PC is so PC he won't get on a bike

A charity providing bikes for police community work failed to get a policeman on a bike at a photo shoot because he hadn't been trained.
Rules are rules and must be adhered to. A bit embarrassing for all concerned though

From: http://news.bbc.co.uk

Urban Cycling Best Practice - UK leaders find out more

MPs and Lords from the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group visited the Netherlands with officials from British cycling organisations to look at the Dutch cycling culture and integrated transport solutions. Carlton Reid of Quickrelease tv produced an excellent 12 minute document of this trip.

Bike and Trains Study Tour, Netherlands from Quickrelease.tv on Vimeo.

It should be mandatory viewing for every council department that is resposible for urban transport. Too often in Britain we say we are different and conclude that cycling in Holland is so popular because their country is flat. This video looks beyond that and highlights all the compelling reasons why urban centres benefit from swapping car usage with bicycle usage. The big message appears to be that people want to do it because it is easier than the hassle of taking the car and finding parking.

The sooner councils realise their car centric view of urban planning can be very different, the better. If they can encourage cycle use, people will cycle more, given the right environment to feel safe, links with public transport and secure places to park a bike. It can be the catalyst to urban regeneration. Our towns are emtpy shells with little or no life and increasingly with fewer shops. People have no reason to visit towns any more. Part of this is the car centric mindset and that means drivers look for somewhere that's easy to get to and free to park, hence the large out of town shopping centres. Despite a 'commitment' to cycle facilities we only see random implementations such as short cycle lanes, cycle lanes only on one side of the street, cycle stands at one new development but not another. I understand there is policy governing this but there must be so many get out clauses such as 'If the road is only so wide you can leave out the cycle lane'.

Councils have had their heads in the sand too long and now preside over ghost towns with no restaurants, few arts facilities, empty and closed pubs but plenty of parking meters. It's time to wake up. I hope the MPs and Lords can spread the word and create the self powered culture we so desperately need. It won't happen overnight but a fresh approach will help it happen sooner. First step: send the relevent responsible local government officer from each council to the Velo-city conference in Brussels 12-15 May and make them all travel there with a bicycle.

Another spoke

I rebuilt the back wheel of my commuting bike in its partial restoration at the end of last year. When I say rebuilt, I didn't replace all the spokes, just the ones that were broken, damaged or with seized nipples. That was about twelve, still leaving 24 old tired spokes in the wheel. I followed the excellent wheel building article by the late Sheldon Brown. I was surprised to find that although the lacing pattern was 3-cross, the spokes did not go over or under each other, shown in the picture above, before the wheel was cleaned up and re-laced. Sheldon's article explains what happens to spokes under tension and explains the possibility of the derailleur cage getting caught in spokes due to incorrect lacing and crossing. I stripped all the spokes out and laced them correctly before truing and tensioning it. After the exercise of truing it, I was pleased with myself for being able to get the wheel into better shape than it had been before I started.

Although the wheel is old, it gave it a new lease of life. Until Friday that was. That's 600 miles of shoddy roads, steep climbs and 5 months of daily commuting that it survived. I'd decided to pop into town after work and, after crashing into pothole after pothole along Whalley Old Road (another road in need of a complete resurface), I straightened out my eyeballs back on smooth tarmac at Larkhill to discover the bike shimmying around. I looked down to see the back wheel wobbling. Another drive side spoke had broken. It wasn't bad enough that I couldn't get home on it and I had it repaired in just over an hour. With hindsight, I should have bought 36 spokes and done a complete restoration. If only I'd known I could rebuild it successfully, but I wasn't that confident at the time.

Strangely that very morning there had been a piece on the radio about the state of the local roads and the amount the council spends paying out claims due to damage from potholes. It did cross my mind that maybe I should claim. Maybe I will. Time and materials and all that.

RoadPeace

It's nearly a year since John Whitaker, a local cyclist, was killed in a road crash on the A59 at Sawley. I didn't know him, but any tragedy involving a cyclist is shocking. The two companions cycling with him on the day he died are raising money in his memory for the charity Roadpeace by cycling from John O'Groats to Lands End starting May 9th. Please consider sponsoring them.

http://www.justgiving.com/end2endmay09

Springwatch '09

The trees are nearly all in leaf, spring is in full swing as the aroma of barbecues ramps up for the bank holiday weekend. The lapwings have been active on the Virgin Media site at Greenbank for a few weeks but this week saw the return of oystercatchers with their unmistakable squealing. I'm not going to chase them round this year for a new picture - they look the same as last year or the year before. It would be nice to get a shot of them flying because they look more elegant yet slightly aggressive in flight. My camera isn't good enough to do that.