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keep dancing, or you'll fall off.

several years ago, the guardian gave away a dvd of the superb scottish movie gregory's girl, a film that formed a substantial part of many a scottish childhood, including mine. the stars were john gordon sinclair (who followed up this starring role by riding a motorbike back and forward along a village main street throughout another scottish movie local hero), dee hepburn and clare grogan. the basic premise of the narrative involved the insecurities and eccentricities of scottish schoolkids, offering many a humorous moment along the way.

numbers play a significant part in the storyline, particularly when gregory finally gets his girl and goes on a date to the local part. lying down on the grass with clare grogan, he points out that the earth is hurtling through space at just over 1000 miles per hour, and the only way to make sure we don't fall off is to start dancing, something they both do while lying on their backs on the grass.

this fixation with numbers is presented as something of a juvenile obsession, allowing the adult population a wry smile either at the recollection of the same obsession or its having passed them by completely. however, this presents us with something of a dilemma, for either the preoccupation with numbers spreads wider than the junior percentage of the population, or we as cyclists are still remarkably juvenile.

i'd figure the jury's still out on that one.

if evidence of such juvenile behaviour were required, you need only look as far as the numbers appended to the carbon fibre from which that bike in teh shed is fashioned from. or, perchance, the endless digits that can be garnered from a garmin, srm or simple heart-rate monitor. for some folks riding bicycles, those numbers have taken on a level of importance that threatens to over-ride the simple joy of riding a bicycle in the first place.

however, numbers have their place under certain circumstances, and oddly enough some of the more intriguing or, dare is say, important have been brought to light by the royal automobile club (rac). for instance, dates when related to important points in cycling history, are surely numbers with which few would argue against. in 1830, scottish blacksmith kirkpatrick macmillan was credited with building the first mechanically propelled, two-wheel vehicle. a fellow in whose company i was on friday (hi james) contends that other than the wheel, scots invented everything, though special dispensation was awarded the australians for socks that remain up and whirly-gig clothes driers.

statistics, however, offer a substantially different viewpoint of the cycling fraternity and may well be a set of numbers that have less efficacy than their originators intended. in fact, frequently, they are all but meaningless. 43% of the population owns or has access to a bicycle; 8% of the population cycles three or more times a week; 34% of the population cycles at least once a year. unless specifically placed in context, such numbers don't really mean a whole lot of spoke nipples, but every now and again, they can come in remarkably handy.

it does seem rather odd that a motoring organisation has collected these cycling facts in an impressive, but lengthy infographic, the full force of which can be see via the link below. naturally enough there is some method to their madness, in this case, advertising their personal accident insurance, but to be quite honest, i think that's a quirk for which we can forgive them, in return for such a plethora of cycle-related numbers.

saturday 27 september 2014