tea and pedal grease

Once again, London Critical Mass has been targeted by police. 

Critical Mass is a pariah; “a black cloud on cycling advocacy”; a call to arms; a howl of rage; a defiant glare…

In the midst of a tepid Times campaign to make cycling safer, a pathetic “cycling mayor”, and suffocated by the endless lycra sport image of Hoy, Cav, Wiggins et al, cycling in the UK needs so very desperately an outlet for the angry demands for safer cycling for normal people.

I will now state, with style and wit to rival Oscar Wilde himself, my key feelings about this whole debacle.

Fuck motorists.

Fuck the police.

Fuck the Olympics.

And solidarity with all those arrested and the three who have been charged.

I finished work the other day, stacked the tourer in the hallway and barged into my flat in a fug of agitation and excitement. About ten minutes later, I was rolling down the street on my mountain bike, recalcitrant flat mate in tow.

We pedalled loosely through Bristol in the evening sun (in those sweet sunny days of yore, last week!) After spinning round some of Yer Tizz in Leigh Woods, we came to The Chute. We stopped and poked around, prodding roots, scuffing the rock step and doing that funny thing all us mountain bikers do where we look and say “hmm” and make hand gestures to show the lines and hold imaginary handlebars in front of ourselves. Then, I finally cleaned that fucking chute that I just could never do.

And I rode it again and again and again. I even borrowed my mate’s bike and rode the bugger on that.

Yes, it was rad.

I’m sure every rider has those lines. The one that they never quite manage to pin just right. The one that never feels quite smooth enough, that always has that awkward stall on the exit to the corner, the one where they just can’t avoid clipping that tree. There are lines from my past that eluded me for years, that I rode continuously for half a decade and yet never felt spot on. There will be lines in the future.

But when you get it… well, every rider knows the feeling.