Sno' cycling

There are braver soles than me out there, all wrapped up in their super warm cycling gear, or just bearing the freezing cold through their lycra, but I haven't cycled to work since 2009. I felt like I admitted defeat early by buying a week tube pass early last week but my bald fat tires were already prone to skidding a little in the wet so they definitely wouldn't be happy on ice.

My bike would quite like a new pair of tires with decent mountain bike tread, but I'm hoping these ones will hold out till I find it a new home in March. In the middle of last week's crazy snow days, I looked into how to make studded snow tyres, but seems its a fairly permanent DIY job which requires a spare set of wheels with decent tread to start with, and might not be so easy riding once I get out of the ice-lands of North West London to central London where there's still dry tarmac around.

We managed the ten minute ride to the supermarket on Sunday in a light snow blizzard but that's been the extent of my cycling efforts for more than two weeks.

This morning I was actually looking forward to riding into work. The roads were drying up nicely after a couple of snow free days and ice was all but melted. Yet again snow foiled my commuting plans, a few inches had stuck to the ground overnight and a fine mist of snow continued to drizzle until lunchtime. I'm not quite sick of the freezing cold / snow / craziness yet but much more of this and we'll have to invest in sleds...

The 6000 km photo

There has been a long winter (mostly of running) since the last 1000 milestone. Exciting bike events in last 1000 kilometres include losing bike computer, breaking bike rack and most excitingly handlebars coming loose from bike during Norfolk Coast ride - luckily when had stopped bike outside a pub where they had the necessary tools to tighten it up again.
(And that explains that wierd feeling that the handlebars were moving out of sync with the road.)

Clocked over 6000 within metres of the house, so another exciting picture of urban London sprawl is to your right.

The 4000 km photo

I've done 4000 kms! Way hey. Not so much as lycra or clipless pedals in sight. This was taken in the middle of Normandy on day three of our France cycle adventure (and back dated as such...).

This wasn't one of the rainy days, in fact it was pretty sweet from start to end. Nice tarmac in France.

The 3000 km picture

Three thousand kilometres in and its another central London road...

The clock ticked over just before an odd art deco building with giant stone cats outside, which sounds exotic but its just down the road from my work, and on the road up to Camden (Camden Road?) Most of the last 1000 kms have been done on the daily commute, except a ride down to Brighton, two day trip out to Oxford and a quiet weekend ride north of London to see friends of Justin's.

Its summer, would you believe it? Not from this picture anyway...

The 2000 km photo

April Critical Mass bike ride in central London - this is just after we'd turned TCR corner into Oxford Street, not that you can tell from photo. Dusk just falling at about 8pm on a Friday night. Justin and I left at the early evening hour of 9:00. First fine Critical Mass of 2008, and you got the feeling that they could be going all night....

The 1000 km photo

Hopefully the start of a tradition - and I've been carrying a camera around for a few days in anticipation....

Not quite the achievement that clocking the bike computer will be, but little steps, eh.

All these adventures we've been having and the numbers click over less than a km from home on a regular weekday commute.

View from an afternoon...

Spent a year wondering what this was.

Then we saw someone up there.

But this Lev says it wasn't him. Doesn't answer the question, what the hell is that? What does it do?

Any suggestions?