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.

A ride amongst friends.

Quickerbybiker Strat has hit upon a clever attitude to commute with.  Ride as though you know all the other road users.

No matter how smugly self-righteous you are, it's hard to always ride absolutely without aggression, without cockiness, arrogance, impatience and intolerance.

But Strat has adopted this new approach of pretending all the other road users are people he knows.  That way his behaviour has consequences in that it influences opinions of himself that he's actually bothered about.  He says it works and he behaves himself better now.


The other thing Strat said and we talked rubbish was that motorists are not people.  I think that's right too.  I try to be srupulously not anti-motorists on this site but I still think it's fair comment to say that a motorist is not a person.  They don't typically behave as people would, certainly not as friends would.

Alas, the kit has not arrived.

Hey ho.  It's hardly shorts weather anyway.

But I'm very sorry you lot.  You've all waited very patiently having paid your money weeks and weeks ago.  It's not great.  Sorry.  Let's hope it turns up promptly after Christmas so I can get it out to you.

In the meantime, here's the best e-card I got.  I don't think Howies are saints but I think they're at least in the right direction and I know for sure I'd look a lot worse if they didn't make clothes.

Merry Christmas all.

Top tip.

I've read a few of these books now and every one has been bright and engaging and funny and has taught me loads. I can't recommend them highly enough. They're only small. Very manageable.

Have a look at the list of titles. Ten-to-one you find a load of subjects you think you'd be interested in. Twenty-to-one the book turns out to be more interesting than you expected. http://www.oup.co.uk/vsi

You are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic. Break free.

This should have been the quickerbybike slogan.