My story

I had some plastering done this week, and the plasterer, aged 45, family man (as they say in the best tabloids) was curious about the miscellany of bicycles scattered around the house.  He was also kind enough to say there wasn't an ounce of fat on me.  Oddly, though, that did not endear him to me but I digress.

He asked me about my riding, lots of questions. How far do I go, do I ride, like, once a week, isn't it weird  how you don't see many women on bikes.  So somehow I ended up explaining and at the same time as explaining I was remembering.

It sounds like a sob story but it isn't.  My family didn't have a car.  There were multiple reasons for this, and the last one on the list, although relevant, wasn't the most important, that one was money.  The other reasons were the curious thing where my dad didn't have a driving licence.  It was years before my mum found out that something she thought had been a choice of his, not to learn to drive, wasn't. In fact, he had learned, he took his test, and on failing it, just stopped, gave up.  My mum had a licence but zero confidence in her abilities.  She came from a world where the expectation was that the man would drive, and the little woman might do the odd shopping jaunt now and then, but wasn't expected to be the main driver.  The other reason was, in fact, ethics, and the environment.  Even back then, in the 1960s, 1970s, my parents were passionate about their beliefs.  They believed we should be walking, or cycling or taking public transport because it felt like the right thing to do, in terms of fitness, in terms of environment, innately, they felt it was the right way to do things.  We were the kind of family where if there was an organic, wholesome way to do things, that's right where we'd be.  My mum made her bread by hand all through my childhood, our clothes were recycled pass me downs.  We didn't waste stuff, and we didn't load ourselves with unnecessary possessions.  A car would have been unnecessary.  As would more than one bike apiece.  Hmm.

Anyway, as I explained to him, to me a bike was transport from the age of 10.  That just stayed the case, a combination of bikes and public transport saw me through a lot of years, particularly when I was a student in London then worked in London where public transport actually functions, lots of it, runs regularly, frequently, and goes to places which you want to go.  Amazing, huh?  I told him it felt like flying, that at times you do want to take your feet off the pedals, stick your legs out to the side and yell wheeeee as you go downhill.

I never stopped riding a bike.  I think there's some adults out there who can't picture getting back in the saddle because they stopped riding, and there is a perception that traffic is more of a problem now then it was in the 1970s.  I guess it's true to say that traffic has increased, but for city riding, it means for cycling in that it's slower moving, often queueing and it feels fairly safe to ride past stationary cars.

My answers to his other questions were that on Sunday I rode 130km, and that on a road bike 60km doesn't seem too big a deal, and that I rode nearly every day, not just once a week as he seemed to think was appropriate.

I tried to explain to him the need for more than one bike but he didn't get it.