

Posted on March 27, 2014 by kevinmayne

When I go to the big bike shows I try to have a wander round and see if there are any trends that catch my eye. After a while the sea of alloy and carbon can become overwhelming so the eye is only drawn to superb design or something quirky.

At this year’s Taipei Cycle Show I was actually on the lookout for signs that the growing interest in cargo bikes in Europe might be backed up by the companies who make so many of the elements of our bikes. With the Asian heritage for carrying loads by bike I always believe Taipei should be a good place for research. However this year I was almost completely disappointed apart for two items in the Design Awards section – a small trailer and a stylish pedelec (IZIP E3 Metro) with load carrying front and rear.

There was also a very cute Louis Garneau bike with basket which I liked.

However I was struck by one trend that is massive in every dimension. While last year the fat bike was a novelty on a few stands this year they were absolutely everywhere, it appears that the Taiwanese manufacturers think this is one of the trends their US and European importers are going to run with for a while so many had designs on show to prove they could meet the demand.

A have read some reviews and stories about fat bikes and I can clearly see the attraction in the countries where snow lies feet deep for months on end, or if you have a convenient sandy desert or beach to hand. They would be fantastic to hire for a fun day out at a bike park. But a mainstream part of the market? Not convinced.

But I have a sneaking suspicion that fat bikes are largely created to meet Rule 12 of the Velominati, that is to say

“The correct number of bikes to own is n+1.

While the minimum number of bikes one should own is three, the correct number is n+1, where n is the number of bikes currently owned. “

A bike that satisfies the need for the cyclist who has everything? Now that might work.

I have acquired a Flying Pigeon – icon of Chinese bicycles, the most numerous bike on the planet

Posted on November 4, 2013 by kevinmayne

This week I finally collected the Flying Pigeon bicycle that has been waiting for me on a Brussels street since May of this year. The classic Chinese roadster, first built in 1950 and believed to be the biggest selling bike of all time and source of a precious memory.

It is a PA-06, the double top tube model, so really up market!

I wrote about my experiences of riding in China in this post published in January of this year. If you were not following my blog at the time then I encourage you to go and have a look, there is a link to a lovely film by China TV about the peak and decline of mass cycling in China.

At the bottom of that post I mentioned that my colleague Julian had a Flying Pigeon in Brussels. Well he upped ship and returned to Australia and I quickly put myself forward to become the custodian of the Pigeon because it was not going with him. I should pretend I really don’t know why I wanted it or why I am going to love it. It is a pig to ride because the long extended fork rake gives it an awful turning circle, it has no gears, it weighs a ton and rod brakes on steel rims were never the best braking solution.

But that is the point. It is as strong as anything, built to carry loads and people and to get the job done, not for fancy Dan shimmying all over the road and certainly not for weaving around cars. And it is wonderfully and distinctively a Chinese bike, just as much a utilitarian dream machine as the upright Dutch black bike or a Brompton. If nothing else I will have it for special events and occasions as a talking point.

It also takes me back to another of my Chinese experiences in 1985. We were in Shanghai sightseeing when we arrived outside the legendary Shanghai Number 1 Department Store. I am no shopper but an early Lonely Planet guide said it had to been seen for the huge variety of Chinese products. We were allowed in because we were tourists but only higher cadres of Communist Party members and public officials were allowed to shop there, many Chinese were being turned away at the door.

As we left we were approached cautiously by a young Chinese man who spoke to us in perfect American accented English. He asked if we would be willing to go into the store and buy a bicycle. He explained “I live in America and I have come back to visit my father. What he really wants is a bicycle. I have the money but the store won’t let me in because I am Chinese. They will let you in, I can give you the money.” We were absolutely thrown by this. He seemed genuine but we were very wary of being trapped by some sort of scam that would see us in trouble. This was very much the beginning of the opening of China to Westerners and we had already had some odd experiences, we certainly didn’t want another.

If I look back now I realise that this young man must have had some sort of second sight. He could have asked us for any other item of the thousands in Department Store Number 1 and we would have walked away. But let Geoff and Kevin Mayne look on the face of an old Chinese man who has dreamed of a bicycle and we were never going to say no. The deal was done and a Flying Pigeon was passed out the door to the welcoming smiles. You never forget your first bicycle, nor the gift of a first bike.

