Upcycling

“So I don’t think that I like grease and sparks quite as much as I like knitting and baking” Kate said as she handed over a box containing the various pieces of her vintage ladies shopper bike.  She’d found the dilapidated Hercules Balmoral online and proceeded to disassemble and strip the entire bike with the intention of refurbishing it, but now it looked like the task of reassembly was going to fall to me.  I took the opportunity to break down and rebuild my own bike, which had been my Dad’s mountain bike that he used to ride alongside me when I was a child, and come the start of the summer we had two good-as-new bicycles.  Her bike looked classic in black with a brown Brookes saddle and a wicker basket; mine looked like Frankenbike in green and black, with various boxes bolted on and a rack to hold my surfboard hanging off one side.

Kate and I used to live an hour's drive apart, she on the south coast of Cornwall and me about 45 miles away on the north coast.  It seemed like a nice idea for our first roll out last summer to be an overnight bicycle camping trip leaving from my home and travelling to hers, pedalling the coast roads and the cycle trails and stopping off at beaches along the way.  We’d upcycled our bicycles and we upcycled an awful lot of steep hills as we wound our way down the Cornish coast.  What follows is a photographic journal of our trip, shot entirely on 35mm film by Kate and myself:

We should've caught the ferry at high tide.

Long hills and lots of luggage.

Coasting downhill to the beach.

The Upcycling chalkboard.

Kate checking out the distance to our campsite, just the other side of that far headland.

Cyclo-shortcuts to avoid the holiday traffic. 

 Camp.

Washing the road off with a quick sunset bellyboard session. 

Fuel. 

We stopped at backroad farm-stalls to buy fruit and lunch provisions. 

 Two and a half foot at eight seconds with a light nor-westerly wind.  I probably needn't have bothered hauling my surfboard along with me if I'm honest.

A polite reminder to myself for all of the "up" bits.

Can you overflow a bike?

It turns out that Kate's house sits at quite some elevation.

The Last Lane.

The Finish Line.

A big thanks to the team at Babes&Bikes in Wadebridge for sorting out our gears and brakes (and giving my probably quite questionable workmanship the necessary once-over) before we set off on our journey, and to various colleagues of ours for the help and advice that they gave whilst ridiculing how heavy I'd made my bike.

"Sunshine Sunday" Criteria

Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia.  By Chris Burkard for Surfer Magazine.

Today is "Sunshine Sunday" in the UK, the day when travel agents and tour operators prepare for around two million Brits to look for the light at the end of the wintery tunnel and book their summer holidays.  Maybe you're planning 2013's movements today also, and looking forward to the waves yet to come?
  
Trips, projects, expeditions, adventures - call them what you will (although if we're being picky, you can't plan adventures, they're what happens when a trip or expedition goes wrong), many of us populate our daydreams with these and while away the boredom of long, lonely drives or any other mind-numbing downtime planning and scheming.
This year I'm setting myself some criteria for the projects on my to-do list.  Each trip, if at all possible, has to fall into one of the following two categories:

• An ordinary trip done in an interesting way.
• An interesting trip done in an ordinary way.

It's that simple.  If it's a trip that's close to home or the sort of thing that's common fodder then I'm going to endeavour to do it in an interesting way, and if it's more of an expedition or exploratory trip then I'll probably have to undertake it by the (most likely stock-standard) ways and means available to me.   

These days, you'll be lucky to find something, anything, that somebody else hasn't done already - but that's no reason not to do it.

The six-wheeled truck used to explore the Kamchatka Peninsula.  Photo by Chris Burkard.

Over the past few months I've taken a lot of inspiration from the trips that these images are taken from.  The January issues of Surfer magazine and Surf Europe feature a trip to the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia, a trip that was well documented through various social networking outlets by Chris Burkard and Foster Huntington who had portable solar panels with them to charge their cameras and laptops.   They scored good, fun, cold surf where nobody really expected it, exploring the region in a six-wheeled former Soviet military truck and a helicopter.  There's a great video available to view (it can't be embedded on this blog) through Surfer magazine, here.

Kamchatka campfire.  Photo by Chris Burkard.

