Off the chain

Cycling in York is often an utter delight. The wind in your wheels, the open road beckoning, the high-viz accessories marking you clearly out as really cool and the envy of everyone you meet. Pretty sure that’s what the stares mean.

Whizzing down University Road past a rageful mob who have just undergone the injustice of a (distinctly evil-looking) Number 4 bus fail to stop for them, always invokes a rush of sheer joy in this cyclist’s heart. Accompanied by, of course, the constant fear of death integral to cycling; but I’ve grown quite affectionate towards even that.

Knowing from my experience of living in Goodricke last year how horrendous the ‘free bus’ system can get when stranded on the windswept heath (Hes East) in a nose-slaying icy wind, cycling has always been a must for me on my York-based adventures.

Cycling equates to glorious liberation of the sort I’ve only ever witnessed once before, when Jennifer my hamster (I was really imaginative with pet names) made an all-too-successful bid for the gap in the floorboards and was never seen again. The sudden animation of her usually inert, rather fat body was startling to witness, and clearly heralded an emotion of huge importance. The joy of freedom.

So like a slightly overweight hamster that has finally realised there’s a brilliant wild world outside of being poked from bed on a regular basis by the invasive grubby fingers of a ten-year-old girl, last October I took to my bike. And I never looked back.

Under your own cycle-steam, journeys, which can take the best part of an hour on foot, are reduced to a mere fifteen-minute flight. I suspect, despite a secret longing to become fully airborne, cycling is the nearest I’ll ever get to flying. Whenever asked which superpower I’d have, it’s always flight. Cycling is a lot like that bit in The Snowman, you might know it, when they’re walking in the air. Floating in the moonlit sky. While the people far below, are sleeping as they fly. Just like that. As I cannot commend the flight-like quality of cycling enough, (seriously though, sometimes I race a flock of geese overhead, AND WIN), I’ll move on.

Not only flight-like, cycling is totally brilliant for many reasons. Health, speed, convenience are the top three. Traffic, though terrifying, is satisfyingly by-passable when stationary in long unrelenting queues. At traffic lights, that moron who passed too close to you in his ridiculous Land Rover 500m earlier has to just suck it up while you slip smugly past him and head leisurely to the front of the queue. Pretty convenient.

The speed advantages are nicely highlighted when your housemates bid you farewell half an hour before you’ll need to think about setting off – FOR THE SAME LECTURE. Health is standard, and it doesn’t even feel like exercise. (It feels like flying.)

But there are some high-octane dangers associated with cycling. Trials include jobsworth policemen with an inexplicable but vehement cycling vendetta; the seemingly endless list of expensively necessary bike accessories; tackling various bike-related service providers for providing appalling bike-related services. Other key issues include the danger of death (that’s quite a big one as cycling-downsides go), the generally despised position cyclists hold as the lowest in the time-honoured road-vehicle hierarchy (taxis are the malevolent court malcontents, obviously), and the stomach-churning moment when you realise you’re on the way to an exam and your chain just snapped.

So follow me on my adventures as a cyclist in York, as I tackle the tribulations and fly with the geese. Like that girl in Fly Away Home. Except with more cycling. And less of a tragic backstory. But an equally triumphant finish.

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