live-cycle

“I’m going for a ride on my bike.”
Words that pass a cyclist’s lips almost every day. Yes, we go for a ride on our bike, but how many people can say: “I’m going for a ride on MY bike”? MY bike that I made, that has my name on it?
What prompts these thoughts was a little soiree on Monday night held by Halfords and Boardman bikes, quite fittingly at the Transport Museum in Covent Garden. It was an evening to keep in touch with the press, really, and to introduce the Boardman Limited edition (1,250 bikes, special decals, signed and numbered, and almost sold out). Chris Boardman was there, obviously, along with his production team, some Halfords staff and a fair sprinkling of PR people, plus a bright array of their bicycles for us to spill our beer over.
But it made me wonder: how many people can truly say that they are riding their bike. The Eponymous Cycle Club must be quite an exclusive band: there is, of course, Boardman, and others that spring immediately to mind are Gary Fisher, Greg Lemond and Eddie Merckx. After a bit more thinking, I came up with Ernesto Colnago (who was employed as a mechanic on Merckx’s Molteni team), and Fausto Pinarello. Then there is Dr Alex Moulton, who pioneered the small-wheeled bicycle revolution nearly 50 years ago, and William Pashley, a First World War dispatch rider who set up Pashley Cycles in 1926.
Someone who comes close, but is not quite a full member, I think, is Tom Ritchie, who rides some of his very stylish and expensive bicycle parts but, to my knowledge, does not have a frame with his name on it.
I decided to dig a little further, and my librarian, Google, took me to Baron von Drais, a German inventor, who is probably the most eminent member, because although he does not have a bicycle brand named after him, he was one of the people who invented the bicycle, although his eponymous draisine has rusted away from our vocabulary over the years.
But my favourite club member is Major Nichols. During the Second World War he served in the Navy as a Gyroscopic Compass Technician, leaving as Petty Officer. Major, it turns out, was his Christian name. He went into bike building, in his home town of West Bromwich, and died in 2005.
I know that you’ll probably come up with dozens of names that I have overlooked, and I will be happy to hear from you.
But before I finish, I have just one question: Who is Claude Butler?

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 28th, 2009 at 11:57 pm and is filed under Dennis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.