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the more it stays the same

a couple of weekends past, as i rode southwards along uiskentuie strand, i was passed by an estate car featuring two bicycles on a rear rack. given that a fortnight ago, we were quite possibly at the height of the holiday season, i doubt that there's anything particularly notable about such a happenstance, but had the car had another coat of paint, it would have forced me off the road; and that wasn't the first time that sort of thing has happened. we are, according to the highway code, allowed 1.5 metres of lateral clearance from passing vehicles on a two-lane road; it's 50/50 whether that actually happens, but i would have expected nothing less from fellow cyclists.

of course, the fact that the car was carrying two bicycles doesn't necessarily indicate that the occupants considered themselves to be cyclists. concentrating hard on remaining upright and on the tarmac, i did not take time to check out the occupants of the vehicle; it's entirely possible that there were two teenagers in the back seat belonging to those bicycles. either way, it hardly lets the driver off the hook for passing a cyclist way too close.

however, my sunday morning cycling colleague and i, observant to the last, have noticed what does appear to be both trend and aberration, though admittedly based entirely on our own predilections. had either of us opted to take a holiday with bicycles, particularly on a relatively small island such as islay, we agree that we'd both be likely to park up the car, and cycle. it is an inarguable statement of fact that you will see far more of the island from the saddle than you'll ever view behind a windscreen, and at a considerably more sedate pace. on occasion, when circumambulating loch gorm, and passing kilchoman distillery, it is particularly common to meet cars with bicycles on the roof or hanging off the back, and that's where the aberration kicks in.

loch gorm (which, in gaelic, can mean either loch green or loch blue, though mostly its an odd shade of purple) is a relatively small patch of water on islay's west coast, only a few hundred metres from the north atlantic coast. the road by which it is encircled is approximately twelve kilometres, featuring one or two short inclines, but nothing that might strain those calf muscles. the views are picturesque in every direction. assuming many of the bicycle-carrying motorists will be heading either for kilchoman distillery, machair bay, or saligo bay, the ideal excursion could be easily enabled by parking at one of the above mentioned destinations, removing the bicycles from their racks and enjoying a leisurely perambulation of the loch. yet, week after week, we meet several bike encrusted vehicles from which the bicycles seem reluctant to separate.

could it be that an anecdotal desire to impress the neighbours and fellow visitors that you are of an athletic nature, has actually brought members of the visiting public to carry bicycles that will, in fact, never find use during the holiday? though we do meet cyclists as we wend our merry way around the principality, very few are to be found unencumbered with luggage (though we did meet a couple yesterday morning in which the woman sported not only two rear panniers, but a backpack, while the male, riding a few metres ahead carried nothing. should we have reported it to amnesty international?). though our visual surveys are hardly exhaustive, it does look very much as if the car-mounted bicycles are being used as mere accessories, with no intention of donning padded bibs and actually going for a ride. presumably, on return to their homes, they are expectant of the neighbours, either asking about their cycling holiday to islay, or simply being quietly impressed.

a friend of mine owns a holiday cottage on islay's west coast south of kilchiaran farm. a young couple arrived at the premises a few years ago in a white audi sports car with two bicycles on a roof rack. apparently those bicycles were never once removed from the car. this appears to be the next step past purchasing spray-on mud to apply behind the wheel arches on a so-called chelsea tractor (any variation of range rover), solely to give the impression that you might have used a purportedly off-road vehicle for an action weekend.

even supposing, however, that the bicycles as described above are relatively low-cost budget items, it still seems an unnecessarily expensive way of convincing others of your purported physical prowess. does anyone really care? i have always been of the opinion that cars are justifiable purely on the basis that they can easily transport the more important bicycle. i will be lobbying my msp to encourage legislation that forbids such aberrant behaviour, bringing the bicycle into disrepute.

monday 17 august 2026

virtual reality

part of yesterday's lunchtime conversation revolved around the playing of games; we're talking scrabble, cluedo, snakes and ladders etc., none of which those of us involved in the discussion had any truck with. it was brought to the fore by the subject of family visitors, who apparently settled down after dinner and, rather than re-acquaint themselves with family they'd not seen for quite some time, preferred to drag out the board games from the back of a forgotten cupboard and while away the evening prior to bedtime.

while i'd admit to occasionally enjoying a game of scrabble, i'd be fibbing if i said i could recall when last i had played. i am not, and never have been, in favour of card games; i struggle even to complete a game of snap; anything more complex is not in my games vocabulary, and certainly not anything that might involve money. however, my personal sense of horror is reserved for monopoly, the purpose behind which has never entered my psyche. it's a game that seems to go on for ever, as does the tidying up when it's finished. even the islay edition, once sold by a local retailer, is not within my domain.

in the good old days of yore, when compact discs were still used to deliver software, i was a regular subscriber to macworld magazine. every month, said publication would arrive with a covermount cd, containing software updates, trial versions of utility software, and freeware, the provenance of which was often more obscure than you'd like to hope. and every month there was a folder included entitled games, a folder that, on my computer at least, was never to be opened. invariably computer games arrive with a lengthy tabulation of instructions for play, involving keyboard commands that i doubt i'd ever learn in a month of sundays.

