OPINION
LAURA LAKER’S NEW COLUMN I
In my new BikeBiz column, I’m interested in reflecting all things cycling industry: where it is, where it’s going and maybe even where it needs to be. I’ll no doubt talk about e-bikes, and some of the good, the bad and the meh in cycling, while cracking some bad jokes along the way. You can get in touch with thoughts and ideas via my social media channels.
t was a dark and stormy night. Rain was lashing down, as blood poured from my lacerated finger. The pedestrians of Piccadilly Circus walked by,
every one oblivious to my increasingly desperate plight. I can’t remember the details of how I’d drawn blood trying to fix a puncture, but drawn blood I had. It’s possible I’d used a penknife to remove the offending shard of glass from the tyre and ended up removing a slice of finger. Once the inner tube was repaired and the Marathon Plus tyres wrangled back into place I took my oil-blackened, bloody hands into the loos of the nearby McDonald’s to clean myself up for the ride home, trying not to scare the customers too much.
The event, while hazy now in my memory, must have taken place in my earlier days as a London cycling commuter. I’ve learnt a lot over those years, including choosing tyres that aren’t so thick they hurt my hands to change, while improving my puncture repairing skills. A ten-year-old photo that resurfaced in my social media feed recently shows I used to use knitted gloves to cycle. I’m far too much of a convert to neoprene and other technical fabrics to go there again. Looking back at my cycling journey, it’s fun to remember what it’s like being a novice to cycling, wearing all sorts of weird things (plastic bags inside trainers to protect from rain and cold in winter), and learning what works for me, pretty much regardless of any trends. People I speak to, who want to start riding a bike, are embarking on their own journey – and they’re doing it, dozens of them, every day. It’s a wonderful thing – and it’s what will keep the bike industry alive. Now when I pass other cyclists on the bike lanes I look at them and think, I’ve been riding in London since you were a kid. I’m the elder now, weirdly. Younger riders in London – cycling for leisure or
34 | April 2025
commuting – do things differently to how I did them, or possibly you did. Those in their 20s and early 30s might view a full Lycra outfit for a leisure ride, for example, as a bit gross. It’s cotton t-shirts on top, padded shorts down below – a nod to the wider 1990s revival. People seem to have discovered, en masse, the joys of a front rack for carrying stuff, a joy Dutch riders have long known. In London at least, there’s just more people cycling than there were 20 years ago: every day more than 1.3 million people hop on cycles of all shapes and sizes in the capital. Some of them are going to work, some are parents with cargo bikes or child seats dropping their kids off or running errands. They are younger and thankfully more diverse than they used to be: this morning two Muslim kids cycled past my window on their way to school, apparently unaccompanied – a freedom that wouldn’t have been possible without the recent Low
Traffic Neighbourhood.
Many young people don’t bother owning their own bikes, and for younger, more diverse riders, it’s Lime or Forest
PHOTO CREDIT: STOATPHOTO, SHUTTERSTOCK
www.bikebiz.com
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