All things bike and beautiful... all cranksets great and small.

ADAM FARADAY bone- shaker magazine

issue #4 © nick hand

Bicycle, a two-wheeled vehicle. Its forerunner was the dandy-horse or hobby-horse, invented by a German civil servant, Baron Drais, in Mannheim in 1818; the rider propelled himself forward by pushing one foot and then the other against the ground. Kirkpatrick Macmillan, a young blacksmith from Dumfries, fixed cranks to the axle of the rear wheel of the dandy-horse, and operated them with his feet by means of two long levers; this enabled him to ride without putting his feet on the ground.

A German mechanic fitted pedals to the front wheel of the vehicle, and a Frenchman made the front wheel larger than the rear wheel in order to increase the speed. This was the so-called ‘bone-shaker’, which was developed into the penny-farthing when the front wheel was enormously enlarged. “Some days you go out and it’s raining, the wind’s Boneshaker believes in the power in your face and it’s cold and you can’t find a of words, the beauty of images and the love of cycling. B&B and you think ‘I’m not doing this again, it’s absolutely ridiculous’. Then you get up next This issue the happy hum of morning, the sun’s shining, you go down some tyres on tarmac sings again across every page: life-changing tandem wonderful roads, and you think I was just born adventures, learning to love your to cycle, and you’re just so happy and high, it’s punctures, the simple pleasure of bike-frame badges. We hear about fantastic...” Midge, 66, Portpatrick, Scotland the art of bike dance, bike design, even about bikes themselves making art – and so the simple, joyful convergence of bikes and beauty and life are reaffirmed. Welcome to Issue #4.

Nick Hand www.slowcoast.co.uk www.simonpeplow.com

Contents Brotherly love 4 Schwinn: The stay-bed 10 Headbadges 14 My beautiful bike 16 Tandem acts of kindness 18 The joy of cycling 26 Slowcoast soundslide 28 Coming around to going around 30 Father and son 34 Joseph L. Griffiths 36 Bratislava: The city that only cycled at weekends 38 Learning to love your punctures 44 We don’t need more cyclists... 48 Ride like a grrrrrl 50 ‘Passage’ 54 ‘Car racing at rush hour’ 56 contributors words.....mike white, tony abatemarco, john mcfaul, laura laker, nick hand, tom southam, tom hornby, jan sifra, jet mcdonald, joseph l griffiths doug gordon, vicky richardson, esther perry, rado masaryk drawings.....simon peplow, evgenia barinova, bex glover, nicola meiring, harry sankey, christoph ohanian, nick willis, dale edwin murray, nick souček, emilio santoyo photos.....james ellerker, adam faraday, 45rpm, dom gill, nick hand, hubert m. van doorn, stine stensbak, phil dixon, jonathan maus, the spokes, jonathan atkinson, paul green, berco balog, matej zoldos, eva siva, denisa tothova backpats and handclaps fingerprint distribution, yael ben-gigi, linda oliver, look mum no hands, restrap, taylor bros & the bristol bike project crew copyrights & disclaimers Boneshaker is a quarterly publication. The articles published reflect the opinions of their respective authors and are not necessarily those of the publishers and editorial team. ©2011 Boneshaker.

Printed on paper from sustainable sources by Taylor Brothers Bristol Ltd. 13-25 Wilder Street, Bristol BS2 8PY / www.taylorbros.uk.com

Conceived by james lucas / Compiled & edited by jimmy ell, mike white and john coe Designed and published by coecreative / www.coecreative.com Cover imagery by adam faraday / www.adamfaraday.com Superhero rider by evgenia barinova / www.evgeniabarinova.com Words Mike White Photography James Ellerker www.jamesellerker.com

Brotherly Boneshaker meets Will and James, the brothers behind London’s Brother Cycles. Love Yes, Brother Cycles really is run by brothers. James Can you remember the first bike you fell in love with? is slumped in corner seat in Look Mum No Hands WILL: Yeah I can and it remains to this day one of bike bar. He’s got a hangover, and his younger brother the coolest bikes I’ve ever had. It was towards the Will is gently ribbing him for it. There’s an easy end of the 90’s and I was really into my downhill bonhomie between the two, the kind of unspoken and dirt jumping, so I built up this insane Azonic understanding that only a sibling’s shared history can DS-1. The thing had tyres like a motorbike and was bring. We share a coffee, then saddle up and roll out indestructible... which was totally unnecessary as I across the city, heading east to the canals and Saturday was shit. I remember riding through Dupont Circle, bustle of Hackney, where Brother will soon be leasing a big courier hangout in Washington D.C., and their first workshop. As we swoop through the traffic, all the messengers crowding round to look at it... they spin stories of boyhood derring-do, a shared at the time I thought their skinny track bikes were love of sad and bad music, and a new frame they’ll ridiculous... little did I know. be releasing later this year. Point your peepers at their blog for the latest on that... JAMES: I’d like to say it was the Raleigh Mini-Burner we kept at our grandparents, but really that was our older brother Tom’s. So in all honesty it would be the Huffy 10-speed I got for Christmas after we moved out to the States. It weighed a tonne, but it was my first bike with gears and also my first taste of freedom as after much persuasion my parents let me ride to school on it everyday.

www.brothercycles.com

7 8 What’s your ride of choice now? enjoyable and memorable weeks of my life -– I highly JAMES: Sorry to be boring – but it has to be a Brother! recommend it! That then gave me the confidence and know I’ve built it up with a Sturmey 3-speed hub and moustache how to go on and start designing our own frames. bars which just suit my riding style perfectly, and it’s super comfortable. It actually gets more comments than any other What makes a great bike frame, in your opinion? bike I’ve ridden, mainly from old men with beards. JAMES: How long is a piece of string? I guess you have WILL: Surprise surprise - I ride a Brother as well! Although to ask what you want to use it for first and go from built up as a brakeless fixed gear, completely differently there. Also the frame is just the foundation for a bike, from James’... I’m saving for a Dawes Galaxy though to do depending on how you build it up the results can be some serious touring on. dramatically different. Our current bikes are a good example of this – same frame, totally different bikes. And your favourite place to ride? Oh and one other thing, I really believe you should try WILL: It has to be Epping Forest. I’ve only just discovered and get a frame that’s going to fit you. I’m amazed at all it really, but I love how one minute you’re riding through these guys riding tiny frames these days... the gritty east end of London and the next you’re on long WILL: It should say Brother on the seat tube. winding country lanes. Perfect place for a Sunday morning ride. JAMES: That’s a tough one. Certainly my favourite Does each of you have particular skills that you bring ride of 2010 was on a dusty old cruiser up and down to the Brother team? the Venice and Santa Monica boardwalks. Crap bike, WILL: Yeah for sure – James and I are really different in so great location. many ways. James is a complete perfectionist, almost to the point of being obsessive. I’m much better with people, and How did you go from just appreciating bikes to thinking promoting the company, but would probably make a load ‘hey - let’s have a go at designing one ourselves’? of mistakes if I had to design a frame on my own! It seems James and I have always been into bikes. Never quite as to make a pretty good combination though. fanatical as we are now, but we’ve always loved them in some way or another. It was about 5 years ago, I think I What have been Brother’s proudest moments so far? “I think we were in the pub talking about how it would almost be was riding a Cannondale at the time and James was on WILL: One of the craziest moments was when our frame easier to just build our own frame than find affordable second hand one of the early Langsters. We were in Portobello Market was featured in Esquire magazine’s fixed gear article, to see ones. The idea just kind of stuck and a few years later here we are.” and the slightly dodgy bike dealers had a nice old Raleigh. our work in such a massive publication was incredible. But In hindsight it wasn’t anything special but at the time we I’ve got to say my proudest moment was when our first ever thought the sleek steel frame and lugs were beautiful. So we sale came in - to think a complete stranger liked our work bought it and converted it to a fixed gear – a couple of days enough to spend their money on our frame was a really later a mate was having dinner at ours and bought it off us. incredible feeling. JAMES: For me it would be walking So we built another one, and again someone bought it off through Hyde Park last summer with my mum and seeing us – and this happened 4 or 5 times until we thought we someone ride past on a Brother frame. It was the first time may as well try and make a business out of it. We spent the I’d seen one ‘in the wild’ since we’d launched and it gave next couple of years, through word of mouth and a basic me a real buzz. website, building custom bikes for people with vintage road and track frames. This worked well for a while, but when Any disasters/nightmares? fixed gear bikes started becoming really popular the price of WILL: Ha – to be honest there haven’t been too many old steel frames rocketed... stuff we were buying for £50 was issues (touch wood) so far. Although we did have a slightly suddenly nearer £150! People go crazy for anything which awkward moment when the truck turned up with our says ‘531’ on it. I think we were in the pub talking about first shipment of frames and the driver asked us to bring how it would almost be easier to just build our own frame the forklift up to the back... who the hell owns a forklift?! than find affordable second hand ones. The idea just kind of Anyway we spent the next 3 hours carrying them down stuck and a few years later here we are. one by one as the driver looked on in amusement.

What past experience/training feeds into what you do now? Have the two of you battled much with sibling rivalry JAMES: I’ve been building things all my life. I’ve always over the years? been of the opinion that if I can make it myself I’d rather JAMES: I’d like to give you some juicy stories about the that than pay someone else to do it for me. It was the fights we’ve had over the years, but to be honest we’ve same thing with bikes – after a load of restorations and always got on really well and that’s still the case. Obviously conversions the next logical step was to have a go at we’ll have the odd disagreement but it usually gets resolved building an actual frame. So I started by going on Dave over a pint or two. Invariably one of us is wrong and just Yates’ frame building course. It was one of the most doesn’t want to admit it!

9 10 Will on JAMES James on Will

What’s your earliest memory of your James? I think it you can see from our bikes we have gone for totally What’s your earliest memory of your Will? I’m six years Do you assume distinct roles in Brother Cycles – is was actually James and our Dad teaching me to ride different styles! older than him, so my earliest memories are of Will one of you the organised, bossy one, and the other a a bike over in America, I must have been about 4 as a baby when he didn’t have a lot to say for himself. freewheeling, devil-may-care dreamer? Very much at the time. Do you assume distinct roles in Brother Cycles – is He certainly made up for that when he got older. so, I guess you’d say I do the technical and one of you the organised, bossy one, and the other a logistical stuff whereas Will is responsible for the Can you remember a time when he helped you through a freewheeling, devil-may-care dreamer? Definitely Can you remember a time when he helped you through a communications, promotion and basically just dark time, or particularly made you feel proud or loved? – James is much more logistical and technical, so dark time, or particularly made you feel proud or loved? getting out there and meeting people. Having Well it wasn’t exactly a dark time, but I remember at does the actual designing of the frames, shipping, As the older brother I guess I’ve always adopted more said that we do consult each other on most school in America the older kids used to have Coca accounts, web design etc. Whereas I suppose you of the protector role. These days though things are decisions so it always feels like a team effort. Cola vending machined which we, the youngsters, could say I’m more marketing and PR (although I a bit more even and we help each other out all the weren’t allowed to use. Every now and then I’d see hate both those terms) – getting our frames out in time. Basically he’s my best buddy and I know he’ll If he was a bicycle, what type would he be? James and he’d give me a drink... all my friends were the public eye, organising events, writing the blog, always be there if I need him. A Swiss military bicycle. jealous as I had a cool older brother and I definitely advertising, etc. As far as bossy-ness goes I’d say we felt really loved. Unlike lots of siblings who row and both are – but just regarding different things. I think Do you share similar tastes in most things? Any sharp argue James and I have always been very close, our we’re both dreamers... which is why Brother Cycles or unexpected contrasts? In many ways we’re really family have moved around a lot and I think this has started in the first place. very similar - strangely so sometimes. But I do think made us stick together. we see life through slightly different filters. He likes If he was a bicycle, what would he be? Look at the happy music and I like sad music, that pretty much Do you share similar tastes in most things? Any sharp or picture of James’ bike... it sums him up perfectly. sums it up. unexpected contrasts? Generally we are very similar – Stylish, well fitting, perfectly made but with an we’ll often turn up to things wearing the exact same element of the ‘old man’ about it! clothes which is a bit embarrassing. Although as

11 12 A short story by Tony Abatemarco

The year after my mother died was quite a transitional one. Though I had made up my mind to function independently and fend for myself as an adult, biology had another plan. I was eleven years old. My father went through the motions of his previous routine, but he was derailed. A wayward man, too full of self-blame for a time to be present for his youngest son’s initiation into manhood, he deferred his remaining parental obligations to his grown daughter. My older, married sister and her husband took on the daily administration of me.

