Tour de Farce

The Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, Denmark, is home to the Bicycle Museum. It’s not a lot of bicycles, but rather a pedal-driven, human-powered exhibit that takes up to 10 minutes to cycle. We didn’t know if we were allowed to cycle it ourselves or if we had to wait for a museum guard. There was no one around; no guard, and, at the time, no other visitors. we clambered aboard and made a film. It’s nine minutes long. If you watch it all I don’t know whether I should be impressed or appalled. And my apologies to Zoe for… well, just for… this:

And thank you to Zoe for giving me a Flip camera as a gift. Without it none of this would have been possible. More films to follow. I’ll try and keep them shorter.

the joys of cycling

Well, there aren’t many. I used to cycle a lot. I even had two bikes; a touring bike and a racing bike. I loved my bikes, and then, in what must have been a true moment of madness, I sold them both, or rather traded them in, for a soulless mountain bike. if I was still using my battered old touring bike I’d have put a picture of it up for you to see, so pleased was I with it. No picture of the mountain bike, for I hate it.

My touring bike had been to France with me. In the early 1990′s I cycled around France on my own, covering something like 800 miles in two weeks. I was sad, lonely and sunburnt but I look back affectionately at that trip. Now the bike’s gone.

My racing bike was rarely used; a Giant; a perk from my TV days, where, thanks to meeting a man called Tim who worked for Giant, we managed to get these great bikes half price. Trev still has his.

I sold my Giant bike, and my touring bike that had cried with me through France, for £80. For both of them. And I got an ugly mountain bike. What was I thinking? As for regrets, and mistakes; in my list of Top Ten regrets and mistakes this most probably figures about… well, about 13th. it doesn’t quite make it in to the Top Ten. After all, they’re just bikes.

My mountain bike has been out of use for a couple of years. Why did I ever buy a mountain bike? If I go over a pebble I get jittery. At no point will I ever cycle up, or dow, a mountain. Well, I’ve got it out, oiled it, pumped it up… Blimey, I sound like a review of an 80′s Schwarzenegger movie… and today I went for a little bike ride. All with the aim of lowering my blood pressure (currently 2574/3). And if I hadn’t gone for a bike ride I wouldn’t have seen this:

Morris dancing by a Lewisham bin.

Right. That’s the bike back in the shed.