My Bike

Page 1

My Bike — Monday 6th Jul ‘26

I was recently hit by a car on my bike. I am fine and my bike is fine. The injuries I sustained will heal quickly. My bike required a lot of fixing, I essentially had to break it down and rebuild it from the frame up, six million dollar man style. As I was doing it, I was thinking about all the wonderful memories this bike has given me. This is nothing more than a love letter to it.

I love my bike. I bought it for £200 from a charity bike shop, I’ve ridden it for almost exactly three years now. I was doing some rough calculations and I think I’ve done around 10,000 miles on this bike. “The Swift” is what I call it, It has a little emblem on the front with a bird (a swift, I assume) and text that reads “Swift and True”.

It’s a bit small for me, but I like that. I ride a little bit further over the handlebars than I “should” but it makes me feel like I’m rushing forward like those scenes in sci-fi films where the stars go all blurry. It’s very nippy, very quick and very sturdy. It’s a touring bike, so it has 3 rings in the crank. It also has downtube shifters. Both of these things put the bike’s age at somewhere in the 1980’s, or so I’m told by friends who know much more about bikes than me.

Bikes are inherently liberating; You can buy one for next to nothing. The cheapest bike I have ever ridden was one I bought in Bahrain for a tenner (I paid 20 quid cos I felt bad it was so cheap). You can fix most issues with one of those cheap multitools that cost a fiver. With some lube, a pump and a puncture kit you can be set for years!!!

---

Page 2

No one can stop you riding a bike. Early suffragettes loved them because they allowed women to get about on their own with no one to stop them. I am not an early suffragette but that’s one thing I love about bikes, you are FREE

So that’s why I love bikes, but The Swift isn’t any bike, it’s MY bike. I’ve ridden it to Paris from Blackpool on my own, I’ve carried 50KG of french oak to the hackerspace on the back of it, I’ve balanced large pieces of furniture on the rear and it has never buckled or broken

The seat is perfect. It’s the only thing modern about the bike really. It’s some Italian seat my friend suggested I buy and it is, predictably, perfect. My sit bones sit just where they need to, and despite it being incredibly hard, I’ve never got a sore bum from it. My family don’t understand how I could ride on such a hard seat, but they don’t understand the swift like I do.

The wheels are somewhat modern too, now I think about it. I used to have some thicker wheels on it but my friend gave me his mavicks when he moved to Oz. I had gotten to the age of 32 before realising what a massive difference thinner wheels make on a bike. I love them, and every time I go for a ride I’m thankful that I exist in a world with friends who know much more than I do about things.

---

Page 3

I ride it through Manchester, parking it anywhere, knowing that because it’s not a “fancy” bike, no one in their right mind would try to steal it. It’s obviously old, but not old enough to look “vintage” or look like anything worth nicking. I guess it just flies under the radar of whatever bike thieves there are round here.

So that’s it. An outpouring of love for a hunk of metal I use everyday of my life. I’m not a materialistic person generally, but I do find I establish emotional connections with many objects in my life (see my post on “crap things” if you’d like more of this)…

I don’t believe in a normal god, but I know there’s a lot we don’t know about the world. I like to think my bike smiles at me when we go on a ride together, that all the atoms and molecules that make us both up are connected in some way. I know this probably sounds ridiculous, but come back to me when you’ve done 10,000 miles on a bike you love dearly and you’ll know what I mean.