Welcome to Rain Miles Count Double!
Rain Miles Count Double is a personal weblog about owning, maintaining, commuting and having fun on bikes in Northern Ireland, a place where, on average, it rains somewhere every other day.
Your host is me, John Girvin, a largely waterproof recreational and commuter cyclist from Belfast, Northern Ireland.
I’ve been pushing pedals most of my life, ever since I had a little trike when I was two years old, but I’ve never been attracted to cycling competitively. It’s always been about utility or just good old having fun for me. I’ve cycled to school, university and now to work, been in an informal mountain bike club and gone on long road rides by myself and with friends, but always always just for recreation. Competition seems to me to require taking it all a little too seriously.
I’m lucky enough to own a small fleet of bikes, each suited to a different purpose, and do most of the maintenance and repairs myself. I make no claim to be either an expert or a champion cyclist, just a guy who rides bikes. I like working on bikes, talking about bikes, promoting the use of bikes, riding bikes and now, it seems, I write about them too.
This is one of the sites I maintain regularly. If, like me, you’re into old computers and retrogaming, you might be interested in girv dot net. I maintain a professional resume / CV and portfolio site at johngirvin.com which has a johngirvin.com blog to which I occasionally post articles of a more technical nature. Finally there’s Wee Doors Banging, a catch-all blog to collect random miscellanery that I’d otherwise lose track of.
Rain Miles Count Double is a diary of sorts, a diary of my cycling life in the present day. Here you will find articles on topics from maintenance, commuting, the cycling lifestyle, fitness for cycling, occasional rants and opinion pieces and more. I hope you at least find some of it interesting or useful.
If you have anything to say about the site, I’d love to hear it. Please leave a comment below or use the contact form to get in touch directly.
Today is a good day to ride.
