Grace jones, a blast from the past.  Playing "Slave to the rythm" on the radio, good times.

I just realised that the blog "Phatman on a bike" doesn't represent me at all, you would assume by the title that I am indeed a fat man on a bike but to clear things up it's a play on words.  My nickname has the word "Phat" so "Phatman on a bike" was born.

Monday mornings are always such a delight, I always take the lift on the Thames underpass as my legs aren't quite ready for the onslaught of the stairs, maybe when the warmer weather is here and my rucksack is lighter I'll attempt it.  We were all standing patiently for the lift when it eventually arrived to find a homeless guy fast asleep on the bench.  I'm not one to judge as I've been homeless myself, it's not nice and people tend to treat you like shit when all you need is some help.  People have no idea how homeless people end up in that situation but due to alot of bad press some of the more genuine cases get a bad reception.  Anyways, the guy was absolutely sound asleep and snoring hard and reverberated around the lift.  A couple of the other guys on bikes started chatting, something us cyclists do which motorists can't do and they mentioned that he's there regularly, the bench is a "hard" wooden bench and somehow this guy has fallen asleep on it ?

Good bit of news in that the London Bike Show is on this weekend so will book my tickets for that on friday, should be a good event to go and see, pick up some freebies etc.  Talking of bikes, my two month old Triban & has developed a problem and I'm not sure if its the rear bearings or the crank.  We've had alot of rain the past few days and the bike has developed a knocking/grating sound like a ballrace has dried of grease or sand has penetrated the crank.  I turned the bike over last night to oil the chain and chain rings up last night and as I did water poured out of the downtube so I know water has penetrated the inner frame so maybe has gotten to the crank.  I'll give it a day or two to dry out properly and see if it's still sounding bad, if so off to Decathlon to get it checked out.

Phat man on a bike.

Who am I ?

Mid 40's, going gre......silver,  slightly deranged and mad about bikes (amongst other things)

 
So, after people telling me that I should start a blog of my journeys to and from work on a bike I have decided to put pen to paper, not in the literal term but “virtually” J  I witness some of the most ridiculous accidents, SMIDSY’s, RLJ’s etc etc.  Now, there’s good and bad on both sides of the coin, I’m not anti-car as I am a car driver, petrolhead to be honest and I just happen to own a number of bikes.  I guess the reason for starting this is to dispel certain myths regarding cyclists and the good old phrase “you don’t pay road tax”.  Road Tax as everyone still calls it was abolished in 1937 by sir Winston Churchill and replaced with VED which is a tax on vehicle emissions, cyclists produce 0 emissions. I’m not a cycling activist but I do feel strongly that not enough is being spent on the cycling infrastructure, or, strips of blue paint (which I refuse to use). When you consider other European countries (GERMANY !!!!), they has segregated cycle paths, separate traffic lights etc for cyclists, that’s how it should be done. What do we get, a pot of blue paint that you could buy from Wickes and the government think that’s enough. The government has a budget of £97 billion allocated for the road budget, yet as cyclists we receive 0.2% and before anyone shouts “but you don't pay road tax”, neither do motorists !.

My weapon of choice when I first started biking seriously was my Trek 4400 workhorse which I’ve had since man invented the wheel, in fact, the wheel was modelled on my bike it's that old.  This was really, too heavy and cumbersome for London’s streets albeit incredibly comfortable as it floated over potholes and ruts thanks to its suspension.  This paved the way for my second steed, a part Carbon Fibre Triban 7 which is very unforgiving on the streets, Carbon fibre has no flex so you feel EVERY bump in the road added to that the tyres are micro thin and incredibly hard.  However, I wouldn’t change my mode of transport even when the weather turns nasty because I have changed an hour+ sat in the car to 45 minutes and that’s including a ten minute walk under the river Thames.

I’ve been called all sorts of names on my bike, probably due to the fact that I’m a “cyclist” and I’ve passed you stuck in traffic, I’m thick skinned so don’t really care.  I just give a cheery smile and nod as I pass you at the traffic lights and seeing as the average speed across London is just 10mph, that’s not too hard as I can average 20mph on flat tarmac, faster if going downhill or caught in the draft of a bus or large van (or from the previous nights curry, JET POWER!).  Some drivers are considerate some are just plain idiots, Monday just gone I was coming up to a pinch point where I could have taken the lane, but I pulled in to the side of the road to let a bus pass and received a flash of his hazards to say thanks which I thought was pretty cool.

Well, today is the second day of our tubestrike and I did have a smug grin this morning riding to work. There was more than the norm in the amount of traffic so as you can guess, no one was going anywhere in a great hurry, except for me of course. Bus lanes were empty so I could breeze past the cars with minimal effort, you could almost hear the car drivers muttering under their breath when they saw me sauntering by. 

An incident that made me laugh this morning, waiting at the traffic lights in Deptford I heard "OOYYYYYYY!!!!" followed by a fellow cyclist (as opposed to a person on a bike, more later) speeding across the lights WHICH WERE GREEN before anyone says anything, whereby he quickly entered the bus lane.  The traffic was horrendous due to the tube strike so I can imagine the cyclist had the same smug grin as myself, however, he was quickly followed by a black BMW, young male driver at the wheel.  When I say quick, this guy was NOT hanging around.  I'm almost cetain there was an altercation between himself and the cyclist, can't judge as I don't know what happened but it was funny that the car driver was chasing the cyclist right up to the point where the car driver noticed the bus lane but plowed on through after the cyclist, unfortunately for me I haven't got a decent camera because I would have loved to capture that.  My lights changed and mister white van man behind me wanted to move on so couldn't hang about to see what unfolded. 

There's stories going round that cyclists must wear high-viz, wear a crash helmet, mustn't wear headphones etc.  I'll agree with only one of those and thats the headphones, but wearing high-viz and a helmet gives drivers a false sense of security.  High viz will get you seen, but I guarantee that my all black gear with reflective strips will be seen further away and have a higher luminescance than your high viz. 

Lastly, Cyclists are generally people who care for their equipment, follow the highway code and generally ride safe.  Normally called Lycra louts as we position ourselves in such a way that we "take the lane" which pisses off car drivers.  People on bikes, are the kind of people who ride boris bikes or their own bike once in a while, happy shopper basket on the front (Ive seen people carrying their children in these before, madness) wear their work clothes, wear headphones, no lights, jump traffic lights etc.  There is a distinction between the two.

 This is my first blog so things will improve as I post more.