i did not learn them.

i am led to believe that there are even youtube videos which depict individuals playing various computer games. how is it possible that watching someone else playing a computer game has become a spectator sport? as pointed out above, i have no interest in games of any flavour, but i can comprehend that i may well be in a minority, and that others will happily while away the hours shooting virtual stuff in order to win credits or coins that have no actual value in the real world. but watching people play these games must surely be one of life's strangest means of passing the time.

however, having scoffed my double-egg roll, washed down with a soya latte, i departed debbie's to head homeward, via the southernmost portion of uiskentuie strand. it may have been fenced off, but access and egress for bicycles is still possible via the kissing gates sited at bottom, middle and top of the strand. now that the cattle have been (permanently?) removed, there are only sheep with which to contend; they're just daft and not at all threatening to the (very) average cyclist.

the origins of riding along the grassed portion of the strand was at the behest of strafing winds blowing across loch indaal and, when at full strength, often pushing the hapless cyclist into the path of following traffic. not a situation in which you would wish to find yourself of a saturday or sunday morning. but, coinciding with my unbridled enthusiasm for cyclocross, this meant i could combine safety-first with the ongoing pretence that i possess bike handling skills that would come in handy if wout van aert ever knocks at the back door to ask if i'm coming out to play. long have i ruminated and promised myself to learn once again the joys of mounting and dismounting at speed as practised by the professionals. sadly, procrastination has kept learning at bay, and i am no nearer to accomplishing this than i was last time it was mentioned.

and given that the strand is effectively pan flat with the occasional shallow-dip, its verisimilitude to ruddervoorde, koksijde or namur is debatable to say the least. yet still i persist with the pretence, having shod my specialized crux with challenge chicane rubber in the singular belief that amber sidewalls are considerably quicker than all-enveloping black. in other words, despite my earlier protestations to the contrary, i'm playing a game.

and it's not even a game that i'm winning.

sunday 16 august 2026

i apologise for the lack of content this past week, but, as previously advised, i have been in percussive mode since tuesday evening, leaving scant time to scribble anything of velocipedinal interest. however, unless something unexpected transpires, i believe i may have returned for the foreseeable future. whether that's good news or not, depends entirely on your point of view and how much your existence has become dependent on monologues of no particular intrigue whatsoever.

ever since i began purchasing a daily copy of the times newspaper in the late 1970s, i have satisfied myself as a fan of what was referred to as the broadsheets. the uk dimensions of this particular genre of newspaper varies slightly depending on the publisher, but roughly speaking, we're looking at 37.5mm wide x 57cm tall. granted, this was often a tad tricky to read in starbucks, trains or buses (and aeroplanes, for that matter) or even the breakfast table. however, the large format allowed for an expansive layout and, in certain cases, inspired page designs, but it seems that a majority eventually tired of attempting to fold the pages in order to read in one or more of the above examples, and thus avoid disturbing one's fellow passengers, who were quite possibly attempting to do likewise.

i therefore look back with nostalgia to pre-september 2005, the month in which my current daily read (the guardian) migrated from broadsheet to berliner format, reputedly easier to manage, but a move that required a substantial financial investment in custom printing presses. however, after only 13 years of savouring the reputed benefits, the guardian moved to tabloid size, while managing to escape direct comparison with the so-called red tops with which it now shares shelf size. apparently the original departure from broadsheet size was, according to the guardian website, an attempt to counter "free tabloid newspapers such as metro saturating the market alongside access to fast, cheaper broadband internet connection in the home, and 3g phones bringing the web to an increasingly mobile generation."

evidence of the failure to counter the online world can be demonstrated by the newspaper's decline in print sales by approximately 100,000 in the last couple of decades. to an extent, that has been countered, however, by their highly successful embracing of the online world. currently the only uk newspapers still printed as broadsheets are the financial times, the daily telegraph and the sunday times.

newspaper sales are a tad more complex than simply looking at the decline in print, but one aspect that has followed from broadsheet to berliner to tabloid is the infuriating inability to separate the corners when attempting to turn the pages, a factor that remains to this day, when avoidance of licking one's thumb and forefinger to accomplish has become a thing of the past. however, making inherent alterations to previously traditional modes of operation is hardly confined to the newspaper trade. and in the majority of those cases, expecting an improved outcome as a result is often left unsatisfied. uk residents may recall that in 2022, courier company hermes rebranded as evri following widespread customer dissatisfaction, low rankings in delivery league tables, and negative publicity regarding parcel mishandling. yet, despite the change, the company's reputation seems scarcely to have improved.

i was reminded of a velocipedinal instance while playing drums at thursday's annual islay show, as i watched a ponytailed gent continually walking to and fro from the beer tent, wheeling a cream-coloured folding bike of indeterminate brand. long have i wondered about the third aspect frequently cited as ripe for improvement by government and local authorities. 'walking, cycling and wheeling' are three words apparently joined at the hip when funding for active travel is being discussed; but for years i wondered just to what wheeling referred? perhaps thursday's gent embodied that very aspect, though why he would have required funding for doing so, remains something of a mystery.

