Style over sense

I know it's not new news, but I saw the Chanel bike again on a post that linked to an article in the Telegraph. So Chanel bring out a bike for £6900. This is the same money as you could by two eye-wateringly expensive Condor Diamantes with Campag Record and still have some change for an energy drink - or whatever Diamante owners go for. Alternatively you could buy 12 Bromptons and have change for a whole wardrobe of dayglo jackets - or whatever Brompton owners go for.

I notice that like all highly exclusive (read expensive) products, the Chanel bike is a limited edition. Limited presumably because the manufacturers have to stop work every half an hour with giggling fits over the fact nobody noticed the extra zero they added to the end of the retail price. This is essentially a nicely spec'd £500 roadster with a fancy paint job and two girls handbags attached to the rear rack. Most of the population of Copenhagen ride something similar for 10% of the price tag.

I just don't get why when a fashion house conducts a branding exercise, whatever was the lucky recipient becomes fashionable. Fine if it's Timothy Everest smartening up M&S's suits - they both know something about the rag trade. Or Linda Barker desperately attempting to take the chav out of dfs sofa range (has anyone ever paid full price for one of their sofas?) But Chanel and cycling just don't seem good bedfellows.

Hand shadows

I was back on the bike yesterday which felt great. I got home late thanks to SWTrains deciding to stop all the trains running through my station. This meant a taxi ride with the bike (who ever designed London's black cab was a cyclist - just open the door, turn the bars and you can sit with your bike) followed by six miles of cycling through crisp, moonlight woodlands.

When I wasn't being blinded by oncoming motorists, I noticed that the new bike light I'd bought created a great shadow on the tarmac. The brake lever and drop of the bar looked just like a kneeling elephant.

Sport relief

I've never been into telethons. Just the thought of all that goodwill is exhausting and none are ever going to come close to Live Aid. Sport Relief is one of the many events that passed me by so I was surprised to see Alan Shearer and Adrian Chiles beaming out of today's Evening Standard. Apparently they cycled 335 miles from Newcastle to London in two days - a good haul by anyone's standards.

Specialised must be delighted by the fact that they were able to so completely brand these two and pass it all off as "charidy".

The website has a few videos of the pair that will be familiar to any cyclist who has a few miles in thier legs - standing, munching flapjacks on a petrol station forecourt watching the traffic flow past.

My pervious post was inspired by a radio interview with Alan Shearer, perhaps if I'd listened properly I would have heard him mention this ride.

There is some irony in hearing Adrian Chiles describe how "deep he's had to dig" on this ride. Perhaps next time Nicole Cooke's up for Sports Personality of the Year he won't be tempted to ask patronising questions such as "do you fall off much?" If only Nicole been at BBC Television Centre to greet Chiles and ask him if his legs ached.

Pedal it like Beckham

I learnt the other day that professional football players aren’t allowed ride bikes – apparently it’s in their contracts. Nor are they allowed to go skiing. Footballers are valuable resources and like any company asset need to be maintained in good working order to deliver a full return on investment. Skiing is clearly tough on the knees and the risk of injury is high, not only to legs. I read that broken thumbs were a common snowboarding injury.

But cycling?

Is it because they are worried about damaging their precious limbs through pedalling or because they perceive that they may get knocked off and hurt? Given that getting caught speeding whilst over the safe alcohol limit is a rite of passage for most footballer it can’t be the latter.

What can be the harm in cycling to get a paper from the local corner shop …hang on there’s the issue. That one phrase sums up the whole problem: why would a footballer want to ride a bike to the corner shop when he can take a Bentley Continental GT?

1. footballers don’t live in places that have corner shops

2. footballers certainly wouldn’t collect their papers, they’d get them delivered or more likely

3. their agent would tell them all the bits they needed to know.

It’s a shame though as cycling is often prescribed as an entry point to taking up exercise or a part of a programme of recuperation.

The biggest shame is that children, so heavily influenced by celebrity sportsmen, particularly footballers, never see them riding a bike. At some point in a child’s life they will have had the conversation that runs

Child - “but I don’t want to [delete as appropriate] got to bed now/eat broccoli/dry my hair/do my homework”
Parent – “well [delete as appropriate] David Beckham/Frank Lampard/Wayne Rooney does”

The problem is that argument doesn’t work with “I’m not driving you to school everyday, why don’t you ride your bike?” since David Beckham/Frank Lampard/Wayne Rooney don’t ride bikes.

To get children cycling, it’s got to be cool yet accessible, not in a skinny jeans wearing, fixed gear, fakenger, cutting edge Hoxtonite kind of way.

Complete the set: astronaut, deep sea diver...

…bike messenger comes next in the list of uninsurable, yet now apparently “cool” professions. So you’re a 25-35 year old metrosexual looking for the next hip thing to sink your disposable income into – well it’s fixed gear cycling. And it’s official, two barometers of what’s up and coming have informed me of this. BBC 2’s Culture Show and trend forecasters (yes such organisations do exist) Future Laboratory both say that cycling’s officially cool.

The Culture Show had a 10-minute piece on alley cat races and followed some footage of a group messengers on a cycling-cider drinking-camping weekender. The theme was one of family, fraternity and f&#k it I like riding bikes. They’d have done it regardless of the Beeb’s camera crew.

