KarmaCycle: dawn

Friday, 18 December 2009

How many of you made it in on a bike in the snow today?

All I can say is, thank the Lord for ski gloves. I've written about them before but once again they've proved completely indespensible.

I had an amazing moment this morning - I left much earlier than usual and cycled down the Regent's Canal while it was still pretty much pitch black. I was wearing just enough of the right kind of clothes to keep warm. The wind, for once, was behind me. I only passed one other cyclist and there were no pedestrians. It just felt ... amazingly exhilerating cycling into the dawn, with a few dots of snow billowing about.

Wonderful.

Any snow-related biking stories out there? Perhaps those in Canada can give us an insight?

The Cycle of Karma

When you're cycling around 100 miles a week through London, you develop some strange notions. The one I can't get out of my head is that you build up karma - good and bad - depending on how you cycle. So - if you stop at red lights, wait politely for pedestrians, smile at cars, you get rewarded - the next light turns green for you straight away, someone smiles back at you - you get the picture. Of course this doesn't always work, but it works often enough for me to try to cycle by those rules. Most of the time.