almost one year past, in september 2025, the artist formerly known as sustrans changed its name to the far less satisfactory walk wheel cycle trust, nomenclature that just rolls off the tongue (not). over nigh on 50 years, sustrans had cultivated an enviable reputation, praised by transport activists while currying respect from the opposition was almost a unique situation. and while it may be a tad soon to assess any advantages or disadvantages that may have accrued, i have yet to read or receive a press release announcing an improved profile and notable achievements as a result of the new name. some people are just too myopic to realise just what they already have.

mind you, edge carbon componentry migrated to enve, and can now be seen writ large on tadej's wheelsets.

saturday 15 august 2026

ninety degrees of separation

a friend of mine has lost his driver's licence for, i believe, a period of one year as the result of a coming together with his car and an approaching motorbike. from what i can gather, it was a smidsy - sorry mate i didn't see you situation, where the motorcyclist may, or may not, have approached at speed and my friend failed to note his imminent arrival. this probably references a point made only a few days past, that motorists tend to selectively look for other motorists; it's not that they don't physically see other road users, it's just conditioning that tends to lower the importance of doing so.

although in a distinctly different set of circumstances experienced at the weekend, where no-one was ever in any danger of injury, one of my fellow sunday morning peloton riders and i observed an oncoming car at least half a kilometre distant. yet, despite both of us featuring flashing white lights on our handlebars, and the glaringly obvious fact that, if we could see the car, the driver had unhindered vision of two bicycles heading in the opposite direction on the same stretch of road, at the point of coincidence, it was clear that the driver had failed to notice either of us in advance.

i know that, when learning to drive, my instructor laboured the fact that i should always look well ahead in order to 'read the road'. judging by practical experience in recent years, that advice would appear no longer to be on the agenda.

however, as is frequently the case, i have digressed.

the fellow who now finds himself legally carless for a period of at least twelve months, has substituted an e-bike as his principal method of transport. he is fortunate to live quite some distance outside of any village conurbation, with impressive views across the landscape and seascape, but consequently, nowhere near anything that might resemble public transport. the gentleman in question is considerably younger than yours truly, but freely admitted that, had e-bikes not existed, he would find the alternative considerably less palatable, despite being apparently fit enough to contend with riding under his own efforts. he remained unimpressed and unphased by my helpfully pointing out that the mighty dave-t, some fifteen years my senior, still rides an acoustic bicycle, having renewed his subscription with pedal power via a new gravel bike only last year.

it is only a matter of days in excess of one week since the annual ride of the falling rain took place for 2026, a bike ride which preceded its subsequent naming by several years. having read in a copy of america's bicycling magazine in the mid 1990s, an article entitled riding your first century, i had set off one sunday morning to undertake my own century ride, woefully underestimating just how difficult that would be for a first-timer on a mountain bike, without sufficient cash to acquire sufficient sustenance along the way. however, from that point onwards, i would attempt to ride a century at least once every year, if only to prove to myself that i could manage to do so.

latterly, each year i placed a brief article in the local newspaper, advising of my impending lengthy bike ride, enquiring if anyone might find it in themselves to join me, even if only for a portion of the total distance. i'd be fibbing if i said i could recall the exact year, but two chaps both named tom arrived at the appointed hour outside the leisure centre in bowmore, and we set off into the unknown.

one of the two is still a fully-paid-up member of the sunday peloton, having since permanently moved to the hub of the universe. the other fellow, who was inordinately slow, yet perfectly happy on the two occasions he comprised the trio, owns a house here, but lives most of the year on the mainland. and despite not having been in contact for a year or two, as i trudged meaningfully back to the office yesterday afternoon, following a medicinal shot of espresso, i met him outside the premises, proudly displaying his retirement bike, a muted red, steel surley, with rear rack, pannier and slightly chunkier tyres than would win him le grand boucle.

fate and coincidence are probably quite familiar bedfellows, but as we discussed his resplendent new bicycle, the disbarred motorist with the e-bike stopped on his way up the road. this is islay; everybody knows everybody, so all three of us engaged in deep and meaningless conversation where i was moved to note that the gent with the retirement surly was also of an age greater than the newfound e-bike rider, and while i will happily agree that e-bikes have their place in velocipedinal society, if the two elder statesmen of the story have no qualms about remaining the progenitors of their own motive power, why is it that a youngster (by comparison), was satisfied to relinquish that task to a motor and battery?

and, had the e-bike not existed in contemporary society, his alternative to an acoustic bicycle would be missing in action; there would be no convenient alternative. it's not, therefore, the portent of an artificial intelligence future of which we need be aware; for some fit and healthy members of society, that particular future might already be here.

odd that, after so many years of evolution, it seems some of us are content to subcontract to artificial means, that which has stood us in good stead over the centuries.

tuesday 11 august 2026