Things I’ve already learned about bikes and biking

In just over twenty-four hours. See, I work fast. In no particular order:

• Bikes are nowhere near as cheap as they were when I was a lad. Either that, or the economy is screwed up, or my pocket money doesn’t go nearly as far.
• Bikers are geeks. This is good; I will get on fine with them, once I understand the lingo, which is many and varied.
• Bikers have blogs. I guess this shouldn’t have surprised me. I mean, who doesn’t now. Still, it’s pretty heartening to see other bike blogs with bad puns for titles.
• Bikes are marketed in much the same way as cars. Y’know, names that make them sound far too macho (’Velocity’, ‘Comet’) etc. It’s only the fact that they cost about a twentieth of their car equivalent that we don’t see wall-to-wall advertising for them.
• Twenty-nine inches is apparently an important measurement.

More ‘revelations’ as they strike me.

In the beginning, there were bikes…

… a lot of bikes. Streaming past us at varying intervals, but still streaming. All kinds of bikes, with all kinds of riders; young and old, black and white… whatever that third pairing is.

Which was to be expected, as it was the day of the London to Brighton Bike Ride, 2006. 18th June to be precise.

And apropos of nothing, I turned to my wife - for she was with me - and said “I’m going to get a bike. And next year I’m going to enter the London to Brighton Bike Ride.”

Yes, I know. Perhaps I’d been out in the sun too long… but this is what beginnings are made of, right? A good hook. Now we just have to follow-through.

A really kind of pointless disclaimer

Before we get started here, I want to establish a few ground rules.

1. I’m here to blog about my experience of thinking about buying a bike, actually buying a bike, and then probably (if I’m still going), y’know, riding a bike. It won’t be about anything else.*
2. The title is a pun. A bad one. But my brain threw it out there as the first thing I thought of, and I like it. So there. It will not change. (Until I say it will.)
3. I may have blogged in other ways and other places, but for now I’m sticking with the plain and simple. I’m kicking it, in fact, old school style with Blogspot. Word. WordPress. Right.
4. I will try not to use phrases like ‘kicking it’, ‘old school’ and ‘word’ very often.
5. I may swear. For some reason I think I might not do that too often here. But I have before, and may again.
6. I may also add to these ground rules in the future for no apparent reason.

And that’s it for now, folks.

* Like movies, or my work, or games, or just general rambling angst.