Somehow, I didn’t resent this. In fact, I was happy to be supervised by a couple almost as young as I was. They were nearly of my generation. They understood how rock and roll could give expression to the chaos that had become a logical reaction to the atomic world. The post-war world. They were ‘with it’. They were expecting. They had charge of me. As an added bonus, the birth of their first was timed perfectly with the advent of my coming of baby-sitting age.

For nearly two years, we lived in my mother’s house; my sometime father, my sister and brother-in-law, their infant son, and me. Seven months after my mother’s death in that house, in her own bed, my twelfth birthday came.

13 14 Illustrations by Bex Glover www.severnstudios.co.uk

Throughout the years we lived onT enth Avenue, a to me at that time. But the real wonders were in the style Cheerily, blithely, we three tradition of hiding big special presents in the two-car of both the seat and the handlebars. The seat was called friends parked our bikes in garage had been established. There was a door that led a ‘banana seat’ because of its elongated shape and the the rack outside the store and from our den directly into that garage, so you didn’t need handlebars rose in a ‘V’ over the front end of the bike, headed in to scan the bins to brave the elements to get in and out of the cars. One with red plastic streamers dangling from either of its of hits. Murray the K and his birthday I found a large gift-wrapped object there of white grips. Swinging Soiree, our chosen radio indefinable shape which turned out to be a beautifully host and show, spun the AM hits refurbished old schoolhouse desk with attached chair. For What a conveyance! How did my family know that we craved most, and with six or my parents’ anniversary my mother discovered a brand stylistically, this bike was on the cutting edge of cool? seven vinyl 45’s under my arm new white Ford Falcon parked in the spot where her And me upon it… it was as if I, in my chinos and packed in triple-bag protection old car used to be. She loved that new car – the second penny loafers and Madras shirt, astride my gleaming so they wouldn’t crack in my rear and improved model of Ford’s new compact line – and new two-wheeler, was photo-ready for the cover of the fender book carrier, we hurried out drove all over Long Island in it, sometimes getting lost for next Beach Boys’ album. I would be the envy of every to the parked bikes to get home before hours. Years later, that Falcon would be transferred to me teen in New Hyde Park the moment our garage doors the sun went down. We would still have time so that I could get lost. opened for my maiden voyage next day. before dinner and homework to lie around my den and listen to ‘Where Did Our Love Go’, ‘Under the Boardwalk’, ‘Do Wah Diddy Diddy’, ‘A World Without “What I hoped it contained was less than what I got. I had hoped Love’, ‘Wishin’ and Hopin’’, and my favorite #One Hit for a new bike. I got the Cadillac of bikes. The Schwinn.” of the moment and anthem extraordinaire to my new bedroom. The attic room. wheels, The Beach Boys’ ‘I Get Around’. It was a long, A-shaped room, painted mint green But this year, 1964, when I turned twelve, I opened the I would be hailed from block to block on my trusty The Schwinn was gone. at the top of the house, garage door early in the morning not really expecting metallic Palomino! Hail, Lancelot! Knight of the with two sash windows much of anything, and I got a bike. A brand new, bright Motherless Adventure! Vanquisher of Grieving Time. I hadn’t locked it, though I had the equipment to do so. dressed in Venetian blinds. red and white Schwinn. It was still in the box when I first All Hail! I had been too cocksure, too excited with the great ride I left my triple-bagged 45’s saw it, but I knew what it was despite my sister’s careful and prospect of my new purchases to bother. My friends’ on the dresser near the windows, wrap job. You always know what’s in those boxes at the And with a pocketful of crisp dollar bills folded in old bikes were there, unlocked, parked where they had unplayed. I took off my penny loafers and got into bed key passages in life. For a woman, there’s no mistaking the my brand new calfskin wallet, that is what I did next left them to either side of a now-empty slot. But theirs fully dressed. I pulled up the covers. I dove down deep. box that contains her engagement ring. I’m sure that there afternoon. Vanquished grieving. It was an unseasonably were not taken. Theirs were not worthy of the taking. I sank below the world up in the attic. are still some male executives on the brink of retirement warm though overcast day as I activated the automated My Schwinn was. with X-ray specs who don’t have to tear the paper to garage doors open after school and set out in chinos A fever dream of sometime moving shadows in broken know what’s inside when the company hands them their and madras on my new Schwinn on a quest to purchase I began walking, the wind knocked out of me. My friends parallel lines, as day merged into night merged into kiss-offR olex. I knew beyond any doubt that my bike some ‘Top Ten’. solemnly walked their bikes alongside in solidarity. morning. A stay-bed, I lit no lamp. I took no food. My was in that box. What I hoped it contained was less than I didn’t bother looking for the Schwinn. I knew it was sister came and left with trays, with water. A figment of what I got. I had hoped for a new bike. I got the Cadillac Caldor’s was the store. It lay a few towns over, in Roslyn. gone. Anyone could have taken it. Someone did. It God’s grace. My pieta. Three days, the house below me of bikes. The Schwinn. It was always stocked with the biggest selling records. It was too cool to resist, a masterpiece like that. A block vibrated with life and then went still; vibrated awake and took about twenty minutes to pedal there. I knew, since I or two on, I cried like a baby cries but I kept walking, ground to stillness. I was nowhere to be found among That night, after cake and candles, we slipped on our had done it once or twice before on my old, single-speed inconsolable. Eventually, I accepted when one of my the movement. jackets and braved the chill of March permeating the bike, huffing and puffing all the way. This day, I glided friends offered for me to ride side-saddle on his bike as garage. My brother-in-law did most of the assembling and flew. I switched gears, rising up difficult inclines he struggled to pedal our combined weight home. Eventually I rose. I peed a little blood. I descended with my father and me assisting. It was a bit complicated with ease. I out-distanced the two envious friends who to the kitchen to report it. My father was there, the following the instruction manual, but even in the most accompanied me, no sweat, my plastic streamers flapping Walking in, near dark, having parted from my friends baby on his knee. “Puberty” he said. “It’s natural.” rudimentary stages, tearing through plastic bags to expose and crackling ‘so long, suckers’ as I gave those kids the slip with nary a nod, I faced the impossible. My sister, I sat with him. the individualized parts, I could tell that no expense time and again. standing at the stove with her baby on her hip, knew in had been spared. The body of the frame gleamed with a an instant what had happened, and turned away from So commenced my thirteenth year. glossy cream-colored veneer across which the embossed My Schwinn was a thing of beauty. It emboldened and me. She didn’t need to say what she saw on my face. Schwinn logo stood out in deep blood-red. The fenders enlivened. I grew brazen. I tackled tight curves and I think she may have mumbled, “I can’t talk to you”, ...... were the same color as the logo, with cream trim. launched myself from precipitous curbing, the shock steam rising toward her beautiful cheeks as she tilted Handsome reflectors were screwed in place behind the easily absorbed. In the last blocks before the superstore’s her sad visage toward the task of stirring a pot. Los Angeles-based Tony Abatemarco writes, teaches, seat and on the silver book carrier over the rear fender. inclined parking lot entrance, I even considered standing and creates theatre internationally. He also has a long There were three speeds, adjustable by turning the left on my seat as my downhill velocity picked up, but The baby looked happy to see me. I went upstairs. list of film and tv credits and can be reached directly hand grip while in motion; a technological innovation thought better of it. Not for that first outing. But soon. Since my older brother had married I had inherited his at [email protected]

15 16 Headbadges by 45rpm

www.thebearded45.co.uk

17 Illustration Nicola Meiring / www.nicolameiring.com Words John McFaul / www.mcfaulonbikes.com

I don’t have just one, I have many. Not as many as friends lowest lows. A bike isn’t simply a vehicle of choice for me, of mine, but enough. One for every terrain perhaps. I it is my tonic to much of what life chooses to dish out... don’t differentiate between disciplines you see. Riding is or at least it affords me time to think, which in this day riding. I simply ride. It’s in the doing that I find love, pain, and age, ladies and gentlemen, is a luxury in itself. Early in fatigue, overcoming and release. All those things and much, 2010 I spent a lot of time on my bikes. The studio knew much more. A crummy metaphor for life I suppose, in something was seriously wrong! There was of course, and its simplistic form. I don’t do downhill though, that my relief was hour upon hour in the saddle on road and never ticked any of my boxes. I don’t find my soul trail. I was riding mile after mile seeking answers without whilst hurtling downhill at speed. Well, I do to a certain really knowing the questions. I just knew things had to extent but it doesn’t harbour that struggle that I always change. I wanted my life back. I wanted to smile more gravitate towards. Downhill is, for the most part, fun. and bring that smile home to my family every night. I owe Life isn’t ALWAYS fun! them that, surely. They don’t want to see me so depressed, stressed, fed up and working all hours. I’m not a young I’m a designer, art director and creative consultant. I had man anymore (well, I am really, but not as young as I once led a very successful creative agency up until April 2010 was you understand) and I can’t do what I used to do. I and then at the ripe old age of 37, after 15 years, I decided have bigger responsibilities now too. So, I suppose, it was to go it alone once more and bring a bit more life back to all these things that were burning a hole in my heart. the tumult that is my existence. For the last god-knows- how-long I have had one thing in mind and that one thing I did find answers. Amusingly, the studio blog at the time was making McFaulStudio the best creative agency in the caused a bit of a stir when I wrote the ‘29/04/10 – my business. Whether we were or not is of no interest to me first day’ post. Some thought I’d finally gone mad. Quite now. I don’t care for the accolades or the associations. I the contrary, I could see for the first time in a long, long know what we did and how we went about our business time. I could see past the facade. I wanted no more of and I certainly would not have changed a thing. Well, a the surface and bullshit. I found my answers and I’m still couple of things perhaps but hey, how good can things get? finding them daily. My beautiful bicycles are more than ‘just for riding’. They make me who I am. They educate me. They facilitate my understanding. Of course it’s just Along the way we had some unimaginably great times a machine; a vehicle on which to delve deep and lose and incredible opportunities and I thank everyone both oneself but it’s a necessity for me. Indeed, sometimes I within the company and outside for making it so. Early find myself so lost in emotion and thought that distance this year though, now with two beautiful children, I had and time are of no consequence. something of a breakdown. Maybe breakdown isn’t the right term; I didn’t actually breakdown... I just began to Riding the Marmotte back in 2009 I was reduced to tears see. An awakening then. I began to see the things that up the final climb of Alp D’Huez. I don’t fully understand weren’t right. I wasn’t loving it. I wasn’t getting out of it the whys? I wasn’t too well on that ride. I’d had a chest what I was putting in. I was out of balance. I had lifted the infection and was advised not to ride. I had to though, as carpet and under there was everything I had chosen not to I don’t get to ride in the Alps too often! Crying though? acknowledge these past 15 years whilst busy 24/7 : a lot of What was that all about? A confirmation that I’m bloody shit! I had forgotten who I was. The industry had made a good at something perhaps. In fact, not just good…on my monster out of me. It was using me. It does that. It doesn’t day I’m great! I don’t mind admitting that either. Physically care for life. I do! below par I still managed this flagship course in good time. I know it. Its in my genes; my father was a rather classy Throughout tough times I have always had my family and rider too. Perhaps that is baggage in itself. I lost him when friends. My wonderful partner Rachel, who I’ve been with I was 21. Large suitcase of baggage there, but baggage I’ll for so long now, and latterly with our two beautiful little leave for another time... girls make up my unit. Close friends too. I wear my heart on my sleeve (obviously!), and together we can talk troubles If I don’t ride I am grumpy and my smile loses its shape and through. Sometimes we can work them out. On occasion slowly turns to a frown. I don’t like seeing myself sporting though, some things are simply too big to even begin to a frown and neither does my family. McFaulStudio is now discuss. Early 2010 was certainly that sort of time... a virtual and only undertaking projects that I fancy. It’s where time when I just wanted to be alone as I couldn’t actually John McFaul does art & design stuff. He is also an art articulate my problem even if I had wanted to. I needed director and creative consultant where the same rules apply, to ride. Riding defines me. The process of riding a bike is working with like-minds and those who I believe in. It’s a my every sinew. I love my bikes. They are my pride and little too good to be true, but that’s what I have chosen and joy. Riding has provided me with the highest highs and the the bikes keep telling me I’m doing the right thing. 19 20 Words Mike White Pictures Dom Gill

