work lives


write, sub or edit the story or get paid for it if it carries my byline. Most come to understand how journalism works when, as a comparison, I ask to direct their research and have a slice of their grant. You may have concluded that I earn bike-shed- loads of money. I wish. In an unpredictable career, earnings fluctuate wildly. From what I can deduce, they are influenced by two things: the sporting calendar – the market is biggest just before the Tour de France; and chaos theory. To boost my income, I’ve emulated the rock biz; performers now make more money from shows than from sales of recordings. I’d lacked confidence in public speaking until I addressed the NUJ’s New Ways to Make Journalism Pay conference in 2012. Nobody threw tomatoes. The next year, I hit the road with cycling science gigs. I never knew there was an audience for these until I was hired to talk at a couple of cycling festivals. People who had cycled all day simply couldn’t get enough of bikes and seemed happy to hear about the latest on graphene tyres, plasma-assisted aerodynamics and how machismo makes men’s bikes more vulnerable to theft.


Opportunities to talk doubled when a genuine


scientist invited me to a glitzy science festival. There were 250 paying punters, watching our demonstrations where an oxyacetylene torch was used frighteningly close to a high-pressure cylinder of hydrogen. I’ve since learned a little about risk assessments. Bookings at other science festivals followed. I also started leading bicycle rides where people can do experiments and understand scientific discoveries. From that came an invitation to lead cycling science rides at a literary festival. It attracted a different kind of rider – transplant surgeons, an international banker, a former cabinet minister and a Syrian refugee. Most gig audiences are smaller than the


number of links in a bicycle chain but often better lubricated. Also, the fees are low. However, as copyright buyouts make it impossible to resell stories, it’s one way of reusing information. The festivals pay expenses and the best provide fine accommodation, food and drink. Signing and selling copies of my book help, too. The exposure has led to me being hired to chair international conferences and to be a pundit on TV. It’s a career I could never have predicted, developed by chance. It works for me.


How chasing fire engines by bike sparked a niche career


With hindsight, it’s easy to construct a route to becoming a cycling science journalist. As an indentured


reporter on the Wrexham Leader, I bought a bicycle to chase fire


engines. To get to London, I got a job on a cycling magazine. Then, going freelance, an engineering title bought stories about new materials for bikes and commissioned lots of other technology articles. It was the 1990s tech boom so the nationals often also wanted stories with a science bent. Years of covering all


sci-tech areas were disrupted in 2010 when a former colleague from the cycling mag days commissioned a review of brand new bicycles. Then another former colleague nudged me towards a packager who wanted an author to bring cycling and science together in a book. It took almost a year to write, in return for an advance equal to three months’ pay. By the time it was published, I was in


too deep. I knew too much. It was easier to stay with cycling science than to pedal over the horizon. So I glide along, finding the smoothest route, cresting the steepest hills, enjoying the ride. Cycling Science (http://tinyurl.


com/msf5hz6) is published in the UK by Frances Lincoln and in seven other


language editions. There are tweets @cyclingscience1, a blog at cyclingandscience.com and a Cycling Science Facebook page at www. facebook.com/CyclingScience. Cycling science rides will be part of the British Science Festival (www.


britishscienceassociation.org/british- science-festival) in September.


SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO theJournalist | 11


MARTIN J BURTON


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