Wheels of freedom.

There is a mathematical formula that relates to bikes. It is as simple as it is accurate. It is:

N = n+1

"N" represents the ideal number of bicycles a person should own, and "n" is the number of bicycles that person currently owns.

I have for some time, been a two-bike man. As of last weekend, I'm now a three-bike man, and I have to say, my life is considerably improved. Whilst I bask in the dewy afterglow of my recent acquisition (the formula above only applies once this honeymoon period wears off), let me share my bikes with you.

I got my first bike aged three and a half. My parents bought my elder brother and I identical bikes for Christmas, which my Dad assembled out of large, flat boxes. These "Golden Arrows" came complete with one brake, solid tyres and stabilisers. My brother and I tore up and down the flagstone pavements of our seafront road, and before long it was a race to see who could take the stabilisers off first. I think mine lasted about two weeks.

Our next bikes were Christmas presents again, a few years later. The Golden Arrows had fallen from favour, and the three letters in the heads of small boys everywhere were BMX. Our parents took us to the shop to pick our bikes, and a yellow Raleigh Boxer was the closest thing I could get to the Holy Grail, in my size.



Raleigh Boxer



By that spring, my brother and I would be lost for hours on evenings and weekends, riding our bikes up and down our road to a quite cul-de-sac so we could jump off the kerbs, and over the park, where we would see if we could clear the bunkers at the pitch-and-putt. Always returning home "when the street lights come on", we'd rig bicycle assault courses in the garden from bricks and planks, turn all the lights on in the house, and ride in the dark.

At barely seven years old, I took a fairly innocuous tumble, and unbeknownst to everyone, busted my spleen with the end of a handlebar. The following morning I was rushed to hospital and brought back from the brink. A week later I was back on the bike.

Peugeot Super Sport



Eventually, as we grew, so did our need to get further afield, and for our birthdays, our parents bought us second hand racing bikes from the newpaper. My dad cleaned them up, put new tyres on, rewound the handlebar tape, and we got to grips with gears for the first time. As much as I still wanted a BMX, there was no hiding the fact that this little ten-speed Peugeot gave me an independence that I thrived on. For the first time, we would venture from the house at a weekend, either together, with friends, or solo, armed with basic supplies and spares, and pedal between towns and villages we'd previously only thought you could drive to. The outside world became smaller, as ours suddenly seemed huge.

Redline RL20



These racers got us into paper-rounds. Pocket-money stopped, if there was anything we wanted, we got on our bikes, and earned it. My brother first, then a year later, I followed, and soon enough, every day began at 0530, as we each took a couple of rounds to save for "stuff".

We both bought second hand BMXs. We stripped them down, and fixed them up, and these became daily workhorses, and weekend thrashers. Sunday morning excursions across building sites and waste ground would often leave one of our group coming home on a "backy", someone else carrying the broken bike. Mostly it was me. If there was something stupid to do on a bike, I was your man, and by now I'd learned how to heal fast and fix anything.

Raleigh Pursuit

In the meantime, our parents had put some money towards "grown up" bikes for our thirteenth birthdays. Full sized racers, twelve gears, and the fastest things we'd known.

Our world widened again. By this time, my Raleigh Pursuit meant some space between siblings. The year between my brother and I somethimes seemed more, sometimes less, and whilst we still wanted to do the same things, by now it would be alone, or in the company of separate friends. By now, a week might involve hundreds of miles of cycling, just doing our paper rounds, and nipping off for a long ride at the weekend.

Understanding nostalgia for the first time as an awkward teenager, my cycle rides would often take me the fifty miles down to the coast to the old house. I'm sure my brother's may have done too. Interesting how we keep rejoining those dots.

Before the arrival of motorised transport into our lives, these racing bikes were transport. I'd cycle the thirty mile round trip to college a few times a week to pocket the train fare, and if I wanted to take a girl out,  I'd leave my bike locked round the corner of her house, with a binbag full of my cycling gear tucked under a hedge.

And then, motorcyles, and cars. Suddenly, the bikes just stopped getting used. The appeal of the open road was now measured in tanks of petrol, and after years of BMX related injuries, I just wasn't that crazy kid anymore.



Issimo F100



The combustion engines have stayed with us. But like the bikes before them, the cars and vans have become the transport, the means to an end. My brother's back on two wheels at the weekend, bombing about on his 900cc Triumph Bonny, but for me, it's still pedal power.


On-One Inbred


I realised this evening that in the last seven days I've ridden all three of my bikes, covered over fifty miles, and unthinkingly, bicycles are an important part of my life again.

Last Wednesday's commute to the office was on my Issimo folding bike. A £40 eBay bargain, and now wearing triathlon-style "aero" bars. You can't help but see the funny side, especially when you're doing fifteen miles on most outings, overtaking everyone.

Monday saw me darting around a country estate on my steel-framed hardtail mountain bike. Frame by UK firm "On-One", and built by me, this bike has won races, crossed the Hebrides, taught people to ride, and belted up and down the trails and mountains of this country in the company of my friends. It has never let me down.



bTwin Sport 2

Finally, today I pedalled my new roadie to Farnborough Pool. The swim was rubbish, I got out early, rode the long way home to blow it out of my hair, and felt better for it. For the first time in years I was back on a bike that seems to weigh nothing, and yet devours the tarmac beneath it, craving the far, and the fast.


Every bicycle I have owned has come with something intangible, beyond the glow of owning a new trinket. Quite apart from the exhileration of the actual riding, the bikes themselves awake within me a sense of opportunity. Whether it's the foldie that slices past public transport; the mountain bike that thinks it's a sheepdog; or now, the roadie, that may only come out when the sun is shining or the roads are dry, but feels like it may again broaden my horizons.