Around the same time as the Kamchatka trip, Californian pro-surfer Dan Malloy was cycling the length of California with two friends, carrying all of their camping and surfing gear in panniers and on bike trailers.  They travelled slowly, stopping off to surf, visit friends and work stints on organic farms along the coast.  It just so happens, as luck would have it, that Dan's two companions comprised a professional photographer and a videographer.  

Slow is Fast.  Photo by Dan Malloy.

Dan Malloy running out for a surf, the Slow is Fast bicycle trip, California.  Photo by Chris Burkard.

Feeling inspired?  There are so many ways that you can go, do, and experience places and faces these days if you put your mind to it.  Maybe it'll be a staycation with a twist, a micro-adventure in your own backyard.  Or perhaps it'll be a trip which you spend more time researching, planning and preparing for than you actually spend doing it.  Either way, it'll make for a memorable one.  One that you can talk about over a drink in the pub when the days are short this time next year.  An experience that might just set the tone, or the wheels in motion, for the next.

Scott G Toepfer takes brilliant photographs of people having too much fun riding around on motorbikes.  Check out It's Better In The Wind.

Le Maillot Jaune

When I was 11 years old the Tour De France crossed the English Channel for a couple of stages and passed within 10 miles of my childhood home in the south of England.  It was sports day at my primary school and my Dad asked the Head Teacher if he could take me out of school for the morning to go and watch one of the biggest sporting events in the world pass our front door.  The Head Teacher said that school was more important and I wasn't to miss a day, so on the morning of sports day my Dad let me sleep in and woke me up telling me that I wasn't going to school that morning.  Legend.


This afternoon British cycling stepped to the front in a sport typically dominated by Continental European countries and made some bold statements.  Bradley Wiggins rode up the Champs Elysees  wearing the coveted Yellow Jersey that signifies the overall leader of this year's 2,173 mile Tour De France (the biggest annual sporting even in the world) and became the first British rider to win the event.  In second place came Chris Froome making a British one-two (the first time that countrymen have shared the two top spots since 1984), and to top that Mark Cavendish was the first over the line.  No cyclist has ever won the final day's stage in Paris more than once, and today's win made it four years in a row for Cavendish, the "Manx Missile".  There's only 6 days to go now until the Olympic cycling road race.  You'd be forgiven for presuming that the future's looking decidedly golden for British cycling.

The start of the Tour de France borrows from lifesaving races, with a 'nose-to-the-sand' lying start followed by a sprint to the first beer of the race, then the pile of bikes.  Under starter's orders. 

I don't have any photos of the Tour De France though.  The closest that I have were shot with a disposable camera at a bike race with a slightly different bent:  The Tour de Point.  The Tour de Point was (is?) an annual event for members of Trigg Point Boardriders Club (TPB) in Perth, Western Australia, and requires participants to complete a 5km odd circuit of the coastal suburb of Trigg with periodic beer stops.  Quite a few beer stops.  And the whole thing's a race, just like the Tour de France, with last year's winner wearing a yellow jersey.  Trigg Point Boardriders are one of the more notable West Australian boardriders clubs and the core crew of members are comprised of some of the standout surfers in Perth, with the club regularly winning events against their rivals from the slightly more wave-blessed neighbours down south.  But they have problems finding a member willing to put their name to the bank account into which they can deposit winner's cheques thanks to events such as the Tour de Point.

Stage 2. 

I was gifted a wildcard place in the 2006 Tour de Point along with another Brit transplant my old housemate Ref.  I lived with a couple of pillars of Trigg Point Boardriders and managed to borrow a bike for the event.  Not that your bike really matters, because by the second or third beer stop there's a fair chance that somebody else will have picked up your bike in their rush to set off again, or you'll do the same and set off on somebody else's steed.  Once it's all done and dusted and after 5km of sprint-pedalling and skulling beer you cross the line back at the Point, with most competitors "blowing warmies" (frothy beer burps, bleurghh), the winner has to down another beer or five from the trophy and then everyone have a crack at riding their bikes down the sand dune and into the sea.  In 2006 my housemate Scott was the only person who managed it; on somebody else's (probably now saltwater corroded) bike.

