Combing my hair….

Kickstarter is a fascinating project – a new way to fund creative projects. I am really grateful to Andrew Curling for drawing it to my attention. And one of the projects they are supporting is called Bicycle Portraits – everyday South Africans and their bicycles. They already have some great photographs and I am a right sucker for cycling books and photography books, so it is not a difficult sell to get me to pledge support – which is in part a pre-order for the book. Check it out.

Summer’s here and added to the joys of wind around bare knees and squashed greenfly on the teeth is the sight of wildlife on the way to work. This morning I got a great close up view of a Little Owl on a post just outside Thurgoland. It stared right back at me as went past. (photo by me’nthedogs’ on flickr – thanks for the Creative Commons license)

So Floyd Landis, having spent the last four years lying about his drug use and blood doping, now tells us he is telling us the truth and that we should believe him because he knows that Lance Armstrong is a liar on this score too. I personally don’t think Floyd is what our learned friends would call a credible witness. People will make their own minds up about Lance, most probably have already. My conclusion was that in his glory years he made the Tour de France boring. In this respect he redeemed himself significantly last year when he injected a considerable measure of interest with the ‘who’s the team leader?’ game.

I’ve stolen the fabulous image above from an award winning set by American photographer Elizabeth Kreutz – you can see more and her talking about it here (scroll down)

Knitta Bike (Photo by Gamma Blog on flickr)

Julia is out of hospital and I am responsible for cooking and cleaning for the next few weeks. Actually the weather has gone damn cold for May, so I am not at all tempted to go out on the bike. Surfing the web she found this photo by our friend Michael (aka GammaBlog), just what you need for the cold days. I love the way the passerby can’t resist turning to look.

While I cannot see how you would ride this Knitta Bike, there are other examples on the web which do appear to be roadworthy. The disadvantage is obvious; when it rains the bike gets heavier, but I guess it does serve to cover up the £4500 Time carbon frame.

Update: In a strange piece of synchronicity  (ie a coincidence) I discover from Greg’s blog that the technical term is Yarn Bombing

The January CTC social provided an opportunity to see again Alan Bennett’s first TV play “A Day Out”. Broadcast in 1972 the play tells the story of a Cyclists’ Touring Club run from Halifax to Fountain’s Abbey in 1911. The play captures the pleasures of cycling on quiet country roads in mid-summer and shows the early roots of the CTC as an organisation of the mainly well to do, who ran their rides with military discipline and tolerated (just) the rambunctiousness of the working class members. The play also shows some of the timeless elements of joining a club run, notably the reactions at home – from the wife who asks if two sandwiches will be enough to the son who creeps out of the house fearful of waking his mother.

There is also a reminder that in the days before gears, cycling involved quite a bit of walking – something which tends to be forgotten by the fixerati.

At the poignant heart of the film is a sense of Englishness. Read the rest of this entry »