“I began this journey hungry to prove that I could do it, that I was strong enough to survive, full of machismo. Slowly, ever so slowly, my priorities changed, and I learnt the real worth of this journey. Company. Sharing. Faith in those around you wherever you are…”

21 22 ime was when adventure came easy. Much of the twelve she was taking me up the Alps. Ever since then I’ve had as often as he was in company, he wound his unhurried way much quicker than I would’ve done at home, because I wanted world lay unexplored, uncharted, unknown. Those the disease of adventure.” through fifteen countries, filming each new sunrise, storm and something to counteract the loneliness. Then a week later I T brave souls seeking sights unseen could follow a It was five or more years ago now thatD om decided breathtaking vista as he went, and diligently recording the highs would sort of break my own heart, by forcing myself to move battered brass compass in almost any direction and find he “wanted to do a big adventure”, and having cycled from and lows, the friendship, heartbreak, delirium and despair in on. The huge loneliness of the road was only made worse by the themselves off the map before too long. Vancouver to San Francisco before, he decided he’d go one his journal. By the time he’d reached his destination, Ushuaia, fact that a few hours before I was sitting amongst new found not any more. When bold adventurer Dom Gill stood better, and do the whole American land mass, both continents, at the very tippiest toe of Patagonia, he’d had 270 proper riding friends. And this cycle repeated again and again – it became before potential backers of a journey he had in mind – to North to South on this stranger-powered tandem – a mission companions, “but there were probably 500 or 600 more along like a bit of a drug. Probably the most profound, damaging and cycle, unaided, the 20,000 or so miles from the northernmost that was to become known as ‘Take a Seat’. The plan was to the way - kids that jumped on, whooping through villages, intense aspect of my journey.” tip of Alaska to the most southerly bit of South America, and make a film of the trip, so as well as the 100 or so kilos of bike random people that took a ride round a parking lot.” This level of intensity brought with it a kind of time- make a film of it – the response was little more than a shrug. and trailer, his handlebars and frame were rigged with camera The ‘always say ‘yes’’ rule was a brave one. “I took it as a warp, until the journey felt like “a life and all its emotions “Not exciting enough.” Not different enough to capture the grips and battery packs. really important lesson in tolerance, to accept everyone and concertinaed into two years. When there was peak in happiness imagination of today’s demanding adventure fans. So a bolder, He set off on A‘ chilles’ the tandem (a rugged-looking then learn how to deal with it. There were ways I would gently it was just as high as a lifetime’s highest moment, and when madder plan was concocted, a plan which would make up for Thorn) in June 2006 ‘with lots of school-boy bravado’, through dissuade people - if I was worried about some 500lb American there was a trough it was similarly low, but they were within the landscape’s lack of ‘unknown’ with an utterly unknowable the barren tundra of Alaska. “I was thinking, ‘I’m pretty tough. getting on the back of the bike I would do my best to be fairly days of each other, not years.” factor: strangers. Dom decided to make the ride on a tandem, I’ll cycle this damn bike all the way on my own’, but within negative about the journey. But there was only one that I The surprising thing is that in all the miles, the months, but (here’s the clever bit) he’d set out alone, and fill the rear seat four or five days I had become quite humble. I realised that I wasn’t entirely happy about having on the back – a very young the moments of close contact with strangers, only once did with random folks picked up along the way. He had only one was extremely lonely, and from that point onwards, from the French-Canadian traveller up in Northern Canada, who turned Dom feel threatened. Heading through Mexico, he’d been rule – always say ‘yes’. If someone wanted to join him, they point of meeting my first partner, my aim of just getting to out to be an obnoxious 18 year-old telling me how to live my invited to camp in the yard of a friendly old fisherman. They did. And thus began an almighty voyage into the unknown, a the bottom of South America and making a documentary very life. And not only doing that but also not pedalling the weight were swapping stories, the grandchildren playing all around, voyage that became as much about the people along the way – much changed.” Dom began to realise that his journey was to of him and his forty kilos of hemp, or courgettes, or whatever singing. Then the drunken, macho son of the household pulled and, perhaps more importantly, about the spaces between those become “about getting as much as I could from just learning was in that bag of his. When, after a day of cycling, he woke up in his car, and ended up going after Dom with a rusty people – as it was about the miles covered. That voyage in turn about humanity, and hopefully inspiring people along the way.” up the next morning and told me he hadn’t slept a wink and machete. Dom was on his bike and off down the road “feeling gave rise to another, further journey into what it is we do and and so it proved to be. As Dom’s tandem snaked further couldn’t carry on with me, I wasn’t actually all that upset!” the hairs on the back of [his] neck prick with fight or flight don’t know about ourselves. So this is a tale of not one but south, pedalling by day, pitching his tiny tent by night - or More often though, the problem was the opposite - adrenaline.” And yet, once his nerves had calmed and he was two adventures. staying with the good people he met - he found the true the repeated closeness and loneliness began to take its toll. safely away, Dom – in his trademark philosophical way - put dom’s adventuring spirit had always been there – “it’s sustenance of humanity is not food, but friendship. “Countless times I’d make such a good friend that I just didn’t the danger into perspective. “It’s funny; that was probably the my mum’s fault. I would have probably been very happy with Through snow-blasted wilderness, thigh-burning hill want to say goodbye. Friendship’s an interesting thing on the only human interaction that scared the crap out of me. If there’s a nine to five if she hadn’t carted me up Snowdon when I was climbs, sweat-trickling jungle he went. Hailstorms, lightning road. I noticed myself getting into a habit – after a period of a message from this journey that I would like to transmit to about four; I remember when we went up again when I was storms, snowstorms. Flies, mudslides and a thousand intense loneliness I would arrive in a town and I’d want to rest. the world it’s the fact that in two and a bit years I met tens of something like nine, Mountain Rescue reported us as missing punctures. Dom and his irregular stream of companions kept And with rest I would also want companionship. So I would thousands of people and only one of them threatened to hurt in the worst weather in years... By the time I was eleven or on. Tank crews and toddlers, travellers and tribespeople. Alone meet people and absorb them into my heart and soul much, me. And that in a world that is plagued by this relentless stream

23 24 of bullshit bad news is something to think about.” sleeping bag’s worth of floorspace at the waitress’s house. The challenges of making your own documentary on the at nine o’clock sharp the next morning, Ernie was waiting hoof are not inconsiderable. Dom rode without a camera unit “in his freshly ironed, ancient looking cycle wear” and the two of and so for each spectacular vista that opened before him, he’d them cycled 60 miles to Santa Barbara together. stop, set up the camera by the road, then cycle past it again “He nearly died on the way but he was incredibly happy, to get the shot. “I probably ran about 150 miles, just running really pleased to be getting out and doing stuff again.” Ernie, ahead, putting the camera down, running back to the bike, you see, was 70, and suffering from chronic, progressive cycling past, dropping the bike, picking the camera up again.” leukaemia. “He told me on the way that six months ago to But the solo effort was crucial: “as soon as you have a camera that day his wife had died of a long, painful illness. He’d unit with you people’s reactions change. You can’t view reality been in a pit of despair ever since, and he thought that the with a film crew. I don’t think there are many other examples ride would help turn that around. And you know what? We of what I do - most other sort of ‘alone-across-Australia’ got to the end of that day and he’d turned some kind of a documentaries and they get 25 hours footage while they’re doing corner.” Ernie was glowing at the achievement, and in the it and then go back later on motorbikes and get all the rest. But weeks that followed, a small newspaper article was written my budget wouldn’t quite extend to that.” about the trip, which ended up in the hands of Ernie’s long- There were two big soul-changesD om carried with him estranged son and daughter, who contacted him for the first after ‘Take a Seat’. The first was about trust. “If I had to be a time in 30 years, healing the family rift. Dom began to preacher, and some people accuse me of being one sometimes, realise that this trip could really be something special for I’d encourage people to take the leap of faith with each other. people, much more than a foolhardy adventure and a I find I get back to this country, or even the States, and people marketable film.

“I’ve realised I don’t want to make documentaries about solo adventures. I want to involve people, to show that you can get up and squeeze what there is out of life if you want to.”

are unwilling to trust even their own neighbours. I didn’t do it once he was home again in the UK, editing hours of because I’m some kind of a wise man, I did it because I had to. I footage, struggling to write the accompanying book, Dom’s wouldn’t have been able to eat or sleep or anything else if I hadn’t thoughts returned to Ernie and his lifelong wish to cross the trusted everyone around me. And when I did do it, I found that States by bike. The leukaemia greatly reduced Ernie’s oxygen the benefit was so great that it would be ridiculous not to do it capacity – but with a tandem, Dom reasoned, it might just in future – we only stand to gain from it.” work. He started hunting around for the right machine, and The second was that a journey of this kind – a collaborative, settled upon a German-made Hase Pino Tour which Dom cooperation-dependent endeavour, can, perhaps unsurprisingly, took to calling Huckleberry. Huck was a tandem with a fully bring out the best in others. “I’ve realised I don’t want to make recumbent front seat, the pilot sitting upright behind. The key documentaries about solo adventures. I want to involve people, benefit was that the front-rider could free wheel while the pilot to show that you can get up and squeeze what there is out of carried on working at the back. life if you want to.” And that leads us nicely onto Dom’s second Eventually, Dom sourced funding off the success of ‘Take adventure – ‘The Dom and Ernie Project’. a Seat’ (the film went on to win awards and the book’s selling When Achilles the tandem paused in Lompoc, California, well), and Ernie was “obviously very anxious, but still keen.” Dom met Ernie Greenwald. “I was sitting in an ice-cream Dom got to work organising it all, flew out to the States and parlour trying to sweet-talk my way into the waitress’s house for shot a pilot film with Ernie. “He wasn’t all that fit but we figured the night, when I saw this old-looking man outside examining that with a good little bout of chemotherapy he’d be good my bike. So I went out and chatted to him, and though he enough to make the journey.” seemed very frail, he said that forty years previously he’d been a In June 2010, Dom flew out again, this time for the real very keen cyclist and he’d even planned to cycle across the States thing. But it soon became clear that Ernie wasn’t doing well. “I with a friend.” But that was decades ago and life had overtaken refused to believe the trip couldn’t go ahead. I just carried on Ernie. Dom suggested that he join the ‘Take a Seat’ challenge telling him to look after himself. Subsequent screening revealed for the next day’s ride on to Santa Barbara. “At which point he Stage 1 prostate cancer as well, and Ernie was taken into hospital said ‘No, I couldn’t possibly do that’. He was scared, I think.” in Santa Barbara. Dom was forced to accept that Ernie wouldn’t Ernie reeled out the same dog-eared excuses that most of us be coming along, but he still didn’t give up. “Not me! I was come out with: commitments, paperwork, stuff to be done. “I thinking he could perhaps join me for the last stage of the trip, told him that I’d be in that cafe for another half hour in case he in a few months time, and started to scramble together the plan changed his mind. He wandered off. I couldn’t believe it when I of inviting other disabled people to join me in the mean time.” actually saw him again twenty minutes later and he said ‘I would The original departure date came and went.T wo weeks really regret it if I didn’t take this opportunity, so I’m going to later, Dom had found a companion to cycle the first leg from come with you.’” Meanwhile Dom the charmer had secured a Santa Monica to Las Vegas with, and the trip grew wheels again.

