Oldham pot hole festival

Among all the excitement of the Tour of Britain and the pending world champs I missed this story which broke last Friday. 
One of the 'bosses' at Team Sky - Fran Millar - trousered undisclosed damages from Oldham Council after injuring herself by falling off her bike. Nasty injuries too.
The circumstances will be familiar to many. As described by the BBC, Fran '...swerved to avoid one pothole in Oldham's High Street but then injured herself on another.'
Now, I do have some sympathy for the council's view that there is a 'national pothole funding crisis'  but it seems to me that the further east you travel in Greater Manchester, the more threadbare the cycling infrastructure gets.
My regular commute takes me through, Manchester, Stockport, Tameside and Oldham. 

Potholes can be creative too

Using the Fallowfield Loop, I barely notice Manchester and Stockport despite the loop's inadequacies. 
On my route, both Tameside and Oldham have zero bike infrastructure which is pretty poor. Actually, tell a lie, there is 400m a shared bus lane and one advanced stop box.
As cyclists we get to know the road surface intimately and often have to pick our way along rutted and damaged roads - roads that we all pay for.
We have a long long way to go.

Why the Fallowfield Loop flatters to deceive

The beloved 'Old Faithful' of off road cycling in Manchester - the Fallowfield Loop - has loads going for it as a bike / horse / jogging / dog walking route. The main attractions are of course that it's traffic free and for the most part is soundly surfaced.
It's pretty quiet, isn't covered in broken glass as you might expect and seems to be mostly populated by reasonable people.
But why oh why I ask you did the people responsible for it punctuate its entire length with a series of ever more elaborate barriers which serve no purpose other than to force cyclists to stop, get off, swear and blow their cheeks out. Oh, they also provide blog material too! I think there are about 16 of them in total.
I initially thought that they were there to stop the local scamps driving 'souvenired' cars and motorbike along. But, in a blinding flash of logic, it struck me that, if this were the case, then the barriers would be at the path entry points - on the side  - not blocking the path.
Another really annoying element is that they are all different. I usually celebrate difference and shun uniformity but its like they have been designed to specifically make it trickier for riders to get to the other end.
The worst protagonist is about 2/3 of the way along - travelling east - just before Gorton Cemetery.

As you can see in this picture, it's a reet pain for cyclists but its anatomy has changed a bit recently. The local scamps had managed to remove the top bar of this hilarious obstacle making it bunny hoppable. It was bliss for about eight weeks until some guys with an arc welder removed the bottom one and raised it back up to the old height - and painted it yellow.
If there is a more un-cycling friendly barrier on a cycling path anywhere on the planet then I don't want to know about it. Shite.
The sooner these things go the better for everyone...
Ride safe

A nod or a wink

If you've never noticed it, look out for it - it happens all the time. When motorcyclists ride past one another on opposite sides of the road, nine times out of ten, they'll give a little nod of acknowledgement. This behavior is not exclusive to bikers, oh no. drivers of certain models of - often classic - cars will do the same as will Eddie Stobart drivers and the like.
This little nod says a whole lot more than a simple hello. It signifies that you are part of a wider group; you're in the know; part of the scene.
But us cyclists tend not to do it - at least not as a rule anyway - there's no accepted acknowledgement of others culture in cycling is there.
Being a reasonably glass half full type guy, I'm often found saying 'how do' to passers by or offering thanks to people who shuffle their crazy hounds out of my way.

But many, many don't bother and I think it's to cycling's detriment.
Maybe we don't acknowledge other cyclists because if you did, then you'd do little else - a nod to each passing rider on the Fallowfiled Loop on a summer evening would end up looking more like a semi-permanent nervous tic.
But even when there are few riders around, some people just refuse to acknowledge their role as an ambassador of the cyclists union.
There's a guy who I ride past on a daily basis who I basically rub shoulders with in absolute silence.
I thought, incorrectly as it turned out, that saying 'alright mate' would make the whole process a bit less odd. He obviously thought I was some kind of simpering idiot on day release and didn't even acknowledge my existence.
Maybe he's just ignorant, but it's weird. 
So, I think it'd be a better world if we all said hello to each other. More often. When riding. As long as its not too often cos that would get too weird.
Or maybe I'm completely out of tune with public thinking on this one?

Manchester's two-wheeled award winners

This is not a post about Wiggo winning the sports personality of the year.  The only thing which needs to be said about that is that, he has one, a personality.
No, much closer to the everyday, two cycling related bodies picked up gongs at the recent North West Together We Can awards.
In the Creating Learning & Enterprise category Pedal MCR won the top award for their Earn a Bike Tool Club while the Friends of the Fallowfield Loop were highly commended  for the Levenshulme Community Orchard in the Better Neighbourhoods category.  You can find out more about the awards here.
Always good to see grass-roots organisations getting recognition. Very well deserved I say.

A different Gong