Unfortunately there is a catch with our Brussels Flying Pigeon. The only way to hand over the bike when Julian left was to leave it locked to a signpost by a friend at a pre-determined spot in Brussels, some miles from our office or a convenient station. However these bikes can be a bit of a handful to maintain if you have never come across old school features like rod brakes and I was told it wasn’t really rideable by that point so I couldn’t just go and ride it to a station and then home. And thus it sat on the street for five months, a real test of its indestructible reputation.

Last weekend I had some things to collect which meant I reluctantly took a car into Brussels and the Pigeon finally made it on to a roof rack to be shipped out to Lasne. Sorry Julian.

It is a testament to the paint job on these bikes that the frame has remained in excellent condition, however unfortunately that can’t be said for the accessories which have taken on a rusty hue and are certainly going to need some rubbing down and some judicious restructuring or replacement of that rear wheel.

However it is now safe in a dry barn with my other bikes and it is going to give me hours of pleasure when I finally get round to polishing it up.

Look out for a wobbly Englishman on a Flying Pigeon on the streets of Brussels sometime next year, maybe after I finish restoring my Freddie Grubb fixie.

More about Flying Pigeons on Wikipedia here

Another lovely hazy autumnal weekend in Wallonia – shall we do the same as last week then?

Posted on September 27, 2013 by kevinmayne

A quick return visit to Vienna. Cycling promotion at the FahrRadhaus and Radlager

Posted on September 22, 2013 by kevinmayne

Nice to be back in Vienna for a rapid visit after enjoying it so much in June. A bit rainy but in between showers lovely pre-autumnal temperatures which encouraged me out onto the city bikes. I was reminded by one of my hosts that I had been very rude about these bikes when I first used them last year. On one of the rides I did manage to pick up one of the original purple monsters with its huge over-gearing which made my dodgy knees ache but once I got the hang of it I learned that Vienna City Bikes are like a bag of sweets – pick them by the colour. (Always take a yellow one).

Two places I didn’t get to see in June were the FahrRadhaus and the new location for the Radlager, a great retro cycle shop and café that I wrote about early in my blogging days, way back in May 2012.

Radhaus is the City of Vienna’s official bike promotion centre which it has used as the base for Bike Year 2013 (Radjahre 2013). It as sign of the city’s commitment that this isn’t an unwanted cellar somewhere the wilderness, it is a nice piece of imperial architecture right next to the City Hall, the Rathaus (great wordplay in German Rad = bike, pronounced raat, the same sound as Rathaus, city or town hall )

I didn’t get a chance to come here during Velo-city so it was nice that my meetings for the two days I was in the city were in the Radhaus. It is a nice atmosphere, it doesn’t feel civil service, it feels like a promotional centre that gets cycling and cyclists. There are good displays of a wide range of city bikes and absolutely tons of printed matter, books, pamphlets, maps, guides, in fact almost anything you could want to take up cycling.

Vienna cycling office

There are also mobile outposts of the Radhaus promoting cycling which seem to be transported by the biggest cargo bike platforms I have ever seen.

On my evening in the city I joined some of the cycling activists for dinner and then we rode city bikes around the city to the cycling quiz night.

Sadly I arrived too late to take on the local talent but I looked around our venue and realised I was in a nerds paradise, retro bike stuff and restored bikes all over the place amongst the beer and coffee. “Look like the Radlager” I said to my hosts, referring to one of the coolest bike cafés and bike shops I have ever been to in Vienna. (See previous post here)

“This is the Radlager” they said.

Doh!

I hadn’t noticed the names and logos around the shop so I hadn’t realised that the café had moved to a new much more central location. Maybe I was confused by the fact that more Moultons than I can possibly recall seeing in a small shop had moved in among the Colnagos.

I like it and it is now much more accessible to visitors so I do encourage any bike nerds going to Vienna to pay a visit to the Radlager as well as the Radhaus.

However I miss that gallery – it really was a great display.

I’ll treat myself to using that photo again. Enjoy.

Do not despair’s daily bike back on the road

Posted on September 14, 2013 by kevinmayne

After all the wonderful machines of two weeks ago at Eurobike I returned to the basics of my cycling life to replace my daily work bike.

I actually do more miles per year on this machine than any other, perhaps 3000 per year (4500km). Therefore there are rules. It must handle all weather conditions, be bounced on and off trains and yet it has to be so ugly that nobody could possibly contemplate stealing it. Weight completely immaterial, ability to carry significant loads essential. Puncture proof tyres.