25 26 They set sail on Independence Day, leaving Santa Monica in philosophical and friendly at the end of the day, when actually high summer, the thermometer creeping past 120º as they all I wanted to do was ensure that they didn’t get back on the crossed the desert. The first front rider,R yan, had suffered bike! But it was a massive learning opportunity for me to deal a traumatic brain injury from a car accident a few years with this, to rise above it.” previously. “His balance was off, but that really only affected naturally, the journey was a huge challenge for the front his walking – and getting out of the tent in the morning was riders too. Take Jimmy Klingle, an Iraq war veteran in his always a spectacle. He was a very funny guy, not least because late twenties who survived a rocket-propelled grenade attack, the filter between what he thought and what he said had returned to the frontline and was blown up again by a completely disappeared; he had none of those firewalls to roadside bomb. Left with Traumatic Brian Injury and several prevent unsuitable things from coming out of his mouth. broken vertebrae, Jimmy nonetheless rose to the challenge We all think these things but most of us don’t say them.” of three straight days of hills and rain helping Dom get from after Ryan there was Carlos, a visually impaired student Cleveland to Pittsburgh. (and aspiring triathlete) from Salt Lake City. After him came take Rachel Swanson – a smiling 31 year-old with cerebral two brothers, Warren and Chad Woodbury – both of whom palsy, who Dom met through Bicycle Bill’s shop in West St. Paul, are living with the muscle-destroying condition MMD. Warren Minnesota. “We knew she wouldn’t be able to pedal very hard, rode for a day – Warren for a record-breaking 24 days. They but I’d overlooked the fact that her feet wouldn’t even be able to were camping in the grounds of a deserted school on a hill top. reach the pedals!” Make-shift wooden blocks were fixed in place “It had swings and a rusty roundabout – there’s something very to make up the shortfall. Rachel was probably the most severely sinister about a children’s playground when it has no children disabled we rode with, so she only joined us for a three- or four- in it! A little bit Hitchcock.” Dom checked his emails and day stretch. But it turned out that despite her severe disability, found one from the hospital in Santa Barbara saying, ‘We have she was so free of emotional baggage that we would have happily tried to get in touch with Ernie’s family but can’t find their carried on with her indefinitely.” contact details.’ Ernie was worsening. Dom gave them all the dom’s last companion was Amy, a professional dancer and information he had, still hoping for the best. “A week later I yoga teacher whose fourteen years living with Multiple Sclerosis was sitting watching Old Faithful in Yellowstone and we got had left her “at the very peak of psychological anxiety. She had the call that Ernie had died. Of course it wasn’t out of the got used to these pathways in her brain that told her she could blue or anything, but I was incredibly sad, because part of me do this and couldn’t do that. For instance she just decided, for had never really given up hope of him joining us for the last no very sensible reason, that she couldn’t put on her jacket when leg, and seeing him live out that dream.” she was sat on the bike.” This is where Dom’s girlfriend Nadia’s Pulling himself together, Dom pressed on, always heading “special powers” came in useful. “The females would have been east, picking up a total of ten people with a range of challenging impossible if Nadia hadn’t have come along,” says Dom. “She conditions along the way. “I figured that’s what Ernie would was able to give Amy a good talking to, basically, saying ‘Listen, have wanted more than anything. His initial inspiration had we’re not going to put up with this.’ People respond to that and allowed ten other people to each experience a piece of his sometimes it’s the only way of progressing.” By the time they longed-for adventure.” pedalled into New York at journey’s end, both riders were utterly This trip was very different toT ake a Seat – there was, exhausted, “but Amy was very grateful that we had just bitten through necessity, a support driver, and Dom’s girlfriend Nadia, the bullet and got on with it.” Dom’s typically candid about how along with various companions along the way. So loneliness hard it was: “I was so pleased to see the back of her as far as the wasn’t an issue this time. But the logistical difficulties were bike was concerned, which is a sentiment I’ve stopped feeling bad greater, meticulous organisation paramount. “It was much less about. But we did what we said we were going to do. She made free and much harder work than the first journey, but there it to the end and had herself a fairly profound experience I think, were some amazing highs. Probably the best was going through and so mission accomplished.” the desert in Nevada. It was stunning, the emptiness. It was the The challenge of other people brought home another truth closest we got to the wilderness, and camping and survival, which for Dom. “When you look behind every large so-called idyllic is what I really like. But the heat was also incredibly unpleasant adventure, you can break that down. There’s no such thing as a – the thermometer up in the 120s by day, and hardly dropping completely happy family, and I don’t think there’s such thing as an at night. Huge tracts of North America are just phenomenally idyllic adventure.” Was it a relief to be finished, then? “Yes and no,” beautiful. Going through Yellowstone and Pennsylvania - by Dom says with a rueful laugh. “I don’t like endings. When there’s the time we got there it was autumn.” Dom smiles as he realises an ending there’s a hole where you want a new something. We that if they’d left when they’d originally planned, they wouldn’t arranged to finish beside the fountain inC entral Park, but Nadia and have seen those autumn colours – “it was like a parting gift. We I got split up, and I somehow got there ahead of her. So I actually couldn’t have planned it better if we had tried.” ‘finished’ three times, cycling round and round the fountain as with ‘Take a Seat’, Dom’s journey became defined until the camera could film us both together. There was a lovely by the relationships he built on the road, though there were bunch of school children from Washington High that had made plenty of challenging moments. “I’m not going to say that it signs and banners, and they held them up every time I came past, wasn’t incredibly frustrating. It often was. Not least because of cheering more each time, until we got the perfect ending!” the emotional and psychological baggage that frequently goes after all those miles and smiles, trials and tribulations, with a disability. I hadn’t foreseen that really; I thought it would Dom’s very definite about what he’s learned. “In a funny way, it’s be a case of helping them pedal and they would be happy. It’s proved what I’ve always bandied around, which is that anyone a lot more complicated than that.” Sometimes he found his can have an adventure like this, with a little help. People say

companions were “slightly deluded as to their level of ability,” and that I did a lot for these people; they wouldn’t have been THE ‘TAKE A SEAT’ BOOK IS OUT NOW. thus got a shock when their on-tandem performance failed to able to do it without me. But that’s not true. They had the ‘THE DOM AND ERNIE PROJECT’ BOOK match up to (their own) expectations. “It just made it much strength of mind to be able to think ‘I’m going to give this a AND FILM WILL BE FINISHED SOON. more of a challenge for me, after 7 or 8 hours cycling, usually go’ and they pedalled and they camped and they got there. CHECK WWW.DOMINICGILL.ME for my weight and most of their weight, trying to be all All they needed was a little help to get started.” FOR UPDATES.

27 28 Words Laura Laker / lauralakergraph.blogspot.com Illustration Harry Sankey / www.harrysankey.co.uk

“A cyclist also knows the changing weather like no one else. From the gentle spray of watery mist to the torrential rain that pours down your face.”

My bike is like a set of wings. Moving fast enough for and I imagine postmen being chased by small dogs. that pours down your face, the more extreme the weather, feel like I never felt before that this is my city; I know its the journey to be fun, yet slow enough to savour my During office hours a different demographic fills the streets, the funnier the exchanges between riders. The world’s intimate little back streets and I understand the people surroundings, flying around on two shiny wheels I have though. My main cycle route takes me through a big, open strongest gust may have you pushing for all you’re worth who travel them. I see its idiosyncrasies, some funny, some a unique perspective on my city. park with elderly dog walkers, roaming crows and people on the pedals, to little avail, but all it takes is a glance bewildering and like an old friend whom you know and without jobs to go to. There’s nothing quite like watching at the nearest rider and you’re both smiling. When it’s love, if they were in trouble you would step in and help. Travelling without walls opens up a host of sensory treats dogs run at full speed through fallen leaves, tumbling bitterly cold and there’s snow flying in your face like little for me, from the smell of a hot tarmac when it starts to squirrels and balls in their wake. icy pins, every cyclist is a fellow adventurer. No matter the Whereas drivers may see someone falling down or whose rain, to passing parks full of trees and their mysterious, weather I can have the satisfaction of glancing over my shopping has blown away and cannot intervene, a cyclist earthy aroma. Wood smoke in winter takes me far away to Then as the night draws in, London is a quieter, more shoulder at the person next to me and with a knowing look can merely put on the brakes, hop off and help. With the peaceful countryside and the smell of food can evoke magical place, belonging to cats and foxes who roam silent remembering this is another of life’s rich experiences, where no worries about disrupting the flow of traffic, parking, distant exotic places, each breath transient and changeable and beady-eyed in their nocturnal quests. Night rides reveal every day is a different variety. The homogenised climate or realising you’re too far away by the time you’ve decided as the wind brings us together and separates us again. damp, secretive smells and a cool air of calm punctuated behind the wheel of a car simply can’t replace that thrill. what to do. Cyclists are quick-response urban defenders. It is all of these sights, smells and sounds that immerse by excited voices from bars, clubs and wandering groups Recently I was cycling along the canal when I saw a man the cyclist in every aspect of his or her environment. This of young people. Midnight revellers stagger haphazardly For a species so good at socialising it is satisfying, in a dashing towards me with a phone in his hand. Up ahead relationship I have with the place we live is enhanced the home or simply stand swaying in the street, making for world increasingly dominated by cyber interaction where there was a crowd gathered around someone on the floor. more I understand it, helping me develop a unique respect interesting games of dodgems. travel can be so solitary, to enjoy the simple pleasure of It was a man who had fallen against the wall and his head for my city. actually sharing your journey with another human being. was bleeding, and I realised the running man was calling an But the pull of cycling, the thing that puts a smile on The kind of solidarity one experiences on a bike is ambulance. Afterwards, I thought to myself that if I were to The roads I pass offer up people from all walks of life doing my face is being able to travel as humans were meant to: heartening, and if someone drives dangerously close to fall, I’d much rather it happens on a cycleway where people things in public that they think no-one will notice, as much independently, using our bodies. Unrestricted by traffic another cyclist, I try to offer some words of support. If would stop, than on a busy road where everyone would of urban life rushes by in cars. Out in the open, the air offers jams and able to see 360 degrees, anything is possible and someone’s tyre is flat or their clothes are dangling perilously likely just drive past. up snatches of conversation from the mundane to those that everyone is your neighbour. near a wheel I don’t have to even wind down a window to sound like classic one-liners I want to write down. From let them know. Friends have told me innumerable stories I think travelling in the open air engenders a lovers on park benches, to the oddball having a solitary The experience of travelling in packs is a worthy one. about falling off and in every case another cyclist comes responsibility for one’s environment that you cannot conversation as he strolls aimlessly along, on a bike, life in Not in long, depressing lines of fuming traffic moving in to their aid. benefit from inside a metal box hurtling along a all its richness is laid out in front of me. While cycling we aggressive bursts, but in glorious glittering shoals. With a highway. Town planners are increasingly taking down are uniquely a part of our surroundings. common interest, and pitted against the at times roaring Being on a bike you can pull up alongside someone and railings that separate pedestrians from motor traffic traffic, cyclists gradually gather together in the morning ask for directions at pretty much any time, and frequently I because by removing physical separation you reduce My early morning rides reveal a city waking up, when along the city’s arteries, becoming one pedalling mass. have directed someone or been directed while cycling with risk-taking behaviour. In other words, people drive commuters stare blank-faced at bus stops, while the sky Congregating centrally again after five, one by one they them. This is also a novel way to make friends. slower when they feel they must take responsibility for above is all reds and pinks and empty roads are like a separate out and disappear into the night. Indeed, cyclists are in a unique position to be a useful the safety of others. If there is nothing between you playground as my world slowly gains its daily momentum. part of their communities and I often imagine that and the people and place around you, that very human While shopkeepers unload deliveries, road sweepers go A cyclist also knows the changing weather like no one else. if I saw someone in trouble on my daily trips around instinct to be sociable and altruistic and to care for about their rounds like silent knights of street cleanliness, From the gentle spray of watery mist to the torrential rain London that I would step in and help. On my bike I your world is unrestricted.

