The Doc refuses to subscribe to the notion that antiquated bicycles need to see out their days sporting an assortment of hardy perennials
One of my regular routes – my shortest middle-distance route with moderate climbing but avoiding the really rough road in Shepreth – has a feature that always troubles me.
In one of the villages I pass is a house that has a bicycle bolted to a garden wall, and decorated with hanging baskets. It’s not a young bicycle. It’s got rod brakes, a full oil-bath chain cover and a threespeed hub. It’s also very rusty, the leather of the saddle has rotted away almost completely, the tyres are nothing more than a wire bead and a memory. The Argyranthemums are pretty decent, but if anything the care lavished on them makes it worse.
I hate seeing it hanging there. It looks like it’s been crucified. But doing this to bicycles seems to be a thing. I passed a cafe the other day that had a rusting road bike mounted on the canopy over the front door with pigeons crapping on it.
And in Ireland not long ago I saw an old Columbia penny-farthing chained to a drainpipe outside an antique shop, well on its way to disintegrating entirely – two thirds of the spokes had gone, the front wheel was warped, half the handlebar had broken off. A few years ago it would have been worth more than the crappy contents of the shop. By the time I saw it, it was worth less than the drainpipe.
I don’t understand this. Even in rural Ireland, where a rusting Ford Escort in the front garden is a regular sight, no one decorates one with flowerpots and claims it’s a feature. They don’t put it in front of a shop to draw the customers in. No one puts a knackered washing machine on their patio with trailing geraniums growing out of it, and clearly that would look no worse than a crucified bike with floral tribute.
I’ve always felt that bikes are for riding. And if they’re not for riding, at the very least they’re for preserving so you can maybe ride them again one day. When I bought a Lotus 110 frame (the famous ‘Boardman’ bike) a friend was aghast that I raced it. He thought I should hang it on a wall. “Though of course,” he said, “if you were going to do that you’d need to put Dura-Ace on it rather than Ultegra.”
How to… be a junior
Some parts of being a junior bike racer are fairly simple. You need to say things like, “Who’s Bradley Wiggins?” while looking baffled at the mention of the name. (Alternatively, freak people out and get a reputation as a Young Conservative by saying, “SIR Bradley Wiggins actually.”)
You need to ask questions like, “Why does your bike only have 11 sprockets?” and, “What are those things that pinch the rim of your wheel when you pull the brake lever? Doesn’t it damage the carbon? Actually, that’s not carbon – what is that? It’s weirdly cold feeling.”
Ther