I achieve this by getting old mountain bike frames or bikes and modifying them with recycled road parts from bikes I have had for up to forty years. The mountain bike setup lets me use fat tyres on very cheap steel frames and use of the parts is just common sense – and appeals to my more miserly side.

It has other benefits too. I have learned an enormous amount about creative bike building and repair as I have bashed and bodged various fits together over the years. I have also learned to curse the bike industry for lack of standardisation as I move from bike to bike discovering parts that don’t fit the latest incarnation.

The last bike was a Giant Granite that was left in a park in Reading, UK and picked up by a friend who recycles them. However after a several years and a Belgian winter it succumbed to a crack through the frame. Now it has been replaced by an unidentified silver machine with flaking paint and rusty spots for which the only evidence of origin is “Made in Taiwan” stamped on the bottom bracket.

Substitution of friction shift levers that I can mount somewhere on the frame is the issue I face every time so I can get rid of the mountain bike changers on the bars. Indexed shifters combined with the brakes are all very well if you have all the matching gear mechanisms and correctly spaced sprockets but that is never going to happen here. The rest usually works with a bit of fiddling and adapting.

I am quite happy with it on the first couple of rides to the station but I will probably need a longer/higher handlebar stem at some point. A 25km hilly cross country ride to work on Monday should confirm or remove any other niggles.

Total cost – €40 on E-bay for the run down MTB and a spare frame thrown in. That will undergo the same treatment to become my son’s student bike. Good value all round!

Not despairing at Eurobike 2013 – the cycling industry’s family gathering

Posted on September 8, 2013 by kevinmayne

This year’s reflections from the world’s biggest bike show. No, not the Tour de France or the streets of Copenhagen where cycling itself is on show. This is the biggest show of bikes, bits and all the associated services that go with them in the world and it attracts an enormous range of visitors and companies to Friedrichshafen in southern Germany. (Keeping the rough rule that my professional work stays distinct from the blogging my work at the show can be seen over at ECF’s news pages here.)

Eurobike display BH

I have to be honest, am not someone who can get excessively excited by the promised benefits of a new carbon weave or the relative merits of some enormously expensive braking system over another. There are many cycling bloggers and journalists whose raison d’etre is bikes and bits so I have to leave judgement on the merits of the products to them. This year I was even so busy I didn’t even get a single test ride which was a little bit frustrating.

My “Do not despair” thoughts are all about people and atmosphere with the occasional showstopper moment thrown in. I do like bikes as art or design and to be fair to our industry colleagues there are plenty of occasions when the exhibits have some “wow factor”, but to me that is aesthetic as much as technical. (Not all bike show exhibits are eye catching for the right reasons – remember this moment of madness from earlier in the year?)

It is essentially a trade show, business to business, so its primary target is manufacturers, bike shop owners and their wholesalers who come to sort out what bikes they will be selling in 2014, what the components will be and where the trends are. On the Saturday it also opens its doors to around 20,000 cyclists, mainly from Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

The overwhelming impression you get from Eurobike is just how big the bike industry is when you see it on a global scale. This year Eurobike had 1400 companies, 2000 journalists and 45,000 trade visitors putting well out ahead of the other two main shows at Taipei and Interbike in the US.

It is also home base for Europe’s biggest cycling market Germany so there is a lot of focus on how cycling in Germany is going in any given year. As my regular readers know I am very excited about how cycling in Germany is growing, I think their cities and cycle touring have a formula for success that is bringing results.

Now it is very clear that this importance has the highest level of political endorsement in Germany because the star of Eurobike this year wasn’t a piece of technology or even one of the celebrity riders like Tour de France breakthrough star Markus Kittel. They were all swamped by the appearance of “Angie”.

Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany. With respect to our French, British and Italian friends she is almost certainly the most powerful politician in Europe and in Germany she has superstar status. Various coincidences of the German election campaigning season meant that Eurobike fitted her schedule but the overwhelming mood of the show was that this was a breakthrough moment for cycling in Germany. Nearly 18 months ago I wrote about President Ma of Taiwan coming to open the bike show at Taipei and declaring himself to be Taiwan’s number 1 cyclist.

At the time I was able to reflect that this couldn’t happen anywhere else in the world, it was entirely due to the business clout of the Taiwanese bike industry.

How wrong I was, and how pleased I am about it too because it is a real coup for cycling in Europe, not just in Germany. I was very pleased to get a place in the room for the opening because it was a bit of a superstar moment for us policy wonks too.

