It was February 2022. Chris Whitty had just been knighted, the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson had published an official statement about ‘how we will live with COVID,’ relaxing practically all the restrictions concerning meeting and travel, and I was cooked. I’d been working for the London Cycling Campaign for approximately two years, overwhelmingly indoors, and not really doing much cycling, and I was really not in a good way at all. My sleep cycle was all over the place and the only in-person communication I was getting was with a very occasional couple of laps of Regents Park with friends I really treasure. But this occasional relief wasn’t enough; I needed to go and figuratively touch grass. My chosen way of doing this was to quit my white collar job and become a cargo bike courier with an employer of cargo bike pilots. I did this for just over 2 years. This is a blog post about what I learned about Urban Arrow cargo bikes and how what I’ve learned might help you going forward.
Tag Archives: londoncycling
What I learned and observed doing the Dunwich Dynamo fixed – again
The first time was so nice, I had to do it twice. It didn’t hurt that my other bike had a cracked frame either. For the second year in a row I took the fixed gear commuter bike on the ride to Dunwich, and there were a few bits I jotted down you might beContinue reading “What I learned and observed doing the Dunwich Dynamo fixed – again”
3 successes and learnings riding from Hackney to Brighton off-road
I’m very lucky to have pals who commit to big plans and full days out; I asked my friend Maria if they’d be free for ‘a ride’ on a coming Saturday, and they immediately came back with a full .gpx file going from Hackney to Brighton overwhelmingly off-road. For me this came to a day’s 165km/100mi of riding. We kicked it off at 0715 to make the most of the sunshine and to hammer it out of London before it got too hot, and we met up with two other pals in Richmond and Weybridge. It was a great day out with some big wins and learning points, so here they are.
Learnings and feelings after 6 months of cycle educating in London
The other day at London Bike Kitchen, where I teach as a freelance tutor, I ran a ‘introduction to maintenance’ class for two people who were several decades older than me. Correspondingly, they probably had in the order of 40 years more of experience regarding riding bikes than I did, since I only really began cycling properly (in the sense of leisure and transportation) in around 2017. Writing this, I’ve been teaching classes like this, or working as a community mechanic, for about 6 months now, and thought a blog post about what I’ve learned and how I’m feeling about it may be interesting to you.
Calum On Wheels 