The fortnight in cycling vol 4: adventures and Bono

Welcome to 2015! We hope it’s treating you well so far, and that you’re hatching a healthy amount of cycling plans for the year. The first section of this round-up aims to inspire this planning, and we ourselves were inspired by a fantastic image posted on twitter by Cycle Traveller on the 1st of January:

What an inspiring and excellent introduction to the new year. “You must be crazy!” is a refrain all cycle tourers will be familiar with. People will question every aspect of your plans – where will you sleep? what if you get a flat tyre? how will you be able to carry your stuff? what if you get lost? is it safe?!

Cycle Traveller give us all a great reminder that it’s important not to let these questions dishearten you. We all know that cycling is one of the most amazing ways to discover the world – here are a few stories to inspire you:

• Around in a Grand: two guys decided to see how far they could go with just their bikes and £1000 each. One dropped out when they reached Moscow, the other got all the way to Tokyo – there’s an incredible interview with him on Alistair Humphrey’s blog.
• From Prague to Berlin without a map: this adventure is a nod to the days before Strava, GPS, smartphones and all the other modcons we now have access to. The two cyclists allowed themselves 2 location checks per day to ensure they were heading the right way – the video below gives a breakdown of the trip:

Pro cyclists

We found a fantastic graphic on Reddit (credit to user historicusXIII) that breaks down the amount of pro cyclists per country. Each flag represents a cyclist, and the flags are arranged into the shape of the respective country. This gives a map where the countries are scaled accordingly to the amount of pro-cyclists from there. Click the image below to expand it:

We think this is great because it’s such a simple but captivating way of visualising the data, and it also gets us excited for 2015’s cycling calendar!

Bono

Sad news for U2 fans: Bono may never be able to play guitar again! This tragic news comes after he took a tumble from his bike while riding through Central Park. Cycling Weekly reported that he “[broke] his arm in six places and fractured his eye socket, hand and shoulder blade”.

We wish him a speedy recovery!

Cyclists reaching pariah status

Another piece in the Guardian recently about the perception of cyclists in society, this time through the lens of bike provisions on trains. The article correctly describes these provisions as “varied and piecemeal”, and it’s often hard to know whether bikes are allowed on the train you’re on, and if so during what times and in which carriage.

The author of the article saw his bike being kicked by a fellow commuter, who then demanded that he give up the seats the bike was positioned in front of despite there being other empty seats in the carriage, and the bike being in the correct area. Someone eventually came to his aid, but only to include the caveat “cyclists are idiots usually” in their defence.

It’s an ongoing and unnecessarily heated debate that is usually confined to words, but sometimes sees people lashing out (on both sides). We hope that 2015 sees the mutual animosity between some cyclists and non-cyclists subside! We’re all friends here after all, just trying to get from A-B.