Angela Merkel at Eurobike

Angie herself was somewhat of a surprise package as well. One of our journalist colleagues said she “stole the show”. I think I have only every seen this rather sour-faced, serious woman who is set on bashing her own and other people’s economies into shape. So when she got up on stage, smiled a bit, relaxed and told a few modest local jokes she had the whole room in her hands. It even worked through the rather overwrought translator who was breathlessly trying to keep up through our earpieces in a horrible monotone.

She did apologise for not being a cyclist, explaining that when she was 15 the Russian soldiers in the forests around her home stole her bicycle, but apparently that wasn’t the reason she had a political reputation for not liking the Russians!

As well as the political clout the other stars of a business event are of course the business leaders, however their presence is much more low-key. It isn’t the impression I get from reading about other industries like cars or IT where the CEOs are put on a pedestal. No Steve Jobs moments at Eurobike, Here you are quite likely to bump into the CEO of the world’s biggest bike company casting a paternal eye over his company’s display (Tony Lo of Giant) and the others are out and about on the floor.

Product wise the E-bikes remain the place where the biggest buzz is happening, especially in Germany. Bernhard Lange, President of the German manufacturers’ association ZIV was even able to tell Angela Merkel that cycling has delivered her target of 1 million electric vehicles on Germany’s streets although the ferocious political leverage that the car industry has here meant that she quickly had to tell him that they hadn’t meant that.

One of my favourites was actually British, the GoCycle is a very stylish folding E-bike which I am actually hoping to test in Brussels in the next few weeks.

As I whizzed around the booths there is always room for some stylish carbon and huge arrays of mountain bikes but fortunately right in front of our booth was the Eurobike award winners’ section so I was able to sneak over and take a look at some trend setters.

Among them my first look at a Surly fat bike which was a pretty eye-catching. I have seen increasing mentions in US blogs about them and in the winter of last year I could almost have done with one in Belgium.

Very, very stylish cloth coated saddle from Brooks. Since the company was saved by Selle Royal I think they have done a great job bringing Italian creativity to this most traditional of British icons. It is cotton set on vulcanised rubber – pretty much unique.

Häse’s recumbent cargo bikes were very popular in the bike tryout area and were a distinctive sight all over the expo..

Unfortunately the scale of Eurobike does provide the other overwhelming impressions of Friedrichshafen show and an almost permanent talking point amongst the attendees. Once inside the Messe (exhibition centre) it is busy, but well run and efficient. Outside is chaos. There are not enough hotels so people stay up to 30km away, but this in turn means they largely need to drive to get to the show. Some of the veterans have booked the same hotel for about 15 years to keep a place and other experts from the mountain bike festival scene enjoy the camp site instead. However most just drive – on Thursday the queues to the West were over 20km long.

It would be nice to think we could all ride in on the great network of cycle paths or get the plentiful shuttle buses but even the cycling advocacy world knows that getting your way in and out from the countryside in good shape to stand and meet people all day isn’t practical for everyone. Many try to avoid driving, including me. However even with a relatively straightforward journey I managed to mess up one day and required 3 stages of public transport to get back to my hotel at 10.30 pm. Instead of rich Swabian cookery I had a burger from a well-known fast food brand at Friedrichshafen station which really did not sit very well. Not my finest hour.

However bad it gets it seems Eurobike is an addictive draw for the global bike industry and it looks likely to remain the key show of the year. Increasingly it is growing on me. I genuinely believe we have a very special business, I like the personalities of that community, even the most battle hardened CEOs of stock market listed industrial conglomerate seems to smile more when engaged in the bike world. But at Eurobike they are also surrounded by thousands of company owners for whom running a bike company is a multi-generational passion which has been passed on for as much as 100 years. From bike shops to giant companies like SRAM and Shimano we still see the founders intimately involved in many companies, still bringing the energy they had when they started out.

It never feels like that when I work in any other sector, long may it continue.

We need a cycling hero – Bicycle Repair Man – Classic Monty Python

Posted on August 1, 2013 by kevinmayne

A small favour prompted me to revisit this classic Monty Python sketch.

I usually enjoy playing at Bicycle Repair Man, the opportunity to give someone back their cycling through a small tweak or adjustment or fitting a spare that I just happen to have in the shed. Last week it was a tweak to brakes and gears and my colleague was off.

However while I am happily tweaking other people’s bikes I am deeply in need of a bit of BRM magic myself. How would our hero have coped with the complexity and diversity of modern bikes? I have spent absolutely hours going nowhere in the last few weeks on just one bike while it holds up painful decisions on other machines.