Seven empty cans for the winner, and another one on the way.

In 2006 my friend Scooper retained the yellow jersey that he had held on to for several years previously.  This needs special mention, because whilst the riders in the Tour de France can lay claim to being some of the most incredible athletes on the planet (endurance or otherwise), and that's just the 'domestique' team riders, I bet most of them would struggle to down a can of beer faster than it could be poured on the floor.  Scooper is a man of considerable athletic prowess proven through years of open water swimming and paddling at a competitive level, however his ability to down beer is the talent that gave him a competitive edge that no man could best through his years dominating the Tour de Point.

A couple of evenings later and it's all back to normal at Trigg Point:  a few boys paddling around looking for a wave, and a few more sipping sun-downers looking at waves.

On Yer Bike

Styling old bike and basket, Tokyo.

Every bike-riding kid in the world knows about backies. Just keep your ankles clear of the gears... Sri Lanka.

Bikes are brilliant. Did you know that they're the most efficient form of self-powered human transport? Something like 99 percent of the energy that you put into the pedals gets transferred to the wheels. That's pretty amazing.

Millions of people on this planet use bicycles as their primary form of transport, and I think that this is something that often passes those of us who live in "developed" countries by. The beach and the local shop are at the end of my lane, and I have to drive for an hour to get to work. I can walk to the beach and the shops, and there's no way I could pedal my pushie to work everyday. I wish I could. But here's the thing, if you regularly take on a journey that's more than a ten minute walk and less than a 15 minute drive, why not get on your bike? After all, it's good for you and the planet. Win/win.

My friend Will is one half of Brother Cycles; he and his brother (funny that) make exquisite track and fixed gear cycles up in the 'don, the sort that if you own one, you also need to own a damn good bike lock. Where I live is waaay too hilly for a single speed bike though; I've had them before (beach cruisers though) and they can be hard work with a surfboard under one arm.

The video below features a guy called James Bowthorpe. James is an ambassador for Finisterre (an award-winning ethical outdoor apparel company run by some friends of mine) who pedalled his way around the world a while back and wasn't put off enough to stop him him from entering the Race Across America. The guy's calves must be enormous. It's a beautifully shot video.

30 Century Man from Antony Crook on Vimeo.

I'm planning on taking a bit of inspiration from all this though, my bike needs the cobwebs blowing off it, a bit of an oil and a go out in the sunshine. Why don't you do yourself a favour and do the same?

The North Shore bike path runs the entire Eastern length of the North Shore of Oahu's 7-mile-miracle, from Waimea to Velzyland. It's just about the quickest and most efficient way of checking the surf. Backdoor and my bike.

These guys have the right idea.

Blues Gone Green

A couple of music based pieces in fairly quick succession with the addition of this piece, but it's not without good reason I assure you...
Last Sunday afternoon I rolled down the hill to The Eden Project to catch an interesting show: Blues and Roots maestro Martin Harley was playing the final show of his "Blues Gone Green" tour in the inspirational environs of the Mediterranean Biome, the culmination of a bike powered, completely emission free UK tour.
Between August 20th and September 19th Martin pedalled 1,200 miles and played 27 live shows, averaging around 50 miles per day on a "Big Dummy" cargo bike fitted with racks to carry his guitars. My friends at Finisterre kitted him up with a load of technical clothing to equip him for all of the vagaries of the British summer weather, and he arrived last Sunday from Plymouth to play his final show in fine form. Martin was playing solo shows (as opposed to fronting his three-piece band the Martin Harley Trio) with all of the power for the PA system provided by a special "solar" truck covered in photovoltaic cells, introducing some songs from the new album and mixing up beautiful acoustic folk ballads and blistering slide blues stompers.
A ripping show after a month pedalling a massive bike up and down hills - big props to him for showing that you don't necessarily need a massive hermetically sealed all mod-cons tour bus, or even a comfortable saddle, to transport you between gigs in order to arrive refreshed.
You can just go slow, inhale some fresh air and enjoy the view en-route.

Read his own account of the tour on his "blues gone green" blog here.

Photo above by Angus Cowan, photos below snapped by Martin.