There are good and bad things about biking, which is how I mostly get about nowadays. I love the freedom of it. I hate being stuck behind a gas-belching bus. I love going down hill. I hate struggling up hill. I love the way it's so easy to strike up conversation with a bike (sorry, with people when I have my bike).
In this country, especially, the thing that influences a ride the most is the weather. I don't mind the cold, since I get warm very fast when I'm biking. I do mind the rain though, because the rain here is cold! I came out of a meeting in Waterloo today to bike to the Strand and then to New Cross. As soon as I had unlocked the bike and started off, there was a hail storm. It then poured all the way from Covent Garden to New Cross (about 6 miles) and it was freezing. I was a cold drowned rat at the end of that one. And yet, there were good bits to it too. Like the parking attendant who grinned at me at a traffic light, looked up at the sky and said "It's not nice, is it?" Or the solidarity you can feel from other cyclists who are as wet (and presumably as miserable) as you.
So I love it, in spite of everything
