Sunday 21 February 2010

Get Cycling


We were visited this weekend by our friends Jim and Sally McGurn and their son Joseph. The McGurns run the York, UK based cycling promotion company Get Cycling and previously have been involved in many cycling ventures in the country such as the excellent Bike Culture Quarterly magazine and the Encycleopedia.

They combined visiting us with picking up some new bikes to add to their fleet, including the Conference Bike shown in the video, and got to try out some of our bikes while they were here.

6 comments:

Harry Lieben said...

Gasoline Gus?

David Hembrow said...

I thought it was funny... An idea from another age.

l' homme au velo said...

Great Bikes for Car Free Day and or Bike Day especially that Conference Bike. Although our Car Free Day is Micky Mouse with just Merrion Square and around the Custom House in Dublin Car free. The Traffic still moves all around the City. They still have not caught on to lessening Car Dependency.

I love the Song Gasoline Gus.

It's not even a "bike" said...

I love practical bikes.
The Conference Bike makes me furious.

David Hembrow said...

l'homme...: I did a lot of such events when I used to work for Jim. The conference bikes are specifically for such events. They're eye catching and you get to talk to people.

The Mango is also eye catching, but you don't really want to let a load of teenagers ride, and crash, it.

It's not even...: You're right. It has more than two wheels so it's not a "bike".

The English language sadly lacks a useful word to describe any pedal powered vehicle whether a bike, trike, quadricycle, or whatever...

At least it's not named quite so absurdly as "quad bike"

Dutch has the wonderfully short word "fiets" which covers them all. Let's import that into English, alongside "gezellig." English speakers could do with a bit more gezelligheid.

Anonymous said...

The UK Government has just published a document called Active Travel Strategy. This is a joint publication between department of transport and department of health. Groningen gets a mention on page 9, with a carefully worded description that actually avoids bringing the wonderful cycle routes to your attention. Clearly this was the influence of the dept of (motorised)transport.
Continuing the well worn theme Page 41 talks of training, hi-viz and helmets, with no commitment to segregated routes. Its a sad document.
Mark Garrett, Bristol UK