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:
Month: October 2013
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’.