The main problem is my clunker, the work bike that I actually do most of my miles on. It is a carefully crafted beast because it combines lots of thrown together parts that create a bike that looks really ugly but actually has exactly what I need. With a good layer of dirt and grease on top it is the machine nobody wants to steal, although I do get looks on the train that are almost as dirty as the bike. But it can do almost anything from the daily commute to low level mountain biking in all weathers.

Each incarnation has had a rigid MTB frame (currently a Giant Granite) and fat sturdy puncture-proof tyres from Schwalbe (Marathon Plus) which I ride until something falls apart. The main investment is the rear wheel where I use good quality, otherwise everything else is where I do my experiments, bodging together all sorts of combinations. I have learnt so much passing these bits from frame to frame over the years I reckon I can make most things work.

However this winter played hell with the machinery and in the last few weeks everything decided to pack up at once. The chain and sprockets finally got to the point where I was selecting about 3 gears from 24 and the bottom bracket was making ominous noises.

I spent hours in the shed trying to combine every set of chainrings and cranks I had into something that would work but there’s not a lot of point when the teeth barely exist.

Got that sorted eventually (spent money – hate that) but a week later the bottom bracket just seized with some suitably horrible crunching, fortunately just a short distance from home. I was about to start replacing that when I noticed a crack in the frame, so it has finally bit the dust, not bad for a machine of unknown history found abandoned in a Reading park several years ago.

New frame then.

Off to Cyclo, the well thought of bike recycler in Brussels that takes all the old bikes off the street and operates a social enterprise and community workshop in search of a frame.

What a treasure trove, buzzing with customers and atmosphere. Hundreds of bikes of all styles and vintages waiting to for buyers, most €100-€200. I would love to have had a few hours in there, I am sure there were some classics waiting to emerge.

However it was a practical visit and I was treated to a trip down the basement where the recently arrived and unused bikes were stashed. It was actually pretty easy, within minutes we had found a scratched and battered MTB frame with a bottom bracket and headset that looked just the job.

Back to the office on the metro and then I entertained the office when I set off for the station with my burden. ECF facebook image

Nothing unusual about that in my mind, they obviously haven’t met enough bike bodgers here. Next stage of the chaos then ensued because SNCB had managed to cancel one train and tried to force two trainloads of passengers onto one half sized train. The bloke with two dirty bikes got lots of cautious looks from anyone wearing pale summer clothes although there was general good humour about my antics, climbing in and out at every stop with both machines to let people on and off.

But no matter how painful the process had been so far I now needed the satisfaction of getting the project moving properly to put the wasted hours behind me. So off to the shed.

I was actually making reasonable progress until I got to my final job of the night. Putting the wheels into the frame to set up the brakes..

I then stood back in amazement. I was going mad. The wheels had shrunk. Nothing would line up.

And slowly it dawned on me that the frame may have looked in every aspect like an MTB, but it was actually a typical continental trekking-bike set up, 700C touring wheels in a MTB set-up.

Arrggghhh – fallen into the incompatibility trap. And in this case one with a special Belgian twist. A check on the internet showed that indeed the Diamond Galaxy is a Belgian made trekker, not an MTB.

I spent last night and all my bike ride to work this morning stewing, cogitating and creating. Don’t have a plan yet – I need a sprinkle of some BRM magic.

Three types of brake possible but maybe not a full set of each, loads of wheels with umpteen gears, few of which are compatible with each other or maybe I can use it as the tourer for which it was designed and I’ll start again on a new work bike.

There is the common sense “take it back and try again” option, but that breaks just too many rules.

Thank goodness it doesn’t involve my other current maintenance hates – mainly hydraulic disk brakes. If you really want to annoy me just now put a post in a forum describing in detail a simple process that requires me to buy a kit, read about, understand and buy loads of different incompatible oils and widgets for two separate bikes and then enjoy fiddling with it for hours. Oh really? Please – wires and levers of single design – please!

Bicycle Repair Man you had it easy when bikes were black and the only thing involving pressures was a quick squeeze on the tyres. But you are still our hero and I’ll be reminded of you the next time I can tweak something that puts someone back on the road.

