I’m a road-rage addicted cyclist who commutes right into Manchester city centre monday to friday. I’m enjoying a career at the Co-op near the printworks and I used to do delivery driving and courier work so I have a lot of road knowledge. Also from my dad, a retired driving instructor who has always kept me grounded so I never became a ‘white van man’.

I suffer from over-confidence and I must be quite intimidating on my 23 inch no-brand (bankrupt stock) mountain’ish road bike. I’m 6’4″ and I ride on the balls of my feet, almost on my toes but I’ve found my optimum riding position.

My bike? It’s a beauty (to me.) I get it serviced every 10 months due to the 14 miles a day, which wears the tread off the puncture proof road type Schwalbe tyres. I just had to ge the whole transmission replaced due to wearing down the teeth on the freewheel. I had enough fun chewing handlebar when I was younger.

I use rear panniers for my work clothes so i’m used to a little extra weight, if I need to swap over a hardback book used for reading at work, or i’ve bought something in town that I need to strap onto the top pannier.

I’ll post a picture when I take a snap of it tomorrow. It got serviced (new tyres / transmission) just a week ago so it feels.. well.. how do you empathise how good it feels? I love cycling. Oh and I just ordered some Montane overtrousers and a waterproof peak cap too. Gotta keep the rain off the specs. Although I just can’t get with the polystyrene hat crowd. I own one and a full on skater style helmet, but I just feel stupid.

yeah, yeah, would I rather be walking through the pearly gates or getting home safe in a polystyrene hat? It’s a no-brainer, but my brains switched off then. Maybe it’ll take a near miss to make me strap one on.

I’ve already had two near misses in my cycling history. A good ten years ago my beloved uncle gave me a bike with a broken top tube, and since he was such a do-it-yourself type of guy he’d bracketed the two ends together. I got to one sleeping policeman (road hump) and the tube went skewiff. I chewed pavement.

The second time… Does anyone know the Burger King / Abbey bank area of Manchester Piccadilly Gardens? I took a tumble. After nearly a week without rain (in manchester, uk??) we had a bit of a quick downpour before I left work. That meant the roads and cycle areas had a greasy film of dirt just waiting to bring down any cyclist not paying attention.

I was going between the tram lines past said shops, and one pedestrian changed his direction. I saw it and jigged the handlebars so I’d go over the metro rail. But instead I had the sudden feeling of hitting black ice as the front wheel connected with the metal rail. Before I could say “you goober, where’s the beef!?” I thought someone had hit the bottom of the front wheel witha sledgehammer. I went down so fast I didn’t even have time to let go of the handlebars. My head and shoulder hit the ground like a mortar.

And I saw stars.

Once I was fully conscious after a few seconds where everything tasted purple I got up slowly. Simply because of the embarrassment factor. 4.45pm on a Thursday afternoon in the Manchester Piccadilly area. I couldn’t have had a bigger audience if I was auditioning as a hilarious circus artist at the M.E.N. arena.

The end result was a few chips of bone missing from my right shoulder and my arm held in a trouser belt for a week. With two weeks off from work to recover.

Is that my calling card? Polystyrene hat from the attic, are you mocking me? I think so.

Thanks for reading and I only wanted to say Hi – what a great, informative (to the max) and calming site for cyclists. I think I over shot the mark.

Have a nice day. I’m going to leave my anger at other road users at home tomorrow. See you on the roads. I’ll be the tall mancunian cyclist on a huge black mountain bike cycling around the south manchester area.

Have a nice day!

Rob