rain miles count double

I’ve complained before about what I call “iPeds” – pedestrians who wander out into the roads completely unaware of danger due to the volume of the music assaulting their senses through their personal music player earphones – but now it seems that cyclists who ride while listening to music are coming under fire too.

On the ever-thorny subject of cyclists paying “road tax”, I present a couple of interesting and well informed arguments against the barmy idea that it is.

Now it’s November and wintry weather is here in force, conditions for which BeOne Storm “summer” bike is really not suited. Today was supposed to see me back on the cycle commute after a week’s break, so I spent yesterday getting the Commencal ready for action.

Rain Miles Count Double gets a little mention at the start of episode 5 of the Blogtalk video blog series, published this week. In the clip, the panel discuss the (potential) bridge across the Lagan from the Gasworks to Ormeau Park that I mentioned on this blog, in the context of wider Belfast and Northern Ireland public transport issues.

Click through to watch the show.

A new campaign (and associated range of products) has been launched to highlight the fact that paying “car tax” (Vehicle Excise Duty) or not has nothing to do with your right to use the public road system. I pay road tax. Do you?

Today was the first day of a self-enforced break from cycling to work. Over the past few weeks I noticed I was becoming increasingly tired and slow on my regular commute rides. The established wisdom is of course to “listen to your body” so I decided to cut back to one day’s commuting for a week or perhaps two.

That’s what I had decided. Then I commuted this morning by car.

You can’t escape it. Christmas is rapidly approaching and maybe you’re thinking of buying a new bike for someone, or maybe even buying one for yourself to keep those New Year’s Resolutions. A “mountain style” bike can be had from many supermarket and high street retailers for less than £100. Bargain or a false economy? BBC’s Watchdog investigated recently.

On Friday 30th October, the Critical Mass crew got together for a special, Halloween themed fancy dress “Zombie Mass” ride. A short video of this has now been posted on YouTube. Enjoy!

Sustrans, the sustainable transport charity, is calling for Belfast cyclists to email the city council with their support for a new foot and cycle bridge over the river Lagan. The proposed development would provide a safe, traffic free link from Belfast city centre to Ormeau Park via the Gasworks, bypassing the busy Albert Bridge.

With the numbers of cars and cyclists on the roads of the UK increasing, it’s probably inevitable that there is a corresponding increase in the number of car (or bus, truck, pedestrian) vs. cyclist “incidents” happening on a daily basis. For this reason, many cyclists have started to carry compact video cameras on their regular commuting runs to record what goes on, and a new site has been set up specifically to gather together recordings of these commuting incidents: Fight Bad Driving.