With all the talk of public transport being a shambles during the Olympics, I pretty much panic bought a bike.
I'm easily led. I get addicted to those really crap late-night infomercials and convince myself I NEED to buy the six-DVD ab challenge/industrial steam cleaner for £199 plus P&P. And I get panicky because THIS OFFER IS NOT AVAILBLE IN THE SHOPS. I can't help it. So when it came to taking up cycling, its all the fault of the Olympics organising committee, LOCOG, and their scaremongering about all the Tube chaos come July.
And I know I'm so predictable - and exactly the type of person LOCOG are hoping will actually take heed of their warnings and plan alternative modes of transport. My weakness is that I love a good scaremongering. I can't help it. It makes everything seem so exciting and so very dramatic (albeit a little bit scary). And I just want to get involved.
So I bought a bike last week, to avoid being squashed into oblivion on the Piccadilly line in about five weeks time. Or simply not getting on the Piccadilly line at all, thanks to the 65 million tourists about to descend on London.
Consequently, if anything happens to me on the roads, I'm holding them personally responsible. But it's not the first time I've been a cyclist in London. But it'll be the first time I cycle on proper roads, and not little sneaky back ones.
About four years ago, I used to do short journeys on a shiny silver and gold bmx I bought on eBay for £20. That was mainly for low-impact journeys - booze runs, buying sweets from the shop or getting from A to B in the quickest possible time, but only when B was less than five minutes away from A.
It was a very sweet but way too short relationship. I was gutted when the local hoodlums nicked the gold stunt pegs (obviously it's the law that everyone who owns a bmx NEEDS to stand up on the back and front wheels of as often as possible) - but at least those were only a matter of aesthetics. The bike still worked. That was, until the hoodlums decided to pilfer the bmx's front wheel, which rendered my little mean machine completely useless.
After that bmx Tale Of Woe, last week I graduated to a bike more suited to actually doing something useful, like cycling to work. Even though the prospect of cycling through central London filled me with dread, as I didn't want to get squashed by a bus/lorry/milk float on my way to the office.
I nicked a hi-vis jacket (well, tabard) from work (it was actually a fire marshall's 'vest', but hi-vis is hi-vis, no?) and wore it the whole way home. The fact I looked like some sort of neon-loving mental for six miles didn't actually bother me - I was cycling all the way home, on actual busy roads. And it was amazing.
I didn't fall off, I didn't get knocked down, and there were around six million other cyclists on my route, which made it all a lot easier. How I'm going to deal with rain and adverse weather conditions, I haven't quite though out yet. LOCOG probably have a lucky escape that I can't exactly hold them responsible for the weather too.