Bikes, smikes, in the UK the resurgence of cycling is a boon to the green minded and welcome step forward in a country otherwise preoccupied with doing itself down in the quality of life stakes. That is all to the good believe me, and even better a Mintel report which I cannot afford, but of which I garnered a butchers, states that there's "6 million new cyclists that have yet to take a cycling holiday".....as long it's with me in Gran Canaria then doubly welcome!
The sportive crowd too have their passions sated with a never ending list of events to gurn their way through. MTB sects too have tailor made tracks and routes so much now that email queries from the UK profess familiarity with black and red runs....black and red runs?? Where did that come from? And why do I need to be convinced of one's MTB prowess in order to accept a booking?
MTB is for all and cycling is for everybody. But one group I fear, aren't catered for, the older generation fear death and debilitating injury on a bike more so than the rest of us and quite rightly too, if the law states that one must ride in the urban environment on the public road, where metal blind rhinos await the merest whiff of your presence to trigger a fatal charge in your direction, it's unsurprising therefore that cycling in the UK is only for the immortal.
But wait...it doesn't have to be like that, students of my very popular Facebook page will know that I've been wintering in Germany during August and September, in fact I am laying this ink down on the return flight. Those same students have seen the photo of me riding a ladies shopping bike with fashionable basket, this, my main mode of transport during my stay along with an asthmatic mark II Golf. I didn't feel embarrassed at all, because my bike was perhaps the most normal looking bike on the dike, and I had plenty to choose from, for Ruegin as a popular destination on the Baltic, is a warren of bike, forest and beach tracks to twiddle along in blissful ignorance of the fashion rules of cycling.
I am not a spring chicken by any means but I was a warm egg age wise in relation to the other cyclists purposefully pedalling around and past me, and not a helmet, spd or suspension fork amongst them. Riding unfashionably on the pavement in perfect harmony with walkers and on ghastly ugly frames with vertical bar ends, I counted 103 of them at one junction alone, that's 103 old folks riding bikes in all directions for all purposes....I noticed too that all where sitting upright, not a sprinters crouch in the whole pack?
Closer examination showed head and fork tubes higher than the saddle...hence the comfortable upright position, so bikes made for older people with stiffer joints so that older people can continue to ride and keep fit and healthy, bike tracks used by older people so that they don't have to gamble their effort with their life in the hereafter.
This is the way it is, not a ground breaking facetious initiative by a vote scrounging odious government wrapped around a mean spirited tax incentive scheme...
So have we missed the point, if you see my point?
The sportive crowd too have their passions sated with a never ending list of events to gurn their way through. MTB sects too have tailor made tracks and routes so much now that email queries from the UK profess familiarity with black and red runs....black and red runs?? Where did that come from? And why do I need to be convinced of one's MTB prowess in order to accept a booking?
MTB is for all and cycling is for everybody. But one group I fear, aren't catered for, the older generation fear death and debilitating injury on a bike more so than the rest of us and quite rightly too, if the law states that one must ride in the urban environment on the public road, where metal blind rhinos await the merest whiff of your presence to trigger a fatal charge in your direction, it's unsurprising therefore that cycling in the UK is only for the immortal.
But wait...it doesn't have to be like that, students of my very popular Facebook page will know that I've been wintering in Germany during August and September, in fact I am laying this ink down on the return flight. Those same students have seen the photo of me riding a ladies shopping bike with fashionable basket, this, my main mode of transport during my stay along with an asthmatic mark II Golf. I didn't feel embarrassed at all, because my bike was perhaps the most normal looking bike on the dike, and I had plenty to choose from, for Ruegin as a popular destination on the Baltic, is a warren of bike, forest and beach tracks to twiddle along in blissful ignorance of the fashion rules of cycling.
Closer examination showed head and fork tubes higher than the saddle...hence the comfortable upright position, so bikes made for older people with stiffer joints so that older people can continue to ride and keep fit and healthy, bike tracks used by older people so that they don't have to gamble their effort with their life in the hereafter.
This is the way it is, not a ground breaking facetious initiative by a vote scrounging odious government wrapped around a mean spirited tax incentive scheme...
So have we missed the point, if you see my point?
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