The Spokesmen Cycling Roundtable Podcast The Spokesmen

15th April 2024

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 351: Andy McGrath — God is Dead

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Andy McGrath


LINKS:

https://www.the-spokesmen.com/

https://www.ternbicycles.com

https://twitter.com/CarltonReid

https://twitter.com/Andymcgra

https://andydoesart.substack.com

https://www.amazon.co.uk/God-Dead-Vandenbroucke-Cyclings-Wasted/dp/0552176044/

TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:12
Welcome to Episode 351 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Monday, April 15 2024.

David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:04
I’m Carlton Reid. And today’s show is the first of two episodes with bike book authors. Later this week, I’ll share the chat I had with potholes and pavement author Laura Laker a book so fresh, it’s not even out yet. But today, I talk with William Hill award winning author Andy McGrath about his 2022 book, God is dead biography of Frank Vandenbrouke the wunderkind who died a mysterious death in a grungy African hotel room.

Liège–Bastogne–Liège has been staged since 1892, the oldest of cycling’s five monument races, and this year’s race will be staged at the end of the month, Sunday the 21st to be exact. Now, Andy, it’s 25 years since a certain famous victory of that particular race. So tell us about that.

Andy McGrath 2:10
This was the edition of Liège–Bastogne–Liège where the great Belgian cycling hope Frank Vandenbrouke seemed to be fulfilling his immense potential. And he did it in his own unique way. He told anyone that would listen in the days for the race, you know, teammates, DS’s, rivals and other races and media, where he was going to attack to win the race to make it stick, a bit like Muhammad Ali used to do before his heavyweight fight. And he’d went out for a 20 minute puto, a few days before the age best on the age. And it’s covered his teammate saw him come back to the hotel, you know, barely a blink of an eye later. And he told him, that’s all all I need, I feel good. I’m going to win lift some of the age. And he was in a state of grace that day, he attacked on by ODU, which sounds different course back then. It finished in an industrial suburb over the age. And the Cordilla. Redo was about oh, at 90k from the finish. And he, he he wrote up in the big room, he tacked up in the big green, which is I could barely walk up it when I was researching the book, which is a astonishing and slightly sinister thing when you really get into that era of cycling. And he was already clearly the best, you know, he he accelerated pass the defending champion makayley Bartley like it was nothing and then he just let the rest catch him up, basically. And he did attack, you know, if we’re going to split hairs slightly later than he said he would you know, or maybe earlier actually, I think it was early. And he said he would you know, a few 100 metres earlier. Because

Carlton Reid 3:55
Because that’s in your book, isn’t it? Yeah. It’s a very detailed book and you you’re knocking on doors, and you give the exact door that he actually did attack on and not the one that you said he’s going to attack on?

Andy McGrath 4:06
Yeah, the thing is, I actually knocked on the door of the house number he said he would attack which was 256. You know, hoping for some kind of journalistic intrigue and it was a little bit disappointing that I think people that answered the door were very nice, but it was someone loo

8th April 2024

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 350: AA’s Think Bike Redux

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Chris Boardman, Jeremy Vine, Edmund King


LINKS:

https://www.the-spokesmen.com/

https://www.ternbicycles.com

https://twitter.com/CarltonReid

TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:12
Welcome to Episode 350 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Monday 8th April 2024.

David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:04
I’m Carlton Reid and on today’s super short show we hear from Chris Boardman and Jeremy Vine, plugging that from today, the AA is relaunching its 10 year old ‘Think Bike’ campaign. This nudge-like promo encourages drivers to fit small Think Bike wing-mirror stickers to remind them to look out for those on two wheels. Back in 2014 the AA printed a million of these stickers and distributed them to members promoting the giveaway with a YouTube video featuring a good-looking naked cyclist appearing in wing mirrors demonstrating that if people chose to truly look before manoeuvring, there’ll be fewer casualties out there. Did the campaign save any lives? Impossible to prove either way, of course. And some might argue that 10 years down the road the feral attitude towards cyclists in particular from some motorists is worse than ever. But that a motoring organisation is still going out of its way to promote a critical road safety message is something that’s to be applauded.

