Feeling flat
Ned’s love of urban riding is tested by the law of cycling misfortune
Cycling goes in cycles. Now, this may appear to be a daft statement, and in many ways it is. But I am a firm believer that my cycling life obeys some kind of higher cosmic laws of orbiting fortune and misfortune, unreadable to mortals, and immutable in their application. In short, I am fairly certain that we cyclists are held aloft by unknowable forces (isn’t there still a debate among physicists as to how exactly bicycles stay upright?) and driven to delight and despair by unseen actors.
I should perhaps explain. The recently completed Critérium du Dauphiné was shown every day on the telly, presented as nightly hour-long highlights in which David Millar and I commentated, and Gary Imlach stood in a very small studio passing interesting, wry and elegantly crafted comment on the efforts of Jumbo Visma to kill off any sniff of interest. But, far from being in France, enjoying the vast mountainscapes of the Alps, or the rugged beauty of the Auvergne, we all commuted to work in west London from our various accommodations. Gary, for example, took the tube. David unfolded his Brompton and glided through Richmond Park towards the river with his time triallist’s elegant poise, occasionally being spotted by keen-eyed roadies out for their morning dose of creative suffering among the bracken, the deer and the procession of 4x4s snaking their way across the park. Me? I mounted my almost extraordinarily dirty road bike, with a crossbar now so chipped that I can scarcely discern the original paintwork, and set off to pass through London’s various districts, stopping with grating frequency at the astonishing numbers of red lights.
As I have often expressed on these pages, urban riding is, for me, a great pleasure. I accept that it’s not perhaps for everyone, but I love it. As perverse as it sounds, and despite the invisibly noxious air I am forced to breathe, I enjoy the challenge of inventing a new route (in London there is always a new route), and I am genuinely enlivened by the sheer mental acuity required to avoid ending up on the bonnet of an Uber or upending a pensioner on her way back from the shops.
But there is one sensation that is the very opposite of enlivening: puncturing. Once again, I am conscious that I once penned an entire column about my hapless attempts to change an inner tube on route to an event at the Science Museum (of all places). So, at the risk of going over old ground, I’ll just say this: it happened again, and I was just as inept. So, if you happened to have been commuting past Oval underground station on the first day of the Dauphiné and spotted me close to weeping with blackened fingers and sweat dripping down my back, that is the reason.
That latest puncture came after a three-year punctureless hiatus. Though the pandemic led me to ride more frequently, somehow I had managed for so long to avoid that (literally) deflating feeling in which, in an instant, the nature of the ride is eradicated and the ghastly battle against time and rubber begins. But worse was to come.
About five days later, and once again frighteningly close to Kensington (where my Science Museum puncture had happened), I felt the rear wheel start to go all airlessly sloppy on me, and I knew that it had struck once again. Three years without a puncture, and now two in one week! The immutable law of cycling misfortune!
This time, however, and perhaps because I had undergone a refresher course in inner tube replacement and inflation only days before, I managed to effect the change in something close to a personal best time: probably just under ten minutes of concerted faffing. Sadly, though, the day’s bad luck wasn’t over.
Resuming my journey, I made progress as far as Shepherd’s Bush (a mile or so), where I stopped at the 435th set of red lights on my 16-mile commute. Sensing that something was weirdly amiss, I glanced back at my cycle rack. My pannier had been stolen! Lifted straight off!
As the shock subsided, I did a mental audit of what had gone missing, and realised that it contained my pump, spare tube, levers, a rain jacket and…my laptop! Mercifully, almost all of my work had been backed up on the cloud, save for my latest column for Cycling Plus, which had been stored only on my laptop. The one they had stolen was all about the pleasures of summer commuting. I would have to start again from scratch.