Meanwhile back to work…………………

Riding, not despairing in Upper Austria

Posted on July 5, 2013 by kevinmayne

When I finished Velo-city I was exhausted, not just by the work and the hours but also because I was fighting a cold the whole week. (Insert man-flu insults here)

Going to the Attersee in Upper Austria with my wife was a planned escape to chill out and recover which for me always includes getting in a few bike rides of some type. Last year in Canada was my special treat to mountain bike at Whistler and tour across British Columbia straight after the event. If had even thought about cycling or mountain biking like that this year it would have been a complete disaster, I would hardly have made any progress.

For three days I was just floored and very happy to be carried around the lake by ferry and lie on the bank in the wonderful summer heat. I didn’t even hassle the landlady for the free bikes promised at the hotel which is very out of character. In fact I was dreading that feeling of a first ride after a break, the knowledge that my legs would be like jelly and in the heat I would really suffer.

But on Wednesday the bikes turned up and within a couple of hours I just knew I couldn’t resist. I also knew I didn’t fancy the busy road around the lake, I was just so tempted by the minor roads and tracks up and away from the side of the valley that decided to take the risk that I would expire and head up and away for a few km.

Up the first slope I was very grateful for the extra big sprocket provided by a Shimano Megarange 34 tooth sprocket because it was a real struggle. However then I looked back. Maybe just a hundred metres gained and I had a spectacular view over the Attersee.

And then suddenly I was back. I just wanted to ride up and away to take in the views and get that sense of achievement that comes from getting to the top of a decent hill. I really did find myself saying “its back, I’ve got my mojo back” which does seem toe-curlingly embarrassing now.

After that I was able to enjoy the tracks that led up into the hills and do a great loop around the Wachtberg. Only a few km but quite a lot of climbing up around the beautifully tended farmhouses and then along wooded trails before a tricky descent back almost to lake level at Alexenau and back to Weyregg am Attersee with great views all the way along. The best 7km ride in ages!

Once the ice was cracked I was into my riding for the next three days. The network of roads and trails was just stunning. Just as importantly they were brilliantly waymarked and I could almost have navigated without the map. I nearly made it up to around 1000 metres every day on climbs like the Gahberg and the scenery was just stunning, plus we had some great rides together. I didn’t complete either of them but the temptation of the longer distance Salzkammergut mountain bike routes like the Richtberg Runde and the Krahberg Runde were always there – maybe an excuse to come back.

Despite the bike being a very ordinary mtb clone the KTM Lifejoy it did at least have a triple chainset and the Megarange so I could ride everything. Surfaces were not technical, mostly dirt road, so the challenge was steady climbing, not staying on the bike. I wasn’t properly kitted up for full cross country with helmet and toolkit so I had to be a bit careful not to get stranded in the middle of nowhere because there were certainly almost no other riders, astonishing given the quality of the riding.

None of the rides was longer than a couple of hours but all were proper summer holiday rides, great scenery , great weather, hardly anyone around and properly recharging the batteries.

A decent photo gallery too. (just take a look at the route profile on the final photo!)

Tour du Monde – unique historic bike exhibition in Vienna’s MAK design museum

Posted on June 30, 2013 by kevinmayne

There are many special events in Vienna to celebrate its year of the bicycle.

Opening to coincide with our Velo-city conference two weeks ago was Tour du Monde, an exhibition at MAK, Vienna’s design museum.

It features the amazing bike collection of Viennese architect Michael Embacher which is normally kept privately but includes some of cycling’s design classics and some quite rare pieces.

We called in for the formal opening on the night of the mass bike ride at Velo-city (the Radcorso – story here). As even the German speakers told me the speeches were pretty dull I was glad I skipped them to take a wander round the collection.

I am not really a bike technology buff but I really appreciate some of the classics and it was good to see them displayed well. They were hung as art from the ceiling and lit from above but the nice touch was that they were hung in sweeping curved lines which gave a nice feeling of movement in a static display. Almost like an aerial peloton perhaps.

Each bike had a short history on the wall too which brought them to life.

Embacher certainly has an eye for some interesting pieces, including famous racing machines and good old British steel. The post war Raleigh Roadster special edition export bike in chrome was pretty special, as was the Bob Jackson Super Legend with curly stays. (both above)

One I particularly enjoyed was the Gitane Enfant special edition road bike from the early 80s. I remember seeing them in magazines at the time, I was too old to have something that small but I remember thinking how cool it would have been to have been a French kid with a bike like that. Looking at it hanging in the exhibit it took me a moment to work out what I was seeing, it was this odd looking thing, but then it is clearer that it is a small bike with adult parts, more obvious when it was seen with its big brother beside it.

