It will probably not have escaped your notice that this blog has been a little ranty this week. Perhaps I should redress the balance a little today. In fact Four Miles Fighting Traffic is a little demob happy as we’re off to Hamburg tomorrow for a study of the cycling culture there (or perhaps just some drinking and fun in Germany, one or other…). We’ll be enjoying the contradictions of air travel security, which prohibit you from taking anything that could be used as a club in cabin baggage, but allow you to take the litre bottle of vodka you bought in duty-free on board. Of course nobody’s ever been assaulted with a heavy glass bottle, have they?
So what does this all mean for you? Well, there’ll be no posts until we’re back on Wednesday, so you’ll have to survive without us for a few days, but we should be able to return with interesting information about cycling in Germany, or at least our hazy perceptions of it, seen around mild drunkenness. If we manage to organise ourselves sufficiently we might even hire bikes to show you Hamburg from the ground.
In the meantime, and to keep you out of trouble I thought you’d be interested in this story from America to show that, at least somewhere, the police are taking cycle theft seriously. I quite like the fact that they publish the face of the criminal as well. Also, if you’re struggling to get to work on time on your bike, then maybe you should talk to Sam Whittington who seems to have the answer, and might help someone to fulfil my ambition to get caught on a speed camera on my bike sometime. Mind you, you won't be able to do that in Islington, where they've introduced speed ramps for bikes (and here), which somehow takes away one of the pleasures of riding, slipping past the speed bumps as cars slow down. Maybe it'll be good for cheeky jumps, so we'll investigate in the next few weeks.
Finally it’s always nice to feel like we’re not alone on our ride to work and now we know we’re joined on the ride by the Hornsey and Crouch End Journal. There’s simply no better publication for news on a tiny part of North London.
Auf Wiedersehen.
A
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