30 In the summer of 2010, I completed a bicycle adventure Dominique Lieb around the coast of the British Isles by riding around Ireland. As before, I met, spoke with and recorded some of the artisans I met along the way; people with a passion Puca Press for making or doing something. The resulting 100 or so little films are a homage to the inspirational people who Dingle, County Kerry live on our coastline. Boneshaker continues with its series of these encounters. Nick Hand, slowcoast.co.uk

“My name is Dominique Lieb. l was trained as a graphic designer in Lausanne in Switzerland and when I came here to Ireland, I got into contact with a man who ran this letterpress here in Dingle. He told me he wanted to sell it. My plan was just to stay for a year. But my daughter went to a school that was very good, so I decided to buy this press and to stay here. It was not very expensive.

As far as I know, Puca Press is the only working letterpress printer in Ireland. There is a letterpress in Dublin, but it is in a museum.

In the first year or two, I was mainly doing business cards and letterheads for local businesses and some invitations. But somehow the jobs got a bit less. There is also a copyshop in Dingle, and he’s a bit quicker.

And then I am learning Irish as well. This is because my daughter has learnt Irish in school and I am interested in the language; it’s a nearly dead language, but I don’t mind.

Through learning Irish, I got into contact with people who I wouldn’t normally. They are somehow very special people, farmers mainly, and poets. I found out that they were very good [Irish] speakers. I decided that if I do books, like these small book that I have here, then I would like to have the Irish language in the books. Because this is also somehow an exchange, I do the images and someone would write the text.

And if it’s in Irish, then something new would somehow come out of it. This is now my main interest – to mix these two cultures. It’s a very slow process. It is labour intense. And then when I set these words and Irish texts so slowly with the letters, then this helps me learn the language.

Yes, it’s hand-made, and I don’t mind if it looks hand-made. It should be done carefully and it should be clean, it’s a bit more heavy maybe. But I like this simple look. It looks a bit plain and no plastic, no gloss. You can really choose the paper, the material is more important. And then you have content, a story and images. It’s just different, I believe”.

31 32 Words Tom Southam / www.tomsoutham.com Illustration Christoph Ohanian / www.christophohanian.de coming around to going around

I can still clearly recall my first bike ride. my dad like the son in the fields of the Seamus When I say ‘bike ride’, I don’t mean Heaney poem, Digging. It felt like an epic struggle in just riding up and down my street, his tyre-tracks, gaining ground, then losing it again, that’s just play, I mean the first time I and losing some more, standing up out the saddle, went out just to ride my bike. You see, then sitting. That climb of just a few hundred metres despite the fact I make my living riding went on forever. a bicycle, simply going for a ride on my bike is something that I’ve hardly ever All the while I remember pulling bits of bracken out been able to do. of the hedgerow, clutching at it and yanking it out as I passed. I don’t know why I was dong this, maybe That first ride would have been approximately six that childish love of wanton destruction. I loved it miles, on my red Bacini mountain bike (it was – my motion was enough that when I grabbed hold 12-speed, that was what mattered) on a Saturday of something it would pull it free. All it determines afternoon with my old man. I was nine years old. I is that I was definitely moving pretty slowly, and had remember that ride so well and I think what no real concern as to going faster, I was just enjoying makes it stand apart in my mind to this moving – on a bicycle. day was that I wasn’t yet a bike rider. I was just a kid, cycling just The idea of bike riding for the pure pleasure of it for the sake of cycling, and seemed to disappear quite quickly. I loved cycling loving it. instantly; I went straight out and sold my Sega Master System so I could buy a racing bike with thin tyres. I In going six miles I felt I had was a bike rider before I knew it. As soon as I started been on a voyage of to want to get better, I wanted to race, and as soon as discovery. There was I wanted to race, I knew that every time I set off on only one real ‘hill’ my bike, it was for a reason. and I remember every metre It was never a clear-cut thing. I didn’t instantly start of it, trailing putting lactate threshold intervals into my training behind rides, but I just had in my mind that I was going out there for a purpose. I would have the route mapped out in my head, and instead of thinking about what that route might unveil to me, or where I might arrive at the end of the day, I could only see the places where I would be fast or slow, where it would be difficult to keep the pace, where I would really be hurting, and where I might get to recover for a few kilometres.

33 34 All I would do on these rides was dream – as all glamorous about learning the trade, taking beating bicycle racer, I could no longer claim to even enjoy always linger. I went out late in the afternoon, kids with an imagination should do – I imagined after beating until eventually starting to come out on riding my bike. In ambition and competition I had with no plan, no route or idea. I didn’t wear my the races I would one day win and imagined how top and it was only from my third year in the Elite lost sight of what it was just to ride a bike. I had to sponsor’s fancy kit; I didn’t care whether I rode at I would win them. I invented scenarios, and raced amateur category onwards, that I started to place in ride my bike each and every day, and not just ride my 20 miles an hour or five. I rode with guys who didn’t imaginary foe. I loved these days growing up on a the top ten, and then win. bike. I had to play the game of convincing my body wear lycra. I chatted, and I stopped as many times as bike, but with that purpose in my mind; I was never to move the bicycle at unnatural speeds in exchange I wanted, to buy snacks or look at a view. It was the riding for the love of cycling, I was riding for the It felt like it took so long, that when finally I caught for the minimum amount of physical effort. It’s not strangest sensation. It was liberating, and gave me love of racing. the eye of an Italian pro team at a race in Germany riding because it’s fun, and I simply started to hate time to think, which for the most part was about and made the deal to sign my first real contract, it riding my bike. nothing other than what I was doing. Throughout my career I avoided strict training was simply confirmation for me, and I saw it as the methods like the plague. I used heart rate monitors beginning of a new road. I could finally call myself It’s true that the days that the sun was out and the It made me come back to a conversation I had had only intermittently, have only ever put a power- a pro cyclist, but there was more work to do now required kilometres were few could lessen the growing with my dad once, that has stayed with me even meter on once and my attempts at keeping training than ever before. dislike. But on the grey days, the cold days and the though I hadn’t truly understood it at the time. He diaries are sporadic at best. I rode my bike for a long days I would wake with a genuine shudder at walks a lot, my old man. I mean a lot – five to six living to keep myself free from the shackles of a As a professional racing cyclist you can’t get away the thought of pushing pedals. Throughout my whole hours a day, and as a thrusting twenty-something- routine, but without knowing it the enjoyment of with just going out on your bike; there is an professional cycling career I suppose I struggled to year-old I just couldn’t understand the appeal of it. riding my bike had long since started to be lost to undeniable correlation between structured training exactly that: routine. and monitoring of workload and success. The trouble was, that wasn’t really what I loved about “I went out late in the Becoming a pro-cyclist isn’t an easy thing. In my riding a bike. case it was the culmination of a lot of hard work afternoon, with no and many steps down a long, tough road. I started Things like coaches, training plans and intervals were racing at 12, as soon as I possibly could. I had exciting to me as a young man and made me feel plan, no route or idea.” secretly thought I would somehow magically win my like I was doing something. While my mates ate off first race and instead, sprinted it out with my now dirty plates and kept their clothes in cardboard boxes work this balance, and I think it was only recently that I It got him nowhere but where he started. He wasn’t lifelong friend for last place. I lost that too, dead last, during the two drunken years plus one of sobering found out why: I simply hadn’t been for a bike ride. training to do anything with it, he wasn’t ever but was far from put off. panic that is the UK university experience, I was going to get better at it; he was just walking. What cycling up mountains with the national A bike ride for the sake of going on a bike ride, a ride was more, he didn’t have to do it. When I asked For the next six years I raced all over the country and cycling team in Spain. rolling along in the spirit of Jerome K Jerome’s ‘Three him why he did it, his response was, ‘there is no occasionally got to taste the real thing in Europe in men on the Bummel’. With no haste, no plan, no bloody advertising when you’re walking’. my school holidays. Every spare moment was spent The years led me from rush and time to pull foliage out of cycling, or racing or travelling. one country to another, the hedgerows. Now I understood; walking is a freedom for him. competing, training, and It frees him from what he can’t stand – in this case, Eventually the time came when winning races riding, riding, riding, further Recently though, I broke my elbow the constant barrage of shit that the world throws became not just a possibility, but a certainty. I and faster than ever. My training in a fall during a race. After several at you as you go through your life. TheT V shows, moved from the National Junior team, onto the days in my early twenties were up months off the bike, and a world magazines and songs, the things to buy, to race, the newly founded World Class Performance Program to seven hours on the bike. Typically away from competition, when my competition. and just never looked back. I left everything I knew three and a half hours at a high tempo in team kindly left me to do whatever I aged 19 to go to France to try and make it, ignored the morning, and three and a half hours wanted, I began to go out cycling I think that was what I found when I started riding University and friends and put everything into that sprinting up hills in the evening. My again. I had no real need to, I my bike for the pleasure of it again. A million miles elusive professional contract. backdrop was incredible; I lived a few doors had no races and there was no from pushing my body through its limits past noisy down from George Clooney in Como, rush to regain fitness. I rode crowds on hillsides in Europe, I found that after The three tough years it took to make my way into and raced in some of the most amazing alone, staying clear of my the love and the hate, having seen cycling through the paid ranks could verge between Hell, hard and countryside in Europe on a weekly basis. pro cyclist mates, where some every stage from fun, to competition and to work, much worse. There was nothing simple, quick or But, paradoxically, in making my living as a element of competition could deep down I still just love riding my bike.

35 36

At the blurry boundary between two things is often where you’ll find the most interesting part of either. And so where bicycles meet art, where collaboration meets Photography Hubert M Van Doorn creation, Boneshaker meets Joseph L. Griffiths.

Joseph is a fine artist by training – an Australian “I really wanted to make a participatory installation who’s currently living and working in Paris which enabled the audience to engage in a kind of thanks to a professional development grant a “ride” as we would have done as kids visiting the from the Australia Council for the Arts. He’s place for holiday entertainment. Naturally this ridden bikes all his life, and first took an included my deeper interests in the importance interest in road cycling as a teenager in the of cycling in leading a healthy life, and finding late nineties, heading out on long weekend a way to transcribe the inter-relationship of man rides with his father and watching heroes like and machine. ‘Drawing Machine No.1 (To Your Miguel Indurain in the Tour de France. Heart’s Content)’ is an interactive art installation that invites the audience to participate directly A few years ago he built up a fixed-gear conversion in the creative cycle. Pedalling a series of belt- and then a full NJS Keirin track machine – his driven gears and wheels, audience members everyday ride when back home in Melbourne. contribute to a communal wall drawing, Joseph’s interest in the physics of cycling and evolving over the course of its exhibition. In a the implications of pedal-power evolved and world of increasing digital dependence, the work dovetailed with his fine art work when he was utilises primitive technologies and collaboration, invited to create an installation in a disused to encourage a reconnection to the natural and fun-parlour in Melbourne as part of Penthouse man-made worlds through manual crafts. By Mouse 2009, an annual multidisciplinary avoiding traditional artist/institution/audience art, design and fashion event in conjunction relationships, and relying on communal with the L’Oreal Melbourne International participation to the complete the work, the joy of Fashion Festival. making becomes as important as the outcome.”

www.josephlgriffiths.com

39 Photography Berco Balog, Matej Zoldos, Eva Siva and Denisa Tothova Translation Rado Masaryk

Ride a curving trail along the river Danube the forgotten Hungarian villages, or to the from Vienna, and after sixty kilometres Hungarian city of Mosonmagyarovár. or so the city of Bratislava will appear in Any self-respecting itinerary would also front of you. You can hardly go wrong in include a ride to the baroque mansion of choosing Bratislava as a starting point for Schlosshof, the castle town of Hainburg, bike trips along the Danube. the Roman spa of Bad Deutsch Altenburg Bratislava – or perhaps to the Czech Republic, to see The city is located at the point where the castles and mansions of the Moravia The city that only cycled at weekends Slovakia, Austria and Hungary meet - and region. Every weekend, tens of thousands near various important bicycle routes. It’s of Bratislavans mount their bikes and head also just a stone’s throw away from the out into in the Danube river basin – but as Jan Sifra, manager of ModrofUz bike shop in Bratislava, beautiful Neusiedler Lake in Austria, with recently as a year ago, they all seemed the most elaborate network of bike trails in to forget about the joys of cycling when saddles up for a tour of the local cycle scene. the region. Or you can head out to one of Monday came around again.

