I went down to London Fields Cycles a few weeks ago to get my tires repumped, and was served by an actual twelve-year-old, an Anakin Skywalker of the cycling world, who was able to discuss the difference between distributing weight over the tires and the amount of force that each one feels. He also noted that the front handlebars were a bit low, and asked whether I'd done that myself (he may or may not have added insult to injury by calling me "Squire" during this discussion). I'd said I hadn't, though as the words left my lips, I remembered that I'd taken an alum key to them a few nights before, to correct a slight angular difference with the wheel. But even if they were a bit low, did it matter that much?
About a week afterwards, something happened. You know the feeling you get, when you stretch a scab, that little rush of separation? While I was cycling home, I felt this sensation IN MY WRISTS, my beautiful white unscarred fronts of my wrists. I don't know what exactly was happening, just that it filled me with total creeping horror then and the other three times it happened on my way home, and that night my handlebars were raised two inches, banishing the effect forever.
Also I nearly saw some dude die! He turned off from Roseberry Avenue into Clerkenwell Road (ie where a road, that I was on, is merged into another by traffic lights), and came up short behind a van that was unwisely parked on the side of the road. He'd clearly thought it was mobile, and as he pulled up behind it, a 38 bendy bus (AKA The Clapton Killer) passed by him on his right hand side, heading over into the bus lane that the van was stopped on. So the cyclist pulls out into this closing space! I'm am naturally like "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO", but he stops just short of the gnashing jaws of death and just palms each window of the 38 as it goes by a centimeter from him.
That's all the bike news.