The concept for a wing-mirror sticker came from AA patrolman Tony Rich after his friend was killed in a motorcycle crash. The idea was then championed by AA president who’s not only an arch motorist but also travels around London on a folding bike. Edmund cycles recreationally, too … I know that because he often sends me photos of him riding his mountain bike wearing the ipayroadtax Lycra jersey that I sent him ages ago … So before the sound bites from Chris Boardman and Jeremy Vine here’s Edmund King …

Edmund King 3:01
It is now 10 years since we launched our Think Bike sticker campaign. But unfortunately, the message is still as relevant today as it was a decade ago; far too many people are being killed and seriously injured on two wheels, whether cyclists or motorcyclists. So we will be spreading the message again, to all drivers to think bikes.

Chris Boardman 3:26
It’s hard to believe the Think Bike sticker campaign launched 10 years ago, and I was there when that happened, the idea to make drivers just a little bit more aware of the vulnerable road users around them. Really glad to see that the AA is reinvigorating the campaign. And I’ll be glad to join in and help.

Jeremy Vine 3:43
And I’m so pleased to see that the AA is doing this because if you’re on two wheels, you do feel quite vulnerable. And I always think when you’re in a car, and I drive too, you don’t always see that that person on the bicycle is a mum, a sister, somebody’s son, someone’s grandfather, maybe even their great grandfather. So thank you AA for thinking bike.

David Bernstein 4:07
This podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit

17th March 2024

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 349: Turn on Strava for everyday journeys, it could reshape streets for the better

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Tom Knights, Strava Metro


LINKS:

https://www.the-spokesmen.com/

https://www.ternbicycles.com

https://twitter.com/CarltonReid

https://press.strava.com/articles/stravas-metro-reaches-significant-milestone-of-10-year-anniversary

https://metro.strava.com

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 349 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday 17th of March 2024.

David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:03
I’m Carlton Reid. On today’s show, I’m talking with Tom Knights. He’s the senior manager of partnerships and marketing for Strava Metro. This is a super-useful active travel city-making dataset-service from the athlete tracking app. And if you bristled at the word athlete, because you think there’s no sport in transport, listen on …

Strava metro was very, very

insistent in 2020. About how successful cycling and and walking in all active mode because of the pandemic and the blog posting was, you know, we’re very pained to say this. However, you know, it’s really, really, we’re going crackers with the amount of cycling as you know, the bike boom, yeah, what did go amazing. Now, the bike industry right now is famously and woefully massively down in the dumps. So what have you seen with usage? So what has happened since 2022? actual usage of bicycles not just, you know, we know the sales are bad. Is the usage bad also?

Tom Knights 2:21
Yeah, that’s a really good question. And actually like to say the kind of the free, the free, free call to Strava Metro kind of suddenly going free was actually very well timed, unfortunately, under very difficult circumstances globally. One of the reasons like I say, we kind of made Strava Metro free wasn’t actually because of the pandemic and the looming kind of crisis. And obviously, this switch to human powered transportation. It was like, almost like an unfortunate timing, but but obviously beneficial for cities and all the planners that start to use this data. So yes, we definitely saw this huge boom during the kind of 2020 21 era. And thankfully, because a lot of cities and a lot of regions and governments had the foresight to start investing in protecting cycle lanes in safe routes, which we know is one of the biggest barriers to people actually kind of picking up a bicycle. Lot of those initiatives have stayed, and we hope that they’ve stayed because actually, they’ve been able to see some of the Strava activity straight through Strava Metro, and then use that against other data sources to start to understand actually, is this being used in terms of trends, and overall, we’ve definitely seen more of a normalisation but again, what we are seeing is obviously, people looking for alternatives to either commute, and then well, kind of 2024 the word commute looks a bit different than maybe it did in 2019. But anything that’s a utility trip, and essentially through safe and accessible infrastructure. That’s what we know. And I’m sure you know, from all the kind of conversations you’ve had over the years, that’s the biggest driver to people, making it feel safe. So, long story short, yes, we’ve definitely seen a normalisation now, in terms of growth

Carlton Reid 4:06
Normalisation, that sounds like quite a bit of a euphemism for, for wh

10th March 2024

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 348: Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett of Komoot

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett

LINKS: 

https://www.the-spokesmen.com/

https://www.ternbicycles.com

https://twitter.com/CarltonReid

https://www.komoot.com/user/655260825794

https://jkbsbikeride.com

TRANSCRIPT
Carlton Reid  0:13  
Welcome to Episode 348 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday 10th of February 2024.