The exhibition is on until October – if you like vintage bikes or just good design it is well worth a visit and it is a rarely seen collection. Details here.

Another one of those diversions for the cycle tourist travelling Eurovelo 6 along the Danube this summer perhaps. To tempt you or if you cannot make it Embacher’s collection of over 200 cycles can be found here

Discount if you arrive at the MAK by bike too!

Duel at dawn – part deux

Posted on June 4, 2013 by kevinmayne

A few weeks ago I amused some of you with my post “Duel at Dawn” in which I told the tale of the old sporty cyclist faced by another cyclist on the morning road.

The tale took a new twist this morning.

I was thrashing my way through the hills of the Foret de Soignes at my usual lumbering pace when I suddenly heard the swish of a bike tyre beside me and a cyclist zoomed past up the hill.

Without even looking I knew that I was being passed by some flying roadie in lycra and I was going to have little chance of slipstreaming the passing rider even if I put on a burst.

Except

I was being passed by a woman on an upright bike in day clothes.

It took quite a few revolutions before the penny dropped.

E-bike.

The battery pack was the give away which I discovered when I got over the hill not too far behind her and then caught up freewheeling down the other side.

Amazing experience – we followed each other for about 3 km – me pulling ahead on descents and at any busy junctions but she absolutely flew up the climbs effortlessly and on the last one I just expired like a burst balloon and watched the green spot vanish.

It was the first E-bike I have seen in Brussels and you don’t see many of them on the commute in many countries because people are worried about storage at the other end. But we know from Germany and the Netherlands that the E-bike revolution is letting more people ride further, more often, in sensible normal clothes. Great to see it in Belgium.

Just not good for the ego of 50-something roadies. Time to move on.

Into the heart of Flemish cycle racing – Centrum Ronde Van Vlaanderen

Posted on May 26, 2013 by kevinmayne

Another week, another cycling fans’ café.

This week I am sipping a coffee surrounded surrounded by memories of Flemish cycling. Perhaps fittingly it is grey and raining outside which matches the grainy black and white photographs which decorate most of the walls.

This is the Brasserie des Flandrians, the nice bar and restaurant in the Tour of Flanders Centre in the town of Oudenaarde. I had been expecting to write you a rant about how the Belgians were stupid enough to close a tourist attraction on a public holiday Monday because their web site said the museum was closed. But when I arrived to meet some friends who are cycle touring across Belgium to spend a few days with us I was delighted to see the lights on and I could immerse myself in a hundred years of history while I waited.

No need to write much, the pictures and images do most of the talking, but a few of my personal picks are underneath this pictorial homage.

The museum guide is a familiar face to local fans, former Tour of Flanders winner and world champion Freddie Maertens was putting on a very animated performance to a coach party of adoring fans who doted on every word and anecdote, I only wish I spoke Dutch because it sounded like fun. Here he is today and in the 1970s.

For British fans and old bike geeks Tommy Simpson is remembered, both by his 1962 Gitane with its Brooks saddle, and by a bust next to his Flandria cycling shirt.

Breaking away from the impression that this was as much about Flanders as it was about the race was hard, the introductory film was great for atmosphere but its roll call of double and treble winners managed to ignore anyone who wasn’t Belgian! Similarly buried in a corner was a small section which acknowledged to a small extent that women exist with some photos of the recently introduced women’s Tour of Flanders. I was delighted that its principle star was Nicole Cooke, I have a feeling her “all or nothing” riding style endeared her to local fans.

The interactive elements were popular with kids large and small, especially a static bike mounted on some asymmetric rollers which were supposed to simulate riding on the cobbles. Very funny expressions, lots of noise and plenty of cheering and egging on when the coach party got to that section.

And I have to say there was a gentle sense of humour running through the place with plenty of cartoons and a rather delightful drinks menu at the café which made me smile.

Oudenaarde itself is not a town known for much else but it has an attractive market square and a very impressive church towering over the centre. For the cyclist it is however at the heart of a massive network of cycle touring routes, not least the three Tour of Flanders waymarked routes which if done as a complete set would give any of us a good workout. The steady stream of riders through the brasserie obviously thought so too, although the number of bikes on cars in the market square rather suggests that the weather was playing havoc with riding plans on this particular day.

Click on the links for my previous posts about the Tour of Flanders and riding in the Flemish Ardennes.

A ray of Italian cycling sunshine on a soggy Stockholm morning

Posted on May 21, 2013 by kevinmayne

Everywhere I go at the moment it seems to start raining.

