I want to ride my bicycle

I guess I should do a little bit of a bike safety talk before we start. I can’t have you all going out there and doing exactly what I do, because I might get in trouble from someone.

First of all, and probably the most obvious – get yourself a helmet. A good helmet costs about £15-20 from most bike shops, and believe me, it’s worth it, if only because if you don’t get one, my mum will hunt you down and nag you about it. Even if she doesn’t know you – she’ll find you.

Her helmet-related-nagging skills are honed. I’m not even kidding. See, once, when I was little, I went over my handlebars and skidded a good two metres across the pavement from where I landed. I know this doesn’t seem like a lot, but now consider the next part: I landed on my face.

For those of you who know me, this explains a lot about my nose. For those of you who don’t, it also explains a lot about the fact that my mum probably still has the helmet that I managed to break in the skidding process. She may even have made a shrine to it. The fact that I could have broken my head instead is universally agreed in our family as the reason why everyone everywhere should wear helmets. Possibly while they’re not even on bikes.

The fact that I could have broken my head instead is universally agreed in our family as the reason why everyone everywhere should wear helmets.

Second: you’ll probably need some lights. I absolutely can’t talk here, because mine are currently languishing at the end of my bed – presumably to make my wardrobe handily visible to oncoming traffic – but nevertheless, get lights. You have no idea how many stories I’ve heard this year about cyclists riding around and people not seeing them. In fact, it’s usually the kind of story my friends tell me right after I tell them about my road-safe wardrobe. There’s probably a link there somewhere.

Finally, one last point on bike safety that my housemate learned the hard way: never, ever attempt to pull up your trousers while you’re cycling. It will only end in tears, and possibly also in showing off more to passers-by than you ever intended. Not that I’m saying you intend to flash innocent pedestrians at all. Or that my housemate intended to either.

Anyway, one of the main things you have to think about if you’re going to cycle is what you’re wearing while you’re doing it. I still have the scar on my leg from when I decided to wear a dress and cycle. Undoubtedly the saddest part is that I never actually got further than getting the bike out of the shed before I tangled myself in the pedals, fell over, ripped my tights, gashed my leg, and bled copiously all over another one of my housemates. Trousers, people – that’s all I’m saying.

So, once you’ve gotten past all these newly-instilled fears, the good news is that our campus is absolutely ideal for the helmeted, well-lit, practically dressed, over-cautious cyclist. I’m sure you’ve already noticed this, but almost all the main footpaths – particularly between Vanbrugh, Derwent and Langwith – are either wide enough to safely ride bikes on without hitting anyone, or they even have their own separate bike path. Actually, if you haven’t already noticed that – or the giant bikes sometimes painted on the ground – then maybe cycling isn’t for you, and you should think about a less extreme sport. Possibly tiddly-winks.

If you are set on cycling though, then there are some definite benefits. Firstly, it’s great to have a bike around when you suddenly realise you’re about to be very, very late for a meeting you’ve known about all week. You’d be surprised how often this happens to me. Well, unless you’re the one taking the meeting, in which case, people tend not to be surprised when it happens for the fourth or fifth time.

It’s great to have a bike around when you suddenly realise you’re about to be very, very late for a meeting you’ve known about all week

In any event, once you get to wherever you should have been an hour ago, cycling’s also good for your health. Even cycling at a fairly gentle speed – around 12mph – on a completely flat road, you burn about 450 calories an hour. Also, it’s an aerobic sport, so when you cycle, your heart beats faster to get the oxygen around and you exercise your lungs more - and even I know that strong lungs are pretty much a universally good thing.

So I guess the only thing left for me to do is wish you all good luck with your new bike friends. Remember: even if you can’t really cycle that well, you can’t do much worse than my housemates and I. We’ve come to the conclusion - now that four of us have fallen off our bikes at least once this year, and two of us did it while the bikes weren’t actually moving - that our house has some kind of bad bike karma. Well, three of us have bad bike karma, and one of us needs to get jeans that fit better. I guess some people should probably just walk, really.

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