David Bernstein  0:28  
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid  1:03  
I’m Carlton Reid. And this is the fourth in a five part series digging into bike navigation apps. There have been shows with folks from Ride With GPS, Bikemap, Cycle.travel, and today it’s the turn of Komoot.

although as you’ll soon hear, in this nearly 90 minute chat with Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett, we also talk a great deal about travelling the world by bike. And that’s before, of course, there were smartphone apps to guide you.

Jonathan,

welcome to the show. And presumably you’re you’re in London,

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett  1:51  
thank you very much for having me. It’s a real pleasure. And yeah, I’m in London, South London to be precise on a very beautiful sunny February morning. 

Carlton Reid  2:01  
It’s kind of nice in Newcastle as well. So we’re blessed. Now the reason I said that was because a your name. So we can get looking we can discuss that in a second and you can show me how you’re you can tell me how to pronounce your, the Danish part of your name correctly. But also because cuz because we’re talking here about Komoot and Komoot is a German company. But first of all, how do i pronounce your name correctly? 

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett  2:29  
My name is pronounced Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett.

And it’s actually not a Danish surname. It’s a Faroese surname from the Faroe Islands. So I am I a half British, my father’s English my mother is Danish, but my mother is half Faroese, her grandma, my grandmother’s from the Faroe Islands, and the Faroe Islands for anyone listening who isn’t sure exactly where they are, is a bunch of islands about halfway between Scotland and Iceland. And on the southern most of those islands, called Suðuroyu. There’s a kind of like a mountain ridge, behind the village where like my gran and her family are from called CamScanner. And that’s where that name is from. So yeah, it’s it’s ferries surname via Denmark. Wow. Okay, good explanation.

Carlton Reid  3:26  
And because I didn’t know any of that, I then didn’t go back and check on your, your global world. Crossing cyclist. So I noticed that you went from Iceland? Did you go via the Faroe Islands at all? Yeah.

Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett  3:45  
So many, many years ago. Now, I spent three years cycling around the world, which was a whole kind of story in episode in itself. And at the very end of that, I wanted to go and seek because my great grandmother was still alive at the time, and she was alive and kicking the pharaohs. So towards the end of this, this, this free journey, I really wanted to go to Iceland cycle there wasn’t particularly advisable in the depths of winter, but had a wonderful time nonetheless. And from there, you can take a ferry to the pharaohs. So I did go. I did after sort of not really seeing any family for about three years. I did go and see my great grandmother, which was amazing. It’s an incredibly beautiful

24th February 2024

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 347: Richard Fletcher

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Richard Fletcher, Isle of Man

TOPICS:

LINKS:

https://www.the-spokesmen.com/

https://www.ternbicycles.com

https://twitter.com/CarltonReid

https://www.cycling.im

https://www.bikestyle.im

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru1PYzU1k_w

https://www.visitisleofman.com




Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 347 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Saturday 24th of February 2020. For

David Bernstein 0:29
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:04
The plan was to record this interview while riding to Laxey on the Isle of Man with cycle guide and event organiser Richard Fletcher, pointing out the roads long used by fellow Manxman Mark Cavendish, but then weather! I’m Carlton Reid, and I was on the Isle of Man for the AGM of the British guild of travel writers. members could choose a one day fam trip activity. And while others chose spa and yoga retreats or cookery sessions, all indoors, I had asked to go cycling. I brought my road bike on the Steam Packet ferry from Heysham and was eager to hook up Richard with a radio mic and then chat, as we pootled along. The driving rain put paid to that idea. And after a bitterly cold two hour ride, we drip-dripped into a Douglas bike shop. Right. And I’ve just seen a photograph of you there that I took on the road, and you’re smiling. But there’s sleet. There’s rain, there’s basically we’re riding through it almost a river coming up through to Douglas. So that was pretty grim out there.

Richard Fletcher 2:23
Yes, as bad as it gets over here. But yeah, you’re out on your bike. And there’s the worst places to be. So as long as you don’t do more than an hour and a half in that sort of that sort of weather, then it’s fine. Right?

