KarmaCycle: bike route

Monday, 9 November 2009

How to tackle a new route on your bike

Today I had to go to a different venue for my work - Millbank to be precise. Here's what I think you're supposed to do when you are going somewhere different on your bike:

1. Study route the night before
2. programme route into iPhone, and place iPhone in handy iPhone strap-on device on handle-bars
3. If you don't have an iPhone, print off map
4. stop every now and then to look at by now crinkly map
5. Go back to old fashioned techniques - ask people where to go

Being me, here's what I did:

1. Hurriedly check address as I try to leave house, failing to print map
2. Go on normal commute route, hoping I'll recognise a few landmarks
3. Get lost around Trafalgar Square
4. Suddenly spot Big Ben
5. Find venue just in time.

I suspect that many people are more organised ... but is a cool iPhone the only answer?

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.