The Bike Blog

According to the Guardian, Google are giving 2,000 of it’s Europe employees a free bike. The health and safety people have also got involved, so each bike will also come with a Google branded helmet.

Holger Meyer, Germany’s first Google employee, came up with the idea and staff will be able to choose from a range of models including a “cool cruiser” - a folding bike for those that only make part of their trip to work under pedal power - and men’s and women’s hybrids.

Now I want to work there even more.

I’ve had a hectic fortnight with a lot of traveling back and forth, so I hired a little car.

It was supposed to save me time and money and generally make my life easier. What it actually did was drive me mental and cost me a fortune.

This is why four wheels is two too many…

Firstly there is traffic. It seems that since the last time I drove, the number of cars on the road has doubled. Drivers have got considerably more idiotic as well, and it’s now apparently OK to pull out in front of people on the motorway, slow down and wobble from side to side.

I have spent longer in traffic jams than I would have on trains, and you can’t read or type whilst driving. I did manage to move some furniture, but what it cost me in petrol and parking tickets I could have just bought replacement stuff in London.

There’s also the issue of the constant surveillance that car drivers now have to endure. Speed cameras, traffic-light cameras, parking cameras and the Orwellian overlords of all this technology; over-zealous traffic wardens, blind to logic and reason.

I was given a £100 fine for parking with my wheel on a kerb. It wasn’t causing an obstruction, but it did help to fill the warden’s quota for the day.

There’s also the green aspect - my 900 miles contributed more carbon emissions than a whole lot of train journeys would have.

Possibly the only benefit was that I got a glimpse of city traffic from the other side of a car window.

Thank you to the man on a moped in Brixton (GP53 OLC), who smacked into my wing mirror, then stopped in front of me at a red light and desperately stared ahead, pretending that he hadn’t noticed.

The cycles and motorbikes that crowded me at every junction, swerving in front of me and narrowly missing my deposit-pending-paintwork showed me what a pain I must be when riding.

I’m not sympathetic though, anyone who chooses to drive rather than ride must be a masochist.

Shhhhh, shhhhh, shhhhh. There it is. Shhhhh, shhhhh, shhhhh. Perfect rhythm, rider and bicycle in complete unison. Not pushing the pedals, not fighting against the bike but flowing with it. Moving at speed simply by thinking, impulses rushing through nerves, muscles consuming the products of innumerable chemical reactions, slick tyres racing across the blacktop. In road cycling it’s called cadence. It may be measured in revolutions-per-minute but it’s not just a question of speed. It’s about fluidity, smoothness: rhythm.

But it’s not always easy to find. Struggling up a climb, for instance, striving to keep the easiest gear turning, desperately trying to keep your legs turning fast enough to find any sort of consistency. Putting all your efforts into making sure your feet are describing complete circles rather than degenerating into chaotic lolloping. And, with your body committed to keeping one tempo, you have to find the presence of mind to disconnect the pattern of your breathing from the rhythm of your legs. Rejecting the usual rhythmic rules of cycling, you find yourself breathlessly reaching for the oxygen-rich oasis of syncopation.

There are also times when getting stuck in a rhythm can be as frustrating as not finding it in the first place. These are the times in which the rhythm of your legs comes into step with the rhythm of your thoughts. One moment, you’re happily cycling along, the next you find that you’re cycling in time with the last piece of music you heard before leaving the house. Or are you thinking through the music at the speed you’re cycling? In some circumstances, this can be helpful: a primal punk beat can help you feel smoother and faster through twisty mountain trails. But on the commute to work, it’s less beneficial. Not only can songs embed themselves in your brain for the rest of the day, there’s also the risk of finding yourself singing at traffic lights. Which can’t be good.

For most of the time, though, rhythm is your riding partner. It’s the pulse that underlies the perfect, ecstatic monotony of road cycling on a flat road. Whether it be as part of a chain-gang or a solo effort to cover the distance, your brain can lose itself in the rhythm and focus on nothing but the bike in front or the white line unfurling itself under your front wheel. These are the moments that road cycling makes sense: the moments during which the mind can be free.