Carlton Reid 2:35
So warmed up, we had a cup of coffee, and a bit of cake in Noa’s bakery, and that’s Noa. And next door to that is Bike Style. The bike shops who are now sitting on very nice sofas here, in in a nice bike shop. I’d like to say overlooking, you know, the scenic wonders of Douglas, but we can’t actually see a great deal. And when we were out riding this morning, you you basically you took me out to some scenic places, but we didn’t actually see anything. So just describe the ride that we did this morning. What would we have seen if it would be a beautiful day? Because we’re kind of going towards Snaefell, weren’t we?

Richard Fletcher 3:12
Yeah, well, the hills, the route, we went on the hills all around it, basically. So and yeah, on a clear day, that’s what you see. You can you can see the island from sort of side to side and top to bottom only when you’re out it’s particularly if you get some height. But today, because it’s hilly, you get white-out effectively. So yeah, there’s quite low cloud and you don’t see a lot. But yeah, it would have been a nice ride if our view wise if it had been clear.

Carlton Reid 3:42
Because we did get pretty damn cold out there today. So the route you were originally planning to take me on would have been towards Laxey

Richard Fletcher 3:52
We’d have gone north of the east coast of the island. And you get some stunning views on the East coast. Well on all the coastal routes on the island, and the island basically has villages and towns dotted around the coastline. So as soon as you come in from the towns, you start cli

20th February 2024

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 346: Monica Garrison

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike


LINKS:

https://www.the-spokesmen.com/

https://www.ternbicycles.com

https://www.blackgirlsdobike.org

https://twitter.com/CarltonReid


TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 346 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Tuesday 20th of February 2024.

David Bernstein 0:29
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:03
I’m Carlton Reid and today’s episode is a half hour chat with Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike a Pennsylvania nonprofit now in its 11th year of group rides and more for black women and girls. And yeah, I should have checked out the weather map before I asked the first stupid question. Have you been riding today?

Monica Garrison 1:28
Oh, no! There’s snow everywhere. We had a big storm yesterday. Yeah, yesterday.

Carlton Reid 1:35
I should have checked your weather. Okay. So how much of the year can you not cycle in Pittsburgh?

Monica Garrison 1:43
Pretty much November to March is pretty snowy and rainy, and cold. So we have a nice big offseason here, though some folks ride through the winter. I’m not one of those people.

Carlton Reid 1:57
So you kind of come say March, April, you’re kind of really desperate to get out on your bike, that kind of thing.

Monica Garrison 2:05
Oh, yeah, the mid March The weather seems to shift and and cyclists return full force and and then we’re good. I mean, we get pretty hot in August and July, you know, it’s a bit unbearable and humid. So there’s some time there where it’s not so pleasant to be out on the bike, but pretty much yeah, the rest of the year we’re riding.

Carlton Reid 2:27
So I really should have checked the weather. Because that was such a stupid question, wasn’t it if you’re deep in snow, and of course. That’s okay. So the rest of the year. tell me about the rest of the year in Pittsburgh. What’s it like riding in Pittsburgh?

Monica Garrison 2:43
So Pittsburgh is notorious for its hills. It’s a very hilly city. So it’s not for the faint of heart. Literally. I think over the last 10 years, we’ve had a really good programme, Bike Pittsburgh is our local Bike Ped organisation. And they’ve done a really good job of creating infrastructure that connects. So there are large parts of the city that are interconnected for commuters and everyone else on bikes. So that’s nice. We have what we call the gap trail here, which is a Great Allegheny Passage. And it starts here in Pittsburgh, and you can ride it all the way to Washington, DC. So a lot of local cyclists put that on their list of things to do in the spring and summer, before it gets too hot. And our we have Port Authority, which is our local bus transportation here. And they made an effort a few years ago to outfit all of the buses with bike racks on the front. So no matter where you’re headed, you can take your bike with you

Carlton Reid 3:52
Now, we’re very jealous. When when we see Americans with, with buses with that on the front, we get very jealous, we’ve got very few services that will will do that. So I’ve seen photographs on your, on your website, where it’s like the media images where you can get these the photographs you’re allowed to use. And there’s you and your kids, and there’s a bike lane in Pittsburgh. So I can visualise extremely well, t