41 42 Inside the Bratislava bike scene. Who’s who?

Mundane Mondays The Winter Meeting The Critical Mass Matej Zoldos / Bike Builder Fixie Foxie The romantic notion of a biker’s For the last three years I have On the last Friday in April 2010, www.slowatch.sk www.fixiefoxie.com paradise gets dashed every been using my bike to commute approximately two hundred Monday morning. Although to work, to do my shopping and bikers met in Bratislava. We set Matej is one of the handful of bike builders in Matej deserves yet another story. He’s also every fourth Bratislavan uses for fun. There aren’t many of off for a 12km ride through the Slovakia. Although he cannot boast many years of started to manufacture bike frames with friends a bike to relax on weekends, us, less than one per thousand city. Two hundred might not practice, the demand for bicycles from his start-up from Vienna and Budapest. “A friend from Vienna workshop is great. He got into bike building after a asked me to help him find an old track bike in commuting by bike is a great commuters. Last year, however, sound like a lot, but something series of unfortunate events. “First I crashed my car Slovakia. Track biking used to be big in the country important happened; formerly unknown. To get to work, something started to stir up. so I started to ride a bike. Then the bike got stolen so some old bikes should be around somewhere,” everybody just uses cars. Something big and positive. lonely riders discovered they and I didn’t have money to buy a new one – so I Matej says. were not alone after all. searched for a way to make one myself.” “We are afraid to ride our bikes In the midst of the freezing Since the friend was a motorcyclist and the words on the road. Those drivers are January of 2010, I noticed a Since then, the community has Matej asked his friend, a motorcyclist, to fetch him for bicycle and motorbike are easily confused in dangerous. There are no cycle person pushing pedals on a smart- been meeting every month and an old bicycle frame from a second-hand market German, Matej found him a small track motorbike. lanes in the city. And we may looking black bike. It was my magical things have started in Austria. “When I built my first bike it looked “When I brought him the motorbike he laughed get sweaty,” they reason, friend Eva Sivá. I did not know she to happen around Bratislava. nothing like anything else available in Bratislava. that this was not exactly what he had in mind.” People started to ask if I could build one for them The friend explained what a track bicycle was and whenever you ask why they put rode her bike to work – and she Scattered bike activists came too.” Since Matej had access to nice bicycle parts sent some pictures. Matej was surprised: he’d together to lobby for cycle lanes away their bikes every Monday didn’t know that about me. There from retailers in Vienna, he stocked himself up and never seen a fixed-gear bicycle before. He liked it, and reach for the car keys. was no time to chat in the middle in those parts of the city that are started to build more bikes. though – so he started to do some research. of the traffic. We exchanged not easy to access. Bike builders You may try to point out that in surprised greetings and flew by. exchanged their know-how. Today Matej is one of the most skilled ‘bicycle This eventually led him to a remote corner of the neighbouring city of Vienna New friendships were made cowboys’ in Bratislava. Recently he built a bike Slovakia, where he found a person who used to a bicycle is a common means After several days I received an and by joint effort we started for the landlord of the building where he runs his weld frames for track cyclists. They designed of transportation. In nearby e-mail from Eva. “I’d like to help to break down the barrier workshop. “He is an older gentleman, so instead their own frame together and called it Fixie Foxie. Budapest, even sixteen-year-old Bratislava. To expand the ranks between the weekend cyclist of loud colour combinations I tried new technology Matej sold the first 15 units. “Both projects have – artificial rust. I took an ancient frame from the one thing in common – they are handmade in girls ride bikes, in much heavier of bike commuters,” she said. and the commuter. thirties and soaked it in water mixed with vinegar, Slovakia. I build bicycles with my own hands,

traffic. The fear of the unknown She explained her plans: she then put clear coat finish over the beautifully and Fixie Foxie is also welded in a small is too overwhelming and there would like to organize an event Bratislava now sees more and rusted metal.” workshop, not in a factory.” are more than enough excuses called Critical Mass. She would more people who are not afraid at hand. I was one of those who design the website and print out to get on their bikes on Monday. What does Matej enjoy about bike building? “I succumbed to this thinking, leaflets. She would ride around All that was needed was to used to have an office job, but I never saw the and for five years I did not have Bratislava at nights to search for create some common space. actual results of my work. What I do now produces the courage to use my bike on the best route for the ride. She All it took was one person to tangible things that make people happy.” a workday. even wrote to traffic authorities start it off. to notify them that an unusually large number of cyclists would be moving through the city.

43 44 Berco Balog / Bike Messenger Marek Parajka / Bike Builder Dano Duris / Cycling Activist Patrik Martin / Cycling Activist www.cyklokurier.sk jednokolecko.blogspot.com cykloguerilla.blogspot.com www.bicyba.sk

Our journey to visit the bikers of Bratislava Not many bike builders in Bratislava can make Cycling activist Daniel Duris was one of the Patrik came round to cycling while studying continues with Berco, a filmmaker and photographer their living just making bikes. Marek Parajka has people who started to ‘break the ice’ for cycling architecture. “For me, bikes are a way to improve on wheels. “Way back when, we had the ‘Velvet a daytime office job in the city, and spends his in Bratislava. “Something had been welling up the life in the city. I see cyclists as the key to a well- Revolution’ which brought Slovakia political spare time building bikes in his hometown of inside me for some time. In 2007 I was planning to designed city, where it is possible to live.” freedom. Over the last year I have been feeling the Cífer. “It’s in my blood. My grandfather was a organize a bike ride, but then I left for the USA and advent of a Wheelvet Revolution which brings us blacksmith. We had a workshop at home, and at my plans remained on paper.” Although focusing more on architecture these days, freedom on wheels.” least a dozen bikes lying around the yard at all he spent more than 10 years as a bicycle activist. times.” In January 2010 Daniel watched a Czech documentary Only a few years after the fall of communism in If there is a perfect person to ask to assess changes on cyclists called Automat. Titled “In The Morning I Slovakia, he took part in an organized bike ride that in Bratislava, it is this bike messenger. He spends “My Grandpa had a Ukrainian bike with an Will Wake Up and Change My City,” the movie spoke stopped at various government authorities around several hours a day on his bike and can see things enormous frame. When I was little, I would crawl to Daniel. “Three months later, the news about the Bratislava. “The ride was organized by BicyBa, changing. “There are more bikers around Bratislava; up between the tubes of the frame and push the first Critical Mass in Bratislava reached me - and that which was a part of the only organization focusing I’m happy about that.” He also welcomes the fact pedals from the side.” When Marek was 14 he great energy inside me just started to pour out.” on environmental protection in Slovakia at the time.” that bike activists are engaged in active dialogue was given a white Favorit racing bike. “I wanted with the City Council. “It seems that the right to have a different bike to everyone else in the Daniel’s first activity was Cycloguerilla. “We started The nineties were not particularly active. Slovakia had people are finally moving to the right places. The city, so I started to tune it up. I put a new lick of to mark our own cycle lanes in Bratislava.” more serious problems than cycling. “It all started to guy previously responsible for cycle lanes used to paint on my first bike in my Dad’s workshop.” Several more people joined Daniel, and after the move again around the year 2000. Once again bike deride cycling. He was fond of saying that the path first radical step he continued in a milder manner. rides were being organized; even though organizers of evolutionary change takes a boy with his bike to a “I tried many frames, but I like steel the best.” “We put together an interactive map of Bratislava. were fined a substantial amount of money.” But the man with his car – which is downright stupid.” This preference may have started in Dublin, where We got together with more biking activists and original number of two hundred participants slowly he moved for a while in 2004. “I used to work in we started to talk to local politicians.” Over time, dwindled; in 2004 the events were only attended Berco started to ride his bike when he was a kid. a restaurant. One day a car stopped at our front Cycloguerilla evolved into Cyclocoalition and by 15-20 people. Patrik continued his activities. By “We used to live near the airport, on the outskirts door and some guys with tattoos jumped out. now regularly advises the City Council where 2004 he had ridden thousands of kilometres around of Bratislava. The greatest fun was to ride around They pulled out bikes from the van and started and how to build cycle lanes in Bratislava, how to Bratislava and completed a cycling map of the city. It the airport on our bikes and see who got caught to put them together right there on the street. modify junctions and how to make one-way streets was published a year later. “I admit, after the years of by security guards.” When he took up playing Hundreds more like them came to Dublin in the accessible to bikes. hard work, I am a bit sceptical these days. This year basketball professionally, he used buses to get to days that followed - there was a gathering of bike- things started to move again though; I hope it will Bratislava. “It took me 45 minutes, and riding a messengers from all over the world. And it just Daniel knows that a change will not come gain more substantial momentum.” bicycle made the journey quicker by 5 minutes. So I blew my mind.” overnight – but he believes it will come eventually. switched to bike.” “It takes time for people to pluck up the courage There is no need to be sceptical. The author of this When he returned to Slovakia he started to rebuild to go into the city on their bikes. And we need article was one of the people who got on his bike And how did he manage to become a bike old bikes. He says treasures of unbelievable more time to get used to the traffic. It took me because of Patrik’s map. It helped many Bratislavans messenger? “I always had this dream to shoot a value could be found in dumps or recycling yards. some time to learn, but I did learn eventually.” to break free from their car dependency. documentary about bike couriers. The problem was “These days, people don’t realise the value that there were none in Bratislava.” When he visited of older bikes, and they get rid of them. One Budapest and three of them zoomed by in the gentleman once brought me 20 or 30 year-old first few minutes, he asked himself – why not do spare parts for Favorit - mint condition, still in the Look out for JAn Sifra at ModrofUz bike shop, Bratislava something like that in Bratislava? original packaging. I couldn’t believe my eyes.” (www.modrofuz.sk), and check the pic-packed blog: modrofuz.soup.io

45 46 Words Jet McDonald www.biketales.wordpress.com Learning to Repair Kits Adam Faraday Inner Tubes Stine Stensbak love your punctures

A slow puncture is like a stilted sigh. is puncture proof – merely puncture Down on my knees I pumped my resistant. Tyres, like human beings, exasperation back into the tyre with a wear down. I met a guy at a hostel rusty pump. Again and again it deflated. who’d weathered seventeen punctures Being in the middle of the desert I had in one go when he’d wheeled his bike no handy buckets of water and had off road in Turkey. He went on to pull to rely on inflating the inner tube and out 72 thorns from his tyres (when you gobbing on dodgy looking spots to have that many you count them all). The look for bubbles. After the third repair poor guy had been cycling on pencil thin I gave up and spent the next 100km racing tyres but it proves my point that back on my knees every half hour. Later the menace of the puncture persists, examination in a hotel room revealed and insists. three tiny nicks made by the wires that explode from old truck tyres. A friend of mine, Steve, took his trusty Puncture maggots. racer out for a jaunt in the English countryside, got a puncture and then Before I started my adventure cycling discovered that were no patches left from England to India I had been led in his repair kit. Walking his bike home to believe there were such things as for twenty miles he was not happy ‘puncture proof’ tyres. “So and so” a man. He then discovered his best had ridden to Australia with only one friend Susie had borrowed his puncture puncture. “So and so” had cycled repair kit, used the last patch and then across Africa without so much as a replaced it in his saddle bag without single patch, I was reliably informed. telling him.

