This floating footbridge really tested my karma ...

I've got the old helmet cam working again - has anyone been down on the Regent's Canal recently and come across this walkway? You're expected to dismount and obviously most don't. Would you? BTW - some people may be offended by the T-Shirt the woman in front of me is wearing. I thought it took a bit of guts to sport something like that!

I had an accident this morning - and it's on helmet cam. I'm OK, by the way

I had a miserable commute in this morning. I was told by a van driver that I needed to learn how to ride a bike within 3 minutes of leaving home. Then this happened. I was riding along the very busy Bayswater Road quite happily. Suddenly, as I tried to accelerate after a light, my chain completely slipped and I was peddling on air. I completely lost my balance and knew I would crash. By some miracle, I managed to fall right on to the pavement and not the road (there was a taxi very close behind me) and I got away with a few grazes. It was shocking more than anything else and seems to prove to me that you should always have a well-maintained bike if you're messing around on the big roads. I suspect my chain is getting old and it's certainly making a lot of creaking.

Anyway - see what you think as I had my helmet camera on at the time.

An example of poor indicating

I feel like a bit of a grumpy old man since I've been using my helmet cam - perhaps I should stop it. Anyway - I can't help showing you this van. It wasn't really that dangerous but it shows how important it is to indicate. I had no clue what he was doing or when and he kind of drifted into the middle of the road. It's on that really fast bit of road going down Theobold's Road towards Farringdon Road in London EC1.

The majority now ignore a red light. But should we hold on to the principle?

I was struck on my journey in this morning that unless there's a dangerous situation, the norm is now for people (cyclists, that is) in London to go through red lights. Cyclists do stop if they're going to get run over by traffic coming the other way - but when it's merely a matter of principle, we/they chose to run it. I know it's a pretty boring debate, well-rehearsed, but I was struck by it at these lights, and (you guessed it) I have a bit of video to show what I mean. Cue very badly edited, amateur shots with lots of traffic noise. For those interested in such matters, I'm heading West along Theobold's Road, coming up to Gray's Inn Road, WC1. I'm sorry if I sound like a prude - but I did just find it interesting to see that so many jumped these lights.

The roundabout of death

This morning I risked the roundabout of death. Some of you may know it - it's a very very strange cycle path which runs along the edge of a roundabout on the edge of Victoria Park - intersecting Grove Road and the Old Ford Road. The main problem with it is that you're actually going the opposite way to traffic, and traffic does not expect you to be crossing their path just as they're trying to turn left off the roundabout.

Thanks to helmet cam, I took a shot of myself traversing it. It looks quite benign in the video as there were no cars coming either way - but hopefully you can get the idea of how dangerous it is.

Here's how you can find it
View Larger Map And here's my rather crappy video from my helmet. Again, apologies for the editing - still not quite there yet.

Example of poor cycling

I've been mucking about with a camera on my helmet. You'll have to forgive the very poor editing but I thought I would show you this incident where a cyclist just pulled out right in front of me. Bear in mind I was wearing a very bright reflective sash, and had a light with brand new batteries flashing - and that he actually looked at me before manoeuvering right into my path. Nice work! I don't want to moan - I must say at the time I almost found it funny because it was so blatantly silly.

Felt a bit blocked ... now free???

I have been cycling quite a lot and had a lovely ride in this morning. Cold, fresh, very little traffic on the streets - something to do with half term. But I have been a bit reluctant to write. I've realised that it's because I've put a few people on the email distribution list for this blog - and I now see that I've been worried about clogging up people's email with my ramblings. So from now on I'm only going to email updates on this blog to people who ask - not to anyone I think may be interested.

It also allows me to bang on as usual and feel that I'm not causing inconvenience on email - and if people don't like the blog, they at least have the chance of leaving.

I've been trying out my new "helmet cam" - it takes good video. My next challenge is to take out clips rather than put 3.1 gigs on the blog (!) and bore you senseless with the whole journey. So - look out for clips.