The one where the new bike arrived
I worked from home this morningpartly to keep an eye on our eldest daughterwho will remain another subject for another time for quite some time to comeand partly to wait for the new bike to arrive that was foreshadowed in my tealeaves. Or maybe an email arrived yesterday evening telling me it was en-route, for delivery today.
After a nightmare morning with the kids, I busied myself with folding the mountains of clothes that had sprung up around the house, hoovering the stairs and landing, going on a sock hunt, and generally attempting to right our ship in the most unsuccessful way possible. Cutting a long story shortif I don't do it, it doesn't happen.
Throughout the morning I kept half an eye on work email, and replied to anything that drifted my way. I also kept half an eye on the time. Where was the parcel delivery truck ?The sun was shining outside mid-morning, and I had discovered while walking back and forth that one of the stacks of clothes in the kitchen was dampdestined for the tumble dryer (the washine machine is faster than the dryer, so we end up with a bizarre cache of damp clothes that builds up over a few days). While standing in the garden, pegging out the clothes, I turned the radio off, and left the doors openI was NOT about to fall victim to some stealth driver dropping the bike off while I pegged clothes out.
The time crept towards lnchtime, and I e-mailed my other halfbeginning the well-worn rant about delivery logistics companies being about as much use as a chocolate teapot. I was halfway through the second paragraph when a large white van materialised at the end of the driveway. A man with a hipster beard and a clip-board strode to the front door, and admired his own Jedi powers as I opened the door on his approach.“I've got a new bike on the van for you!”“Excellent”I signed the packing slip while he lumbered from the van with the largest cardboard box in the known universe.“Greatmore cardboard to get rid of”The delivery driver grinned, thanked me for the paperwork, and walked back towards the van.“If you have any problems with the bike, there is a number on the paperworkjust give us a call, and we'll sort it out”And so it was I found myself standing on the drive with a cardboard box not unlike the monolith from A Space Odyssey 2001 shortly before lunch. Two minutes later the box was open, and an almost completely assembled bike rolled out, along with a couple of bubble packs containing tools, and pedals. The handlebars hung from the frame, dangling by the brake cablesobviously assembled at the factory in advance.
It is a “Charge Plug 0”the most basic model made by a British start-up. It fits my purposescommuting to and from the office, and townperfectly. It's a very simple bikeand deliberately so. No suspension, no gears, and no hydraulic brakes. It's about as minimal as you can get before the idiotic territory of fixed gear bikes (which I wasn't going to go anywhere near).
Ten minutes after tearing the cardboard open, the pedals were on and the handlebars adjusted. Time for a quick run up and down the street before gathering my stuff to go to work.
I haven't owned a “single speed” bike since I was about 14 years old. It would have been a “Raleigh Ultra Burner” BMX. Every bike since has had gears of one form or anotherfrom the “Raleigh Maverick”, to the GT that was stolen, and the Felt Q720 that I'm retiring after seven or eight years continual commutingliterally until it began to fall to bits for the second time.
First thoughts from the journey to the office are that it's actually fun to ride. I wondered for the first mile about the choice of cogsand how difficult it might be to pull away from junctions. My fears were unfoundedbut then I have legs like treetrunks from cycling for years. Once away from built-up roads, I took my hands from the handlebars, and discovered that it tracks very well indeedit's far more stable than my previous bike (I have no idea how a bike designer goes about achieving something like thatI imagine it's a black art, not unlike making a teapot spout that doesn't dribble).
One observationdiscovered after another mile or sowas that the bike feels very different when standing up than any bike I've had previously. I'm not sure if it's geometry, stiffness, or the lack of forksbut it felt very strange. Something to get used to.
On the way home from work this evening I found myself grinning while cycling along. I can't remember doing that for years, and shook my head at my own idiocy.
Hopefully one weekend soon I'll take it out for a longer run, and have more thoughtsbut for nowfor it's intended purposethe Charge Plug 0 is nigh on perfect.