Bollocks. Steve and Susie had a blazing row which preceded them becoming “So and so” had either been cycling on lovers, moving in together and finally silk or had been super lucky. No tyre getting married. All this was caused by

48 the minutest intrusion into the feather adversity was not an instantaneous to do if we embrace the minutiae of bed of air that carries us aloft. Bicycles process but came gradually through discomforts that make up our lives and offer the possibility of simple, direct accepting the inevitability of misfortune. take control of them, rather than expect travel. But when a puncture thwarts “Prosperity unbruised cannot endure a someone else to sell us the solutions off that promise we end up ranting at the single blow, but a man who has been at the shelf. When I first started cycling wayward vagaries of fate, the bike constant feud with misfortunes acquires long distances I was petrified of and ourselves. a skin calloused by suffering.” punctures. I hated it when twenty minutes before dusk and far from a safe The simple answer of course is always I’m not saying here that all cyclists should place to camp I felt the jarring bump of to carry a new puncture repair kit and go around with nasty welts on the tips of metal rim over stone. But now I have stop being such a pansy. Indeed many their fingers but that if we start to accept repaired so many they feel like a familiar riders now carry a spare inner tube punctures as being an inevitable part of scratch. I jump off the bike, dump the and some even resort to those ghastly cycling, that if we start to accept them bags, flip the frame over and get on with disposable compressed gas cylinders not as problem but as an inevitable part it and in fifteen minutes, mostly, I’m for instant inflation. But need the thorn of cycling – like oiling a chain – they done. I’m proud of myself, I repaired the be so vexatious? Can we learn to cease to be such a disturbance. Consumer puncture, and I get on with cycling. love the puncture and cherish those society and the service industry seek to little puncture repair kits? Those kits a sell us the idea that we needn’t have to Having accepted that punctures are part consistent reminder in a hundred years deal with discomfort, that everything can of the road, the road itself becomes of cycling, from boneshaker to carbon be planned for, that even the future and less threatening. “By regarding future forks, of a bygone self sufficiency? fate itself, can be bought for a price. possibilities as certainties, he softens the shock of disasters which cannot disconcert men prepared and waiting,” says Seneca. Mending punctures is in The simple answer of course is danger of acquiring the aura that darning socks has now attained; a dowdy old throwback to the past and post-war dreariness. If only we could recognise always to carry a new puncture repair kit that it is the very self-sufficiency of the fixing our own kit that makes it so attractive. “What is the happy life?” Seneca concludes at the end of his and stop being such a pansy life ; “Self-sufficiency and abiding tranquillity”. Perhaps I am getting too idealistic here. But the concept of self- This I pondered on a long desert road Hence puncture proof tyres, puncture sufficiency has been a driving force in as my bike deflated beneath me. The proof ‘slime’, CO2 gas canisters. But the cycling movement and its power answer was Stoicism. In modern if you accept from the outset that shouldn’t be underestimated. parlance the word ‘stoic’ has come punctures will happen and that they are to mean ‘unemotional’ or indifferent not a problem but part of the solution of “I really felt the bicycle could be for the to pain, but the ancient Greek Stoics, cycling, they become less burdensome. world’s cities what the spinning wheel a school of philosophy, did not wish was for Ghandi” said 1970s cycling activist to extinguish emotion but rather to The more punctures we get, the more John Dowlin. Ghandi used the emblem transform it through calm reasoning. we repair, the more we become better of the spinning wheel to suggest to his Seneca, a Roman stoic, and one of at repairing them, the less anxious we fellow countrymen that they could create its clearest thinkers, puts it thus in his are about them, the more self reliance the fabric of their own lives, that they essay ‘On Providence [ i.e. will of the we achieve and more ‘clear reason’ we could be self-sufficient beyond the gods] – why any misfortunes befall develop. This ‘self-sufficiency’ is one of machine of the Raj. John Dowlin was good men when a providence exists’; the magical things about cycling. The angling that we can create our own way “I do not maintain that man is insensible modern car with its interlinked electronic through the car-clogged cities and reach to externals but that he overcomes; components, demands that you take it for a more self-determined future. unperturbed and serene, he rises to to a specialist, who does everything for meet every sally.” you and gives you a bill at the end. The Bold hopes – and you could argue it is car is emblematic of a service industry trite to force such ideals onto the simple Easier said than done you might say, that makes you relinquish control. But bike and its humble puncture repair. particularly when you have a puncture in when we are in control we are most self But if we don’t learn to maintain the the middle of nowhere and it’s dark and sufficient, most happy. This is a mighty transport of our own lives, to own our it’s raining and your cocoa’s going cold claim to make for the humble puncture difficulties, then those tiny problems will back home. But for Seneca this notion of repair kit. But that puncture repair kit start to own us and that will not help us transforming emotion and overcoming only represents what we might be able ride into an uncertain future.

49 50 “WE DON’T What we need NEED more are more people cyclists. that ride bikes.” Michael Bauch, Director, from the film ‘Riding Bikes with the Dutch’

Imagine if a car driver acted like most of that, you’ll wind up spending a lot of “driver.” They use a car because, to bike riders. Imagine if before they got money on stuff you don’t need. There them, it’s convenient to do so, which in their car they bought special driving certainly are helpful pieces of clothing is exactly the reason you ride a bicycle. shoes, stretchy pants, or sweat-wicking and gear that anyone who commutes by You ride because it’s the best choice shirts. Imagine if the days of driving bike may want, but remember: put the you can make given your own personal gloves and caps were still with us. word “biking” before the words “shirt,” circumstances, not because you’re Imagine if a driver worried about his “pants,” “gloves” and those same items looking for membership in a club that seat belt wrinkling their shirt or how will cost about 25% more than they requires you to adopt a certain ideology spending thirty minutes in the car would without it. Tell yourself you need or wear a specialized uniform. might affect their appearance when they a pair of comfortable socks rather than arrive at work. What if they had to wolf a pair of cycling socks and you probably The irony, of course, is that by adopting down an energy bar and follow it with already have something in your dresser this nonchalant attitude towards your an electrolyte-filled sports drink to fuel drawer that does the job. own mode of transportation you’ll be themselves through their journey? contributing towards a huge cultural The more I’ve moved away from ‘biking shift in cycling, making it a viable Of course, that’s not how the typical like Lance’ to just getting around by transportation option for more and car driver acts. Apart from the time bike, the less gear I’ve needed, and the more people. When people see a rider spent pricing out different models or less gear I’ve needed to bike, the more speed down the street on a racing bike, comparing features, once they have their of New York I’ve experienced while out dressed as if he’s prepared not for a car they just drive. Who would want to pedalling! I have the time and ability business meeting but for battle, there’s drive if getting prepared to get in the car to make impulse stops along my ride, little that makes the average person took longer than the actual trip? the kind that simply aren’t possible in a think, “Maybe I could try that, too.” car or even on the subway or bus, and But when they see someone riding in And so in this respect, we need to treat if something catches my eye – a new a suit or the kind of casual clothes in biking more like driving. If you don’t bookstore, restaurant, or just a street which one spends a casual afternoon in have a bike, by all means spend some scene worth watching – I hop off my the city, suddenly cycling becomes a real time thinking about what model works bike and check it out. Plus, not being a alternative to driving, taking the bus, best for you and what features you’d gear-head means never having to worry or even walking, something that works like. You can even obsess over the color about being the only guy at the coffee for a person who just needs to get from – some car owners spend more time shop in spandex shorts. point A to point B. And the best part of counting cup holders than horsepower, all is that you’ll have made this cultural and I see no reason why bike riders can’t There’s something else that happens contribution by making no effort be as frivolous! when you shift your focus away from whatsoever. You were just riding to get buying stuff and move it towards just where you needed to go. But once you have a bike, just get riding. Instead of being a cyclist, and Illustration on it and go. Sure, you might need a taking on all of the loaded cultural and If you do all of this, if you adopt that Da le more comfortable pair of underwear if political associations the label carries, attitude which seems to come so easily Edwi you’re going out for a while, but that’s you become something very simple to most car drivers and just get out n Murr about it. Of course you can obsess over indeed: a person who happens to get there on your bike, you’ll find the true which lights, jackets, lycra shorts, bells, around using a bicycle. Few drivers benefits of cycling without feeling ay helmets, messenger bags, baskets and think that their mode of transportation like a cyclist. more, but every minute you do is a is a political statement, and fewer minute you’re not on your bike. On top still would identify themselves as a Just ride.

Doug Gordon is a writer and TV producer living in Brooklyn, New York. You can find more of his bicycle-related thoughts at www.brooklynspoke.wordpress.com.

52 infrastructure and aggressive behaviour of motorists towards them. The reason given in the film for most teenage girls in Britain abandoning their bikes is that cycling just isn’t cool (shock horror!). Friends didn’t do it and it was regarded as dangerous, dirty, and lamely lycra-clad. I spoke with the filmmakers Beatrix Wupperman andR ichard Grassick and they explained, “It is really dangerous infrastructure that We all look back and realise there were times in our life that holds teenagers back from cycling. They state publicly their were significant; for me they include first kisses, moving reason for not cycling as not being cool, but peer pressure to Manchester and riding without stabilisers. Then about against uncool behaviour covers a multitude of sins, and a three weeks ago I went into a tattoo shop and asked them to key one is a fear of cycling on busy roads. With teenagers inscribe Maggie May on my wrist, which soon turned into so dependent on the opinions of their friends, they do not a full pin-up beauty on a bike. How did it come to this? cycle. In Bremen, for many teenage girls, you are a hassle I hear you ask. I realised with a grin on my face that The if you do not cycle. In Darlington it is just the other way Spokes were to blame. round!” My home town of Manchester has a woeful cycling infrastructure which pokes a stick in your spokes and has If bike love is a virus that we’ve all succumbed to, then some of the most dangerous roads in the country, so what it would be fair to say that I started showing the first made me rediscover my love for two wheels? Again the symptoms around two years ago when a friend idly directed blame lies firmly at the feet of The Spokes. me to the fresh slice of heaven that is the Pashley website. As her non-cycling buddy, it was a cunning ploy as I’d spent Now as Iuck would have it, and without my knowing many months yawning whenever bikes came up... and then it, I landed myself a flat above Spokes HQ – a top secret I saw Maggie May and the rest really is history. I hate to basement full of mini bikes, hula hoops and pom-poms. admit it, but at 32 years old my most significant, ongoing Every Sunday, a black and green hurricane of girls would relationship is with a 17kg powder blue hand-built lovely whirl up outside my flat to collect their mini bikes, called Maggie May, best described as ‘solid’. I know my collaborate and practice tricks. I was intrigued, often parents despair because they keep dropping hints about

