Hi All,
Last week I had the chance to ride around central London with a few other Brits. The city decided to stop all traffic on a 6 mile course in Central London to allow people to ride their bikes and see the sites. 38,000 (maximum allowed) people signed up to give up their cars for the day and ride. The total number of people that actually took part was estimated to be 80,000. I feel it was probably closer to 60,000 but I might have miscounted. Everybody knows (or will know soon after reading the following) that London drivers are absolutely the worst drivers in the world. To start off, they bloody drive on the wrong side of the road. This just isn't right especially for all the tourists. Tourists and all Londoners (might as well make it everybody) should not be allowed to drive in central London until they pass a driver test as well as a psychiatric test. All cell phones, food, drink, makeup etc. should be vaporized before they are allowed into the cities congested zones. People actually have to pay 8 pounds per day (16 dollars, 12 euros) to drive in these congested zones and yet they still do it. Ok maybe public transportation can't keep up with the enormous amount of people utilizing the streets of London. These buses were not going anywhere fast and probably would have lost the race to the tortoises below.
Ok, maybe the buses might have won. So getting drivers out of their cars sounds smart.
But after thinking about it for a bit I began to wonder if it was going to be a good thing after all. How would these awful drivers handle not being able to blast by my bike with their horns blaring while talking on their mobiles.
It was a beautiful day to have a bike ride, a bit chilly, but not bad. No rain (on a weekend day) for once. It was a nice orderly start as you can see below.
Wow what an impressive start. Maybe, just maybe it wasn't quite as organized as shown in the pics above and the bikes weren't quite as fancy as those above. But at least the number of riders using performance enhancing drugs and blood doping were probably less in the ride around London.
The actual start pictures were more like the ones below.
All the riders that signed up for the ride were asked to meet at designated hubs around London and then ride into the central London in an orderly fashion. Since the roads getting to central London still had cars they couldn't just let this mass of people loose on the streets. My hub was Clapham Common. As you can see from the pics below there were a lot of people on bikes. They funneled all of us under the small banner you can see in the first photo.
They forced people to wait patiently and allow 20 seconds between starts. Londoners waiting patiently was quite a sight in itself. It took almost an hour for me to get my turn to start and there was still a huge throng of people behind me. I thought it worked very well until people bunched up at the traffic lights down the road. It got a little chaotic at that point with bikes weaving through the stopped cars to get ahead at the lights. Fortunately, I only heard a few horns and saw no accidents with cars.
Riding on London Bridge with Tower Bridge off in the distance.
Buckingham Palace Fountain
I borrowed the last 4 pics from the Hovis (sponsor) website. You should check out their website and buy their bread. They gave away 30,000 sandwiches but unfortunately not everyone got one. I was one of the lucky ones.
After finishing the route I parked my bike among the masses and went to see what else was on offer.
Hayden I thought you might like doing some of this trick riding if you ever got tired of that skateboard thing. These guys were pretty good bouncing and balancing on one tire over all those obstacles. Notice the bikes don't have seats so probably not good for any sort of distance riding.
Beware family stuff below!!! Speaking of Hayden (nephew). I thought you all might want to see him doing some of his skateboard stuff. So the following pics are of him showing off and looking pretty good while doing it. Too bad he's not doing it on a bike.
The photo credits for the Hayden pics go to Steven Byeon.
Hayden you look great.
At the end of the day it turned out that getting between 40,000 and 80,000 Londoners out of their cars and on their bikes was a very good thing. Hopefully the other 6.9 million can join in on the next ride.
Last week I had the chance to ride around central London with a few other Brits. The city decided to stop all traffic on a 6 mile course in Central London to allow people to ride their bikes and see the sites. 38,000 (maximum allowed) people signed up to give up their cars for the day and ride. The total number of people that actually took part was estimated to be 80,000. I feel it was probably closer to 60,000 but I might have miscounted. Everybody knows (or will know soon after reading the following) that London drivers are absolutely the worst drivers in the world. To start off, they bloody drive on the wrong side of the road. This just isn't right especially for all the tourists. Tourists and all Londoners (might as well make it everybody) should not be allowed to drive in central London until they pass a driver test as well as a psychiatric test. All cell phones, food, drink, makeup etc. should be vaporized before they are allowed into the cities congested zones. People actually have to pay 8 pounds per day (16 dollars, 12 euros) to drive in these congested zones and yet they still do it. Ok maybe public transportation can't keep up with the enormous amount of people utilizing the streets of London. These buses were not going anywhere fast and probably would have lost the race to the tortoises below.
But after thinking about it for a bit I began to wonder if it was going to be a good thing after all. How would these awful drivers handle not being able to blast by my bike with their horns blaring while talking on their mobiles.
It was a beautiful day to have a bike ride, a bit chilly, but not bad. No rain (on a weekend day) for once. It was a nice orderly start as you can see below.
The actual start pictures were more like the ones below.
All the riders that signed up for the ride were asked to meet at designated hubs around London and then ride into the central London in an orderly fashion. Since the roads getting to central London still had cars they couldn't just let this mass of people loose on the streets. My hub was Clapham Common. As you can see from the pics below there were a lot of people on bikes. They funneled all of us under the small banner you can see in the first photo.
They forced people to wait patiently and allow 20 seconds between starts. Londoners waiting patiently was quite a sight in itself. It took almost an hour for me to get my turn to start and there was still a huge throng of people behind me. I thought it worked very well until people bunched up at the traffic lights down the road. It got a little chaotic at that point with bikes weaving through the stopped cars to get ahead at the lights. Fortunately, I only heard a few horns and saw no accidents with cars.
There were bikes of all kinds at this thing. Bikes that haven't seen the light of day for many, many years were rolled out and put to use.
Actually didn't see any of these bikes on the ride but thought I'd include them just for fun. A couple of you out there have seen these particular bikes before in another place where they drive on the wrong side of the road. For those of you that haven't seen these, they are penny farthing bikes invented by a British engineer named James Starley in 1871. How is that for trivia? Anyway Cheryl, her parents, and I saw these while traveling in New Zealand a few years ago.
The ride around the central London route was great. The pace was really slow over the 6 mile course but the sites were fantastic. I only saw a few people being inconsiderate and some going way too fast for the amount bikes on the road. Saw a few accidents but they all looked minor. Everybody was having fun. Who were these people and what had they done with the real Londoners.
Buckingham Palace Fountain
After finishing the route I parked my bike among the masses and went to see what else was on offer.
The photo credits for the Hayden pics go to Steven Byeon.
Hayden you look great.
At the end of the day it turned out that getting between 40,000 and 80,000 Londoners out of their cars and on their bikes was a very good thing. Hopefully the other 6.9 million can join in on the next ride.
