Commuting on the Brompton

I’ve done two days commuting on my new Brompton and I’m impressed with how well such a little bike copes with the steep hills on the route, both up and downwards. My timing is no different from the times I made on my racing bike. The lowest gear on the Brompton is lower than the lowest gear I used on the big bike and I miss the choice of in-between gears. Yesterday I also kept stopping to move the saddle higher, convinced that it was slipping down. In fact it wasn’t and somehow it feels more cramped than a racing bike and my knees feel they are taking a strain. the riding position must be different. The bag at the front works beautifully and it feels so good not to ride with a heavy rucksack. Here’s the record on Strava of my first day. This morning was a few minutes longer as there was a headwind. (In fact a 16mph wind from exactly the direction I was heading towards.)

The journey back home is never any quicker because, although it is mostly downhill, its the people walking out into the road in Hampstead and Belsize Park and dealing with other traffic that determines how fast you can move.

My folded life begins here

After 6 weeks of waiting I finally collected my Brompton this evening from their slightly chaotic store in Covent Garden and I wobblingly cycled it home having left my full size bike obediently waiting at St. Pancras. Folding and unfolding this thing is daunting. I can’t believe how people do it in the blink of an eyelid. So I am keen to see how cycling up those steep north London hills feels on this little bike.
brompton home

Cycling to Hendon

At last, I’ve plucked up the courage to cycle from Old Street out to where I work in Hendon, up past Camden Town, turning right at Hampstead station then straight up all the way to Hendon then diving down an oblique footpath to arrive nearly opposite the university. I’ve also discovered Strava thanks to my technical guru Geoff Jones from where this map comes.

My folded life

After ten years of uneventful bicycling in London, I have recently had a wheel and now a saddle stolen from my old racing bike. The latter has proved terminal as part of the seat post went too leaving my incomplete post siezed in the frame (its been there for years) and the bike shop telling me what I knew already but which I had been ignoring that my frame is broken in another place. The bike is beyond repair so its time to salvage the parts that I can and look for a new bike. Given my nomadic life I’ve decided to bite the bullet and order a folding bike from here.
I pick it up in 4 weeks [unfortunately my new date for the build is the week starting 14th December – that’s disappointing] while they build exactly what I want at the factory in Brentford.
It should look like this:
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He went out for a few months and came back 14 years later

BBC Radio have a series of short conversations that they call The Listening Project. The key is something powerful in a short conversation often between family members though sometimes friends. Loss and love are frequent themes. I noticed this one:
Itchy Feet – Ian and Judith
last week. Its a slightly strained conversation between what you’d have to call an elderly couple – from Yorkshire. The introduction is something like: he went off travelling on his Honda motorcycle for a four month trip and returned to his wife 14 years later (can it really be true?). Now he is planning his next trip. He’s 70. He talks about getting his visas for Russia and Mongolia, sounding like he is following in many overland motorcyclists’ wheel tracks. ‘I’m fit as a butcher’s dog’, he says, ‘when my hip gets mended’. ‘I’ll tell you, I’ve spent more time in a tent than t’Indians’.

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