A new way to communicate. Help needed!

There's a big queue of traffic outside my office window as I type.  I started Quickerbybike.com after riding past this queue every day.  Queue is still going strong.  Same drivers?

On the plus side, I see loads of cyclists these days.  Way more than before.

The quickerbybike.com shorts are a way to communicate with motorists and point out the alternative and encourage them to switch.

And I hope we're reaching some.  But it'd be great to reach more.

So I'm going to get a sign, like this clicky made up and I'll plonk it next to the road each morning.  You might be thinking that this is hardly thinking big.  True enough.

So what should the new sign look like and say?  Please help me!  Tweet or email your ideas to martin at quickerbybike dot com.

It mustn't be smug.  It will include the quickerbybike logo, nice and big.  Then perhaps the simple message: "Let me help you to cycle instead of driving.".

I'm going to leave an area white so I can write different messages each week.  Suggestions for this would be great too.  Perhaps we can have a weekly poll.

But please - what should the main, printed sign say?

Maybe even just the logo and a big question-mark?

Thanks in anticipation.

New kit order, summer 2011.

The emails asking for kit are piling up so I'm about to place an order.


They're Endura Singletrack shorts embriodered with the quickerbybike.com logo and they're £30. Endura haven't got annoyed with me yet (they charge £42).  It's a campaign, not a business, and I pay the postage on the shorts.

No lycra kit this time round, sorry.

If you'd like a pair, let me know what size you want and give me your address. Email martin at quickerbybike dot com.  I need you to pay for the shorts up front (as you would if a friend were organising some team kit for you, which is basically what this is) and then there will be a two-to-three week wait for the shorts. When I've collated the order, I'll email all those who orderd with bank details so you can pay me.

There are girls' and boys' versions of the shorts. They are big-ish: I'm a 31inch waist and wear "small".

If you know anybody else who might want a pair, please put them onto me. I don't place orders very often so best to include as many people as possible.

Any questions, just ask.

Martin

Ten cycle commute lessons.

A great little piece here on The London Cyclist

http://www.londoncyclist.co.uk/tips/10-lessons-learnt-from-cycle-commuting-for-a-year/

Ues rechargeable batteries!

My friend Phil has a very reliable moral compass.  He reckons in 50 years time people will look back at the wastefull way we live now and find it just as astonishing and deplorable as we now find the idea of a slave trade.

Maybe that's going a bit far.

But having someone make you a new battery (having mined all the materials and manufactured each cel for you) every time your old one runs out isn't very cool.

Get a recharger and buy rechargeable batteries!  If you want a selfish reason to do so: they're much cheaper in the long run and....you can charge them at work!  Free power.

Go on, use the last of your evil throw-aways, recycle them properly and then sort yourself out with some rechargeables for next winter.  You can have a hug from me if you do.

Patch your old tubes.

I get punctures all the time.

If you want to avoid them, take these simple steps:

1. Get tyres with some protection. Here, there's even a site dedicated to them: Puncture resistant tyres
2. Check your tyres as often as you can be bothered for little flints or pieces of glass.  Most punctures are caused by small sharp bits that have been working their way into your tyre over a few rides.  Flick them out with a pin/knife/fork/whatever. How often you check will depend on how important it is to you.  If someone you love commutes 13 miles across london to a stressy job, from whom a mid-commute "I've got a puncture" phonecall would cause you plenty of heart-ache, you'll check hers/his every night.
3. Don't ride in the gutter.  Keep your eyes peeled for glass (more and more of it about.  A deliberate campaign?).

Anyway, when you do get a puncture, find the nasty, remove it and change the tube.  Stuff the old tube in your bag and add it to the pile at home.  Don't bother arsing about at the side of the road patching the tube.  It doesn't work well in the rain and once the tube of glue is open it tends to go off before you next use it.

Once every few months, sit down with a box of patches (Rema Tip Top from UK Bikestore at 30p each?), some sand paper, glue and a pump, turn on the afternoon play on Radio 4 and repair them all.

New tube = £4, patch =30p

No brainer.  Can't do it?  Want help?  Email me!

Have your stationery delivered by bike

There's a zero-emissions way to have your stationery delivered in London.

http://gnewtcargo.co.uk/

Roadhug.org

Riding on my little green bike from Clapham Junction to Kensington yesterday for a meeting, I found myself staring at a poster on the back of a bus.  It was a Roadhug campaign poster.

http://www.roadhug.org/index.html

If you read earlier posts in this blog, you'll remember that my friend James came up with the exact same approach for his cycle commute.  See "A ride amongst friends", posted in December.  He was on to something big.  Kensington and Chelsea (the London Borough) have just adopted the philosophy for their road safety campaign, launched last week.  Pretend all the road users around you are people you know.  It works wonders.

Lycra kit will be here on Tuesday!

Endura had no staff during the epic scottish weather so they're bahind with production.

However, the kit is now finished and will be dispatched on Monday.  I'll get it on Tuesday and will get it out to you that day, I hope.

Thank you again for your patience.  Service hasn't been great and I'm sorry.

Martin

No junk mail please! (again)

I recently visited a Royal Mail depot in Surrey.  It was huge.  Perhaps the size of five football pitches and with five or six large industrial sheds.  It was serviced by a fleet of twenty or thirty articulated lorries.

The sole purpose of this depot was to distribute junk mail.

You have to work quite hard to stop receiving junk mail.  Three steps.  Here they are:

1. "No junk mail" sticker.  You can usually get these free from your council.
   If you live in Richmond and Twickenham http://tinyurl.com/2uhk7g3
   If you live in Wandsworth http://tinyurl.com/396q4js
2. Register with the Mail Preference Service.  http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/mpsr/
3. The most difficult but perhaps the most important is to opt out of Royal Mail door to door deliveries.  Royal Mail deliver tonnes of unaddressed mail for their clients.  To opt out you must email them at optout@royalmail.com and they will send you a form.  Fill the form out and send it back.  Scandalously, this will only last two years, after which the junk from Royal Mail will start reappearing, so you have to register again.

And then you're done.  You no longer have to pick up piles of rain-forest from your doorstep and carry it to your recycling bin.

Doin't you think it's a bit scary that you have to take the above steps to avoid the default situation?  With the default situation being that a huge industry toils away to deliver stuff nobody wants.