Stockholm was no different. A sunny evening turned into a very soggy morning.

However I had an absolutely delightful breakfast coffee to look forward to at a rather special café on the Stockholm scene,

The Bianchi café.

Italian café, Italian staff, fantastic cappuccino and celeste blue bicycles displayed almost as art. Pictures of some of the great Bianchi riders rotating on an electronic screen in the window.

In the back of the café a very good bike shop selling everything you could wish for to go with your passion – from caps to cufflinks.

The breakfast coffee was all the better because I had it in the company of Tony Gimaldi whose family owns the Bianchi brand. He told me the great story of how his family’s Swedish industrial conglomerate got into the bike business in Sweden but some years later after a number of acquisitions got the chance to buy the struggling Bianchi business.

When he went to Italy to start integrating the business into their other bike businesses Tony not only found his Italian family roots it was very, very clear from his passion that he fell hook, line and sinker for the Bianchi legend. He was great company and I suspect we could have talked for hours had time allowed, especially in that setting.

Any bike nuts going to Stockholm – this is your place.

http://bianchicafecycles.com/

30 days of biking: days 8-13 @30daysofbiking (with added @1dayalmostbiking)

Posted on April 14, 2013 by kevinmayne

Failed the challenge, but a really pretty dreadful start to the cycling week did get better and better.

Day 10 consisted of an hour of pretty unsuccessful bike fixing in the morning and much more disastrous hour sitting in an immobile car in the evening. Time when I should have been riding. So @30daysofbiking is going to be @29daysofbiking even if I have many days when there has been more than ride. Do you think the hour spent working on the bikes counts? I did sit on one and wiggle the handlebars?

Broken crank

For the state of dignity I will continue to the month end – here is the rest of this week’s diary which did have an excellent end. Day 7 was already covered – not the best start here

Day 8 – the “ouch that could have hurt” ride.

Snapped crank as I left the station. One of those incidents which could have pitched me onto the ground, but it was only a wobble.

Forced to catch a ride home. 10 minutes.

Day 9 “Who ploughed up the path” ride

Out for an hour on the mountain bike with the dog, only to discover that one of our local farmers has ploughed up the path I chose creating a surface almost unrideably lumpy and I fell off once. Murphy liked it, with his 4 wheel drive he was looking back and laughing.

60 minutes.

Day 10 – bummer. “Sit on saddle in shed” not ride

10 seconds?

Day 11. “Forgot my saddle cover” wet bum ride,

This isn’t a good week. Just from the station 25 minutes.

Day 12. “Paris – oh Paris”

Thank goodness, I needed a lift. See the full post here

Day 13. “The eccentrics of Ceroux” ride

Today I had two rides. I spent an hour with my wife and the dog gently taking in our local lanes. We went over to the village of Ceroux which I have photographed several times before.

However this time because we were going slower we noticed a street of houses that seem to be eccentrics corner. A giant stainless steel windmill that seemed to be made out of car wing mirrors, a dragon chimney pot and close proximity social housing for birds.

After we got back I gave myself a special treat and got out my new road bike for a thrash on dry, clean roads. I have hardly ridden it since I was given it as a leaving present by my colleagues at CTC, now I really was able to enjoy it. No photos, sorry – too busy enjoying myself.

It is a Genesis Equilibrium compact road by the way, steel all the way.

150 minutes and a great way to end the week.

I Do Not Despair

When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. ~H.G. Wells

Category Archives: Bikes

The “Utrecht scale” – a new standard for cycle parking

Now our bikes have got an obesity problem. Fat bikes the trend at Taipei Cycle Show 2014

I have acquired a Flying Pigeon – icon of Chinese bicycles, the most numerous bike on the planet

Another lovely hazy autumnal weekend in Wallonia – shall we do the same as last week then?

A quick return visit to Vienna. Cycling promotion at the FahrRadhaus and Radlager

Do not despair’s daily bike back on the road

Not despairing at Eurobike 2013 – the cycling industry’s family gathering

We need a cycling hero – Bicycle Repair Man – Classic Monty Python

Riding, not despairing in Upper Austria

Tour du Monde – unique historic bike exhibition in Vienna’s MAK design museum

Duel at dawn – part deux

Into the heart of Flemish cycle racing – Centrum Ronde Van Vlaanderen

30 days of biking: days 8-13 @30daysofbiking (with added @1dayalmostbiking)

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