Future Laboratory by contrast tells people who used think they were cool what kids (usually) are about to think is cool so that the un-cool people can make money from them. If Future Laboratories say that something’s going to be cool, then sometime, somewhere for someone it will – like palmists however some of the details can be a little vague.

Future Laboratories demographic profiling ranges from the sensible to the sublime: “Generation Jones”, “Rolodex Teens” and my personal favourite “Muffragettes” describing the rebirth of feminism – apparently. According to the blurb, fixed gear bikes are now “the defining fashion accessory for a new tribe of young urbanites” – you wouldn’t hear Madame Zola, your local palm reader utter that phrase.

But wait a minute, do we want cycling to be cool? Surely just making it normal would be better. Anything that gets people on bikes is a good thing, but sustained change comes from desire not diktat. Cool implies it’s fashionable and today’s achingly cool must have is tomorrow’s charity shop staple.

In fashion loose-waisted, generously cut practical dungarees are always going to lose out to skinny, low-rise denim. Because you’ve got to be thin enough to wear it; it’s exclusive. So it’s an obvious extension that fixed gears would become cool over a sensible bike, one with brakes, say.

The fashion industry’s already nibbling at the world of two wheels sleazily pimping it to help it sell more overpriced clothes under the banner of “eco-awareness” and this "all the kids are riding pencil thin retro steel frames with spoke cards" stuff doesn't help.

Double Dutch

An interesting article in the Times recently suggested that town planners were going to combat the UK’s obesity problem by building new towns with more cycle paths and outdoor recreational spaces. The theory seems to run: “this is how towns are designed in Holland, they all cycle and they aren’t as overweight so let’s do the same here”.

Now I’m up for anything that gets more people on a bike and Holland and Denmark are two countries that despite having similarly inclement weather to Britain get far more people on two wheels. Is the way that their towns are designed the cause of this? I somehow doubt it’s as simple as that.

The plan reminded me of the social housing projects of the 1960’s which seem to have singularly failed resulting in sink estates that are havens for despair. Has British society evolved enough yet to place the bike, if not at the heart of its culture, then at the heart of its transportation? I think that the answer is no. The lives of the average Brit are just don’t consider using a bike in favour of the precious, status defining car. Sure there are urban havens where it’s easy to give up owning a car in favour of a bike, but when you get out into the provinces, cycle facilities and bike-friendly public transport get thin on the ground.

The only way for such a town to work would be for cycling to become an integral aspect of people’s lives then build a town around that desire to cycle rather than planners forcing people to cycle. As the article says, lifestyle, food consumption, sedentary office work are all factors in Britain’s obesity problem.

I have fond memories of an exchange programme that my swimming club did years ago. I stayed with a Dutch family who didn’t own a car, only bikes. One night there was a disco and to get there I remember the mother giving me a lift on her bike – me sitting side-saddle on the rear rack. I think that was the last time I had a “backie”.

Heather report

I’m trying to consume less “news” these days. It’s a bit like caffeine, you know it’s not good for you, but just try steering clear of it. A key item (they aren’t called stories anymore in our fact-hungry world) in today’s bulletin was that the case begins for the courts to decide how much of Paul McCartney’s fortune Heather Mills is entitled to. In 1968 Norman Jewison who directed and produced The Thomas Crown Affair described the storyline as a “love affair between two bastards”. I get the same sensation about these two. McCartnety is untouchable pop royalty and Mills, despite her injuries, charity work can’t get people to see her side – McCartney’s gagging order won’t help – there see it’s impossible not to get drawn in.

Most mere mortals couldn’t dream of a list of items that Ms Mills will deem to be essentials. The fact that she’s not able to write a book about her exploits is worth £18m. I doubt though that a bike will be on her must haves list. Yet it was back in the hay day of their relationship that Heather and Paul were “spotted” enjoying a roll along Brighton sea front on a pair of non-descript MTB/hybrid fusions.

A bicycle is the stylist’s shorthand for carefree and I guess that’s the message they wanted to convey. More recently Heather has been out exorcising her demons with her newly appointed bodyguards. Dave Moulton’s excellent blog contains a number of posts that include pictures that really do convey a 1000 words. So does this one, but for all the wrong reasons. The guy on the left clearly hasn’t been on a bike for sometime and hasn’t dressed for the occasion. He's holding the handlebars like their attached to the bus he's about to pull in the "World's Toughest Man" contsts. In the next Home Office initiative to get policemen cycling their local neighbourhood, this is what to expect. The guy on the right is a sort of personal trainer/body guard who probably does most of his cycling on a stationery bike gazing vacantly at MTV or yummy mummies in his local gym.

It turns out that Heather’s quite a keen cyclist and goes out regularly on her bright yellow road bike – not a great idea for someone wanting to avoid the paparazzi. The bike looks like an aluminium Halfords Carerra but it’s hard to tell. Maybe she got a job lot, buying her body guards a bike each too - but not ones that would upstage her's. There are plenty of examples of disabled people who have completed impressive cycling feats, but Heather Mill’s cycling seems to have a certain defiance and anger to it. Not for her the science of heart rate monitors and lycra togs – more a case of “stuff it I’m off for a bike ride” – an attitude true to any cyclist’s heart.