Revolution

Now that Kate has half a job in town as well as half in Southport, she’s cycling to work now and then. I suspect she also envies me my Ribble. (Like all embarrassing facts, Kate denies this.) Her current steed is a Raleigh Pioneer Classic which was never the nippiest of beasts.

Well, partly thanks to advice on uk.rec.cycling, we used the voucher that came with this month’s Cycling Plus to buy a Revolution Courier Nexus 07 while our daughter wandered around the official opening of the Manchester branch of Edinburgh Bicycle Cooperative wearing a balloon hat with three foot horns and cuddling a balloon penguin.

Hannah (that’ll be my daughter) was pleased with her smoothie, made by me, cycling for some time on a turbo trainer attached to a liquidizer, while trying to find top gear, having never used a bike with twisty gears on the handlebars. Simultaneously, I wracked my brains, wondering quite who the athletic chap popping a champagne cork was. By the time he had signed his name ‘Jason Queally‘ it was sufficiently obvious that I didn’t really know who the 2005 team sprint World Champion was that I thought better of going to chat to him.

I’ve just made good use of my new Altura Stream top and decided, after ten miles agonizingly trying to get as much cool air through the two layers as possible, that it’s plenty warm enough. In my defence, I didn’t set out until eight o’clock this evening so it might have turned chilly.

Kate is now letting off steam at having to wait a week for her new hub-geared bike by playing Wii boxing. She scares me sometimes.

I’m now tempted to get a Courier for holiday use…

Possibly related:

• Hannah goes cycling
• Precipitous cycling
• Bloody annoyed