I bought a mountain bike two months ago. I commute on it now. Barking to Shoreditch, along the canal, dodging people walking dogs and pushing prams. Slalom around joggers when the path is busy. The road when I’m running late.
I grew up cycling in Bolzano. That was the kind of cycling where you started by going uphill for an hour because there was nowhere flat to go. The destination didn’t matter. The terrain did everything for you. You finished with sore legs and no specific reason for any of it.
I stopped when I moved to London at eighteen. There were no mountains. There was the tube. I didn’t think about it for years.
What changed: my office moved from Ealing to Shoreditch. Suddenly the commute was in cycling distance. I got tired of the train. I bought a bike.
I picked an MTB because that’s what I’d ridden as a kid and the body knows it. Also because I can treat an MTB badly and it won’t mind. Drop it. Bash it against a curb. Leave it locked outside in the rain. Hardtails take it.
Forty-five minutes to an hour each way, averaging around 20km/h. Not fast. Fast enough.
Mostly the weather has been kind. This week was rougher: hail one morning, rain most of the others. The hail day I worked from home. I still don’t own waterproofs.
The first ride back, nothing had changed. Eight years off and the body did everything on its own, the way it knows how to swim or catch a falling glass. I didn’t have to remember anything.
Near Mile End and Whitechapel there’s a flock of us, going in and coming out at the same hours. Lycra commuters, Bromptons in suits, delivery riders on comfy ebikes. I get a flash of envy at the ebikes sometimes. They don’t have to earn the speed. I went non-electric on purpose. I wanted my legs to do the work.
The strange part is who shows up when I’m cycling. Not the same person who sits at a desk all day prompting. The cyclist doesn’t care about arriving anywhere. He wants the next stretch of canal to be empty so he can open up. He just wants to keep going faster.
He notices things the desk version never would. A coot that’s been standing in the same patch of canal for weeks. A moorhen a bit further on, walking the path like it owns it. Neither gives way. I slalom around them.
He hates slow people. Or people making him slow down. When someone overtakes him, he wants them back. Buses too. Cars at red lights. He loses most of the time. He minds losing less than he minds being slowed down.
I don’t know if that person was always in there waiting, or whether the bike summons him on the way out the door. Either way, he shows up around 7am most mornings and disappears as soon as I lock up.
It’s the wrong bike for the city. London is flat. Canal paths are flat. There’s a bridge near my house I have to climb both ways, going and coming back, and the canal has a few small ups and downs along the way. The descent off the bridge is the best part of the morning. I’ve hit 40km/h on it once. It didn’t last long. None of it is real terrain. I’m using a hardtail mountain bike to dodge people walking dogs.
I don’t mind. The body has been quiet in this city for a while. It’s nice to hear it again.
