Nobody ever wants to crash, especially when that crash involves being hit by a driver. In fact, most of us don’t even want to think about that! What I’ve learned from painful personal experience is that shock will impact on your behaviour, and decisions after a crash. You are extremely likely to make poor decisions, and to … Read more
Cycloffee is a challenge that will benefit both cyclists, and coffee shops. As is commonly known, cycling and coffee is a match made in heaven!
The idea is to visit as many of the coffee shops as possible, and get your Caffeine Card stamped. Rules are simple: a visit to a coffee shop only counts if you cycled there, and obviously you can only get a single stamp per café.
There’s a massive difference between fact and perception, but as a species, we mostly operate on perceptions. Add to the mix the fact that psychology teaches us that humans tend to first form an opinion, then look for reasons to support that opinion, and things can rapidly get messy. For many thousands of years, humans … Read more
We live in the Information Age, and most of us have instantly-available information at our fingertips, courtesy of the Internet. We also have more information available to us now than ever before, yet it seems we chose to primarily use the Internet to spread doom and gloom, with the occasional cute kitten video to lighten … Read more
Have a conversation with the vast majority of people, and you will very soon hear how everyone needs their car. You will be told detailed stories of how they use their cars to collect fridges, couches and more. So much so that I wouldn’t at all be surprised if someone claimed they used their car to … Read more
Back in 2016, I was involved in a crash. Two weeks before the Dartmoor Classic sportive, I was probably fitter than at any other time in my life, and was comfortably confident of getting a gold medal. Cycling to work, as I did daily, I used to leave earlier, and take the longer route, treating … Read more
By now, you might be sick of hearing about climate change. After all, didn’t the doomsayers forecast Armageddon for decades now, and yet, here we still are? Surely that proves climate change is just a big old scare story, right? I suppose to some degree at least you may be forgiven for thinking like that. … Read more
LOVE It’s often said that the only things in life that are certain are death and taxes. That’s not quite true – there are many other certainties. One of those is that the vast majority of people enjoy cycling, and would love to cycle more, but are scared off by perceived danger on the roads. … Read more
This past weekend (August 21), Dartmoor Search & Rescue was called out to evacuate a young girl, who was hypothermic, from the moor. While searching for her, quite by chance, they stumbled upon a cyclist lying on the ground. When they checked him out, they found no signs of life, and they recovered his body, … Read more
It’s the light that wakes you. Well, sometimes the birds, sometimes the weather and in my case, once a greenkeeper who started very early, but usually the light. Waking up under canvas is different to waking up at home. There’s no sense of urgency, no rush, no dread for what the day may hold. The … Read more
Your ancestors walked great distances. They hunted or foraged for food, and mainly slept on the ground. Unless under shelter, if it rained, they got wet. When it snowed, they continued with life. They faced great danger on a regular basis, ranging from marauders, to wild animals, to infection from a simple cut. And mostly, … Read more
This won’t be a a very deep post, and certainly not a spiritual one. Oh, and there’s a very valid reason why this post has a pic of Lemmy! (Pic of Lemmy is from Wikipedia, under Creative Commons licence) I believe the meaning of life is far simpler than what most people realise. As a … Read more
Hot weather can be lethal This is not a doom & gloom post. Instead, I’m looking at realistic options. Man-made climate change is real, with indisputable evidence backing it up. In real-world terms, we see the effects all around us, in unusual weather patterns, increased flash flooding, and yes, heat waves. As the planet warms, … Read more
Despair is everywhere COVID. War in Gaza. Climate change. Crime. Austerity. Crumbs, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. It’s easy to feel like everything’s going wrong. Here’s the thing, though: what you focus on will seem bigger, and more important. I’m not for a moment suggesting all is well with the world – far from it … Read more
One of the objections you’ll often hear about climate change is “But I’m just one person – nothing I do will make any difference”. You may even have used that excuse yourself, and if you did, you probably believed it, too. Let’s fix that, right here, right now, shall we? You are not just a leaf … Read more