London Cyclist - by Flickr user E01
At the beginning of winter last year, I finally took the plunge, bought a bike and started cycle commuting to work. I’ve now been doing it for approaching five months, and it’s been a
long time since I’ve felt this healthy, alert and fit.
I’m still not quite where I want to be, but I look and feel a lot more like a healthy 27 year old should.
Here’s a few things I’ve learned along the way.
Don’t give yourself excuses
First of all, I set about some serious research, so I’d know what I was getting in to. I searched Ask Metafilter, scoured a few cycling forums and asked friends and colleagues that I knew cycled. I quickly realised that if I was going to stick to it, I’d want a new bike, not a second-hand clunker – I’d have used the first snapped chain or grinding gear to quit. So, a few months of saving up and talking to the folks at my local bike shop followed. This worked out pretty well, because November had rolled around by the time I had the cash together to buy my bike. This had the rather useful side effect of starting me cycling at possibly the worst time of the year, weather and darkness-wise, for a novice cyclist. If I can survive cycling through London in December and January, I thought, I’m far more likely to stick with it. And it’s worked – I’m positively delighting in cycling home when it’s still light and not having to blow on my fingers to stop them dropping off.
Route planning and decent kit
You’ll get nowhere in London without a decent route map. TfL will send you some nice, free paper ones if you email them, and many bike shops carry stocks of these maps, but I’m all about the web-based services, so I used the ‘Cycle’ option on the TfL Journey Planner to get a couple of rough routes, then did detailed route planning with Google Maps. I got pretty lost on my first day, but every day thereafter has been smooth and straight, as I’ve continued to review my route, tweak it by ducking down different side roads and exploring new ways of getting from A to B.
I also started getting high quality gear very early, after I realised the massive difference buying a high visibility jacket made to both my own confidence and the awareness of the drivers around me. I’ve still yet to get hold of some decent padded shorts and cycling shoes, but everything else is pretty optimised.
Cycling myths
Cycling in London is nowhere near as scary and dangerous as you might think. With my Google-Mapped route, I’m only on main roads for perhaps 15% of my total trip – the rest is on back streets with maybe two or three cars. The real danger is pedestrians, who blithely step out from behind parked cars, dart between cyclists with inches to spare and wander out into traffic utterly oblivious to oncoming traffic.
I think the recession has caused a lot of people to start cycling, because there are huge numbers of cyclists on the road with me. At every traffic light a minimum of three or four fellow two-wheelers will stack up waiting for the lights to change, and it’s not unusual to see dozens of cyclists ranging from lycra-clad speedsters to pinstriped men on fold-up bikes at big bottleneck points like Blackfriar’s Bridge. All that bike traffic has, I think, had a distinct effect on many drivers, as I’ve had relatively little in the way of close shaves. The key is to be as predictable as you can possibly be, changing lanes at steady, assertive speeds, signalling clearly and telegraphing every turn and lane change with plenty of backward glancing and braking.
Looking forward to it
Cycling has become a real ritual for me, the way I begin and end each day, and it’s something I actively look forward to (in contrast to the exercise in anger, frustration and misery that was packing on to the 8.01 to Farringdon every morning). For one thing, it’s the most reliable form of transport there is – regardless of what time I leave the house, what the weather’s like or how heavy the traffic is, I’m at my desk forty minutes after first pushing off from the kerb outside my house. Secondly, it’s built-in exercise that actually has a point. I’ve never been able to abide gyms, which always felt like a giant hamster wheel to me, but cycling is a mode of transport that just happens to be getting me back into decent fitness at the same time. It’s not effortless, but it doesn’t feel like a chore either. Finally, it’s time to myself each day, and I’ve begun to use it to catch up on podcasts. There’s nothing quite like sailing along a backstreet in spring sunshine with some tunes or a good podcast on – today it was A Life Well Wasted.
I’m having the time of my life cycling in London, and I can imagine it will only get better this summer. Why not try it yourself?
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