The Spokes The Photography amused, and they made cycling look like so much fun that internet dating; unfortunately I’m so smitten with her that I just had to take the risk of being knocked down by the 86 GSOH reads as ‘Great Set of Hubs’ rather than ‘Good bus. The time came and I was finally convinced to put on Sense of Humour’. their trademark green top. It wasn’t long before I realised that Spokes are utterly nuts about bikes; they dance with The other thing you should know is that I’m a reformed bikes, do tricks on them, ride them in synchronisation, rollerskater, having lived by the mantra ‘eight wheels good, challenge the council about our inadequate infrastructure, two wheels bad’ for the past fifteen years. My teenage and more! Founded in 2007, their wider aim is to years were spent hanging out on street corners, generally encourage everyone to see how bikes are a safer, sociable, not skating much but thinking I was pretty cool all the and more rewarding form of transport. We all share this same. So when and where did I lose the bike love exactly? tkinson vision by performing at comedy festivals, schools and It all started off so well in the heady days, learning to community events as well as dancing at the converted for ride on a blue Raleigh with a little white pannier box and Critical Mass and bike festivals. matching handlebar grips, before moving on to my next faithful companion - a golden, folding Raleigh Stowaway So what is Bike Dance? Well there’s no definition of bike (which would be so hot right now) and lasted me as far as dance itself and even when an entry for it appeared briefly on University. I guess if I’m honest, it was arriving hot and Wikipedia recently, it was taken down when readers reported bothered for my first seminar at university that was the final it as a joke! It seems that the origins of modern bike dance go Jonathan A Jonathan Photography anti-cycling nail in the tyre... if I couldn’t look chic and back to 1996 when the San Francisco Bike Ballet organised cycle then the bike had to go. a performance for hundreds of bicycles to be viewed from above, after which, a group of girls rode out together and, This seems to mirror the experience of most young girls according to Agent Chaos from US-based bike dance group in the UK; it seems that we cycle as kids before our bikes TheD erailleurs, “realised they were fed up with the male are consigned to the shed in favour of ‘girly’ pursuits, dominated bike scene”. This frustration led to a performance depressingly identified as shopping and ‘hanging out’. group which finally became known as The Sprockettes, the first The KU documentary, ‘Beauty and the Bike’, filmed in internationally recognised bike dance group. I spoke with one 2008, explores this phenomenon. In it, a group of English of their members, Agent Sweetpea, who explained, “Our aim teenage girls from Darlington are given the opportunity was always that of injecting a little bit of femininity into the to swap places for a week with a group of German teenage bicycle scene. Dancing with bikes in our minds was a perfect girls from Bremen. When the exchange visit takes place, medium through which we could express ourselves in an the English girls are bowled over by a bevy of gorgeous entertaining way whilst also delivering messages of positivity, sit-up-and-beg Dutch bikes and the relaxed vibe that can encouraging pro-physical lifestyles and advocating bicycle only develop in a city where cycle lanes are wide and drivers riding”. From this small beginning, the latest stats suggest that courteously slow down in shared streets. On the return leg, bike dance groups now number around twenty, and are spread the German girls are shocked by the lack of bike-friendly across America, Canada, UK and Japan.

Words Vicky Richardson 54 Photography Paul Green Photography Jonathan Maus

Emily (aka Archi-chick) By day an architecture student helping to shape communities into better places, but by night (and when she dons her Spokes leggings) an Evel Knievel style impresario, complete with cape and megaphone (very useful for marshalling us and organising super-fly alley cats). Following a recent and traumatic crash, she recycled elements of her ride with a new eighties frame to form Red-Blue Bike which she uses for commuting and spreading Spoke love. Emily’s enthusiasm is infectious and she gives great “Thriller” during any dance off.

Jen (aka Sexual Healing Spoke) Jen works in a Sexual Health clinic and does much good in promoting safer Photography Phil Dixon (Beauty and The Bike) sex and positive biking, both things the Spokes are equally proud of. She heads up a fleet of Pashley-wheeling nurses, so really should be getting commission from the company. By day her sunny disposition is reflected in her choice ofN emo, a sexy 5 speed Tube Rider but she’s also been known to ride a bike called Goldie Horn...make of that what you will. The Spokes live by few rules but getting everyone to appreciate their own beauty and be body positive is up there Becca (aka B-Spoke) Becca is a legend; outside of with the best; as Em from the group puts it, “being so silly The Spokes she organises the Manchester leg of the World that you get some perspective and realise that everyday life Naked Bike ride which highlights the vulnerability of doesn’t have to be so serious”. Claire sums up the power of cyclists and the madness of our addiction to car culture. the bike for me well when she flatly says “when I ride my She took her sexy Boston folding bike on a 5000km trip bike I can eat more chocolate” in-between wolfing down But the main reason I love bike dance is that it’s at the chic such being knackered after organising a bunch of free spirits around Europe this September, exploring sustainable energy some Dairy Milk (hell, a bike dancer’s got to find the energy end of the cycling spectrum. There is an unwritten rule in and the permanently bruised shins that come from riding a solutions. Nobody knows what her bike is called - it’s a somewhere). Like many of our sister bike dance groups, secret just between them. The Spokes came about because of a shared joy, born from girls’ bike dance that each troupe adopts its own colour, which bike designed for a child. Our most difficult moments also cycling and a desire to show that cycling ain’t just about is often teamed with black, all the while shaking a sharpened include “traingate” where one spoke got dangerously tangled Claire (aka Chemistry Clare) This girl rides a BSA being fast/macho/expensive (delete as appropriate). spoke at the idea that you need to be a paid-up member of the in a mini bike and the others had to free her at the same time racer which she converted to a fixie. I’ve not seen her face hi-vis lycra army in order to cycle. In Manchester this has led as concealing that we’d smuggled too many bikes onto the in the last six months - that’s just how fast she is. She was So now to the nitty gritty. Pay attention. Classic bike to the adoption of the term “Spokes Green” to describe the train. Fortunately no Spokes have been permanently harmed recruited to The Spokes by way of a note stapled to her bike dance moves range from the impressive – the spin cycle bright shade often chosen by the team, whilst American bike in the making of this mini adventure so far and at least we and her favourite type of cycling is done during holidays, where riders on multiple bikes move around a pivot dance groups including The Sprockettes and Derailleurs have have a trained health professional amongst our ranks. including coastal jaunts when she can feel the wind and point - to the ridiculous; anyone for synchronised a sexy and alternative approach, donning trashed fishnets and waves in her long red hair. moshing? The UK’s very own disco vixens, Les Velobici short skirts. Les Velobici out-chic us all in snowy white outfits In a year that’s seen me go from armchair cyclist to shaking a from Bristol, have taken this to a whole new level that pay homage to the flowing sleeves and tight trousers Raleigh Mustang in front of 300 people, I’ve recaptured the Zaneta (aka Science Girl) Zaneta is our iron lady with glow-in-the-dark props and a sexy, nonchalant, adopted by our cycling sisters from the early nineteenth joy I first felt when I knocked off those stabilizers back in the who swore off The Spokes after breaking her arm in two European attitude. Since writing this piece, I’ve found century. Core member of Les Velobici, Sylvie Zidek, tells me day. As Claire Spoke puts it “bikes are the solution to many places and dislocating her elbow, only to return and be out that they include a fashion designer and three circus that the idea for their wigs came from ‘TheT rucks’ lyric, “my problems. Want to save money on transport? Get a bike. Want absolutely fabulous. She is a hardcore mountain biker with a performers within their ranks, so they are clearly set two favourite things in life are big afros and riding bikes”. She to do your bit for the environment? Ride a bike. Want to get cheeky, addictive grin - something that came in useful when to storm the scene. Our “fans” including our principle goes on to explain, “Bike dance gives you back that daringness fit? Ride a bike. Want to lose weight? Ride a bike. I could go she convinced eight of her friends to help her move house sponsors, Bike Boutique in Manchester, often urge us to (sic) that you lost when you turned seventeen. When you stop on but you get the message.” without the use of a vehicle. practice more and stop horsing around so much, but it being a kid you can become fearful, but with bike dance I’m just wouldn’t be bike fabulous if we did. constantly falling off, banging every bit of my body on cold All I can add is if you want to do this in style with a group of Caroline (aka Dr Caz Tops) Caz is seriously cool metal and you realise it just doesn’t matter”. inspirational and creative people, and encourage other women and so I wasn’t surprised to hear that her first ride was a Perhaps they don’t realise the strength of will and abs to get back on a bike, start yourself a bike dance group. Trust spangly pink and yellow mountain bike. She’s still rocking required for the acro balance that underpins some Fun is the key factor for all bike dancers, as we stake a claim me, I’ve been there, done it, read the book and got the tattoo a couple of hardcore cycles, including a Cotic Roadrat for of the most impressive elements of our routines. Led in a scene that can be too easily dominated by fixie fixation to prove it. commuting which laughs in the face of potholes. She’s both and hipster chic... What I remember most about my first year elegant, having taken part in a bike ballet last year, and hard by the ever lovely Owen from Circus Disaspora we’ve developed a range of impressive tricks including “Shoulder as a bike dancer is the amount of time I’ve spent laughing, ...... as nails and as she puts it, “We’ve humiliated ourselves so working collaboratively to choreograph performances and often together that we’re now afraid of nothing”. Dislocator”, “Supergirl” (aka Iron Fanny), “The Frog”, p.s. All potential bike dances group out there - when you’re up “The Splat” and “TheL ady”. I can but hope that 2011 is learning how to look after my ride (hell, I still don’t know how to change my own brake cables but I’m glad to know at and running get in touch, we’d love a dance off! Kat (aka Counting Kat) the year that I’ll be riding high, lifted aloft on shoulders Kat is half way to owning least half a dozen women who do). As Becca from our group ...... whilst someone else pedals or I find myself at the top of a bike museum, including a gorgeous custom-build called puts it, “I spend so much time laughing with The Spokes. We Anarchy April which she uses to overtake boys in lycra a human cycling pyramid, but regardless of all that, I’m Links simply excited that bike dance continues to evolve and the don’t call it training but bike play because that’s exactly what (nice). She’s cycled across the Golden Gate Bridge in San it is – playing. It’s sort of like being in a bike gang as a kid!” www.thespokes.wordpress.com / www.lesvelobici.blogspot.com Francisco, invaded the Champs-Elysees with thousands of worldwide bike dance community continues to challenge www.sprockettes.org / www.derailleurs.wordpress.com cyclists as part of Velorution Universelle in Paris and been itself to improve. Our Spokey aspirations for 2011 include Highlights thus far have included 2010’s Bristol Cycle www.bikebeauty.org / www.bicycleboutiquemcr.co.uk featured on uber-cool blog Copenhagen Cycle Chic. She setting up the first world bike dance camp (to convert Festival‘s dance off against Les Velobici and organising a www.circusdiaspora.co.uk / www.ibikemcr.org.uk manages to make being eco and vegan look effortless and is young girls everywhere to our cause) and getting onto TV second showdown with them at Chorlton’s Big Green Festival www.myspace.com/thesearethebrakes often recognised at green gatherings and grocery stores without being on a reality TV show (thanks but no thanks in April 2011. These memories more than offset our few lows – she may be our first celebrity Spoke! Britain’s Got Talent, we’re still not interested). www.myspace.com/thetrucks

56 miscomp.wordpress.com 57 58 Car Racing at Rush Hour by Esther Perry

On my way home from work, the last two miles of road,

starting at Chicago and 31st Street – you’d know the light if you biked here – I began tailing her.

I took the center of the lane on my Specialized Allez, Submissions behind a black woman If you wish to make your mark in the next issue of driving a Ford Escort. Boneshaker or simply want to recommend people or Thirteen blocks, I stuck to her bumper, projects that you think we should feature, then please running-bra soaked, do get in touch. We look forward to hearing from you. mouth parched, my nose – invaded by fumes. At the red light, 1st Av. and 31st, about to turn, www.boneshakermag.com she opened the door and yelled, “You go, Girl!” [email protected] with a grin. @boneshakermag

A woman – not threatening me or hollering “Get on the sidewalk!”, “Move your ass over!”. Thrilled to be tailed for 13 blocks by a shirtless and sweaty chick on a bike.

This is how I move, how I breathe.

Illustration Emilio Santoyo / www.emiliospocket.com 59