RWC: Getting bums on saddles. A political plan!

How do we get the weekend warriors to become winter hard core commuters and how do we get the cagers to become any sort of cycling commuters, because once they start they’ll get hooked as we all have done and the only problem will be the mad silly commuter bike races everywhere every morning and evening.

So how do we do it?

One word [being an engineer] Infrastructure

Yup it’s cycle lanes!

When I come to power it will happen this is the plan and it’ll really could work, if we put cycle lanes everywhere it will be the making of this country.

[warning this covers lots of trains of thought but there’s method in my madness] 

We are currently plunging our way into recession and possibly depression, loads of people are out of work and the world is choking to death on car fumes… Basically we are buggered.

Enter the simple bicycle, this simple device will fix our country’s, nay the world’s problems.

Now to build the cycle lanes we need money, but the country is flat broke so how do we get the money?

 

1st we need bikes and lots of them.

Materials shall be reclaimed from scrap yards and all the cars sat in huge car parks around the country doing nothing and the cars we confiscate off lazy people and they shall be made into bicycles.

But who will do this work?

All the people who don’t have jobs will be given a job in factories making the bicycles, learning manufacturing skills and earning a crust (the wages will be pulled from money saved later) to produce thousands of various types of bicycles.

We have loads of bicycles now what to do with them…. Sell them for cheap £50 each for good reliable lightweight bikes made out of ford, Vauxhalls and range rovers.

 

But how will this solve the country problems?

National Obesity Crisis.  Problem Solved

Some people don’t cycle because they are unfit and over weight due to sitting in front of the TV for 10 years. Give all obese people bicycles, take away their TV’s then they will cycle when they get bored enough and then loose weight. Problem sorted!

Saving the NHS millions every year.

 

Smoking addiction. Problem Solved

Give all smokers bicycles, they cycle and still smoke for a while but in order to get faster they would quit. So we get no smokers again saving the NHS millions every year!

The Money saved shall be reinvested into the building of cycle lanes.

 

Traffic congestion.  Problem Solved

The average road is 8m wide 4m each lane, in this space you can just fit one car and one bicycle next to each other, but with just bicycles we can fit 4 cycles next to each other basically quadrupling the volume of traffic we can fit in the current road system.

Saving the country millions every year in lost revenue from people being late due to congestion!

But who will build the cycle lanes?

 

Over crowded Prisons Problem Solved

We have thousands of people lounging around in cells, watching TV and playing pool, Prisoners are the answer. Given the chance / no choice to get out and graft we have a massive workforce available for manual work.

So we shall create cycle lane building chain gangs, thousands of blokes and women’s in jump suits on the streets guarded by men with shot guns should get things moving along quite nicely! 

Chances are that most of those on short sentences will object the 12 hour days grafting at the side of the road and won’t want to re-offend and go back to prison, so the numbers in the prisons will reduce.

With all the roads getting thinner to accommodate the new cycle lanes the speed limits will have to be reduced to 20mph every where…. Well at that speed it’s just as quick to cycle! (See where we are going)

The last part of the plan is to install SAT NAV type system into every car to control the number of vehicles on the road and it should work like so.

• Get in car; enter destination post code / address.
• Car calculates the distance with the following results:
• Less than 1 miles car does not start and flashes up advice note saying “Walk!”
• Less than 5 miles car does not start and flashes up advice note saying “ Ride your Bike”

This will remove all short journeys that could be walked / ridden = loads less cars!

So we have a country of fit healthy people cycling every where.

Car manufactures give up and start making bicycles!

Co2 emissions reduced dramatically as we all cycle every where.

The rest of the world follow suit, creating the possibilities to cycle round the world in cycle lanes!

 

This is my plan for when I come to power to get more people cycling!

 

Vote Highway Munky

  

P.S. If you are upset and angry about any of the above comments I apologise and will have you a sense of humour posted out immediately. 

Surviving the credit crunch…no wait recession…oh no it’s now a Dep[CENSORED]on

I’m sure that we are all feeling the ‘pinch’ at the moment, job losses, non existent credit, housing market given up, Bankers stolen all the money, Alistair & Gordon seem to have taken the taxes my kids are going to pay and bet them on a 3 legged donkey called Rodney to win the national.

So things are pretty rubbish, so how in such a climate are we suppose to feed our cycling habit?

Cycling is pitched as a cheap alternative to driving and it can be…. buggered if I can work out how, cause I have to buy bike stuff as often as I eat, but I’m told it can be.

Having pondered on this issue I have come up with a few tactics.

1. Stick with what you have.

Now this may seem radical, as the new bike you’ve been eyeing up is still calling you softly, but there is method in my madness!

By not buying the new bike you will not spend £xxxxx or $xxxxxxxxx (add your own figures) on the new perfect, make your life complete bike. You will have to ride your current steed for a while but you can get away with treating it to some of the following:

• New grips – makes it feel lovely
• New tyres – gives a whole new feel to the ride,
• New saddle – so the saddle sores you would have got from the new bike will not be missed out on.

The biggest pro of this is the your spouse, by mentioning that you will restrain from buying the perfect, make life complete steed for the benefit of family,money,recession blah blah blah reasons, and mealy purchased some maintenance essentials.

He / She will think that you are very responsible and praise and love you for it.

(note: this is in the bag for when things turn around. The price of the bike you currently have your eye on will be dwarfed by the one you will be able to get away with in 6 – 12 months time, as you have waited so long for a new bike, you poor little soldier)

2. Get a part time job at your LBS (local bike shop)

Now there are loads of good reasons for doing this and they shall be listed thus:

• Extra money – Yes they will pay you to hang out a drool over bike bits all day long
• Discount – All the essentials and none essentials, bikes, clothing everything is discounted to usually just above cost price….. IT’S AWESOME!!
• Most of the other people who work at the LBS will be into biking too, so you can hang out and talk bikes all day!
• You get to talk to people about bikes all day and they are actually interested.
• You get discount on everything!
• It adds massive kudo’s to your cool meter for working in a LBS.
• Your family and friends will be in awe of you working hard at 2 jobs (if you call hanging out talking about bikes working)
• Did I mention the discount?

3. As the market traders said “SELL SELL SELL”

You like I will probably have loads of bike bits hanging around, old bikes long forgotten, unfinished projects, bits of things you’ll never use.

Ebay is your friend!

The other benefit of selling bits is that you can very easily use that money to fund buying the bits you need!

4. Recycle.

Things that can be recycled.

• Tubes – patch them up and stuff them in your bag as a spare
• Tubes – Cut them up and use them as frame protectors
• Tubes – Cut them up and use them as mud guards on the forks
• Tyres – Clean them down, cut them up and use them as belts, bag straps, wrist straps,
• Cables & cogs – Can be used as an interesting wind chime (bit lame but true)
• Cables & cogs – assassin tool kit of choking wire & ninja stars. (joking)
• Chain – Used as necklace, bracelets, bag accessories,
• Whole Bikes – packed up and sent to Africa HERE and HERE and HERE (OK this won’t help you other than to get rid on a spare bike but it will help someone)

Suggestions for other financial Dep[censored]on surviving cycling tips welcome!