London Cycling Diary

Cycling 10: Jeremy Riggs of Jezzers Jaw Jabberings

Jeremy Riggs' blog, Jezzers Jaw Jabberings, is subtitled "Pointless blatherings on anything and nothing -- mainly nothing". Yet as a fellow London cyclist I find that his cycling posts -- especially this one -- are particularly erudite and so I thought I'd subject him to the same terrible 10 questions I've asked other cycling bloggers over the past six weeks or so...

How long have you been commuting by bicycle, and what made you decide to do it?

I’ve only just returned to commuting by bike in the New Year. I’d wanted to give it a go for ages but decided to start when the company I work for joined the Government-backed Cycle-To-Work scheme.  I used to ride to work when living in Montserrat in the Caribbean some years ago. Then I needed a mountain bike for the journey, as many of the roads were pretty rough and ready and steep. I still have my mountain bike and before signing up for the new bike made sure I could get up the worst hills on the way to work. 

One of the other incentives for getting back on a bike was searching through the blogosphere and noticing how many other people do it on a regular basis.

Cycling 10: Warren of Limited Warren T

Do you work in radio? Do you ride a bike?

I only ask because I've got a little theory brewing: if you work in radio you're more inclined to be a cyclist. This is because out of the five people 'interviewed' for Cycling 10 (so far) three of them, including Warren T, work for radio stations... it can't be coincidence, can it?

Anyway, now it's Warren T's turn to answer London Cycling Diary's probing questions about... what else? ... commuting by bicycle.

How long have you been commuting by bicycle, and what made you decide to do it?

I probably shouldn't count the times in the early 1980s so I'm going to say that I've been commuting by bike for three years or so; I started riding occasionally after my company moved their offices to an office park closer to my home. The bike path that is a mile away from my house runs through the office park and right by my building.

Two years ago I was sitting at a stop light in my mini-van when I was rear ended by a commercial truck at around 35mph. The 19-year-old driver wasn't paying attention. The van was totalled and while I was waiting for the settlement cheque, I started riding full time.

I much prefer an enjoyable ride through the woods to sitting in traffic.  I have yet to buy a vehicle to replace the van.

Cycling 10: Rodney Olsen of The Journey

It's Thursday again, which can only mean one thing: time to put another fellow cyclist under the spotlight as part of London Cycling Diary's ongoing "cycling 10" series. This time it's Rodney Olsen's turn to step up to the plate -- or the starter's blocks, as the case may be.

How long have you been commuting by bicycle, and what made you decide to do it?

I didn't even learn to ride a bike until I was 16, but it was back then that I first started commuting by bike. I didn't commute by bike all that regularly and the cycling stopped when I got my license and a car at 17. I guess I cycled because I couldn't drive.

I started to regularly commute by bike some years later and for a while it was still a mixture of riding and driving. I guess I've now been commuting only by bicycle for around 10 years.

Cycling 10: Adrian of Adrian Fitch's Random Ramblings

Adrian Fitch is a fellow London cyclist who commutes to work. His blog, Adrian Fitch's Random Ramblings, is billed as "a bit about cycling, a bit about genealogy, a bit about radio but mostly a lot about nothing at all". Here are his responses to my 10 questions about commuter cycling...

How long have you been commuting by bicycle, and what made you decide to do it?

I've been commuting regularly since last spring. The main reason I started was to get healthy. I had tried going to the gym but struggled to find the time and motivation.

Cycling 10: Chris of Life Cycle

Chris Lewthwaite, a Queensland-based cyclist, maintains the blog life cycle. His posts, often about awe-inspiring rides through lush, leafy landscapes, are always accompanied by stunning photographs. Here are his responses to my 10 questions about commuter cycling...

How long have you been commuting by bicycle, and what made you decide to do it?

I have been officially riding to work since 1999, but I was doing "other" transportational riding before that.  In fact, when I was growing up in the country, it wasn't unusual for me to ride to the next town to visit friends or do the family's shopping.

I started riding to work specifically because I got frustrated with the inefficiency of public transport in this city [the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia], and didn't want to pay mega bucks for a car (I was a student at the time).  I figured that if I was already riding up 1,000 metre mountains on weekends, a ride to work or uni shouldn't pose any problems.

Introducing a new series...

If you believe everything you read, commuting by bicycle is soaring in popularity, particularly in areas of the Western world dominated by motorised traffic. Figures released by the London Mayor in late 2005 -- at about the same time I started cycling -- revealed that cycling across the capital had leapt by 100 per cent in just five years. Judging by the amount of people I see on the road, even when the weather is miserable, I reckon the boom is still happening.

But what makes people decide to get on the bike, and what is their average commute like? What do they like about cycling? What kind of kit do they use? And what advice would they give to someone thinking about becoming a regular cycling commuter?

I thought I'd put these questions -- and a few more -- to some fellow bike bloggers and post their responses in a new series I've dubbed "Cycling 10", which I'll post on a semi-regular basis.

The first kind soul to answer my 10 questions about cycling is Richard Masoner, aka Fritz, from the US-based Cycle-Licious, a news-based blog that's always jampacked with interesting cycling snippets...