I was a commuter zombie.

For six months I took the bus.

The shock of my first trip in the articulated crush of the #149, which had one of the highest crime incident rates in London and even a song dedicated to it, was unforgettable.

Sometimes I took the train. Or the bus then the tube. But they were all variations on pain, marked by the beep of an Oyster card.

I wonder if people develop an instinctive reaction to that noise, like Pavlov’s dogs? They should. No wonder so many Londoners are so miserable.

And all the while my friends patiently chipped away at my resistance.

I’ll admit it… I was scared.

The sea of traffic around Liverpool Street Station was the part I was most hung up on.

I looked at the towering double deckers buses , and the taxis buzzing around them, and couldn’t imagine navigating them on a bike.

So I carried on commuting, an expensive fifty minute journey which ever way I took it, and a shock for a guy who a month earlier and living in Glasgow could get to work in less than ten.

Finally, six months later, I caved in and got myself a second-hand bike in Camden.

It was a spur of the moment thing, and I ended up with a beaten up aluminium hybrid. I won’t go so far as to call it ugly, but it certainly had some… unusual… geometry.

That didn’t bother me though.

London shrunk in size overnight.

I could get to work in half the time, exactly when I wanted.

The traffic which I’d been so concerned out was not really that bad once I knew how to claim my stake in the road.

This bike thing was proving addictive, and I was hungry for longer trips.

I looked for patches of green not too far outside London, and eventually settled on the Hoo Penisula to the east of Gravesend.

A mate and I rode off without a map or the ability to even fix a puncture. Afte stopping to buy an A to Z, and unnecessarily taking a huge detour to avoid a short stretch of dual-carriageway, we had clocked up thirty miles. (Thankfully without punctures). We ate our sandwiches and got the train back to London. It felt good.

When it came to replace my hybrid (mercifully the frame developed a crack) I did my homework and settled on a second-hand Langster. Its components were alien to me — eggbeater pedals and drop handlebars — and I wobbled home after buying it feeling slightly out of control.

That changed of course, and I grew to love the simplicity of my newer bike.

The lack of gears. The quiet hum of the chain. The sheer nippiness of the thing.

My old commute to work, from Hackney Downs and through the madness around Liverpool Street to Borough Market.

A couple of months later my friends were talking about a trip to Brighton.

I looked it up on a map. The distance seemed a little daunting, and I didn’t fancy it without gears….

I found myself buying another bike — a beautiful blue Raleigh found via the LFGSS forum.

I still have the email with the component spec and a note that it had just been serviced at Brixton Cycles, but at the time neither meant much to me.

It was the colour and lack of decoration and decals that really got me I think. That and the fact that the gear shifters also controlled the brakes. That blew my little bike mind.

After decade without cycling or any other kind of regular exercise, here I was with three bikes leaning against my bedroom wall.

I was hooked.

The ride to Brighton made sure of that.

The first big descent took me completely by surprise, and I suddenly realised what the drops on my handlebars were for. Sixty odd miles flew by, and we wolfed down a pub meal and a pint too many to celebrate.

Next up was the Dunwich Dynamo, the quasi-legendary overnight ride from London Fields to the coast of Suffolk, reportedly instigated by couriers back in 1993, and now a yearly pilgrimage for thousands of people on all kinds of bikes.

A hundred and ten moonlit miles without sleep, past Essex pubs crowded with smiling faces, a village hall pitstop, swooping in darkness down narrow lanes with just the glow of the bike in front to indicate the curve of the road and the hum of rubber-on-tarmac the only noise, the welcome glow of first light and a bacon roll, and then final push to the beach for a cold swim and a warm beer. Magic.

On the beach at the end of the Dunwich Dynamo. Yours truly on the far right , still without any proper cycling clothes other than a baggy pair of MTB shorts.

Thing snowballed even further the next year when I bought a carbon race bike and rode the Etape Caledonia, narrowly missing making it into the top 200 times for the KOM stage. But that’s another story.

There’s a more important question at stake…

Why and how do we become so attached to our bikes?

I’ve formulated a vaguely scientific theory based on the idea that the brain sees tools as extensions of the body.

“It’s a phenomenon each of us unconsciously experiences every day, the researchers said. The reason you were able to brush your teeth this morning without necessarily looking at your mouth or arm is because your toothbrush was integrated into your brain’s representation of your arm.”

I think this applies to bikes as well… after all you can ride one without thinking. You can ride one without using your hands. You can cycle one any which way you want and it’s still the best way to travel I can think of.

Your bike becomes a part of you that you can’t forget. A temporary body part that changes your perception of space and distance.

Heck even a man suffering from Parkinson’s and unable to walk can still cycle.

There’s clearly something marvellous going on between a man and his bike.

A bike is there even when you’re not riding it, imprinted into your soul.

And that’s why I think a second hand bicycle (or three) saved my life.

Posted to Features
by James Greig

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