Bike!!!

[liv]

I bought a bike! I've been trying to for ages but not had time to get to bike shops when they were open. Today we went to John's Bikes in Arbury Court and explained what I wanted and John pointed me out a bike he reckoned would be suitable. It's not a classical Dutch bike but it has some similar characteristics, upright and sturdy. John only sells new bikes, and I sort of wanted to get second-hand but on the other hand, this bike fits my requirements, it's in my price range, and available now. I tried it by riding up and down the road and it felt pleasant, so I decided to go for it.

Talking to John, who is clearly a bike enthusiast, reminded me a bit of my Grandad who use to run a bike shop. But he died before I really got to the point of having adult conversations with him, so I mostly know about him from stories. I do feel sort of wistful that I can't tell him all about my new shiny bike and all the advances in technology of the past three decades, but I suspect that if my Grandad were actually still alive I wouldn't have gone 20 years without owning a bike of my own.

New bike is shiny and black and has Python written on it, so it needs a pythony name. Top candidates so far are Regulus and Apodora. But suggestions welcome, very much including programming jokes.

Getting the bike home was interesting; it's only a mile but it's along a lot of main roads. I ended up wheeling the bike halfway up Campkin Road, and then found one of those barely functional cycle paths by the school, one that has junction boxes in the middle of it and only goes for a few hundred metres before disappearing into road and pedestrian-only pavement. And then I turned off into the little backstreets where our house is and bravely cycled the rest of the way on the actual road. Going round parked cars is still scary but I think I will get used to it.

Definitely need practice at cycling on roads, but acquiring the bike gets me over the major hurdle.

Comments

[ursula]

The obvious programming joke (esp. since it's black) would be Panda.

[sonia]

Yay, bike! Bittersweet about your grandfather - sounds like he would have been delighted about your new purchase.

You might know this already, but for the most part it's safer to ride in a straight line outside the parked cars than swerve in and out. That way cars see you and they can go around you as needed, rather than having you possibly pop out unexpectedly. Of course, you're the one observing the situation and can see what's safer in your environment.

[lovingboth]

Yep.

The cars need to go around you rather than past you, parked cars or no parked cars.

[cjwatson]

Hurray! Looking forward to seeing it :-)

[lethargic_man]

Yay!

[ceb]

Yay! Happy new bike :-)

[zhelana]

congrats!

[hatam_soferet]

Hooray.

Have you a helmet, dear badger? I don't suppose the potholes in Cambridge are nearly as awful as the ones in Montreal, but still.

[wychwood]

New bike! I would call it Monty :)

Do you drive at all? I don't remember - but with regard to parked cars it is best, as I understand it, to take a similar strategy as cars do. Don't move into a lane with parked cars in it unless there's a ton of space, signal and move out a lane well before you actually need to, give them plenty of clearance. If you are impeding the flow of car traffic, well, they will just have to live with that. You have as much right as them to use the lane.

[naath]

Yes, it's much better to stay on the outside of a row of parked cars than repeatedly ducking in and out.

If there is only space for one-way traffic and there is traffic attempting to come the other way it is polite to sometimes tuck in to the row of parked cars and allow the oncoming traffic through, but you aren't required to do that (you'd probably do the same in a car, if you could, sometimes but not every time someone was waiting for you). Be aware that in Cambridge some motorists will persist in believing that such narrow gaps between parked cars contain enough space to pass cyclists (they usually don't) and leave a big gap between yourself and the cars on either side to reinforce the lack of available space or you will be being squashed between a parked car and a moving one (and in any case leave space, people open car doors).

[silveradept]

I think Pythia would be a good name for the bike, and I hope it serves you well.

[green_knight]

Congratulations - I hope you'll enjoy it a lot!

[seekingferret]

And they built for Pharaoh store-cities, Python and Raanses.

[hairyears]

Has the bicycle been named yet?

My suggestion: Zarathustra.

Partly, "Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things"...

...Mostly: "Thus Spoke Zarathustra".