Bicycle

Well, thanks to a combination of the weather and laziness, I've been sadly ignoring my new ordinary*. I got home on Monday and realised it had been a month since I last took it for a spin, and so I decided to spend a good ten minutes meandering around the streets in my immediate vicinity.

Previously, I have been spending a fair bit of my time on the ordinary just practicing getting on and off and turning, so this was really the first time I spent a solid ten minutes riding the bike without stopping.

It seems as though every time I get on the bike I notice something different about the way ordinaries work compared to modern bicycles. This time the thing that struck me the most was the use of my arms.

Okay, the pedals are connected directly to the front wheel, which is connected directly to the forks, which are connected directly to the handlebars, which more or less means I'm using my arms and legs at either end of a "solid" line. Imagine holding onto a pogo stick, only instead of jumping up and down your feet are moving it from side to side.

With a modern bike, I'm really just using my arms to help balance and to occasionally point the handlebars in the direction I want to go. With the ordinary, I'm using them to wrangle the bike - pulling against the movement I'm creating with my legs. I'm sure I'm probably doing something wrong. Trying to hard to keep the bike in a straight line when I should be letting it sinuate more naturally, or something like that. It's hard fighting against the instincts I've developed after years of riding modern bicycles.

Plus, the ordinary is a little closer to my unicycles than my regular bikes, so when I relax my arms I start weaving wildly - the sinuation I usually have on a unicycle is fine on a 20 inch wheel, but at 38 inches it's a bit undesirable.

All I know is I can't just "point and shoot" the thing - I actually have to use my arms in a much more physical way than I first expected.

The things you learn, eh?


* "Ordinary" bicycle: The "I'm more historically accurate than you are" way of referring to a "Penny farthing" bicycle. Use it, and feel slightly intellectually superior.