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@Will: Homemade cleats? How did you craft them?

I've only used SPDs and Eggbeaters, but my vote goes to the beaters because I find them easier (and much smoother) to clip out of, which is useful when some prick pedestrian steps out in front of you. That said, I don't go in for bunny hops and backflips.

There are two sorts of people: those who think that look at a Coke can and see shim material, and those who drink Pepsi.

Come to think of it, he did have a 'gifted' look about him.

You know, I think I may actually be a bastard. I should apologise to the guy.

It's good to know. There's nothing more upsetting than seeing a cyclist with a body mass index North of 25.

I'm not sure of my parentage but I do have 666 carved into my forehead.

How fat are you?

If I hadn't been late for work already, I was considering hanging him up by his feet and setting fire to his hair. Then peeling the skin off his back, sort of thing.

+1 to the high cunt count today.

This morning, on Battersea Park Road passed a stationary bus in two-lane traffic heading East, some total fucking cock behind me driving a Ford Escort the colour and texture of grade zero emery paper in the lane I'd shifted in to decides to honk his horn. Now past the bus, he drives by me, I shout "Fuck Off!" in full voice, and cycle on. I catch up with him at the traffic lights on Falcoln Rd (where I work anyway), get off, and gesture to him to wind his window down (which he does) and ask him why he honked me.
"You were in the middle of the road."
Silly me.
Says I: "I have as much right to use the road as you do. I was passing the fucking bus. It's bad enough out there on a bike without having a twat like you honking his fucking horn behind me when he has no reason to."
This exasperates him.
"Bastard bikes. Shouldnt be bastard bikes on the road. Bastard. You bastard."
The lights he's been waiting at change. I wave him off with the approved gesture.
"Bastard!" he says as he drives off. "Bastard!"

I think we're long overdue an awareness campaign on this one. If the various government departments can find money to remind us not to drink and drive, use a seatbelt, even (for different reasons) to pump up our car tyres, they can find money for this. Every week I see somebody getting closer to an HGV than any sane person would if they knew the dangers, if they were on this forum and read threads like this (and tragically there are quite a few threads like this).

I'm very happy to see so many new cyclists on the road during the summer, and I don't care if they're not 'real' cyclists, but the things they do scare me, and I'm convinced they do them because they just don't know the dangers. Taking liberties with the Highway Code may cultivate an attitude of 'anything goes' in some cyclists, which is a problem, but there is no alternative, more cyclist-appropriate code to fall back on, or at least not one that is widely known and understood. I've seen police stopping cyclists for running a red light at a right hand filter (South down West End Lane in West Hampstead) when there's no traffic coming in from the right at all - time they could better spend having a quiet word with cyclists on the main city arteries who get too close to HGVs.

I got myself one of these. Lots of ventilation, and you hardly notice you're wearing it. They don't look particularly cool but they are a bit different.

Manna on Erskine St in Primrose Hill is nice, but a bit expensive.

I have an 18t 1/8" cog I boght at Condor before I knew jack shit about what I was doing. (What I was doing was running a 3/32" chaniset.)

I still clearly know jack shit because I have no idea if is an EAI cog (it came in a baggie with a handwritten label, no other markings) but if it can be identified as such you're welcome to it - it's currently being used as a paperweight.

Again with the 'cyclist hits lorry' bullshit. What the fuck is that all about? How about there was a collision between a cyclist and lorry?

I'm going to send an email to the CNJ about this lazy, stupid journalistic habit.

MY GF hates cycling in London, always gets very nervous of traffic when we go out on the road together. If she's with me, probably because she doesn't go as fast as the traffic would like but takes my position in the road, we get a lot of overt or covert aggro from cars trying to shove us into the gutter. I always say, if they are getting pissed off with you, they can see you - so you're safe.

There was a young German called Blix
Who, when asked how he rode, replied "Fixed:
No freewheel, one gear
No De-railly-ears
Without them I can do far more tricks."

Le peloton est regroupe
Camaraderie et amitie...

There's a commentary on it somewhere on the net where the cycling boy is described as 'freewheeling' down the hill but at the time the boy was almost certainly on a fixed gear bike - hence putting his feet on a 'narrow plank' on the frame whist going downhill to take full advantage of gravity until reaching the bottom and pedalling again.

I was inspired to find this again after reading the thread started by lucky7 - the best poem I have ever read about cycling, and the experience of cycling, and if anyone can read it and not feel like they want to get out there on two wheels - well, they've probably never learned to ride a bike.

Does anyone else have any favourite bits of cycle writing?
---

The Cyclist (by Louis Macneice)
Freewheeling down the escarpment past the unpassing horse
Blazoned in chalk the wind he causes in passing
Cools the sweat of his neck, making him one with the sky,
In the heat of the handlebars he grasps the summer
Being a boy and to-day a parenthesis
Between the horizon’s brackets; the main sentence
Is to be picked up later but these five minutes
Are all to-day and summer. The dragonfly
Rises without take-off, horizontal,
Underlining itself in a sliver of peacock light.

And glaring, glaring white
The horse on the down moves within his brackets,
The grass boils with grasshoppers, a pebble
Scutters from under the wheel and all this country
Is spattered white with boys riding their heat-wave,
Feet on a narrow plank and hair thrown back

And a surf of dust beneath them. Summer, summer —
They chase it with butterfly nets or strike it into the deep
In a little red ball or gulp it lathered with cream
Or drink it through closed eyelids; until the bell
Left-right-left gives his forgotten sentence
And reaching the valley the boy must pedal again
Left-right-left but meanwhile
For ten seconds more can move as the horse in the chalk
Moves unbeginningly calmly
Calmly regardless of tenses and final clauses
Calmly unendingly moves.

---

Right, I'm off to work now (on my bike)

Great to meet you Stevo and thanks for the tinnies - hope you get on well with the new bars.

@socialamnesia: No problem, I'll let you know once I've spoken to him.

Grange Road, SE1. PM me and I'll give you my number to arrange pickup.

As mentioned elsewhere, I have some O/S drops and Tektro levers fresh off my relatively new LeMond Fillmore - free to anyone who wants 'em.

I have a Chrome, the second largest one. My only regret is not getting the largest - you can never have too much space.

I just switched my Fillmore drops and levers for a riser bar and Diatech levers. The (pristine) levers I took off are cluttering the place up - you can have them for nothing if you like.